PANKISI GORGE (Georgia), March 1: Georgian security forces began to mobilize on Friday against Al Qaeda fighters in the remote and mountainous Pankisi Gorge, with US military instructors to start training elite counter-terrorism units this month.
But despite stringent road checks manned by Georgian soldiers on the highway leading up to the gorge’s main settlement, Duisi, local inhabitants said it was easy to avoid the security measures.
“There are at the very least five checkpoints,” said a Duisi resident, Murtaz. “The police and military are trying to control the access roads. But if you want to, it is not difficult to get around them,” he said.
A correspondent was told at the entrance to the gorge that journalists were now barred from the area.
At each checkpoint, marked off by two barriers, some 15 interior ministry troops and police check the documents of every car and people on foot. Another 40 soldiers are in reserve.
A lawless region bordering Chechnya that has been outside Tbilisi’s control for years, beset by drugs-trafficking and kidnappings, the Pankisi Gorge allegedly is a safe haven for Chechens fighting in the Russian republic.
This tiny zone, which is barely 100 kms in size, is separated from Chechnya by virtually impassable mountains, accessible only on foot through passes that are cut off in winter.
A “large group” of US military instructors will arrive in Georgia in March to form elite Georgian anti-terrorist units, a senior Georgian defence official in Tbilisi, Mirian Kiknadze said.
Late on Thursday Georgian Defence Minister David Tevsadze announced that around 200 US military would form up to three special battalions which will hunt down Al Qaeda fighters in the Pankisi Gorge.
A senior US military official has said the training will be conducted discreetly by US Army and Air Force special operations forces at Georgian military facilities and would not involve combat operations unless the situation changes.
But according to the US television network CBS, the US soldiers plan eventually to accompany Georgian troops on operations into the Pankisi Gorge.
Putin: Russian President Vladimir Putin offered wholehearted support on Friday to a planned US military deployment in Georgia, saying Moscow backed the fight against terrorism there, whoever carried it out, Interfax reported from Almaty.
“When it comes to the fight against terrorism in the Pankisi Gorge, then we support that fight no matter who is taking part in it, either our American partners, or our European ones or our Georgian colleagues,” Putin said.
He was speaking after talks with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze on the sidelines of a summit of former Soviet republics in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which was dominated by the controversy over US plans to send troops to Georgia.
The Georgian defence ministry confirmed Friday that up to 200 US military specialists would arrive in Tbilisi this month to help security forces track down Al Qaeda fighters holed up in the remote mountainous Pankisi Gorge, which borders Chechnya.
Putin sought to defuse angry protests by the Russian military and nationalist politicians by saying the US deployment in Georgia was “no tragedy” and merely an extension of the fight against terrorism in Central Asia.
“When Russia supported the use of force in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan, everybody understood that Afghanistan was a long way away from Russia,” Putin said after the talks with Shevardnadze.—AFP