The Pankisi Gorge crisis was a geopolitical dispute between Russia and Georgia concerning the presence of armed Chechen separatists and jihadists in Georgia, that peaked in 2002.
At the centre of the crisis was a contingent of Chechen separatist militants who sought shelter from Russian forces in the Pankisi Gorge area of Georgia, 25 miles south of Chechnya in the Russian Federation. Alongside the separatists were jihadists with alleged links to Al-Qaeda and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
From November 2000, Russian officials demanded that Georgia suppress the rebels by force and extradite any captives. They later threatened to invade the Pankisi Gorge to achieve those objectives if Georgia could or would not do so.
Rejecting Russia's demands, Georgian officials said that an armed operation in the Gorge could spark destabilising ethnic conflict, and told the U.S. that they did not have the military capacity to impose order there. Georgia also linked the issue to their own demand that Russia withdraw support from secessionists in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.
As part of the nascent war on terror, the United States, like Russia, wanted Georgia to regain control of the Gorge, both to suppress the jihadist threat and to contain the escalation in Georgia-Russian tensions. However, it also wanted to protect Georgia's sovereignty against Russian influence and to integrate Georgia within a U.S.-led international bloc. The U.S. set up a train-and-equip program, which it described as intended to help Georgia's military assert itself in the Gorge, and which also helped prepare Georgian troops to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over the course of the crisis, Georgian special forces acting on U.S. intelligence conducted at least two operations to arrest suspected jihadists.
Pressure on Georgia to act peaked in mid-2002, with a series of Russian airstrikes on Pankisi and several U.S. statements that Georgia must act. The Georgian authorities initiated a major security operation in the Gorge, which was communicated to the militants in advance. The latter began to leave Georgian territory in September 2002. Together with Georgia's extradition of five alleged separatist militants, this caused tensions with Russia to subside to below crisis-level that October.
The Russian claims, sometimes implicating Georgia in supporting the terrorists, was perceived by the Georgian authorities and analysts as an information warfare aimed at expanding Russian influence by internationally discrediting Georgia, using the issue as a lever of pressure, and portraying Georgia as a fundamentally unstable state incapable of full sovereignty and unreliable for Western partners. However, the US support for the Russian claims actually provided raison d'être for facilitating US-Georgian military cooperation, giving Georgia the means to counterbalance Russian pressure but at the same time discontenting Russia which viewed the increasing US presence as undermining its hegemony over its traditional sphere of influence.
Background
Caucasian separatism and Georgia–Russia tensions
Georgian-Russian relations were strained by Russia's support for two statelets that had seceded from Georgia in wars following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Russia itself bore the brunt of several secessionist Caucasian wars. By 2002, roughly one fifth of Georgia's territory was held by Russian-backed forces and Russia had fought to establish control of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.
During the South Ossetia war (1991–1992), Georgian forces were beaten back by local fighters backed by "irregulars from the Russian Federation, and stranded ex-Soviet soldiers who found themselves stuck in the middle of someone else's civil war and chose to fight on behalf of the secessionists." During the War in Abkhazia (1992–1993), Russia intervened both directly and covertly. North Caucasian volunteers, organized under the banner of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, travelled to fight alongside the Abkhaz separatists — something Chechen commander Ruslan Gelayev would later regret as a "Russian GRU operation". Gelayev and many other Chechen volunteers, including infamous Shamil Basayev, soon turned on Russia, fighting for the separatists in the Chechen–Russian conflict.
In 1997, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov met Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and other officials in Tbilisi and Akhmeta, discussing the Chechen-Georgian cooperation. However, Georgia took a cautious approach to Chechen relations, bearing in memory the Chechen participation in the War in Abkhazia and not risking to anger Moscow by showing an overt support for the Chechen secessionist leadership.
Pankisi becomes a refuge for Chechen separatists
Pankisi had been the principal destination for Chechen migration to Georgia since the 19th Century. The Chechen-descended people who lived there became known as the Kists, and retained a strong Chechen identity. By 1989 less than half of Pankisi residents were of Chechen descent, but refugees from the Chechen wars since 1991 had swelled their population once more.
As the Second Chechen War got under way in 1999, 15,000 civilians fled to the Pankisi Gorge from Chechnya. Guerrillas also began to arrive in Pankisi, and their numbers swelled in subsequent years. In February 2000, Grozny, capital of the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fell to Russian forces. Separatist Chechen fighters fled, amongst them a force of around a thousand men under the command of Ruslan Gelayev. Gelayev's men sought shelter in the southern Chechen mountains, but were ambushed, and retreated to Gelayev's home village of Komsomolskoye (near Urus-Martan). The Chechens suffered another heavy defeat, and Gelayev decided to lead his men to take shelter in the Pankisi Gorge, 25 miles south of the Russian-Georgian border. Rumours that Gelayev had made his base there began around October 2000. Georgian officials later acknowledged that the government made an informal agreement with Gelayev's band, allowing them to remain in Pankisi as long as there was no violence within Georgia.
In late November 2000, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev visited Tbilisi, and complained about the presence of organised Chechen separatists on Georgian soil. His Georgian counterparts retorted that, similarly, Russia hosted Abkhaz separatists.
In early December 2000, tensions escalated as Russia instituted a new visa regime for Georgians and briefly cut off gas and electricity to Tbilisi. At a 6 December press conference, presidential aide Sergey Yastrzhembsky said that the visa regime was introduced solely due to "our great concern for Chechen separatism and terrorism in some parts of Georgia." He claimed that there were at least 1,500 to 2,000 militants in the Gorge and its surrounding district, amongst some 7,000 Chechen refugees. Yastrzhembsky complained of "the flow of arms, medicines and munitions" from Georgia into Russia, "storage depots and hospitals" used by the militants, and military training "conducted on a daily basis." At this point, and throughout the ensuing crisis, President Shevardnadze and other officials attributed their unwillingness to immediately suppress the rebels to fear of inter-ethnic violence that would destabilise the country.
Through June 2001, Gelayev's camp continued to receive new volunteers. In September 2001, Russia forcefully renewed its demand for Georgia to eliminate the separatist presence on its soil and extradite a number of "terrorists" - Russia's generic term for the separatists - who had been arrested while crossing the border that June. Georgia stated it could extradite two named persons if they could be found, but emphasized that Russia itself hosted a former Georgian Security Minister Igor Giorgadze, who was accused by the Georgian government of attempting to assassinate President Shevardnadze in 1995.
The Mujahideen in Chechnya, the Global War on Terror, and the Freedom Agenda
Armed Chechen separatists had been growing closer to the transnational jihadist movement since the mid-1990s, in particular through the mostly-Arab volunteers who gathered in the Mujahideen in Chechnya organisation. Its leader at the beginning of 2002, Ibn al-Khattab, had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and had taken a group of Chechen militants to a training camp there in 1994. As of 1998, Arab mujahideen were training separatists inside Chechnya. The separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria had an indigenous Salafist current. Gelayev was not himself part of it, but his subordinate officer in the Gorge, Abdul-Malik Mezhidov, was.
Arab mujahideen began arriving in Pankisi in late 1999, and started soliciting volunteers for the Chechen jihad over the internet. They trained the volunteers in the valley, dispatched them to the command of the Mujahideen in Chechnya, and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. The Arabs used some of that money to build local mosques, and a hospital.
The September 11 attacks led the U.S. to make the fight against transnational jihadism a priority. The George W. Bush administration sometimes found it useful to frame unrelated objectives, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as part of a single Global War on Terror. Russia, among other states, recognised a political opportunity, and sought to use the issue of terrorism to advance its own interests in relations with the Bush administration. As a part of its information warfare against the Chechen republic of Ichkeria, Russia sought to link all Chechen separatists to international terrorists in order to remove the necessity of negotiating and solicit international support, including that of the US.
U.S. military assistance to Georgia had been ongoing at a low level since late 2000, under President Bill Clinton. Presidents Shevardnadze and Bush met in Washington D.C. on 5 October 2001. Shevardnadze offered his "full cooperation and full solidarity" in respect of America's budding campaign against Afghanistan, including free use of Georgian airspace. He received in return a promise of military training and equipment. Shevardnadze claimed that Bush would oppose any Russian military intervention in Georgia, while other sources said that Bush had stressed the need to deal with Russia's Pankisi concerns.
In a speech later that day, Shevardnadze declared: "Georgia is not the southern flank of Russia’s strategic space, but rather the northern flank of a horizontal band of Turkish and NATO strategic interests, running from Turkey and Israel to Central Asia." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Tbilisi that December.
2001 Kodori crisis
On 4 October 2001, fighters under the command of Gelayev crossed from part of Abkhazia that was then still controlled by the Georgian government into separatist territory. The force attacked the village of Giorgievskoe, less than 30 km from the separatist capital, Sokhumi.
Abkhazia had achieved de facto independence from Georgia in 1992, in no small part due to the intervention of volunteers like Gelayev, and retained the support of Moscow. Gelayev's group took at least two villages and fought until at least 12 October, before they were repelled by Abkhaz troops and Russian airstrikes.
Gelayev's force would have needed to cross more than 250 km of Georgian territory from Pankisi before entering Abkhazia, which gave rise to the belief that the operation had been sponsored by the Georgian government in order to enlist Chechen fighters to retake Abkhazia, while Gelayev sought to open "second front" against Russia by attacking a Russian military base in Gudauta. Russian media reported that Chechens captured by Abkhaz forces had claimed that President Eduard Shevardnadze had personally approved the operation. Some suggested, albeit without evidence, that the transmission of the force from Pankisi to Abkhazia may have been orchestrated with the Russian support by some Georgian officials, possibly interior minister Kakha Targamadze, to discredit Shevardnadze and replace him as the president of Georgia. Other reports simply said that Interior Ministry officials provided vehicles. Both the interior minister and state security minister were replaced by Shevadrnadze on 21 November 2001; a move intended to signal a new approach to Pankisi. The new state security minister later said that one of his first acts was to ask the militants there to leave. He said the militants thanked him for their two years' respite, and promised to leave. However, they did not do so for nearly another year.
Russia demanded Gelayev's extradition from Georgia in November 2001. Throughout the ensuing year's crisis, Georgia continued to claim that it was willing to extradite Gelayev, but was unable to locate him.
Events of 2002
Russia and Georgia were engaged in talks at the ministerial level by early January 2002.
Georgia's first operation in Pankisi and arrests of alleged Arab jihadists
In mid-January, Georgia launched a police operation in the Pankisi area, and claimed to have arrested a number of drug traffickers. But two policemen were kidnapped and held for two days shortly afterward, raising doubts about the authorities' real level of control. Russia's defense minister Sergei Ivanov then chipped in, suggesting that Pankisi was turning into a "mini-Afghanistan," and raising the prospect of a joint Russian-Georgian operation to clear it out. Georgian officials immediately dismissed that notion, too, but said that Georgia was open to collaborating with the U.S.
On 9 February, Georgia's Security Minister told the cabinet that a number of Jordanian and Saudi nationals had been arrested in the Pankisi Gorge, after plotting attacks in Russia. Two days later, U.S. charge d'affaires Philip Remler said that fighters from Afghanistan had arrived in Pankisi, and were in contact with Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi Islamist who was leading fighters against Russia in Chechnya, and who had links to Bin Laden.
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov claimed on 15 February that Osama Bin Laden might be hiding in the Akhmeta Municipality, the administrative district that contained the Gorge. Georgian officials dismissed the claim, saying that it would not be possible to flee Afghanistan for Pankisi Gorge without crossing six countries and the Caspian Sea.
U.S. launches Georgia Train and Equip Program
On 26 February, senior U.S. officials said that they had begun providing combat helicopters to the Georgian military, and would soon begin training troops, too. A scoping mission had visited Georgia earlier that month. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plan was "no tragedy," and no different than the U.S.'s existing presence in central Asia.