New views shaping troop deployments

A new mindset, brought about by Sept. 11, has made distant conflicts and nations such as Georgia more important to the Bush administration.

©Los Angeles Times
February 28, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's moves toward deeper military involvement in the former Soviet state of Georgia are the latest demonstration of how, with a world view reshaped by Sept. 11, the administration is thrusting America more directly into distant conflicts that have raged for years.

The United States has long been committed to a stable Georgia, just as it has been eager to see peace in Colombia and an end to a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines. But now, citing the threat of terrorism, the White House has expanded its military advisory role in the Colombian and Philippine jungles and in the former Soviet Union -- a place where any U.S. military presence would even recently have been unthinkable.

"So long as there's al-Qaida anywhere, we will help the host countries root them out and bring them to justice," President Bush said Wednesday in North Carolina.

Late last year, the Pentagon sent 10 U.S. UH-1H Huey helicopters to Georgia, which borders Chechnya, where Islamic separatists are fighting Russian rule. A U.S. military trainer and six U.S. contractors have been in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, since November training Georgian personnel.

Pentagon officials are weighing proposals from military advisory groups that they make more aggressive moves to pursue militants in Georgia who, according to what is described as new evidence, may include members of the al-Qaida network.

"There have been some indications of connections . . . of al-Qaida in that country," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said.

Georgia has been a route for Islamic extremists traveling between Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations and Chechnya. Insurgents from Chechnya have used the rugged country as a route for supplies and as an avenue of escape from the Russian military.

Although a direct combat role has been ruled out, the Pentagon may provide more equipment and step up the use of military trainers in Georgia. In response to published reports that 100 to 200 U.S. military advisers might be sent to Georgia, officials said the needs are still being assessed.

An escalation of involvement in Georgia comes after the United States has already established a military presence at bases in the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They are part of a ring of new and expanded military bases established at 13 locations in nine countries near Afghanistan since Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, the avowed pursuit of al-Qaida members around the globe has the United States closely watching such countries as Somalia, Yemen and Indonesia, which are among the estimated 60 countries where the terrorist group is thought to have cells.

Given the strong domestic support for the war on terrorism, these moves have spurred little open opposition at home. And some analysts sympathetic to the Bush administration said the U.S. move in Georgia is in keeping with the assertive stance that Bush has taken since Sept. 11.

"Our involvement there is a logical consequence of the new agenda," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a conservative advocacy group. At the same time, Schmitt acknowledged that U.S. forces may be required to remain in Georgia for some time, and longer than the Pentagon would like.

The United States has been committed to trying to stabilize Georgia since the Soviet Union fell, hoping that it would serve as a strong independent counterbalance to Russia and trying to support the government of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

U.S. officials had economic interests in mind, including an oil pipeline that they hoped could be built from the Caspian region through through Georgia and Turkey, to provide an alternative to a route through Russia.

But the issue of Islamic militants also loomed large. The Georgian government has been unable to control the Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia in the past three years. Chechen fighters, some reportedly with al-Qaida links, penetrated the mountainous border freely.

Russia has put intense pressure on Georgia to agree to a Russian operation to rid the gorge of Chechen separatists, a proposal Georgia firmly rejected. Nonetheless, Russian planes have bombed northern regions of Georgia several times in recent years, and recently Russian officials have said that Osama bin Laden was in the gorge.

The U.S. helicopter transfer was first agreed to by the Clinton administration, said Kenneth Yalowitz, the U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 1998 to 2001.

Yalowitz said that as part of the agreement, Georgian pilots have been training at U.S. military flight schools for two years and U.S. military personnel have traveled to Georgia to assess the best place to base the choppers.

Yalowitz stressed that the new U.S. interest should be seen as "part of a broader fabric relationship with a country that we want to see succeed -- this is all not just something that comes out of nowhere."

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