Sad news has come again from the Pankisi Gorge, a small valley on the border between Georgia and Chechnya. This time a "death notice" was received by the Borchashvili family, living in the village of Dzibahevi. During the fighting in Syria, 23-year-old Turpal Borchashvili was killed. Six months ago, he left his native gorge, which is home to about 3 thousand Kist-Chechens who have taken Georgian second names in the last century. According to the documents of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Turpal flew from Tbilisi to Istanbul, ostensibly to find work in Turkey. But soon he moved to Syria, joining the ranks of Islamic State. There is no doubt that this was his goal from the beginning, as well as of hundreds of other Chechen-Kists who are fighting in the army of religious fanatics.
According to preliminary data, Turpal was killed during the fighting in the city of Cobán on the Turkish-Syrian border. That fight was participated in by dozens of other people from the Pankisi Gorge – they are trying to fight together in the same formation. The most famous of all Chechen-Kists to join the army under the black flag is considered to be a native of Pankisi, Umar Ash Shishani (Tarhan Batirashvili), who was put on the list of the most dangerous terrorists by the US State Department.
The Pankisi formations attacked the Kurdish parts of Cobán. But aircraft was used against them. And it is not clear whether it was a Syrian or a Turkish bomber. However, according to media reports, the city came under the partial control of ISIS. However, this strategically important town has passed from one side to others several times already during the civil war in Syria.
Turpal Borchashvili became the fourteenth Pankisi citizen to die in this war. Just a few weeks ago in the village of Tsinubani, 33-year-old Ibrahim Tsatiashvili, who left a wife and three young children, was mourned. He was known as a family man, who could not imagine life without his wife and children. The latter fact suggests that, despite the statements by Caucasian analysts about the mercantile interests among extremists, some of them are fighting not only for an idea, but for the money which is at ISIS’s disposal after the seizures of oil wells, and some of the larger cities and their storages.
If a bullet did not catch up with the "volunteers", no one would ever know that they went to war for "a new Caliphate" after fighting and receiving a considerable fee, they could return to the gorge after "a few months of work in Turkey." This does not mean that among those who went to Syria and Iraq there are no fanatics, who are really ready to lay down their heads for the idea.
A son of the notorious Chechen field commander Ruslan Gelayev, a member of the first and second Chechen wars, Rustam Gelayev, died recently in Syria. And only after that did it become known that for all those years (after the elimination of Ruslan Gelayev in the early 2000s), Rustam had been living in the Pankisi Gorge.
Recently, the Georgian Interior Ministry carried out a special operation in Pankisi to arrest ISIS’s recruiters. Several people were detained, they were charged with aiding and abetting terrorism, but they strongly deny their guilt. Experts believe that such "special operations" will not solve the problem. Stopping potential fighters leaving for ISIS is theoretically possible only if the inhabitants of the Gorge are prohibited from leaving Georgia, but it would be a flagrant violation of human rights, moreover by ethnicity. Therefore, the Tbilisi authorities are conducting purely symbolic actions in Pankisi and timidly hoping for "more effective cooperation on this issue with the law enforcement agencies of Turkey."
