- On August 21, the chief of the U.S. Marine Corps, General
James Conway, arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to begin the training
of his host country's military for deployment to the Afghan war theater
under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
-
- "During the meeting the sides discussed a broad
spectrum of Georgian-U.S bilateral relations and the situation in Georgia's
occupied territory." [1] Occupied territory(ies) meant Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, now independent nations with Russian troops stationed in
both.
-
- Conway met with Georgian Defense Minister Davit (Vasil)
Sikharulidze, who on the same day gave an interview to the Associated Press
in which he said that the training provided by the U.S. Marine Corps could
be employed, in addition to counterinsurgency operations in South Asia,
in his country's "very difficult security environment."
-
- Associated Press reported that "Asked if he was
referring to the possibility of another war with Russia, he said, 'In general,
yes.'"
-
- The Georgian defense chief added, "This experience
will be important for the Georgian armed forces itself - for the level
of training." [2]
-
- Sikharulidze was forced to retract his comments within
hours of their utterance, and not because they weren't true but because
they were all too accurate. The Pentagon was not eager to have this
cat be let out of the bag.
-
- Three days later American military instructors arrived
in Georgia on the heels of the visit of Marine Commandant Conway, whose
previous campaigns included the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the first assault
on Fallujah in that nation in 2004.
-
- Three days after that Georgian Defense Minister Sikharulidze
former ambassador to the United States, head of the NATO division
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia and deputy head of the Georgian
Mission of NATO in Brussels who was appointed to the post last year
by the country's mercurial leader Mikheil Saakashvili after the disastrous
war with Russia last August, was sacked by the same. "Saakashvili
criticized [Sikharulidze] for not doing enough to prepare the military
'to stop an aggressive and dangerous enemy' in possible future conflicts."
[3]
-
- Whatever led to the defense minister's dismissal and
replacement by 28-year-old Bachana (Bacho) Akhalaia it wasn't due to his
bellicose intentions towards Russia. In announcing the transition Saakahshvili
said, "We need a tougher approach. Bacho Akhalaia is the right man
for the job" [4]
-
- Immediately after being named new defense chief Akhalaia
identified "three priorities of the defense Ministry: ensuring peace,
modernization of the army, and NATO integration."
-
- In his own words he said: "Modernization envisages
the improvement of the Georgian army's weapons and equipment, as well as
the training of soldiers and officers. And NATO integration remains our
only way. Georgia should have an army that will not be a burden on NATO,
but will strengthen it." [5]
-
- The Civil Georgia web site reported on September 1 that
the U.S. Marines in the nation had launched "intensive training"
which would "focus on skill sets necessary for Georgian forces to
operate in a counterinsurgency environment."
-
- The same report divulged that "A similar training
program was conducted by U.S. military instructors for the Georgian military
ahead of their deployment in Iraq. Georgia withdrew about 2,000 of its
troops from Iraq during last year's war with Russia." [6]
-
- The 2,000 U.S.-trained Georgia troops in question constituted
the third largest foreign deployment in Iraq last year with only America
and Britain providing more occupation forces. They were also stationed
near the Iranian border. When Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia last
August 7-8 triggered a five-day war with Russia, the Pentagon transported
the Georgian soldiers in Iraq back home for combat in the South Caucasus
had the conflict not ended on August 12.
-
- The U.S. Defense Department's training and arming of
the Georgian military started long before the deployment to Iraq and that
underway for Afghanistan.
-
- In April of 2002 the Pentagon instituted the Georgia
Train and Equip Program (GTEP) under the broader Operation Enduring Freedom
"Global War on Terror" campaign whose main target was Afghanistan.
For the first nine months the GTEP was run by U.S. Army Special Forces
Green Berets assigned to Special Operations Command Europe.
In December of 2002 the program was passed on from the Green Berets to
the U.S. Marine Corps.
-
- Later the Pentagon created a Georgian Sustainment &
Stability Operations Program (GSSOP) under the aegis of the Defense Department's
European Command, whose top military commander is also NATO Supreme Allied
Commander. This program concentrated on training Georgia's officer staff
as well as soldiers for eventual deployment to Iraq, NATO integration and
armed assaults against Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The GSSOP succeeded
in all three of its objectives, though not to the degree intended in the
third category.
-
- The redeployment of U.S. Marines to Georgia, then, is
indicative of a continuous effort by the Pentagon ranging over more than
seven years to prepare the Georgian armed forces an American and
NATO proxy army for wars abroad and in the South Caucasus alike.
-
- On August 31 the latest mission began: "The ISAF
program to train the Georgian military for implementing international missions
in Afghanistan started at the National Training Center of the Armed Forces
of Georgia in Krtsanisi on August 31. The 31st infantry battalion of the
Georgian Armed Forces will pass a six-month intensive training to participate
in NATO operations within ISAF, led by an expeditionary brigade of U.S.
Marines." [7]
-
- On September 2 the newly appointed Georgian Defense Minister
Bacho Akhalaia summoned (or was summoned by) the ambassadors of NATO countries
in Georgia and he reiterated his triad of priorities. "The minister
presented during the meeting the key challenges of the Ministry and discussed
the priorities, such as peace, modernization and NATO integration."
[8]
-
- The same day a delegation of the German Bundeswehr arrived
in the country and, visiting the Defense Ministry, discussed information
technology. "The purpose of the visit is to integrate an informational
codification system of the Georgian MoD with the NATO general system,"
an initiative "implemented within the framework of the Bilateral Cooperation
Plan [of] 2009 between Georgia and the Federal Republic of Germany."
[9]
-
- During the same time it was announced that the American
Marine Corps was sending a delegation to Georgia's neighbor in the South
Caucasus, Azerbaijan, which has also recently been levied for more troops
for the U.S.'s and NATO's war in Afghanistan.
-
- From September 14-18 U.S. Marines will "examine
the training of the Azerbaijan Marine Corps" and "according to
the bilateral military cooperation program signed between Azerbaijan and
the United States, U.S. navy experts will assess the skills of the Azerbaijani
naval special forces." [10]
-
- Another Azerbaijani news source added, "After getting
familiar with the combat activities of the marine battalions of the Azerbaijani
Naval Forces, they will make their own recommendations." [11]
-
- Azerbaijan's navy is deployed in the Caspian Sea which
is also bordered by Iran and Russia.
-
- A week before, September 7-9, the nation's Defense Ministry
will conduct a meeting of the Coordination Group on Azerbaijan's Strategic
Defense Outline and it announced that on the same precise dates as the
visit of the U.S. Marine delegation "A working meeting on creating
the Strategic Defense Outline and supporting the preparation of the final
document will be held in Baku on September 14-18 with the participation
of experts from the US and other countries." [12]
-
- On August 1 the nation's press revealed that "NATO
and Azerbaijan are discussing the possibility of using the country's air
space by the alliance's contingents to reach Afghanistan.
-
- "'We are holding talks [about using the air space]
with several countries including Azerbaijan,' said a NATO official, who
asked to remain anonymous." [13]
-
- The third nation in the South Caucasus, Armenia, is also
part of plans by NATO to further integrate the strategically vital region
and it too has been recruited for the Alliance's expanding war in South
Asia.
-
- On August 21 the Armenian ambassador to NATO, Samvel
Mkrtchyan, met with the bloc's new Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
and "said that Armenia is inclined to develop partnership ties with
NATO" [14] and "Armenian servicemen will join the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan shortly." [15]
-
- The expansion of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war by Washington
and NATO is pulling in regional states and increasingly vast tracts of
Eurasia.
-
- Last month General David Petraeus, Commander of the United
States Central Command (CENTCOM), which is prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, visited the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. While in Kazakhstan, which shares borders with
Russia and China, Petraeus met with his counterpart, Kazakh Minister of
Defense Adilbek Zhaksybekov, and "discussions centered around building
on the already strong strategic partnership that exists between Kazakhstan
and the United States." [16]
-
- He also inspected the U.S. and NATO base at Manas in
Kyrgyzstan, which had been closed to the Pentagon and its Alliance allies
earlier this year, but the use of which was again secured by Petraeus in
August.
-
- On September 5 NATO is to begin a week-long multinational
emergency management exercise in Kazakhstan which will include forces from
the United States, Germany, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Armenia,
Finland, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia,
Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine. That is, a 20-nation exercise
in Central Asia whose participants include six former Soviet republics
and two former Yugoslav states.
-
- In late August the Deputy Chief of the General Staff
of the British Armed Forces led a delegation to Turkmenistan to discuss
bilateral military cooperation.
-
- The Afghan war is the center of a Western military operation
that is broadening into wider and wider circles throughout Eurasia and
in varying degrees taking in dozens of nations from the Chinese border
and the Indian Ocean to the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea. Nations being
absorbed into this military transit, overflight, and troop recruitment
and training network include all those in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and the South Caucasus (Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia), the Black Sea region (Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria,
Romania and Ukraine) and the Southern Balkans (Albania, Bosnia, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) in addition to Afghanistan
and Pakistan. With the exception of the Central Asian states (so far),
all of those nations mentioned above have sent troops to the war theater
or soon will, Serbia alone possibly excepted.
-
- Kuwait and Iraq are also used to transfer troops and
equipment to the Afghan war zone.
-
- The above nations include several that border Russia,
China, Iran and Syria, four of a small handful of states in the world not
subservient to the U.S. and its NATO and Asian NATO allies.
-
- On August 30 it was reported that Bulgarian troops scheduled
for deployment to Afghanistan are to train in neighboring Macedonia as
part of "Bulgarian-Macedonian-American training in the framework of
the Bulgarian-American" joint arrangement for use of the military
base in Novo Selo in Bulgaria. [17] At roughly the same time U.S. National
Guard troops were in Macedonia training the nation's special forces is
exercises that were described as "enriching and building the battle
skills of both armies." [18]
-
- While U.S. and Bulgarian military personnel were training
in Macedonia for NATO deployments to Afghanistan and elsewhere, Macedonian
troops were participating in an exercise in Serbia "involving medical
unitswith the participation of officers and units of NATO forces and Partnership
for Peace members states." [19]
-
- In the second half of last month American servicemen
in the Joint Task
- Force-East, which is now based in Romania, trained with
Bulgarian and Romanian opposite numbers "to build interoperability
capabilities and develop relationships with other militaries in regional
security cooperation."
-
- Drills were held in both Eastern European nations and
"More than 3,800 Romanian, Bulgarian, U.S. troops and civilians [participated]
in
- the three-month exercise." [20]
-
- The Pentagon and NATO have acquired seven new military
bases in Bulgaria and Romania in recent years, including air bases for
the transit of troops and weapons to Georgia and Afghanistan as well as
for potential bombing runs against other nations such as Iran.
-
- Last month a Bulgarian news source reported that the
Pentagon "will invest in infrastructure and construction projects
with a combined price tag of $45 million for their Bulgarian bases"
in addition to budgeting $61.15 million a year ago for "construction
works at its training area in Novo Selo." [21]
-
- Bulgaria and Romania face the western Black Sea across
from Georgia and Abkhazia and offer the U.S. naval and air bases for current
and future armed conflicts to the east and the south from the Caucasus
to South Asia, the Persian Gulf to Northeast Africa.
-
- Regarding Southeastern Europe in general, the new NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen last week identified the Balkans
as a "top priority" and "said that his task is to get all
of the Balkan countries into the Euro-Atlantic structure in the coming
years." [22]
-
- In late August the U.S.'s European Command held a 40-nation
exercise in Bosnia, Combined Endeavour 2009, to further integrate nations
from the region and beyond into NATO. The chief military commander of NATO
forces in Bosnia, Italian General Sabato Errico, said of the exercise that
it was conducted "in the spirit of Partnership for Peace" and
that "this exercise offers an excellent opportunity to focus on one
of the key elements of the Partnership and the Alliance: interoperability.
Allies and partners who participate in NATO-led collective security operations
must be able to work together and to communicate effectively exercises
such as Combined Endeavour allow us to practice this." [23]
-
- Last week NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen visited Turkey
and pressured his host to provide more troops for the Alliance's war in
Afghanistan, stating that the bloc's deployment there would last "as
long as it takes." [24]
-
- On the same day Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
announced that his country would be more than doubling its troops in Afghanistan
from 795 to 1,600. At a joint press conference with NATO's Rasmusssen Davutoglu
added, "We are appealing to NATO countries to take measures against
the PKK," alluding to the counterinsurgency war against the Kurdistan
Workers Party. [25]
-
- The war in Afghanistan is developing in intensity and
in range, in depth and in width. The August 29 edition of the British newspaper
The Independent reported that the top military commander of American and
NATO troops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, will demand 20,000
more Western soldiers for the war. That is, after last month's elections,
the excuse for what were presented as temporary U.S. and NATO buildups
over the past several months. Other estimates range as high as 40,000 additional
forces. [26]
-
- The new Chief of the General Staff of the British Army,
General David Richards, last year said "he wanted to see a surge of
up to 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 5,000 more British soldiers"
[27] and is now in a position to deliver on his demand.
-
- Central Command Chief General Petraeus last month announced
plans to launch an intelligence training center to be coordinated "with
the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, the (NATO) International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan,
and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe" that will "train
military officers, covert agents and analysts who agree to focus on Afghanistan
and Pakistan for up to a decade." [28]
-
- Late last month it was announced that the Pentagon was
reassigning its 3rd Special Forces Group (U.S. Army Special Forces), which
has been deployed to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, and now the
"3rd Special Forces Group will be responsible for Afghanistan and
Pakistan under a realignment of where the Army's Special Forces groups
operate."
-
- Moreover, "The 3rd Group's new area of orientation
will include the eastern and northern Middle East, which includes Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan." [29]
-
- U.S. Marines and Green Berets have become regular fixtures
in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Kuwait and the Horn of Africa
over the past decade. With the widening of the Afghan war they are soon
to take up permanent residence in the capital of Pakistan, in the Caucasus,
in the Black Sea region and the Caspian Sea Basin among other locales.
-
- Notes
-
- 1) Trend News Agency, August 24, 2009
- 2) Associated Press, August 21, 2009
- 3) Bloomberg News, August 27, 2009
- 4) Ibid
- 5) Interfax, August 28, 2009
- 6) Civil Georgia, September 1, 2009
- 7) Trend News Agency, August 31, 2009
- Georgia Ministry of Defence, September 2, 2009
- 9) Georgia Ministry of Defence, September 2, 2009
- 10) Azeri Press Agency, September 1, 2009
- 11) Trend News Agency, September 1, 2009
- 12) Azeri Press Agency, September 1, 2009
- 13) Interfax-Azerbaijan, August 31, 2009
- 14) PanArmenian.net, August 24, 2009
- 15) News.am, August 24, 2009
- 16) Partnership for Peace Information Management System,
August 24, 2009
- 17) Focus News Agency, August 30, 2009
- 18) Makfax, August 26, 2009
- 19) Makfax, August 31, 2009
- 20) United States European Command, August 21, 2009
- 21) Dnevnik.bg, August 22, 2009
- 22) Tanjug News Agency, August 28, 2009
- 23) Southeast European Times, August 24, 2009
- 24) Deutsche Welle, August 28, 2009
- 25) Trend News Agency, August 28, 2009
- 26) Russia Today, September 1, 2009
- 27) Trend News Agency, August 28, 2009
- 28) Washington Times, August 24, 2009
- 29) Fayetteville Observer, August 27, 2009
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