Markha, a 14-year-old Chechen girl, sometimes sleeps in her younger sister's jacket. The cloth is punctured by bullet holes and stained with blood, because her sister is dead. Russian soldiers killed her when they fired randomly into the courtyard of her home as she was playing.

Markha, a 14-year-old Chechen girl, sometimes sleeps in her younger sister's jacket. The cloth is punctured by bullet holes and stained with blood, because her sister is dead. Russian soldiers killed her when they fired randomly into the courtyard of her home as she was playing.

Markha refused to believe her sister was dead, asking for her body to be taken to a hospital instead of the cemetery. She often woke at night thinking her sister was calling her. "I always, day and night, think about my sister," she said.

She blames herself for the shooting. "If I hadn't let her out and she had been at home nothing would have happened. They should have killed me," she said. Markha believes her mother also blames her for what happened. She said: "Mum thinks I am guilty, and that's why she doesn't pay attention to me." After a time she did not want to see her parents.

Markha is one of a thousand children a month, traumatised by savage fighting in Chechnya, who receive psychological rehabilitation from the Centre for Peacemaking and Community Development (CPCD). The centre is supported by Hope for Children, the charity chosen by The Independent for this year's Christmas appeal.

"The symptoms are often depression, children withdraw into themselves, they cannot concentrate, they hide under the table when they hear a plane," said Chris Hunter, one of the organisation's founders.

The CPCD was set up in 1994 when the first war in Chechnya began. It operated through the war, despite two of its workers being kidnapped. In the second war in 1999, it had to abandon its main rehabilitation centre in Grozny, the Chechen capital, because of the Russian bombing. Today it has 54 psychologists and councillors helping children, both in Chechnya and in refugee camps in Ingushetia.

"The main thing is to provide a warm environment where children can have fun," said Mr Hunter. "They paint and play musical instruments. They begin to trust people again."

Therapy often means helping children forget what they have seen. Rumissa, a 12-year-old girl, was haunted by the memory of three dying Russian soldiers. Jabrail, aged 11, was obsessed by the sight of two bleeding Chechen fighters being carried into the cellar where her family was hiding.

Since 1999 Russian forces have largely sealed off Chechnya. There are fewer kidnappings than before but they are still a danger. However, there is a far greater sense of hopelessness today among all Chechens, not just children, than during the first war. Other CPCD projects include a mine-awareness programme, aimed at children. Some 150 Chechens are wounded each month by mines, mostly anti-personnel mines which frequently tear off a foot. In the southern mountains they are randomly scattered by Russian helicopters. For young children the mines, which resemble large mushrooms, may look like a toy.

The sheer inaccessibility of Chechnya, because of Russian restrictions and the threat of Chechen kidnappings, masks the cumulative horrors of the war. For instance, last year Yusup, a Chechen boy, was playing with friends in a field near his village. A Russian missile landed. Three children were killed and Yusup was badly wounded. Gangrene set in and his legs were amputated. The CPCD arranged for him to have artificial legs fitted in Germany.

In one of the nastiest conflicts on earth, the organisation is one of the few signs of practical humanity at work.