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Syndicated News from GeorgiaGeorgia Power nuke fee higher on front endDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:51:09 GMT+00:00
Put a south Georgia debate for governor on your calendarDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:12:05 GMT+00:00
Georgia State wins first-ever gameDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:00:32 GMT+00:00
Alabama hears from NCAA, but Georgia doesn'tDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:01:33 GMT+00:00
Georgia's Ogletree suspended for openerDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:56:09 GMT+00:00
Depleted UNC team readies to face LSUDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:31:49 GMT+00:00
Georgia Tech Offense Preview: Ready To Ramble OnDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:00:17 GMT+00:00
Breaking down Georgia Tech and SC StateDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:06:16 GMT+00:00
Driver killed in crash with gospel tour busDate Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:44:33 GMT+00:00
Your morning jolt: Are the fortunes of Democrats Roy Barnes and Ken Hodges ...Date Added: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:31:40 GMT+00:00
Results 1 - 10 of 3 Headlines for Georgia
Georgia HeadlinesResults Page: 1,WEAK GEORGIAN "CRACKDOWN" WILL HURT EVERYONE BUT MILITANTSDate Added: Thursday, August 29th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
A current toothless "anti-terrorism crackdown" by Georgian forces in the Pankisi Gorge will benefit only al Qaeda and its local Islamist allies. The gorge and Georgia on the whole will remain a serious problem for Washington in its war against al Qaeda, for Moscow in its war against Chechen militants and for Georgia in its failed quest for stability and peace.
Analysis Georgia on Aug. 25 launched a nearly 1,000-man-strong military operation in the Pankisi Gorge, a tiny region on Russia’s border where anti-Russian Chechen militants and al Qaeda-linked Islamists reportedly have been operating. After just three days, Georgia’s Interior Ministry declared that "the information on the presence of a large number of armed terrorists in the region is invalid, so the Interior Ministry’s leadership has decided to reduce its forces there." The inability of Georgian officials to round up any armed militants during the recent campaign is downright baffling to say the least. The U.S. and Russian governments, regional media and numerous human sources in the Pankisi area have noted the permanent presence of between several hundred to a couple of thousand heavily armed militants in the lawless region since the beginning of the first Russian-Chechen war in 1994. For example, Georgian television network Rustavi-2 Aug. 22 said that 500 militants -- allegedly Chechen and Arab mercenaries -- were seen in Georgia. The demographic makeup in the Pankisi consists largely of a few dozen al Qaeda militants, several hundred al Qaeda-linked Chechen fighters and armed members of local extremist Wahhabi Islamist communities linked to Saudi sponsors. The rest are mainly hardened criminals, including kidnappers, murderers and drug lords. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has refused to acknowledge this situation for years, calling it Russian propaganda. His position changed after Sept. 11, when the Bush administration said al Qaeda elements were hiding in the gorge and sent U.S. special forces to the country earlier this year to train Georgian forces to deal with the problem. When Shevardnadze finally ordered his troops to move into the gorge four days ago to "restore law and order," the operation was meant to be an important part of the U.S.-led global anti-terrorism campaign. But the Georgian response has turned out to be a cheap imitation of a real militant crackdown. To start with, Shevardnadze defied all common sense when he announced the operation in advance, giving fighters in the gorge a head start and ensuring that they would not come into contact with ill-prepared Georgian forces. Shevardnadze’s original plan was to push the fighters out of Georgia and into Russia. But the militants had no intention of completely abandoning the Pankisi -- a convenient area for regrouping, training and staging attacks on Russian forces in Chechnya -- which is why they reportedly dispersed into neighboring districts of Georgia, according to STRATFOR sources in Georgia’s Interior Ministry and the Tianeti district administration. Four days into the operation, neither Russian nor Georgian authorities reported any attempts to illegally cross the border. The lack of resistance reportedly faced by the militants can in part be blamed on endemic corruption among law enforcement and other agencies in Georgia, while some officials are just afraid to act against Chechen and foreign militants, who enjoy close links with Chechen and Georgian organized crime groups that are powerful enough to target senior-ranking officials with impunity, such as in an attack against Shevardnadze’s motorcade two years ago. The Georgian army reportedly never got to the Pankisi Gorge during the current operation. Instead, about 800 Interior Ministry troops and policemen moved in and established a few temporary posts in villages close to the Russian border. That apparently has been the only major action undertaken during this "operation." Georgian authorities seemed to contradict themselves in their public relations coverage of the operation. Likely realizing that coming away with no results would hurt the government’s image, Georgia’s state security minister said Aug. 29 that one unarmed suspect, a French citizen of Arab origin, was detained. But even after alleged progress has been made, 500 hundred policemen and Interior Ministry troops have been removed from the Pankisi. Intelligence reports have not been acted on, and neither militants nor their arms have been found and detained. Sources in the Akhmety district administration have told STRATFOR that some militants continue staying in the gorge while the others stay just outside in neighboring districts, the Ilto Gorge in particular, remaining "invisible" to Georgian forces. Such a sorry excuse for a militant crackdown will help no one but al Qaeda and its allies. Al Qaeda will preserve Georgia as a safe haven and recruiting base, preparing Chechen and other Islamists for use in future attacks. Chechen and international militants will also continue to use Georgia as a regrouping base for their fight in Chechnya and other parts of Russia’s North Caucasus. Washington probably hoped that if Georgia pushed the Islamist militants out of the gorge into Russia, they would become Moscow’s problem. But the Bush administration will have to continue to deal with al Qaeda’s presence in Georgia, diverting resources and time from other major anti-al Qaeda fronts. This Georgian operation will not help Moscow either. The Pankisi and other parts of Georgia will remain nests for anti-Russian militants, while Shevardnadze again Aug. 28 rejected Russia’s offer to help flush out Chechen rebels from the area. It is likely that the only one who thinks he can benefit is Shevardnadze, who could use the continued militant threat in the gorge to further his appeals for Western protection to help prop up his faltering regime. In the meantime he is using an alleged Russian bombing raid in Georgia last week to distract attention from his failed operation there. It remains to be seen how Washington will react to the half-hearted anti-terrorism operation. So far the U.S. government has not subjected Shevardnadze to the same kind of pressure it is applying on Pakistan, Yemen and other countries that have a similar al Qaeda presence. It looks like Washington will continue to hope that Islamist rage in the region will be directed mainly at Russia and is confident that Russian anger over the U.S. presence in Georgia will not hurt its ties with Moscow. But the immediate loser will be Georgia. The continued carnage caused by Pankisi-based militants throughout the country will accelerate the political, economic and social crisis in this deeply divided, war-torn country.Results Page: RUSSIA SELLING OUT ABKHAZIADate Added: Thursday, August 8th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
A July 29 U.N. Security Council resolution flatly dismissed Abkhazia’s drive for independence, stated that its leadership must negotiate a political settlement to reintegrate back into Georgia, and spotlighted the breakaway province’s rejection by longtime sponsor Moscow. Abkhazia has been the Kremlin’s preferred hammer to keep Georgia in line, but lately relations with Tbilisi and the West have taken priority.
Abkhazia’s brief but brutal war of independence in 1993 -- which sent hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians fleeing the province -- was only possible with robust Russian support, including air strikes on Georgian positions. Georgia is perhaps the most independent-minded of the former Soviet republics, and Tbilisi’s dogged pursuit of an alliance with the United States has been a source of unending frustration within the Kremlin. Moscow has kept 1,600 soldiers in the province officially to act as peacekeepers but unofficially to keep Georgia destabilized. Russian diplomatic efforts -- including veto threats in the Security Council -- also have kept U.N. operations there to a minimum, and prevented international organizations from doing anything more than setting up a buffer zone between Abkhazia and Georgia proper. By voting for the July 29 U.N. resolution, which basically told the Abkhaz that they will never be independent, Russia essentially sold the province out and ensured its isolation, because no country recognizes Abkhazia’s as independent. The trigger for Moscow’s change of heart comes from its recent desire One way Russia has sought to demonstrate its new stance is by dropping its previous opposition to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil-export pipeline, which Moscow once condemned because of the plan for the pipeline skirt Russian territory in transporting Caspian oil to Turkey. Russia still looks to benefit from the BP-led project by using state-owned oil company Rosneft to build a link to the pipeline from Russia’s primary oil port of Novorossiysk. The problem for Russia is that the The province no longer has Russia as its lone sponsor, and the Georgians are receiving American military training -- the secretary of Georgia’s Security Council even said Aug. 7 that the government would consider allowing U.S. troops to participate in anti-terrorist operations on its territory, AP reported. It is thus only a matter of time before the Abkhaz are overwhelmed again. By most measures there are only about 130,000 Abkhaz left in the province, and Georgians still outnumber them there, even after a decade of on-again off-again ethnic cleansing. An eventual reassertion of Georgian control may not be inevitable, but it is becoming ever more likely. Even so, this remains more of a long-term scenario, as Georgia is hardly a strong, able state in its own right. Russia’s problem is that it does not have the luxury of waiting for outside forces to subdue the Abkhaz. If it is to take advantage of the project, it has to complete its spur line by BTC’s expected Jan. 1, 2005 date. That means Russia must sell the Abkhaz out at an even faster rate, including ending all forms of support and possibly even itself moving against the separatists. But having exercised de facto independence for nine years and being stuffed to the gills with Russian weapons, the Abkhaz are certainly not going to go down quietly. While it’s unclear how events will unfold, a showdown with the Abkhaz against the Georgians, Russians and perhaps the United Nations and United States is brewing. Already this year the Russians have abandoned their paratrooper base at Gudauta, which once represented the core of Abkhaz-Russian relations. It is likely that the Georgian government will attempt to retake the province by force. But without direct assistance from the United States or Russia, Tbilisi’s success is uncertain. The Russians might also try to invade directly, but not only would Georgia and the United States protest the violation of Georgian "sovereignty," Moscow could also find itself locked down in a second Chechnya. After all, Chechen assistance proved essential to the Abkhaz war of independence, and the Abkhaz are nothing if not quick learners. The least bloody solution would be a mass exodus of Abkhaz to Russia proper. In an attempt to seek protection from Georgia, the Abkhaz government earlier this year encouraged its citizens to apply for Russian citizenship; some 60 percent of the Abkhaz population now holds Russian passports. As Abkhazia faces increasing pressure from all directions, Russia could collaborate with the United Nations to resettle a trickle of Abkhaz within the Russian federation. The acceptance of only 130,000 people wouldn’t be an undue burden for Russia, and it wouldn’t take long before most of the Abkhaz were out of the province, leaving Georgia to retake the territory.
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DISCOVERY OF NON-ARAB MILITANTS MEANS TROUBLE FOR SECURITY EFFORTSDate Added: Tuesday, July 30th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
Russian media reports say that a Japanese militant is part of a group of around 100 Muslim fighters who crossed from Georgia into the breakaway republic of Chechnya July 29. Two militants captured by Russian forces said there were several mercenaries in the group, including a Japanese convert to Islam who was trained by instructors of Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev, ITAR-Tass and the Kommersant daily reported.
Although the existence of the Japanese militant is unconfirmed, it potentially could further complicate counterterrorism operations around the world. As the number of alleged al Qaeda operatives and other Muslim militants coming from places other than the Middle East or South Asia rises, a key tool used to identify potential terrorists -- racial profiling -- may become even less effective. Russia has long argued that Chechen separatist fighters are linked to al Qaeda, and the presence of a Japanese man among their ranks suggests there is a broader ethnic mix from which al Qaeda or related militant groups can recruit. From China’s ethnic Uighurs to American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh to a British national on trial in Dagestan for alleged terrorism, Muslim militants are not limited to Arabs or South Asians. The arrest in June of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican accused of planning to set off a so-called "dirty bomb" in the United States, only underscored this reality. Interestingly, some Japanese militant organizations have a long history of ties to Islamic militants. The Japanese Red Army, a leftist group responsible for the 1972 attack on Tel Aviv’s Lod airport as well as several airline hijackings and attacks on foreign embassies, worked closely with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although the Japanese Red Army disbanded in 2001 on the 30th anniversary of the Lod attack, the precedent for such cooperation still remains. But of more importance is the idea that the Chechens or al Qaeda, rather than working with existing militant groups that may be monitered, can recruit individuals to their cause regardless of ethnicity or background. This was obviously the case with Padilla and Lindh and is likely the case with the alleged Japanese Chechen. For counterterrorism coordinators around the world, the possibility that anyone could be an al Qaeda operative makes their jobs only that much more difficult. While security agencies have always been aware of this, the discovery of more non-Arab militants renders racial profiling and other visual-detection methods potentially less reliable. |
