South Ossetia one year on: Georgians wait in fear for Russians to return

""If war resumes, every citizen of Gori will fight," he said. "Even the women will fight, even my new wife. We have nothing to lose."

In the 12 months since a war that stunned the world, Georgia has slipped from its consciousness.

Yet tensions remain high. At least 28 Georgian policemen patrolling the administrative boundary have been killed by sniper fire or remotely detonated mines since the end of the war. At border crossings, now sealed, Georgian and Russian guns remain trained on each other."

"Capt Zura, the officer commanding the Georgian side of the line, pointed out Russian sniper positions on the roof of an abandoned hotel. "The Russians make a lot of trouble, especially at night when they are drunk," he said.

Later that evening, Georgian officers at a nearby crossing said they had come under fire, claiming that a rocket-propelled grenade had exploded above their positions.

Such is the instability that the International Crisis Group, a leading conflict prevention think tank, warned in June that "extensive fighting could again erupt."

A European Union investigation is still trying to establish who was responsible for last year's war, which ended in a humiliating battlefield rout for the Georgian army. But western diplomats in Tblisi say it is fairly clear that Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's pro-western president, walked into a carefully laid Russian trap by launching a massive assault against the Ossetian rebels, who had long enjoyed Moscow's support.

Some military analysts in Moscow say that Russia is now contemplating a new war to oust Mr Saakashvili, whose determination to seek Nato membership for Georgia has consistently infuriated the Kremlin."

"Since recognising the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another Kremlin-backed rebel enclave in Georgia, Russia has deployed thousands of troops in both provinces and has begun building new military bases."

There’s some backstory that’s been totally unreported for some reason. Instead,
the Russians are always entirely the bad-guys. The defensive aspect of
their brief occupation (and “cleansing”) of this region has gone
unmentioned. Imagine if bin Laden was hiding with a significant and
active army of jihadis in some valley outside Toronto with Canada’s
knowledge and essential cooperation, and we (well, some other
Administration maybe) dared to do something about it, and the
reporting were all about how we’d invaded and brutalized peaceful
sweet Canada. Actually, come to think of it, that’s exactly how it
would go....

Excerpted from the very interesting http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_31a.html

[snip]

The Georgian government at first dismissed Moscow’s claims regarding
the presence of terrorists and Chechen fighters in Pankisi. However,
in the fall of 2001, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze
acknowledged the possibility that Chechen commander Ruslan Gelayev
could have been hiding in the region. This acknowledgement was
followed by a statement from Georgian Security Minister Valeriy
Khaburdzania pointing out that an unspecified number of Jordanian and
Saudi citizens allegedly planning an attack in Russia had been
apprehended in the Pankisi Gorge. In the meantime, U.S. intelligence
also acknowledged that Arab militants and other fighters from
Afghanistan had been seen in the Pankisi Gorge.[1] According to Philip
Remler, then acting U.S. ambassador in Georgia, al-Qai’da and Taliban
fighters had scattered across the Caucasus, and some of them were
hiding in the Pankisi Gorge and were in contact with Al-Khattab, an
Arab terrorist with connections to Usama bin Laden.[2]

Those allegations became the basis for Russian officials requesting a
large-scale counter-terrorist operation in the Pankisi Gorge with the
participation of Russian troops. Due to Russian-Georgian tensions, the
Georgian government excluded any possibility of conducting a joint
military operation with Russian forces. However, Georgia accepted a
deal from the U.S. government, which offered assistance to the
Georgian military to conduct a counter-terrorist operation in the
region. According to George Baramidze, then head of the Georgian
parliamentary defense committee, Georgia would not object to Western
troops helping to settle the problems in Pankisi.[2] The U.S.-Georgian
deal concerned Russia, which considered the entrance of U.S. military
instructors tantamount to the United States developing a military
presence in the Caucasus—a declared Russian sphere of interest.
However, the U.S. assistance program, known as the Georgia Train and
Equip Program (GTEP), officially launched on May 27, 2002, did not
stipulate direct U.S. military intervention in the Pankisi Gorge;
rather, it was designed to provide equipment and training to four
Georgian specialized battalions, one company-sized team, and 200 staff
officers at a cost of $64 million, funded by the U.S. Department of
Defense.[3] As Georgian Foreign Minister Irakli Menagharishvili
announced, the implementation of this program would increase the
efficiency of the Georgian armed forces and would be a guarantee of
peace and stability in the whole Caucasus region. At the opening
ceremony of the program, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Richard Miles
stated that together with the global war on terrorism, the United
States hopes to promote Georgian freedom and stability.[4]

In the fall of 2002, Georgian law enforcement agencies backed by
U.S.-trained troops launched a comprehensive security operation to rid
the Pankisi Gorge of criminals and terrorists. Despite Russia’s
skepticism that Georgian armed forces could achieve success in the
gorge without Russian involvement, Georgian officials say that
security and stability have significantly improved since the security
operation.

However, the security operation did not put an end to allegations. In
early 2003, for the first time in the Pankisi crisis, new allegations
were made regarding possible WMD production within the gorge. Russian
Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov, during his speech at the Munich
Conference on Security Policy on February 8, 2003, announced that the
Pankisi Gorge was a well-known destination for the training and
instruction of international “chemical terrorists” and that makeshift
laboratories had been built in the region for the production of ricin,
a poisonous toxin derived from the castor bean plant. Ivanov claimed
that alleged chemical terrorists recently arrested in Britain and
France had been trained in the Pankisi Gorge.[5] Ivanov’s allegations
could be based on the Georgian government’s prior acknowledgement that
Georgian Security Ministry operatives had discovered the components of
ricin in the Pankisi Gorge.[6] However, the Georgian government
dismissed the Russian allegations by claiming that no material
evidence had been found to suggest that ricin or other lethal
substances had ever been manufactured in Pankisi. Georgian Deputy
Security Minister Irakli Alasania reported that during the security
operation in the region, no ricin production laboratories were
discovered.[7] Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze pointed out that
some Pankisi-based militants might have been chemical experts, but no
such individuals remained in the region after the security
operation.[5] According to Otar Kvesitadze, director of the Georgian
Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, if makeshift laboratories
were in operation in the Pankisi Gorge, they would have the capability
to produce only crude ricin with low lethality, which would require
other purification procedures outside the gorge.[8]

It is also worth mentioning that while addressing the UN Security
Council on February 5, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell too
linked international terrorists with the Pankisi Gorge. While talking
about the Iraqi regime’s ties with suspected terrorist Abu Mus’ab
al-Zarqawi, who reportedly had links with al-Qai’da and Usama bin
Laden, Powell noted that al-Zarqawi and his associates, among them two
Islamic militants arrested in France, had been active in the Pankisi
Gorge and Chechnya and were planning gas attacks against Russia.[5]

Although the allegations about terrorists and chemical weapons
production have not been confirmed, the fact that criminals and
international terrorists have made use of the lawless gorge is
unquestioned, and raises concerns that the region could be used by
terrorists for illegal activities in the future. The Georgian
government argues that order has been restored in the Pankisi region
since implementation of the security operation, and the gorge is under
the full control of Georgian law enforcement. However, due to its
geographic location and the instability in neighboring Chechnya, the
Pankisi Gorge remains vulnerable to the threat of future criminal
and/or terrorist activities.

[snip]

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