FLASH: US Troops to the Caucasus, Strengthening a Forward Strategy Against Russia

FLASH 25 (2/27/02): US Troops to the Caucasus, Strengthening a Forward Strategy Against Russia

The New York Times of February 27, on page A9, has a brief story from the British news agency Reuters, announcing that "the United States is planning to send elite military forces to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help train troops." The story adds that "Civilian defense analysts have stated that members of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror network, may be hiding in Georgia."

This very bland story understates both the current crisis and its implications, particularly vis-a-vis Russia. We learn from other sources that the al-Qaeda veterans have linked up with Chechen rebels (many of whom also trained in Afghanistan) on the Georgia-Chechen border. US military officers are already in Tbilisi, and up to 200 US Special Forces are scheduled to arrive this week. According to a Georgian website Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Ivanov said on February 27 that "Dispatching US troops to Georgia will worsen situation in the region."

According to the AP (2/27/02), "fighters allied with Osama bin Laden are holed up in a gorge near the border with Chechnya. Russia has called for joint operations with Georgia against the fighters in Pankisi Gorge, but President Eduard Shevardnadze reportedly prefers to work with the Americans."

The BBC concurs:

`The US and Russia both believe that al-Qaeda suspects may be hiding in the gorge area, where militants who operate in Chechnya are also believed to be based. But Russians are deeply unhappy at the prospect of US involvement, suspecting such co-operation is aimed at reducing their country's influence. "We think it could further aggravate the situation in the region which is difficult as it is. That is our position and Washington is well aware of it," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told the ORT public television.'

Not mentioned in any of these stories is the role of Georgia and Chechnya in the developing global drama of oil and drugs. According to Michael Griffin (Reaping the Whirlwind, 119),

"Though Chechnya contains few oil and gas reserves, it is crucial to oil exportation from the new emirates because the [existing] Caucasian pipeline system, linking Baku to Novorossiysk, passes through Grozny, the capital.....Western oil companies interested in the region had proposed two alternative pipeline routes to Turkish territory through Georgia and Armenia, by-passing the Grozny intersection altogether."

Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 into the CIS (which Georgia refused to join), there followed a decade of Russian interference "in the domestic concerns of all of the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus" (Rashid, Jihad, 195). In the case of Georgia, this involved "the stationing of Russian troops as `peacekeepers' in Abkhazia and South Ossetia," showing "Russian determination to keep a grip on the oil and natural gas resources of the northern Caucasus" (Cooley, Unholy Wars, 179). Others talk of Russian military support for rebels in Georgia (Rashid, 195).

In both of the Chechnya Wars, the Russians faced an opposition whose troops and leaders had been trained in Afghanistan by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose training camps became those of al-Qaeda. As government backing disappeared, the camps were partly financed by drug networks through Chechnya and Georgia (Cooley, 159, 161), networks that some have linked first to Hekmatyar and later to bin Laden (cf. Rashid, Jihad, 165, 229).. The al Qaeda refuge in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge is a local center for these drug networks, which have allegedly corrupted local law enforcement officials.

The Russian campaign served to maintain the Russian control of all pipelines bringing oil and gas out of the Caspian basin. It seems more and more clear that in the current decade the Bush Administration is willing to send troops, from Georgia to Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, to neutralize Russian influence. The United States has already stationed 1,000 troops in Uzbekistan, and 300 close to the Chinese border in Kyrgyzstan, with more scheduled to arrive.

This apparent military strategy complements the explicit U.S. energy strategy, which since the mid-1990s has focused on pipelines either south through Afghanistan or west through the Caucasus to gain access to Central Asian petroleum without depending on Russian pipelines.

Since the collapse of the Unocal CentGaz proposal in 1998, the focus of US government strategy has been on the proposed PSG (Pipeline Solutions Group) "gas pipeline that would stretch across the Caspian, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey" (MIDDLE EAST NEWS ITEMS June 2, 1999). This is the pipeline for which Enron, with US Government money, conducted the feasibility study. The backup of US pipeline politics with military support began under President Clinton, but received a boost with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visit to the region last December.

Vice-President Cheney is himself a veteran of the US oil presence in Central Asia (as CEO of Halliburton), and has often spoken in public about the importance of the Caspian basin. He met last spring with many of the companies whose oil investments in the Caspian basin are now languishing. One wonders if Bush's current forward military strategy was not discussed at Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings, by the US oil companies whose current investments in Central Asia are stymied, by the exorbitant rates charged by Russian pipelines to get their products out.

Supporters of the US presence on Russia's borders argue that it will benefit both the region and the US, by increasing the new nations' autonomy from Russia and facilitating the export their of oil and gas.

But there are big risks involved. Georgia, although less corrupt and oppressive than the dictatorships of Central Asia, has nonetheless been criticized this year by Human Rights Watch for its "crippling levels of corruption" and human rights abuses. Nearly all of these states are unstable and face terroristic opposition. The influx of US military aid and corporate investment tends, in the eyes of observers like Ahmed Rashid, to benefit only those at the top. These elites increase oppression while flaunting their Mercedes, and thus feed the alienation of the public. In these conditions, US troops are likely, sooner or later, to become targets.

What is the risk of sending few hundred Special Forces to train the troops of an unpopular regime? Older Americans will remember that that is how the US became embroiled in Vietnam.