Green Berets Go to Georgia in Battle Against Terrorism

In the latest expansion of the U.S.-led war on terrorism to a little-noticed corner of the globe, about 50 Green Berets landed Sunday in the capital of the Georgian republic to help train its impoverished and ill-equipped army to oppose Chechen guerrilla groups active in part of its territory.

Over the next year, the Army Special Forces who arrived in Tbilisi are to instruct 2,000 soldiers and officers in an effort to create an effective anti-terrorist force in the mountainous Caucasus region that has become home to some Arab and Chechen fighters supporting Osama bin Laden.

Russia has long complained that Georgia’s lawless Pankisi Gorge, which adjoins Chechnya, has provided sanctuary for Islamic separatists fighting for Chechen independence from Russia.

Georgian President Eduard A. Shevardnadze asked for the U.S. trainers this year.

Shevardnadze, who was foreign minister of the Soviet Union in its last years, has tried to tilt his country toward closer relations with the United States. But it has been a delicate balance for Georgia to avoid offending Russia. Georgia, whose population is about 5 million, fell under Russian dominance in the 19th century and was part of the Soviet Union until 1991.

The arrival of U.S. troops has offended some nationalists in Russia, who view growing U.S. influence in former Soviet territories in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Baltics as part of a conspiracy to surround Russia and curtail its regional ambitions.

But Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who will host President Bush for four days this week in Moscow and St. Petersburg, has defended the U.S. role, saying that Washington is an ally when it comes to eradicating the terrorist threat on Russia’s southern frontier.

Georgia’s Abkhazia region, a pro-Russian enclave that has had years of de facto independence, has also been nervous about the arrival of U.S. trainers. Its leaders fear a strengthened Georgian army might once again challenge Abkhazia’s autonomy.

The soldiers and officers to be trained by the Americans will represent an elite 10% of the country’s armed forces.

“You know when you have boats in the harbor and the tide comes in and lifts them up? We are going to play the tide for the whole Georgian army,” Lt. Col. Bill Wheelehan, part of an advance team that met the instructors at Tbilisi airport, told Reuters news agency. The team has been in Tbilisi for weeks.

Georgian Defense Ministry representatives and U.S. Embassy personnel were also on hand to greet the troops from Ft. Carson, Colo., as they disembarked from a gray C-17 transport.

After settling in for a week, the instructors are to launch into 70 days of staff training for the first group of Georgian army officers.

After that, the Americans will carry out four back-to-back tactical training programs lasting about 100 days each for commando, mountain and special-forces battalions, and for a motorized rifle brigade. Plans call for up to 150 U.S. military instructors to be in Georgia at any one time.

Under the “train and equip” program, the Georgian troops will be provided small arms and ammunition, uniforms, fuel, construction materials, and communications and medical gear for their training. The budget of the U.S. mission is $64 million, almost four times the annual defense budget of Georgia.

Officials of both countries stressed that the U.S. troops would not travel to the Pankisi Gorge itself or engage in any combat. “They will be staying and working in Tbilisi,” said Malkhaz Radiani, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

In the eight-month war on terrorism, U.S. troops have established bases in Central Asia. An anti-terrorist training mission has also begun in the Philippines, and U.S. military instructors are preparing to be sent to Yemen.