A Gateway to Chechnya, Georgia Risks Wider War

In a sun-drenched valley in Georgia, a Chechen rebel watches his children play with a cat, and it is hard to believe that across the nearby Russian border there is another sunny valley where bombs and missiles crush houses.

Gazing out across this peaceful gorge, the fighter dreams of the other valley 25 miles away in the separatist republic of Chechnya. It does not matter to him how beautiful it is here in Georgia: It will never be home. And so long as Russian soldiers occupy Chechnya, there will be war.

With spring, the sun is melting the snow in the high mountain passes of Georgia, opening the gates to the war. Young Chechen men here will cross the border to fight, and retreat back into Georgia to avoid Russian attacks.

“This war will go on for a long, long time,” said the 39-year-old rebel, who requested anonymity. “I’m afraid that this war will splash over into all of the Caucasus.”

The risk that Russia’s war in Chechnya could spill into Georgia terrifies the people of Jokolo, Duisi, Birkiana and Omalo--the ethnic Chechen villages clustered together in the Pankisi Gorge in northeastern Georgia, where there are about 6,350 Chechen refugees.

“The worst-case scenario is that the war could spread into Georgia. We’ve been trying to prevent it,” said Georgian Interior Minister Kakha Targamadze, explaining that the mountain passes from Chechnya into the Pankisi Gorge are impossible to control.

“Now that spring is coming, the situation may become more complicated,” Targamadze said. He said there are probably several dozen fighters in the gorge now. “But it’s quite possible that with the melting snow, larger numbers will cross.”

Russia has already bombarded Georgia three times during the current Chechen war. Georgian officials fear that the Russian military will attack again, on the pretext that Chechen rebels are sheltering in the Pankisi Gorge.

For U.S., British and other investors in the nearby Caspian oil fields, any spread of the war would be alarming. A major pipeline that would cross this nation and carry oil from Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is on the drawing boards and strongly backed by the U.S. government.

“If Russia had a desire [to undermine the planned pipeline route], it could export destabilization from the North Caucasus to the south,” said liberal analyst Ivlian Khaindrava.

Given the fears of a Russian attack, the question of whether Chechen fighters are present in this Georgian gorge is extremely sensitive.

When outside journalists turn up in Jokolo, they are met with freezing looks. The tension is palpable. Young men stare with silent hostility at strangers carrying cameras. Some walk briskly away or cover their faces.

Few admit to being fighters, but some say they plan to return to fight the Russians.

“The snow will melt and the passes will be clear. I’ll go back and I will fight. We have no other choice,” said a 22-year-old Chechen man who declined to be named. “I have weapons at home, stashed away.”

He believes it is better to die in Chechnya defending his homeland “than to sit here on humanitarian aid.”

Capture Meant Death, One Refugee Says

When Russian bombs hailed down on Itum-Kale, a village in Chechnya close to the border, only the toughest of men could make it through winter’s velvet barrier of snow across the Caucasus Mountains to the Pankisi Gorge.

Yusup Isayev, 35, who denies he is a fighter, led 28 men across on Feb. 14. Itum-Kale was bombed to ruins, he said, and with Russians approaching, the young men there had to flee.

“If they caught me, I knew 100% I’d be dead,” he said, flashing a mouthful of gold teeth. “All the young men who knew they would die anyway came with me.”

Isayev, who used to be a shepherd, knows the passes by heart. The men hid from Russian planes and helicopters and moved only at night, plowing waist-deep through the snow. They crossed mountains more than 13,000 feet high.

“It was freezing cold. The wind was so strong that when we went over the pass, some of our group kept falling over. But we had strong people among us, and we carried them,” he said. One survivor was badly frostbitten.

Isayev said he wanted to fight after he saw Russian bombings. “The whole world doesn’t care. Women and children are being killed, and no one cares. If I had a weapon, I’d go back there and fight.”

The chief of Georgia’s Border Guards Department, Valery S. Chkheidze, said the presence of Chechen men in the Pankisi Gorge who would return to Chechnya to fight against Russia is undeniable.

“Take a grown man whose whole family was wiped out. If he’s a normal person--not some idiot who cares nothing for his family or motherland--that’s how he’ll feel. Imagine a 14-year-old boy who witnessed the deaths of his father, mother and brothers. Can we guarantee this young man won’t take up weapons?” he said.

With the coming thaw, Chkheidze said, the Chechen fighters will be constantly on the move, entering Georgia and other neighboring areas to evade the Russian military and replenish supplies.

“We’ll do our best to protect our border. You can never guarantee that dozens or hundreds of fighters could not penetrate and come into Georgia, pursued by Russian troops,” said Peter Mamradze, senior advisor to Georgian President Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

More worrisome to the Georgian side is the fear of what the Russians might do.

“You can expect anything,” Chkheidze said. “You can expect that some gangs of bogus fighters--actually cooperating with the Russian special services--could cross the border and provoke the situation and then blame the Chechens for it. They could fly over and bomb our territory and then adopt an ostrich position and say it was not them,” Chkheidze said. “As to violations of our airspace, it happens every week. I think it is written into their timetable.”

Targamadze feels certain that Russia’s secret services want to provoke a conflict in the Pankisi Gorge to draw Georgia into the war and control the gorge.

“Russia cannot control the Pankisi Gorge border area from its side. Armed men who are in the Pankisi Gorge can travel to and from Chechnya by foot passes. They can hide their military equipment in Chechnya and later cross the border back into Chechnya and use it, taking part in the guerrilla war,” Targamadze said.

Forces Are on Alert to Resist Incursion

Georgian forces are on alert, ready to resist a major incursion by any armed force, Chechen or Russian.

With the Chechen war, relations between Russia and Georgia deteriorated sharply. In mid-October, a fortnight after the Russian action against Chechnya began, then-Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin pressed Shevardnadze to let Russian forces move through Georgia to enter southern Chechnya.

The Georgian leader rejected the request, warning that it would ignite war across the Caucasus.

In a formal note last fall, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Georgia of aiding rebel fighters, harboring training bases for thousands of fighters and shipping weapons and helicopters to the rebels.

Georgia angrily denied the claims and called in observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who are monitoring the border.

Though Russian planes have bombarded Georgia three times, Moscow apologized for only one incident, claiming it was a mistake.

Children were in school in the tiny village of Shatili, close to the border with Chechnya, on Dec. 17 when a Russian MI-24 “Krokodil” helicopter swooped down, firing around the schoolhouse and other buildings for 20 minutes.

Shorena Shetekauri, 16, said she and the other children fled to the basements in their houses about 500 yards away.

“Some children just ran out of the building and hid behind stones. Little kids were screaming and crying,” she said.

Border guard Imeda Chincharauli, 31, doubts it was an accident.

“They know exactly where the border is. They just sent us a warning to scare us and show that they have helicopters that could come and do it any time,” Chincharauli said.

A Russian guided missile hit the Georgian post Dec. 22, injuring five border guards. Russian planes also bombed the town of Akhmeta, near the Pankisi Gorge.

At a meeting with Shevardnadze in January, Russian President-elect Vladimir V. Putin pledged that Russian forces would not move into Georgia.

But Khaindrava, the analyst, argues that Putin’s rise will increase the sway of the army, the security forces and the military-industrial sector in Russia, which could spell bad news for Georgia. He contends that there are murky forces in Russia eager to preserve their nation’s military presence and political influence in the region.

U.S. Provides Aid for Border Protection

The U.S. is helping Georgians protect their border, providing $18.8 million in aid, all being directed to strengthen the frontier.

Georgian officials, such as border guards chief Chkheidze, do not hide their irritation that Russia’s war in Chechnya is likely to become a long-term problem at Georgia’s doorstep.

“It didn’t take much brains to predict this result. It was easily foreseeable that it had the potential to turn into the long guerrilla war that we have today,” he said. Part of the problem, he complained, is Russia’s approach to the war, which only hardens resistance among the Chechens.

“It’s one thing to fight terrorists and quite another thing to fight against an entire people,” he said.

In the Pankisi Gorge, Chechen men and women talk of a war lasting for many decades. Despite all the suffering, the dream that Chechnya will be free one day has not died here.

“What makes people into fighters?” mused the 39-year-old Chechen fighter in Jokolo village. “Not faith. They stand up to fight for their dead relatives, their dead families, their ruined houses. People fight now because they have no choice. If you stay at home, the war will not pass you by. It’s better to stand up and fight than to sit and let the war come and get you.”

The hatred of Russians is intense here, and the support for the Chechen rebel fighters remains high. One woman, Aisa Shakhgiriyeva, 40, with tears in her eyes and a catch in her voice, told of her struggle to stop her 21-year-old son from going to fight.

“If the fighting goes on, he won’t stay. I know it,” Shakhgiriyeva said. “If enemies came and started killing even women and children, what would you do?”

And if he dies in battle, her younger son, age 7, will be next to seek vengeance. Already he swears that, come the thaw, he’ll cross the mountains back home into Chechnya.

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Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.