United States Expands Anti-Terrorism War To Georgia
22 February 2002
Summary
Two U.S. aircraft landed Feb. 21 in Georgia, likely setting the stage for a new U.S.-led counterterrorism operation against al Qaeda and Chechen militants in the Pankisi Gorge. A U.S. military presence in Georgia -- in addition to the deployment in Afghanistan -- will dramatically weaken Russia's strategic positions along its southern borders and push Russian forces out of former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Analysis
Two U.S. Air Force craft carrying about 40 U.S. military personnel landed Feb. 21 in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet state of Georgia, sources from Georgia's Interior Ministry and elsewhere tell STRATFOR. According to the Feb. 21 edition of Russian newspaper Nezavisimoe Voennoye Obozrenie, the personnel include Special Forces troops, who specialize in counterterrorism operations, and Air Force logistics personnel normally based at Incirlik, Turkey.
U.S. troops have never before been deployed to Georgia. The group's goal appears to be to prepare the ground for a new front in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism war -- this time in the Pankisi Gorge, a mountainous region that has been beyond the Georgian government's control for several years. According to U.S. and Russian government sources, dozens of al Qaeda fighters found refuge in the gorge along with several hundred allied Chechen militants, who also use the area as a regrouping and logistics base in their war against Russia. It appears that Washington is taking its fight against al Qaeda into Russia's back yard, much to Moscow's chagrin.
The move comes barely a week after the United States' acting ambassador to Georgia selectively linked Russia's Chechen rebellion to Osama bin Laden. As STRATFOR wrote at the time, those comments appeared to pave the way either for Moscow to pursue Chechen militants based in Georgia with a free hand or else be forced to accept the humiliation of a U.S. deployment to the region -- Moscow's nightmare scenario. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin was quick to declare himself an ally in the war on terrorism, Washington has repeatedly put him on the spot by slowing rewards for Russia. The pressure on Putin is rising still, as the latest U.S. move will significantly change the balance of power in the Transcaucasus region.
Tbilisi has consistently rejected any overtures from Moscow regarding joint Russian-Georgian -- or solely Russian -- operations against Islamic militants based in Georgian territory. Sensing growing U.S. support, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who has long sought a U.S. or NATO presence in his country to safeguard its independence from Russia, has adopted an increasingly bold tone with top Russian officials. For instance, when Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov suggested that bin Laden could be hiding in the Pankisi Gorge, "a more than insulting answer from Shevardnadze followed, proposing to look for Osama in the house of Ivanov's mother," who was born and lived in Georgia, Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Feb. 20.
Washington also has flatly rejected any proposals of a joint U.S.-Russian anti-terrorism operation in the Pankisi Gorge. Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official Feb. 20 as saying, "Washington's desire to combat followers of Osama bin Laden does not extend to enlisting Russian help to crush the militants accused of using Georgia's Pankisi Gorge as a conduit to the separatist conflict in mostly Muslim Chechnya." With the deployment of U.S. troops, it now appears the Bush administration opted to act alone instead.
The U.S. military presence in Georgia is likely to follow the same pattern as the U.S. deployment to Central Asia. In that case, small forward-deployed groups of Air Force logistics and Special Forces personnel were secretly sent to prepare the ground for larger deployments, which are now present in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The presence of Special Forces in Georgia suggests that -- as in Afghanistan and the Philippines -- the U.S. military will train, direct and coordinate the Georgian army in its efforts to crush the Islamic militants' base in the Pankisi. The deployment of logistics personnel, meanwhile, indicates that more U.S. aircraft may be on their way to Georgia, where their mission most likely will be air transportation and air surveillance, rather than combat sorties over the Pankisi. Even that, however, will require some U.S. combat planes to guard non-combat aircraft. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as Predators, to hunt down Islamists, also should not be excluded.
The first-ever deployment of U.S. troops to Georgia has several implications, not only for the United States and Russia, but for Caucasian and Caspian countries that revolve in Moscow's orbit.
For the United States, it means a big strategic victory. First, Washington is filling a gap in the already significant deployment of its forces in Eurasia. U.S. forces are now stretched from Norway and several other European countries neighboring Russia through Turkey, Georgia and three Central Asian states. This latest deployment only adds to the pressure on Russia's strategic position along its entire western and southern border.
Second, the United States gains several important geographic advantages in Georgia. If, for example, Washington chooses to unleash its firepower against Baghdad, Georgia could provide an extra base for the U.S. Air Force to attack Iraq from the north. If Turkey, which has expressed opposition to such a war, should balk at allowing U.S. forces to use its territory to launch strikes, Shevardnadez would be more than willing to serve Washington in this and any other actions. And if U.S. relations with Russia turn confrontational again, American forces in Georgia -- backed by U.S. forces in neighboring Turkey and the Turkish army -- would seriously threaten the Russian army and major Russian strategic centers in the southern part of European Russia.
Third, the U.S. troops in Georgia will control a western route for piping out Caspian oil and gas that Washington has long favored and promoted. In fact, the U.S. military presence will help ensure that a majority of oil and gas from the Caspian basin will go westward -- bypassing the United States' geopolitical rivals, Russia and China.
Finally, the military presence in Georgia will increase pressure on neighboring Caspian states to accept U.S. involvement in their oil and gas exploitation areas if Washington so chooses. Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev has asked Washington on many occasions to establish bases in his country. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev recently hinted he would not mind some sort of American military presence on his soil as well.
For Moscow, however, the U.S. deployment to Georgia is a major geostrategic defeat and a significant potential threat, should U.S.-Russia relations turn sour. It appears that Russia is being driven out of the Transcaucasus region, where it has a critical national interest and its army has been present for more than 200 years. Adding to the humiliation, the U.S. forces in Georgia are likely to stay in Vaziani, a major base that Russia abandoned last year.
Moscow attempted to save face by hastening its withdrawal from Georgia before U.S. forces arrived. Military sources in Russia told STRATFOR that Army Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, general chief of staff, issued a secret directive Feb. 16 to liquidate the Group of Russian Forces in TransCaucasus (known by the Russian acronym GRVZ), a group that represents an operations-level formation equal to a front or group of armies in war. According to the directive, the GRVZ headquarters in Tbilisi and the Russian garrison there -- about 5,000 officers and soldiers -- would be fully disbanded and withdrawn by September 2002. Ironically, the Russian delegation negotiating the withdrawal of troops from Georgia was not informed about the directive and until this week insisted that Moscow needed 13 years to withdraw its forces from Tbilisi. Even Georgia agreed that the withdrawal should take place over three years.
With the liquidation of the GRVZ headquarters and garrison in Tbilisi, remaining Russian army units in the Transcaucasus -- which comprises Georgia and Armenia -- will be essentially beheaded. Their combat potential will be drastically weakened, and they will and cease to exist as an integrated operational structure. The two remaining military bases in Georgia, the 12th base in Batumi and the 62nd in Akhalkalaki, will become subject to the North Caucasian Military District in Russia proper. These forces also face the prospect of quick withdrawal.
Russian troops based in Armenia, at the 102nd Giumri base and Yerevan garrison, also would be completely cut off from the rest of their counterparts in Russia proper and thus much more vulnerable. This fact will not escape the attention of Armenia. Its traditional orientation toward Russia was weakened last year after the pro-Russia prime minister was killed in the parliament building under circumstances that remain unclear. With Russian troops on Armenian soil weakened, the government is likely to drift further away from Moscow and more actively seek favors with Washington.
In this way, the U.S. military presence in Georgia will drive Russia from the Transcausus and significantly change the geostrategic balance in the region in Washington's favor. Washington has persisted in pursuing a one-sided relationship with Russia, and its latest move will put Putin -- and his much-vaunted alliance with the West -- in a tight spot. The question remains how much farther Putin can give in to the United States without dramatically weakening his position at home.
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