Author: Georgi Kalatozishvili Tbilisi, exclusively to VK
Recently in Tbilisi media the conclusion of the so-called "State Commission of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" was published to investigate last year's events in Lopota Gorge, in the northeast Georgia (near the Dagestani section of the Russian-Georgian border). There, according to official data of the Georgian Interior Ministry, special purpose military, together with the army, destroyed a group of seven Chechen rebels who planned to go to the North Caucasus to commit sabotage.
Events began to develop at the end of August 2012, when four residents of the Georgian village of Lapankuri disappeared. Later it turned out that they were abducted by some armed group. For their release in the Lopota Gorge there was a large-scale military operation that killed not only all seven kidnappers, but also three members of the security structures of Georgia, including a military doctor.
On the eve of the October parliamentary elections, the opposition accused President Saakashvili of "bloody spectacle for a show of force to the population." Having come to power, Bidzina Ivanishvili’s "Georgian Dream" initiated a new investigation into the incident. Meanwhile, the public defender, Ucha Nanuashvili, citing his own sources, clearly stated that the Georgian secret services themselves invited Chechens from European countries promising passage to the North Caucasus, but cheated and tried to disarm them, which led to the tragedy. The same conclusion was reached by the so-called "State Commission on the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria": "Dead Chechens were the victims of the massacre”, its statement said. According to the authors, "the massacre was planned by three parties: the Russian and Georgian authorities and the "Caucasus Emirate". Judging by the mention of the latter subject, it can be concluded that although the document is signed by "foreign minister of Ichkeria" Usman Ferzauli, the true author of the" sign ", with a large proportion, is likely to be considered a former deputy prime minister "of the government of Ichkeria" Ahmed Zakayev, who, while living in London, heads the team, opposing Doku Umarov and his "emirate."
But the most interesting statement is a charge against Mikhail Saakashvili, who, according to the "commission", "gave the nod to the Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Merabishvili for the action to destroy the Chechens." Earlier the authorities of "Ichkeria", unlike the "emirate", has never criticized Saakashvili, but now the era of "Mishiko" is coming to an end, and former Interior Minister Merabishvili is arrested.
However, it seems that the statement by so-called "representatives of Ichkeria" is due not only to the change of government, but also to an offense, as a whole, for the murder of Chechens. This is evidenced by the passage of the "impact on the centuries-old friendly relations between the Georgian and Chechen peoples."
"The Commission of Ichkeria" says that the killed Chechens were deceived: Interior Minister Merabishvili allegedly promised them to provide a corridor for a hike to the North Caucasus. About 200 Chechens expressed their willingness to do that, but at the last moment the squad was nearly disarmed. All the blame for what happened was attributed by the Commission personally to President Saakashvili.
However, the question arises: how true is the allegation that Georgian special services, on the instructions of senior management, were preparing for such a dangerous adventure as sending of well-armed militant groups to the North Caucasus? After all, it could lead to a response by Moscow and another Russian-Georgian conflict on the basis of quite legitimate "response to terrorist actions"?
As for the weapons, everything is more or less clear: most of the dead commandos were residents of the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, where the bulk of every kind of weapons was left from the time of Ruslan Gelaev case, that is, the end of the 1990s. In this regard, an interesting proposition in an interview to VK was expressed by expert on Caucasus Mamuka Areshidze. He personally spoke with some of the 200 thousand Chechens who last summer suddenly came from Europe to Georgia. "They told me that they plan to go to Syria, but when I asked how they can pass a few boundaries with an arsenal of weapons, they could not answer”, Areshidze said.
There was a version that Merabishvili and his colleagues were preparing not to transport militants to the North Caucasus but to assist the Syrian opposition in order to contribute to the efforts of the United States and other Western countries to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. But is a group of a few dozen militants really so important for the Syrian opposition?
On the other hand, training the squad for the infiltration to Chechnya or Dagestan seems really excessive risk, even for very "brave" Saakashvili's team. In addition, a reasonable question arises: why are they destroyed, if, as the Georgian Ombudsman and the "State Commission of Ichkeria" say, Georgia armed and trained them in military bases?
Therefore, the most likely version is still the version that the Georgian authorities are not aware of the training in the Pankisi Gorge of "the second edition of the Gelaev detachment ", which 11 years ago had almost led to the first Russian-Georgian war. Moreover, the initiator of the "symbolic march from Georgia to the north" (it's hard to imagine that a small force could change the situation in Chechnya and Dagestan) seems to be a group of religious fanatics from Doku Umarov’s environment, who at the beginning of "zero years" was in the Pankisi Gorge as an ordinary soldier of Ruslan Gelaev’s battalion, participated with him in the campaign against Abkhazia (Kodori gorge), but first came back again to the Pankisi Gorge, and after the ultimatum by President Putin to Eduard Shevardnadze from September 11, 2002, managed to break into Chechnya.
