#1
Boston Globe
March 19, 2002
US troops help ex-Soviet state fight militants
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

DUISI, Georgia - American military personnel have begun arriving in Georgia to bring the war on terrorism to a violent and lawless gorge on this former Soviet republic's border with the separatist Russian republic of Chechnya.

The Americans will train and equip Georgian troops to reclaim the Pankisi Gorge, a sparsely populated patch of the Caucasus Mountains where the United States believes several dozen Islamic extremists connected to the Qaeda network are hiding.

Beyond that goal, the US military presence serves a larger strategic purpose: building the stability of the volatile Caucasus by shoring up the independence from Moscow of former Soviet states such as Georgia. Before Sept. 11, this US presence would have been unthinkable.

In keeping with President Bush's pledge to hunt down terrorists everywhere, between 100 and 200 US special operations forces began arriving Sunday to train Georgian forces to recapture the Pankisi. The United States has already provided Georgia with supplies and 10 Iroquois military transport helicopters, and 18 flight instructors arrived last week to work with Georgian pilots.

Washington insists that US troops will not participate in combat in the 36-square-mile gorge, which is thought to be the base for armed Chechen rebels, gangs of kidnappers, and drug lords.

Even if US soldiers do not fire a shot, Georgia is a treacherous place for them.

''Train and Equip,'' as the six-month, $64 million program is being called, is the first attempt to station US troops in an area that Moscow still jealously regards as within its sphere of influence.

The mission also creates a US military foothold in a country that is close to Iraq. Georgia has already offered the use of its airspace to the United States for any antiterrorist operations in the Middle East.

''This is about stability in the Caucasus,'' said Georgi Baramidze, chairman of the Georgian Parliament's security and defense committee. ''But we want to be front-row contributors in the war on terror.''

In another complication, the mission places American troops just across the border from Chechnya, where Russian forces are bogged down in a brutal campaign against secessionist forces that they say are being funded by Al Qaeda.

Being too closely associated with that war, which the US State Department criticized only days ago for numerous atrocities, is only one of the risks inherent in Train and Equip. The US troops arrive at a time when Russia has been accused of meddling in Georgian affairs by supporting ethnic separatists there and by trying to undermine support for the government of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

Georgia is also ground zero in a significant post-Cold War struggle between Russia and the United States, over the direction oil from the Caspian Sea region will take as it makes its way to Europe. The United States has backed Georgia's efforts to host pipelines that would keep the oil from going through Iran and Russia.

Shevardnadze, whose popularity and grip on power have slid as his countrymen increasingly blame him for the ongoing corruption, poverty, and separatist conflicts of post-Soviet Georgia, last month hailed the impending arrival of US troops as a new step in the US-Georgian friendship.

''We have been working toward this for eight years,'' Shevardnadze said, speaking of Georgia's ties to the United States.

The training program is intended to shore up Georgia's borders to prevent the transit of terrorist groups through the country and help stop the spread of dangerous nuclear materials, said Valeri Chekheidze, chief of Georgian Border Guards. He said 500 of his troops would receive training from US instructors beginning in mid-July.

US instructors also will work with Georgian special forces battalions, which are meant to form the core of a smaller, more effective Georgian military. At the moment, Georgian and US defense officials say, Georgia's post-Soviet army of 27,000 has a bloated officer corps, inadequate equipment, and few battle-ready troops.

Sunday's arrival of the US soldiers in Tbilisi, the capital, was quiet. A number of uniformed US soldiers appeared in the Sheraton Hotel but avoided reporters. Several men eating at the hotel identified themselves as helicopter pilot instructors but would not say more. The US Embassy here refused to comment about the troops, even on background.

The gorge is a three-hour drive northeast of the capital. With its unassuming farming huts, where some 7,000 ethnic Chechens have lived for 200 years, it seems far from the war on terror. Beyond two checkpoints heavily guarded by Georgian police, who stop and search everyone going in and coming out, lies the town of Duisi, which looks peaceful enough.

When the United States announced that its troops would go to Georgia, everyone in Duisi expected American warplanes to begin bombing, said Dzharap Khangoshvili, the mayor. It was a good thing they have not, he said.

''There are no terrorists here, only poor people and refugees,'' Khangoshvili said.

But Khangoshvili's security officer made sure that an American reporter was well-guarded at all times during a two-hour visit to the town on Sunday. Young men were walking the street in the garb usually associated with Chechen rebels - camouflage uniforms, skullcaps, and long beards. The armed men of at least one Chechen rebel commander, Ruslan Gelayev, have set up in the Pankisi, making money as the muscle for drug and kidnapping gangs operating here, said Zurab Pilashvili, a police officer from the district capital of Akhmeti.

Tensions escalated here after 1999, when Russia sent its troops to retake control of Chechnya. Thousands of Chechen refugees fled the Russian bombs that flattened their villages. But armed Chechen militants, using the countless mountain paths that traverse the border, also made their way into Georgia. By late 1999, Moscow began pressuring Shevardnadze to let the Russian Army open a second front against the insurgents in the Pankisi. Shevardnadze refused, angering the Russian military, whose helicopters later bombed the border areas.

Local officials denied that any Al Qaeda members were in the Pankisi. But they wondered aloud when the Americans would come and help them clean up the place.

Georgian defense officials, who only this year began acknowledging Russia's longtime claims that Al Qaeda sympathizers are hiding out in the Pankisi, now say the militants began moving out soon after the United States announced plans to send troops.

Russian politicians say this is proof that the United States has other agendas. Some Russian politicians are worried that the United States may use operation Train and Equip to establish a permanent military presence in Georgia. But President Vladimir V. Putin said Moscow backs any efforts to control the spread of terrorism to the Pankisi Gorge. Russia has long accused separatist rebels in Chechnya of being Islamic terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

Georgia certainly would like to free itself from Russia's influence, which it blames for backing separatist rebellions in two of its provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

''The day I heard the Americans were coming I was the happiest man on earth,'' said Alexander Rondeli, a political analyst in Tbilisi.

''The feeling was that someone strong and powerful was coming to support me and my country.''

Even with support and training from the United States, Georgia's borders will remain porous.

''There are millions of paths to Chechnya,'' said Pilashvili, the Georgian police officer. ''I don't care which army comes here; no one can control them all.''