Posted on 06/16/2003 3:00:32 AM PDT by AncientAirs
ANKISI GORGE, Georgia, June 11 — For months, local residents say, the group of 15 Arab and Central Asian fighters lived quietly in a two-story house here, among the hundreds of guerrillas who had turned this wooded vale near the Russian border into a burgeoning center of Islamic militancy.
Like many of those who gathered here, the fighters had come over the snowy passes from Chechnya, where they had been helping their fellow Muslims in their struggle to break with the Russian republic. They exercised to stay in shape and went into the woods to practice shooting. Some of the militants departed, presumably for Russia, while new ones came to prepare for the fight.
Then, one night last fall, according to local residents, the group of Arabs and Central Asians packed up and left. Over the next several months, villagers and Georgian officials said, hundreds of other fighters followed, never to return.
"One morning, I got up, and they were gone," said Valodya Tskhovrebov, a farmer who lived near the Arab fighters. "They were nice guys. They didn't drink or smoke."
The departure of the Islamic fighters from this gorge in the Caucasus Mountains appears to represent an uncertain victory for the Bush administration, which last year asserted that the area had become a center of activity by Al Qaeda. To help Georgia confront the threat, the administration dispatched a team of Green Berets last year to provide military training to the country's troops.
Since last August, when Georgian forces began an operation to clear the gorge, senior Georgian leaders and Western diplomats here say the number of guerrillas in the gorge has dropped to fewer than 50 from about 700. The passage of militants across the mountains into Chechnya has largely ceased for the moment, according to Western diplomats and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has dispatched observers to watch the border.
Georgian officials say they detained more than 30 militants from the gorge, most of them Arabs or Chechens. They were deported, the officials said, to countries ranging from Russia to France and Japan, where officials say they detained a Japanese citizen helping the guerrillas.
A senior Georgian official said his government had also turned over 13 Arab fighters to the United States government last fall. The Arabs had been found in the gorge and were suspected of being involved in the Chechen campaign. It is unclear what the Americans did with them.
"We just handed them over," the Georgian official said.
Officials at the American Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, declined to comment on the reported deportations. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration has taken into custody hundreds of foreign citizens suspected of terrorism and held them without charges or access to legal representation. The administration has refused to release the names of those arrested, considering them enemy combatants.
What happened to the hundreds of other fighters who left the Pankisi Gorge remains a mystery that casts doubt on the ultimate success of the operation to sweep the area of Islamic militants. Villagers said that most of the fighters were Chechen, and that once it became clear they were no longer welcome in Georgia, they headed back toward Russia. Some of the fighters, they said, were killed by Russian soldiers as they crossed the mountains.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ping
"Some of the fighters, they said, were killed by Russian soldiers as they crossed the mountains."
:) A few terrorist Muslim Chechians dead..
but lots more to go :(
"where officials say they detained a Japanese citizen helping the guerrillas. "
very weird, I've never heard of Japanese Muslims.
A mercenary perhaps? That sounds more likely. perhaps the terrorists hired him.
Interesting - I was wondering why the "Pankisi Gorge" (btw, it's Pankisi, not Ankiski - NYT's for ya!) issue dropped out of the Russian news during the recent tiff with Georgia...
Shamil Basayev, the butcher of Beslan played football with the severed heads of Georgian Christians in 1992 and 1993 when he helped the Russian army ethnically cleanse the Georgian territory of Abkhazia of hundreds of thousands of Georgians. Russia's "Chechen Problem" is blowback for Russia's jihadist genocide against Georgians.
> Perhaps they are enjoying the balmy climate of Cuba.
Better yet, perhaps they are taking a dirt nap.
Let me correct a couple inaccurate depictions of Basaev and the Abkhazian conflict.
1. Basaev went in with his Army of the Confederation of the Caucasus at the invitation of the Abkhazian rebels and without coordination with or cooperation from the Russian forces.
2. The "playing soccer with the heads of Georgians" is an urban legend and boasting by Basaev that has never been proven. This from a guy who videotapes his atrocities and no video of it has shown up so I don't put much stock in it.
3. Basaev did not convert to Islam until 1995 when the Russian Army drove him into the mountains and on the run.
4. Putin was not in power or anywhere near the "reins" of leadership during the first war.
5. Collusion between the Chechens and the Russians was handled by Berezovsky (and he's probably still helping them). Putin inherited the mess. Berezovsky was p.o-d that Putin was being named heir apparant by Yeltsin. He knew Putin didn't cotton too much to corrupt thugs and knew his (Berezovsky's)days of influence were numbered.
Berezovsky has numerous ties to Chechen mafia and bandits. Low and behold - Russians are murdered in their sleep when Chechens blew up apartment buildings. Next thing you know Berezovsky is claiming that the FSB did it and trots out a former FSB agent (and a man he employed) to "verify" those claims.
Add to this - Berezovsky is friendly with Zakaev, Zakaev was "Maskhadov's man" in the UK. Strangely, Zakaev and Basaev back the same Chechen to be the "leader" of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria - no coincidence.
Berezovsky is no fool - he plays to the paranoia of some in the West and quite successfully. Khodorkovsky learned some lessons from Berezovsky, but didn't get out of Russia in time. The funniest thing I ever saw printed in Khodorkovsky's defense in the West was someone actually believing him when he said he admired (and considered "role models") Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Khodorkovsy was a "die hard Komsomolets" (in his own words) during the Commie days - Now people are willing to believe he "converted" but others haven't... These guys' pandering has paid off in some quarters.
In August of 1992 he joined military actions in Abkhazia which waged a war against Georgia. He led a unit of Chechen militants. He was appointed Abkhazia's deputy defence minister. He was in charge of the Gagry front. In the autumn of 1993 his battalion destroyed thousands of civilians in the village of Leselidze and in Sukhumi. In February of 1994 Basayev returned to Chechnya and was appointed commander-in-chief of the troops belonging to the Confederation of Independent Caucasus. - Voice of Russia
Btw, Musa Shanibov, the leader of Basayev's Caucasian Jihadist Confederation receives free haven in Sukhumi, Abkhazia from Russia's separatist clients.
You apparently missed Romanov's, "Basaev went in with his Army of the Confederation of the Caucasus at the invitation of the Abkhazian rebels and without coordination with or cooperation from the Russian forces."
Granted, I am very well aware of what Basayev is up to, you're making too much of a connection between Basayev and the Russians, which really isn't there.
Chechen and wahhabi terrorists are harbored by the separatists in Russia-occupied Abkhazia. They want a "right of return" for the muslim descendants of Abkhazians exiled to Turkey in the 19th century, just like Hamas wants a "right of return" in Israel. Meanwhile the Abkhaz ethnic separatists have cleansed their enclave of Georgians.
Kinda ironic that someone on here is making the "Basaev is with the Russians" argument - it's the same one made by the KPRF, NatsBol, Agrarians, Prokhanov, and inferred to by Rodina...... Of course these are the same groups that said Dudaev, Yanderbiev and Maskhadov were secretly in cahoots with the Russian (Yeltsin and then Putin) government...
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