#10 - JRL 6525
Philadelphia Inquirer
October 30, 2002
Putin's wrath may hit Georgia;
Before Chechen rebels' raid led to the deaths of 118, Russia had been weighing attacking their refuge in the ex-Soviet republic.
Mark McDonald, Knight Ridder News Service
Tbilisi, Georgia

With his nation mourning the loss of 118 hostages in last weekend's crisis in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has promised to "strike at all the places" where terrorists operate.

"And I stress," he said, "wherever they may be."

No one doubts that Putin has Georgia on his mind, a vest-pocket former Soviet republic to Russia's south that is figuring large in U.S. strategic plans for the region.

Even before a gang of Chechen militants seized the Moscow theater and took hundreds hostage last week, Putin had threatened unilateral strikes against Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, a lawless valley just over the border from Russia's rebellious republic of Chechnya. Russia and the United States - and even Georgia itself - consider the Pankisi a safe haven for Chechen militants, a conduit for arms flowing into Chechnya and a hideout for al-Qaeda fighters. Putin has always considered the Chechen separatists to be terrorists, and his hard line on Chechnya has played well with most Russians.

On Sunday, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said the hostage crisis had created "a psychological and military turning point" that demanded harsher action in Chechnya and the Pankisi.

To many observers in Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, a Russian incursion into Georgia seems almost inevitable now, even if it might upset the United States.

"We're playing with the big angry bear, which is totally stupid, because we're incapable of defending ourselves," said a former senior officer in the Georgian army. "Do you think the U.S. will send troops to bail us out if the Russians come? No way."

A 120-man detachment of U.S. special forces troops is already in Georgia but isn't spoiling for a fight in the Pankisi. Instead, it's charged with whipping Georgia's ragtag army into shape.

The Georgia Train and Equip Program is a two-year, $64 million boot camp that is the centerpiece of the Bush administration's nation-building effort here. The program intends to give Georgia an officer corps and five crack battalions capable of battling drug traffickers and arms smugglers, guarding oil and gas pipelines, and hunting down terrorists in the Pankisi.

"We're the future of the Georgian army," said Lt. Lasha Beridze, 24, a spit-shined battalion commander trained at Fort Benning in that other Georgia, the U.S. state.

Why Georgia? A corrupt little country barely the size of South Carolina, a flat-broke nation of five million that can't collect its own taxes, run its own electricity, or defend its borders?

"Georgia's importance to the West cannot be overstated," said B. Lynn Pascoe, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Pascoe described U.S. policy here as "tough love."

"Georgia is a fulcrum for East-West energy pipelines. A stable and democratic Georgia will have geo-strategic importance for our international relations far into the future," Pascoe said.

That future has arrived. Construction of a $3.1 billion oil pipeline is under way, a BP-led project that will carry a million barrels a day from the Caspian Sea across Georgia and down to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. Beridze's men will be guarding that pipeline, as well as a gas line that will be built alongside it.

Senior Georgian officials say American planners have not asked to use Georgian bases in any coming war against Iraq. But with the growing possibility of military action and further turmoil in the Mideast, Washington is looking at oil from the Caspian basin as a hedge against possible interruptions of supplies from the region.

The Germans, British, French and Turks have the same idea, and they all have energy strategists and military advisers in Georgia. The Germans, for example, will start training drill sergeants next spring in the Georgian town of Gori, birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

"Georgia now has a function," said Tedo Japaridze, head of Georgia's National Security Council and a former ambassador to Washington. "We're talking about huge amounts of Caspian hydrocarbons. If something bad happens in the Middle East, if Saudi Arabia crumbles, if energy channels get blocked, this Caspian energy will help define America's energy security."

Russia has its own designs on all that Caspian oil and gas, and Moscow has not been happy about Washington's growing presence and leverage in Georgia, the Train and Equip Program in particular.

Moscow has its own leverage. For one thing, it controls every cubic foot of natural gas and every kilowatt of electricity that flows into Georgia. About 13,000 Russian soldiers remain deployed at a half-dozen former Soviet bases on Georgian soil. And last month, the Russian military threatened to attack the Pankisi Gorge and the Chechen guerrillas hiding out there.

"If the Russians control or absorb Georgia, they could close down the entire south Caucasus and Central Asia, too," Japaridze said. "They could make Georgia an energy bottleneck. But if we preserve our independence, we can be a gateway."

Keeping the gateway open will partly fall to the Georgian army, now an ill-trained, poorly paid bunch led by an officer corps that Japaridze admits is corrupt and incompetent. The Georgia Train and Equip Program is a first step in constructing a modern army here.

GTEP aims to graduate 2,000 officers and troopers.

"GTEP is training the army so the military won't do anything when [Georgian President Eduard] Shevardnadze leaves" office, said the former officer. "These generals are not dangerous while they don't have an army. But give them 2,000 trained men under arms, and watch out."