EURASIA INSIGHT
Giorgi Lomsadze and Molly Corso
11/09/09
A EURASIANET PHOTO STORY
As the US Marines train Georgian troops for service in Afghanistan, questions remain about whether or not the US coaching is helping the Georgian army to tackle defense challenges closer to home. One Georgian government official told EurasiaNet that White House interest in good relations with Moscow has so far delayed any broader assistance.
But a series of warnings from Moscow has only heightened Georgian interest in such assistance. On November 5, Russian military intelligence chief Alexander Shliakhturov claimed that Tbilisi’s determination to re-seize control of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, recognized by Moscow as independent states, could lead to fresh conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Shliakhturov’s claim follows an allegation by Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov that Georgia is allegedly working with Al Qaeda to disrupt Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus.
On November 9, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed into law amendments that would allow the Russian military to take action wherever Russian citizens are considered at risk from attack. Most residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Russian passport-holders.
Georgian defense officials have scoffed at the Kremlin’s claims, but have said that they are taking Moscow’s grumblings seriously.
Some Georgian officials, who asked not to be named, told EurasiaNet that the Georgian military is preparing to defend Tbilisi against potential attack and is replenishing defensive gear destroyed during last year’s war with Russia. Details of the new defense strategy, however, remain both in the works and under wraps.
Giorgi Kandelaki, deputy chairperson of the parliamentary foreign relations committee, said that Georgia’s "allies" are helping the country to improve its defense capabilities, but to varying degrees of involvement. He refrained from specifying the participants or their roles in the reforms.
Some Georgian government insiders say that so far diplomacy has taken precedence over military assistance in relations between the US and Georgia. A Georgian official with insight into US-Georgian defense ties told EurasiaNet that the Pentagon is waiting for a go-ahead signal from the White House before extending the scope of its assistance to Tbilisi. The official, who asked not to be named, claimed that Washington is hesitant to go the whole hog in helping to rebuild the Georgian army since the US is now caught between its commitment to Tbilisi and its desire to mend fences with Moscow.
The official said that the Georgian government expects Washington to come up with final decisions on how to proceed with assisting Georgia after US President Barack Obama’s administration completes its ongoing foreign policy revisions.
Pentagon officials were not available for comment.
For now, many Georgian military analysts are left to read between the lines. "I know that there have been some measures taken to improve the anti-tank and anti-air defense tools, but it is hard to judge the effectiveness of these measures, essentially given that defense officials have been reshuffled so many times since the war," said Irakli Aladashvili, a Tbilisi-based military analyst and editor of Arsenal, a defense magazine.
Georgia’s defense minister has been replaced twice since the war; the latest minister, 28-year-old Bacho Akhalaia, served as a deputy defense minister during the conflict.
Within Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili has emphasized overhauling the military, but strong expectations - both within political circles and in the general public -- nonetheless exist that both the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will support Georgia both militarily and politically should conflict break out again.
The Pentagon has promised to help Georgia improve its defense capabilities, and both US and NATO commanders and trainers have shuttled back and forth to Tbilisi since the 2008 war with Russia. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive.]
For now, though, the assistance appears to hinge on targeted, battalion-level training for overseas deployments, not on the overhaul of an entire military system.
"These exercises teach Georgian soldiers how to engage insurgents and terrorists, who do not have artillery or some other major military hardware, but they learn nothing about what to do when confronting a massive force armed to teeth with tanks and airplanes," Aladashvili said in reference to recent training exercises with the US Marines.
Visiting US commanders shy away from commenting on the combat-readiness of the Georgian army or from saying if there is more to US assistance than training for NATO’s Afghanistan operations. The Georgian Ministry of Defense also seems reluctant to elaborate about its cooperation with Washington. Phones at the ministry’s press office went unanswered for days. On the ministry’s website, a section tagged "Reforms" has no information available.
Until a clear line of action becomes public, Tbilisi is concentrating on publicity to boost damaged public confidence in the army, commented analyst Aladashvili.
Television stations, reporting on October 30 from the scene of war games just outside Tbilisi, extensively described how Georgian soldiers, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with US Marine Corps instructors, successfully took over a mock enemy cache and overpowered dummy Taliban fighters, performed by smiling American and Georgian servicemen.
Kandelaki told EurasiaNet that the US cooperation is essential for displaying Georgia’s commitment to its allies. [Giorgi Kandelaki formerly worked as an editorial associate for EurasiaNet.org.]
But it is unclear if the US will reciprocate the way the Georgians would like to see.
"One thing I can tell you for sure is that our American friends are fully aware of Georgia’s defense needs and challenges," Kandelaki said. "We hope to continue cooperation in a low-profile, non-politicized way, but we do not want this to become a bargaining chip in Russia’s foreign policy."
Editor's Note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.
