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February 27, 2002
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has begun providing combat helicopters to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and will soon begin training several Georgian battalions to counter what defense officials think is a growing terrorist threat in the country's mountainous Pankisi Gorge region.
The United States also is considering sending 100 to 200 U.S. soldiers to Georgia to help train its military for antiterrorism operations, defense officials said Tuesday.
Russian and American officials say fighters aligned with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network are holed up in a mountain gorge in Georgia near the border with Russia's breakaway Chechnya region.
The move to train and equip the Georgian military opens a new front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism and is fueled by a belief shared by the United States and Georgia that al-Qaida members and other Islamic extremists from Chechnya have taken refuge in northern Georgia along the Chechen border.
The mission also represents an acknowledgement by the administration that Arab fighters connected to al-Qaida have joined Chechen forces to battle the Russian army, an assertion long made by Russian President Vladimir Putin but doubted in Washington.
About 40 U.S. military personnel, including Special Forces, visited Georgia this month to assess Georgia's security needs, according to Lt. Col Ed Loomis, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. The assessment team has filed its report, which is now the basis of the Pentagon's deliberations, he said.
The Pentagon has provided the Georgian government with 10 UH-1H Huey helicopters, six for operations and four for spare parts, Loomis said. A U.S. military trainer and six contractors are in Tblisi, the Georgian capital, training Georgian personnel in how to operate the aircraft.
In taking its war on terrorism to Georgia, the administration is also seeking to bolster the standing of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and build stability in the volatile Caucasus region. Georgia, a transit point for Caspian oil and an aspiring member of NATO, has been considered a U.S. ally since it won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The White House promised to help Shevardnadze during a visit to Washington in early October, Georgian diplomat David Soumbadze said Tuesday. "He was promised there would be a program of training and even providing some equipment. There was no detailed discussion about when and how," Soumbadze said. "This is being done specifically to enhance Georgian armed forces' ability to fight terrorism."
The Bush administration believes that Arab fighters trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan have found safe haven in the Pankisi Gorge. There are also Chechen fighters who have battled Russian troops among an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Chechen refugees.
U.S. officials said there is not an explicit goal of training Georgian forces to capture suspected terrorists, but one policymaker said the potential to question fighters in the Pankisi Gorge is "an element" of the administration's thinking.
Russian reaction to the U.S. mission in Georgia has ranged from fear that the United States is seeking a fresh foothold in the Caucasus to satisfaction that the Americans are acknowledging that some fighters in Chechnya and others in Georgia are connected to international terrorism. Russian troops have battled Chechen rebels in the region since 1994 in an effort to put down an independence movement. The Russian military's tactics-and Moscow's heavy handed rule-have been sharply criticized by international human rights groups.
The Pankisi Gorge lies within Georgian territory, but the government in Tbilisi is too weak to control the rugged terrain or the bandits and transient bands of fighters who operate there. Russia has pressured Georgia to get tough and assert authority over the region or to allow the Russian military to roust the Chechens.