Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusives to VK
The former envoy of Ichkeria president in Georgia, Khizari Aldamov, came back to Chechnya and expressed his apologies to the Russian authorities and the head of Chechnya for his previous deeds. “I realized that Dudayev and Maskhadov didn’t bring anything good to Chechnya; while today Chechnya is developing. Beautiful mosques and mid-rises are being built,” Aldamov said at the meeting with the Chechen Republic’s head, Ramzan Kadyrov. Moreover, he expressed sadness that when living in Georgia he used to heavily criticize Kadyrov and the Russian top officials in the Georgian mass media.
I have many times had conversations with Mr. Aldamov, and his statements on Ramzan Kadyrov, Vladimir Putin, and later Dmitry Medvedev are hardly to be called “criticism” only. Terms meaning expression of rough emotions would be more appropriate. However, Aldamov returned to Chechnya and in a manner “took all his previous words back.”
Tbilisi is sure that the Chechen administration structures, and even the higher structures, are involved in the situation: Khizri Aldamov wasn’t a common separatist. From some point of view, he considered to be no less important than Dzhokhar Dudayev, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, and Movladi Udugov. At least he was the last separatist leader to initiate the Republic of Ichkeria in the early 1990s.
Moreover, Khizri Aldamov as a native of the Pankisi Gorge was sent to Tbilisi in 1989, when in the capital of Georgia saw the first meetings with a demand of independence from the USSR.
Pankisi is a small gorge in the Akhmet region of Georgia where the Chechens-Kistints are living. Aldamov left it in Soviet times and for 10 years lived in Grozny where he approached with the Chechen leaders. He was given a task to build a contact with the governments of the first president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who announced the independence course and the establishing of the United and Free Caucasus. All these years under different presidents of Georgia, Aldamov fulfilled intensive propaganda of “independent Chechnya” ideas, cooperated with journalists, and even provided a connection between the administration of Aslan Maskhadov and Shevardnadze’s environment. In 1997 he managed to organize the official visit of Ichkeria’s president to Tbilisi and the Pankisi Gorge.
In 2001 in the midst of the Second Chechen Campaign, Aldamov provided a corridor through Georgia for the main ideologist of Ichkeria, Movladi Udugov, and later for Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. In general the Georgian authorities in Shevardnadze times treated him positively, even though they called him not “Ichkeria’s ambassador” or “the envoy of the legal president Aslan Maskhadov,” but the head of Chechen diaspora in Georgia.
Aldamov started to experience problems after the Rose Revolution and Mikhail Saakashvili’s coming into office. The team of “young reformers” managed to solve the conflict situation around the Pankisi Gorge: many Chechen militant commanders left Pankisi forever; and some separatists were arrested by the Georgian authorities and given away to the Federal Security Service of Russia. Moreover, in May 2004 unknown people tried to poison Aldamov.
After this incident Aldamov decreased his activeness and became more careful, even though he continued to give interviews and criticize Russian policy in the North Caucasus, first of all in Chechnya.
The first sign of his facing the reality of the Chechen Republic was an unexpected refusal to participate in the development of the concept of cooperation with the peoples of the North Caucasus which was initiated by the ruling party in Georgia United National Movement and was approved by the profile parliamentary committee on diaspora issues and the North Caucasus.
If Mikhail Saakashvili continued the policy of his predecessor – Eduard Shevardnadze – direct support of the Chechen leaders, including militant commanders, Aldamov would probably have continued his activity in Georgia, waiting for better times. But the dramatic change of the situation in Chechnya and Georgia made Aldamov come back to Chechnya.
