WORLD AFFAIRS

The Pankisi Gorge crisis

CHARU SINGH
in Moscow

The conflict between Russia and Georgia over the Pankisi Gorge-based militancy receives a fresh twist with the U.S. taking sides with Georgia, as part of its bid to establish its influence further in the region.

FOR an Indian, the recent events in the Caucasus may seem strangely familiar. Headlines in Moscow newspapers have been screaming about fighting in the turbulent Pankisi Gorge tract of Georgia, the lawless gorge infamous in Russia and throughout Eurasia as an area that harbours Islamic Chechen militants and criminal warlords. News in the first half of September has centred on a series of well-publicised accusations and counter-accusations traded between Russia and its former Soviet co-republic, Georgia. The United States, meanwhile, has been seeking to referee this increasingly rough ball-game. The story is as old and perhaps as sordid as the Kashmir imbroglio in India.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze.

The latest twist to the Pankisi issue began, according to reports, in the pre-dawn hours of August 23 when four `suspected' Russian jets allegedly crossed the Russo-Georgian border over to the gorge and carried out bombing raids in the Akhmeta district of Pankisi, Georgia. At least eight Georgian civilians were reportedly injured and one killed by the bombing. The bombings closely followed an August 22 report on Russia's Rustavi-2 television channel which revealed that over 500 Chechen militants led by the Chechen warlord, Ruslan Gilaev, had abandoned their camp near Tbilisi and had headed north towards the Georgian border with Chechnya. Observers feel that Gilaev's cross-border movement provided the impetus for the raid.

Post-September 11, the situation in the Caucasus changed with a growingly pro-active stance adopted by Russia against Islamic Chechen militancy, an increasing Georgian flirtation with the West and, for the first time, an American military presence in the region. Reportage on the incident let loose a geo-political crisis of major dimensions between Russia and Georgia, dragging the U.S. into its vortex. The bombing raid generated considerable anger within Georgia. On August 24 the Georgian government ordered over a thousand Interior Ministry troops, police officers, and Special Forces into the Pankisi Gorge with the objective of reasserting its control over the area. Even as Georgian troops were sweeping the gorge for ultras, a diplomatic battle of accusations and counter-accusations was building up between Moscow and Tbilisi.

An emotional Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian President, while attending a funeral service in Pankisi, let loose a tirade against the Kremlin. "The Russian bombing of Georgian villages has broken all limits. The entire world feels your pain,'' he said. Shevardnadze explicitly stated to the press in Tbilisi that, "there is no doubt whatsoever that the air raid was carried out from Russian territory and that the aircraft belonged to Russia''.

In New York, Georgia's Ambassador to the United Nations, Revaz Adamia, accused Russia of aggression and asked the U.N. Security Council to look into Moscow's "flagrant violation of international law and the U.N. charter''. The Georgian Parliament further sharpened the crisis by passing a resolution on August 26 which called on the government to pull out of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), expel Russian peacekeeping forces and close the three remaining Russian military bases within Georgia. A serious situation was thus created.

Even as Georgia was upping the ante diplomatically, Moscow remained unmollified. Russia responded to the allegations of its use of air power with an outright denial of the Pankisi incident. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov informed the Interfax news agency that Russia was not responsible for the raids and even laid the blame on the Georgian defence forces. He said, "I do not exclude the possibility that the Georgian armed forces undertook the operations."

However, the harshest reaction from the Kremlin came on September 11, with President Vladimir Putin issuing a strongly-worded warning to Georgia that if the terrorist movement into Russia was not curbed, the Kremlin would go in for concerted, well-coordinated strikes against the terrorist bases in the gorge. Speaking at a meeting with law-enforcement officials on September 11, Putin warned: "If the Georgian leadership cannot create a security zone on the Russian-Georgian border, continues to ignore U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373 of September 28, 2001, and fails to put an end to bandits' sorties and attacks on the adjacent regions of Russia, we will reserve the right to act in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that grants every U.N. member-state an inalienable right to individual and collective self-defence.'' At a high-level ministerial meeting on the same day, Putin instructed the federal border guard service, the Defence Minister and the federal security service director to report to him on the situation on the southern border of Russia. He instructed the Defence Ministry to prepare proposals on the "possibility and expediency of strikes'' on verified terrorist bases within the gorge.

The U.S. meanwhile came out heavily against Russia, with White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declaring that the Russian raid into Georgian territory had been verified by monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Fleischer went on to say that "a political settlement to the conflict in Chechnya would contribute to stability in Russia and Georgia, and advance our efforts to fight terrorism and establish peace in the Caucasus''. The U.S. has already sent 20 U.S. Special Forces' instructors to train and equip Georgian soldiers, after committing itself to a $64-million-plan to help Georgia fight Pankisi-based Al Qaeda militants. The entire move has been made on the basis of growing U.S. anxieties about the presence of Al Qaeda operatives in the gorge. Further, observers argue, even though the overt interest of the U.S. in the Caucasus seems to be the issue of security, its covert interest is in increasing its influence in a region that currently possesses the world's largest energy resources and which is also emerging as a major route for gas and oil pipelines.

Pankisi has been a sore point between Moscow and Tbilisi for some time now. The area was affected by the spillover of Chechen militancy during the course of the second Chechen War in 1999. The spillover was the consequence of the decision of Georgian authorities to admit 7,000 Chechen refugees into Pankisi. This has resulted in the criminalisation of the gorge. Jaba Dariani, founding director of the U.N. Association of Georgia, explains in a recent write-up: "Over the past decade, the Pankisi Gorge has emerged as a haven for criminals. Its proximity to Chechnya helped the region develop into a major route for arms and drug-trafficking. Some observers say that it was only during the late 1990s that ties developed between law-enforcement officials and criminal barons based in the Pankisi Gorge. The influx of Chechen refugees created a political flashpoint that called attention to the security situation in Pankisi. The influx of Chechen warlords upset the criminal hierarchy in Pankisi and set off feuds among rival gangs. Initial instances of kidnapping were, some observers say, linked to criminal infighting.''

Observers declare that another major element contributing to the lawlessness in Pankisi was the movement of Islamic Chechen militants into this area from neighbouring Chechnya. In addition, Georgia has experienced a major round of unrest and secessionist conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia through the 1990s. The movement of militant elements among these three disturbed areas - Pankisi, South Ossetia and Abkhazia - is a well-established fact. Simultaneously, there is considerable trafficking of arms and drugs among these areas. Shevardnadze's government does tend to fight shy of serious engagements against militants, preferring to turn a blind eye to the festering militancies in the area. The Russian government has been highlighting this situation in the world fora for some time, and has stressed the need for joint operations with Georgia in Pankisi.

Security in the Pankisi Gorge, geographically isolated from the rest of the country, has been largely neglected, even as Shevardnadze's government grappled with other threats. For Tbilisi, the gorge remains a very sensitive area. As recently as in January, intra-community tensions rose when a group of Georgian Afghan war veterans established a checkpoint at the point of entry to Pankisi to demand the release of kidnap victims. Local Georgian officials joined the protest demanding better law enforcement. This was a great blow to Shevardnadze. The lawless tract remains a challenge for the Georgian government.

What has consistently upset Russia is the fluctuating, non-committal response it has got from Georgia on the issue. Dariani writes that Shevardnadze reacted to Moscow's repeated accusations with "seemingly contradictory statements". After denying the Russian claims for months, the Georgian leader last year admitted to the presence of a limited number of separatists - men under the command of the Chechen field commander Ruslan Gelaev - using Pankisi as a base. Further, soon after the U.S. announced its $64-million plan to help Tbilisi fight alleged Pankisi-based Al Qaeda militants, Shevardnadze accused the Russian military of driving larger and larger numbers of Chechen fighters across the porous Chechen-Georgian border.

Moscow's anger grew as Shevardnadze vacillated. Meanwhile Georgia signed a pact with the U.S. to tackle militants in the Pankisi Gorge, even as it refused to participate in joint operations with Russia. This struck a raw nerve.

Pavel Baev of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, mentions in his event paper that "the U.S. presence in Georgia could have a dramatic negative impact on the Russian public's opinion of the U.S.-Russian relationship. Following the U.S. announcement of its decision to send troops to Georgia, Russian popular opinion about U.S.-Russian relations has sunk to its lowest level since the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] bombing campaign in Kosovo.'' Moscow currently remains highly sceptical of the Pankisi sweep, especially as two days before the troops moved into Pankisi, Shevardnadze advised the male Chechen population in the area to leave Pankisi.

The latest Pankisi incident has fuelled tensions not only between Georgia and Russia but also between the U.S. and Russia. Observers feel that the post-September 11 warmth in U.S.-Russian relations has ended, especially after the increased U.S. presence in the Caucasus and due to the active U.S. support for Georgia in the current Pankisi crisis. There is also growing unease in the relations between the two countries due to Moscow's increasing dealings with Iran, Iraq and Korea, which the U.S. describes as the "axis of evil''. Baev further stresses that the U.S. interest in the Caucasus "derives from its concerns about threats posed by terrorist groups in the area as well as its enthusiasm for opportunities in the region's growing petroleum industry. While the U.S. government's interest in the Caspian Sea oil and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline has increased, the campaign against terrorism has certainly moved to the top of the U.S. agenda in the Caucasus, at least in the short term.''

Even as Washington strikes out to establish its presence in the Caucasus, in a former Soviet satellite, Moscow gropes to get a grip on the Chechen militancy and also to retain its strategic influence in the region. Perhaps, the real crisis in the Caucasus is not over militancy but over influence, where Georgia is just part of a larger struggle for resources.

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