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GEORGIAN ARMY PURSUES DISSIDENT COMMANDER

posted by FerrasB on July, 2006 as Abkhazia


From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/28/2006 2:07 AM
GEORGIAN ARMY PURSUES DISSIDENT COMMANDER

Abkhazia watches anxiously as Tbilisi sends hundreds of soldiers to subdue rebel
militia.

By Dmitry Avaliani in Tbilisi and Inal Khashig in Sukhum

The Georgian government has declared success in its operation to disarm rebel
commander Emzar Kvitsiani high in the mountains of the Kodori Gorge in western
Georgia, although Kvitsiani himself has so far eluded capture.

“The second phase of the anti-criminal operation has begun,” said defence
minister Irakly Okruashvili on July 27, saying his forces were now focused on
pursuing the rebel leader. “All the villages in the gorge are under control, and
weapons which have been stockpiled in large quantities here are being
confiscated.”

Okruashvili said there had been shooting incidents during the operation - an
elderly woman had died accidentally in the village of Chkhalta and two soldiers
had been wounded. Kvitsiani and his nephew Bacho Argvliani were reported to have
escaped into the forests.

Georgian special forces are trying to block escape routes into both
Georgian-controlled territory and territory controlled by the unrecognised
republic of Abkhazia lower down the gorge. The Tbilisi government has announced
a reward of 100,000 lari (55,000 US dollars) for information leading to
Kvitsiani’s capture.

Georgian troops were sent in to disarm Kvitsiani’s Monadire (Hunter) militia
after he refused orders to surrender to the authorities in Tbilisi and called
for the resignation of the president and government. Kvitsiani also complained
that the government was ignoring the problems of his remote and poor region.

The upper Kodori Gorge is the only area of Abkhazia under the de facto
jurisdiction of the Georgian government and is populated by ethnic Svans,
closely related to Georgians.

The armed forces of the unrecognised republic of Abkhazia have been on alert and
watching developments, but are under orders from their government not to
intervene.

Kvitsiani, the former representative of ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze in the
region, formed what was basically a parallel system of local government,
supported by an armed militia of around 350 men, most of them ex-combatants from
the war in Abkhazia. The Georgian defence ministry allowed the militia to
continue as a line of defence against the Abkhaz forces on the other side – even
though this contravened the 1994 ceasefire agreement.

The new Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili ordered the group to be
disbanded in 2004.

In the last few months, Kvitsiani has upped the stakes in his dispute with
Tbilisi, calling for the resignation of the Okruashvili and Interior Minister
Vano Merabishvili, whom he termed “devils”.

“The future of Georgia is at stake,” he said.

The two ministers led the operation against the rebels, while President
Saakashvili said that the only issue about which he was prepared to negotiate
with Kvitsiani and his supporters was “what kind of cells they will have in
Tbilisi’s Prison no. 5”.

Journalists have not been allowed in to observe the operation. Georgian radio
correspondent Rati Mujiri, one of many journalists based in the village of
Khaishi in the next valley, told IWPR that reporters could only get first-hand
information by calling villagers in the Kodori Gorge by satellite telephone.

Mujiri said that local Svans on the whole condemned Kvitsiani and what they
called his criminal activities, but were anxious that no blood should be
spilled.

The de facto authorities in Abkhazia said they would not provide refuge for
Kvitsiani, who they have described as a “war criminal” for the part he played on
the Georgian side of the 1992-93 conflict.

Most Georgians agree with the aim of the operation, if not necessarily with its
tactics. Georgian military expert Irakli Aladashvili said, “There were serious
problems with discipline in the militia. You couldn’t leave it in that form. You
had to change something – but abolishing it in this way was also unacceptable.

“If it is a police operation that is being conducted. Then it should stay within
those bounds.”

If the operation is judged to be of a military nature, then it would break the
terms of the 1994 Georgian-Abkhaz ceasefire agreement.

Abkhazia has been watching developments with alarm and its Security Council met
for two days in a row. A decision was taken to put the Abkhaz armed forces on
high alert and to move army units into the lower part of the gorge.

However, the Abkhaz authorities stress that they have no intention of
intervening in what they say as an internal Georgian dispute. “Only if the
so-called special operation moves outside that part of the Kodori Gorge which is
now under the control of Tbilisi and spreads deeper into Abkhazia will we be
forced to use force,” presidential spokesman Kristian Bzhania told IWPR.

The Georgian government has blamed both the Russian and Abkhaz governments for
fostering the rebels. Givi Targamadze, head of the parliament’s defence and
security committee, said the rebellion was an “order from Russia, which is
supplying the rebels with weapons”. Targamadze said that Kvitsiani had received
visits from Russia’s FSB intelligence service and members of the Abkhaz
government.

Mikheil Machavariani, deputy speaker of the Georgian parliament, said he saw the
hand of the former leader of Ajaria, Aslan Abashidze, and the former
presidential representative in Kvemo Kartli region, Levan Mamaladze – both of
them powerful figures under Shevardnadze, and both now in exile - in the
rebellion.

The Abkhaz government flatly denied that any of its ministers had visited
Kvitsiani. Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said, “In Tbilisi, they are always
looking for the reasons for their problems in Moscow rather than seeking them in
Tbilisi itself. It’s completely obvious they want some kind of small, victorious
war. They were preparing for a war in South Ossetia and defence minister
Okruashvili has already made promises to celebrate the New Year in [the South
Ossetian capital] Tskhinval. But now they’ve seen that won’t be so easy to do
that, and that’s probably why they’ve decided to impose order on the rebel
Svans.”

Political analyst and member of the opposition Republican Party Paata
Zakareishvili expressed concerns about the implications of the operation.

“In the final analysis, the situation in the gorge is stabilising,” he said.
“But the actions of our authorities are disproportionate. The forces used in the
operation were in excess of the threat that existed.

“This is either incompetence or a show of force. Unfortunately, it shows that we
have a big strong army which we don’t know how to use.”

Dmitry Avaliani is a reporter with 24 Hours newspaper in Tbilisi. Inal Khashig
is co-editor of IWPR’s newspaper Panorama in Abkhazia.


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