This week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reminded at a press conference on results of 2015 that, after breaking off diplomatic relations with Georgia, Russia tightened visa requirements, largely because the terrorist threat coming from the Pankisi Gorge still existed. “Even now there are reports that ISIS is using this hard-to-access territory for training, recreation and replenishment of supplies,” Foreign Minister said.
Meanwhile, the Georgian media spread information that another volunteer who fought for ISIS has died, named Khvicha Gobadze. The Gobadze family lived near Batumi, in the village of Akhalsheni. They found out about his death on the Internet.
Arthur Atayev, head of the department of Caucasus studies of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, says that “many such Gobadzes leave Georgia for Daesh.” “The supporting points of this terrorist organization in Georgia are regions such as the Pankisi Gorge, Adjara and Kvemo Kartli. Kvemo Kartli is a region with a Shiite population, but a turn of the population to Sunni Islam, its radicalization, is actively under way today. Despite the fact that [Shiite] Iran pays this region quite close attention and there are also economic investments in the region from Iran, there is a process in which Shiites who became Sunnis are becoming Jihadists, or at least sympathize with ISIS,” Atayev says.
According to him, “another region, which directly causes concern of the Russian authorities and the Russian forces that are engaged in the fight against terrorism in the North Caucasus, is the Pankisi Gorge. The process of recruiting is still growing there. And such odious personalities, natives of the Pankisi Gorge, as the so-called commander of the Northern Front of Daesh, Tarkhan Batirashvili, they are seen as heroes.”
The expert is sure that the problem of glorification of terrorism is coming to the fore in some regions of Georgia: “Whereas earlier, in Adjara, jihadists were working in 140 mosques of this region, now social networks are widely used. Georgian is becoming a language of ISIS. Jihadists are beginning to recruit in the Georgian language. This is a very dangerous trend.”
Arthur Atayev states that South Ossetia is also concerned about the processes. “South Ossetia is on the border with the Gori region of Georgia, which is not being radicalized, where there are no Salafi communities, but it should be clearly borne in mind that the region of the North and South Caucasus is in the strategic interests of Daesh.”
