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[Second Issue of the Day]
#4
ANALYSIS-Emboldened Georgia may go beyond Pankisi Gorge
By Rosalind Russell
TBILISI, March 12 (Reuters) - Washington's idea in Georgia is a limited operation to flush out a handful of guerrillas from a remote mountain gorge.
It aims to train and equip the ramshackle army of the former Soviet republic to restore order in the lawless, rugged Pankisi Gorge, where guerrillas linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network may be hiding.
But having lost big chunks of its territory to separatist rebels since independence a decade ago, Georgia may seize on the mission to try to resolve a host of other problems.
And some analysts believe a new, confident Georgia may find it hard to exercise restraint, raising some concern in Russia.
"It makes sense in the fight against al Qaeda to mop up potential safe havens like Pankisi," said Anatol Lieven, a regional analyst at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"If the Georgian army is boosted by a successful operation in Pankisi, it could move on," Lieven said. "I have very little confidence in the restraint of Georgians."
Georgian officials are already talking about new threats in Abkhazia -- its cherished, sub-tropical Black Sea province lost to local separatists in a humiliating 1993 defeat.
"They (the Georgians) could use al Qaeda as an excuse for an attack on Abkhazia, with potentially disastrous consequences," Lieven said.
South Ossetia, further east, also runs itself independently, while the western province of Ajara has never paid much attention to the rule of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze.
Last week, Georgia's interior minister for Abkhazia, Mamuka Nachkebia, said he was sure Abkhazia was "in contact" with al Qaeda, accused by Washington of having carried out the September 11 suicide attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
Nachkebia said Arab nationals had surfaced in the region -- seemingly preparing public opinion for the possibility of military action under the banner of the U.S. war on terrorism.
PEACE PROCESS DEADLOCKED
An estimated 10,000 people died in a 1992-93 war between Abkhaz separatists and the Georgian army after the Soviet Union's collapse unleashed secessionist wars across the Transcaucasus.
Some 300,000 ethnic Georgians were driven from their homes in Abkhazia, once a favourite summer resort of the Soviet elite.
Since then the conflict has been frozen but unresolved, and a U.N.-brokered peace process has stalled.
Abkhazia, a strip of territory sandwiched between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, now enjoys the unofficial protection of Georgia's northern neighbour Russia.
A conflict would bring Georgian troops face-to-face with Russian peacekeepers patrolling the province -- a very different story from the measured, special operation Washington envisages at Pankisi Gorge.
U.S. special forces instructors, expected to start arriving later this month, will train four Georgian rapid deployment battalions in anti-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations.
"There's a history of U.S.-trained troops going on to pursue their own objectives," Lieven said. "A new Abkhaz war could mean all hell breaking loose. Along with the military training there needs to be a U.S. capacity to rein in Georgia."
TENSE RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA
Moscow, irritated by Shevardnadze's pro-Western policies, has grudgingly accepted the plan to deploy U.S. troops on its southern flank, complaining only that it was not informed first.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said last week it had received U.S. assurances that it did not expect U.S.-trained Georgian troops to fight in Abkhazia or unruly South Ossetia.
But several hardline members of the Russian parliament have voiced concern that Georgia might use its improved army to win back its breakaway region, and have suggested a new association for Abkhazia with Russia.
Shevardnadze and senior Georgian officials refuse to talk of renewed war in Abkhazia.
"The conflict is frozen," Georgi Baramidze, head of the parliamentary committee on defence and security, told Reuters.
"This suggestion of Russian protection for Abkhazia is just one more indication of Russia's imperialist mind which is working to undermine Georgia."
With U.S. help, Georgia is freer from Russian influence than at any time since its independence. The U.S. deployment has forestalled the threat of Russian force in the Pankisi gorge, where Moscow says Chechen fighters have rear bases.
"The U.S. decision was triggered by Georgia's inability to stand on its own two feet," said Alexander Rondeli of the Georgian Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.
"It has strengthened Georgia's independence by neutralising Russian threats."
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