The Surprise In the Gorge

By Paul Quinn-Judge/Duisi

The mop-up began with a daring raid. Alerted by American intelligence, a small team of Georgian security forces led by their U.S.-trained commander descended on the lawless Pankisi Gorge in the country's northeastern Caucasus region and ambushed a car. The Georgians shot the driver and grabbed the vehicle's three passengers, all of them Arabs suspected of links to terrorism. The operation sent ripples of fear throughout the valley, according to Chechen guerrillas allied with Arab militants in the area. All fighters, they say, were told to leave their billets only if necessary and to avoid contact with anyone they did not know. But that message did not save subsequent targets of the crackdown. So far, Georgia's sweeps in the Pankisi Gorge have netted more than a dozen Arab militants, including at least two mid-level al-Qaeda leaders. All of them are almost certainly at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When Washington announced early this year that it was sending 150 military trainers to Georgia in the wake of Sept. 11, the former Soviet republic seemed an unlikely new front in the war on terrorism. At that time only about a dozen Arab militants were said to be living in the heavily forested Pankisi Valley. But six months into the antiterrorism campaign there, it is clear to Georgian authorities that the Arab presence was at least five times that strong, that the local jihadi cells were highly sophisticated and that they were plotting mayhem that went well beyond supporting the battle of their fellow Muslims the Chechens against Russian rule.

Arab jihadis first started arriving in the Pankisi Gorge in late 1999, after the Russians invaded Chechnya for the second time. Georgian security officials say the visitors set up in Omalo and in two other hamlets near the central settlement of Duisi. There they used the Internet to recruit volunteers for the war in Chechnya, which lies 40 miles to the north. They trained the volunteers and dispatched them to the Islamic brigade run by Khattab, the late Saudi-born commander in Chechnya who was believed to be close to Osama bin Laden. The Georgians have traced many hundreds of thousands of dollars brought in by the Arabs for their operations via couriers who arrived every other month or wire transfers to fronts in Tbilisi. The Arabs built ties to the community, using their funds to rebuild local mosques and construct a hospital.

But their interests were not just local. Georgian officials say the Pankisi Arabs were preparing at least two terrorist plots that were disrupted by the authorities with U.S. assistance. In one case, the jihadis were trying to buy a large amount of explosives for what security officials believe was to be a bomb attack on U.S. or Western installations in Russia. In the other, the Georgians say, a six-man team of chemists was brewing poisons to be used on Westerners in Central Asia.

The crackdown on al-Qaeda became possible only after sweeping changes in the Georgian security structures. Until the end of last year, top Georgian officials say, the Arabs were well protected by high-ranking and corrupt officials and able to operate with impunity. In late 2001, however, the ministers of State Security and Interior were dismissed, and in early 2002 Georgia's longtime ambassador to the U.S., Tedo Japaridze, was appointed National Security Adviser.

The new security hierarchy is trying to make up for lost time. Since the initial raid in May, Georgia's forces have nabbed, among others, Saif al Islam el Masry, a member of al-Qaeda's Shura, or consultative council. By late August, the jihadis had taken enough of a beating that their leaders ordered a retreat from the gorge. But the fight isn't over. The Georgians still can't account for perhaps as many as 30 Pankisi Arabs on their list. And one senior jihadi left in Georgia is Abu Iyad, a one-legged veteran of the Chechen war. In a recent battle with Georgian forces, he sacrificed four of his men to lure Georgian troops to one area while he headed in the opposite direction. "He's very cunning," says a senior border guard. He might have added "ruthless."