American military advisers landed in Georgia on April 28, on a mission to contain al Qaeda loyalists who might be operating in the lawless Pankisi Gorge. But some local experts say that corruption and criminality plague South Ossetia, west of the advisors' base, more deeply than any military planner has publicly discussed.
The United States plans to send military advisors to Georgia this year as part of its global dragnet against terrorism. But Russian incursions are making the region even harder to navigate. Russian ground forces entered the Kodori Gorge, a Georgian stronghold in the breakaway Abkhazia region, on the morning of April 12.
A hostage crisis in Georgia ended March 20 with the release of four CIS peacekeeping troops by Georgian guerrillas operating in the separatist region of Abkhazia. The incident is helping to refocus international attention on the issue of separatism in Georgia.
According to officials in Georgia, US military advisors will soon arrive in the country to help train Georgian security forces in anti-terrorism tactics. The announcement is indicative of mounting concern in the Bush administration that Islamic militants are exploiting Georgia's chronic instability to plot new terrorist attacks.
The top US diplomat in Georgia says Islamic radical fighters from Afghanistan are now active in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. The revelation increases the pressure on the Georgian government to reestablish its authority in the crime-ridden region. The disclosure also indicates that the United States is laying the groundwork for possible anti-terrorism operations in the Caucasian republic.
The breakaway Pankisi Gorge, in the Kakheti region of East Georgia, has attracted unwanted attention as a center of kidnapping, extortion, and the drug trade. Levan Kaladze, brother of a soccer star in Milan, was kidnapped in May 2001, and bandits abducted a monk, Father Basili Machitadze, at the Pankisi border six months later.
