Georgia becomes an unlikely US ally in Iraq

I don't understand why the title is unlikely ally. Georgia along with Romania, Poland and others hope to curry favor with the US and gain quid pro quos for service in Iraq. In the case of Georgia the US supported opposition to former pro-Soviet leaders creating a "revolution" -or counter-revolution perhaps.


Georgia becomes an unlikely U.S. ally in Iraq
By Andrew E. Kramer

Monday, October 8, 2007
KUT, Iraq: The United States has found an unlikely ally in the struggle to block what U.S. commanders contend is Iranian weapons smuggling in this rural agricultural region south and east of Baghdad: soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

At a time when other countries are pulling troops out, Georgia has more than doubled the level of its forces here, from 850 to 2,000 soldiers, and redeployed them from the Green Zone in the capital to a region along the Iranian border.

After a ceremony to mark the formal start of their mission Monday, during which Georgian soldiers knelt and were sprinkled with holy water by their Eastern Orthodox priest, the tiny Caucasus Mountain nation has become the United States's second-largest ally in Iraq, behind Britain.

But it is hardly fear of Iran that is impelling the Georgians to contribute so significantly to the war, even as other nations pull out. As the United States is searching for allies, so is Georgia, a country that aspires to NATO membership as a security guarantee against a resurgent, oil-enriched Russia.

"As soldiers here, we help the American soldiers," Corporal Georgi Zedguidze said, peering out past the sun-scorched checkpoint he was guarding at a bridge over the Tigris River. "Then America as a country will help our country."

The United States supports Georgian membership in NATO, but neither government has formally linked Georgia's deployment in Iraq with this aspiration.

Georgian officials play down any quid pro quo with the Americans, even informally. They say the deployment reflects a commitment to maintaining security after an initial commitment to the conflict in 2003.

"We should show everyone that we are not stepping back and running away from a difficult situation," President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia said March 9 when he announced the troop build-up.

However, for Georgian soldiers risking their lives in on a mission to interdict the southern Shiite trafficking in explosively formed projectile bombs - a leading cause of death for American soldiers - the sense of making a down payment on their own security is strong.

A dozen or so Georgian soldiers said in interviews that they understood their service in Iraq was directly linked to their own security - as a means of helping Georgia join NATO to protect against a resurgent Russia.

Sergeant Koba Oshkhereli, interviewed as he peered out the dusty gate of Forward Operating Base Delta at the trash-strewn streets of Kut, said he understood the rationale for his deployment here in these terms: "The bear was sleeping. Now the bear is awake and stomping his feet."

The Georgians are not the first former Soviet or East Bloc soldiers to come to Iraq with these notions and, in the process, continue to bolster the withering "coalition of the willing."

Of the 25 nations now contributing troops to Iraq , 18 are former East Bloc or Soviet countries, including Poland, Ukraine and small nations like Estonia , according to a tally by the Brookings Institution in Washington. A majority are either new members of NATO or aspiring members of the alliance at a time when Russia's historical imperial ambitions in the region are stirring again.

Within Georgia, which has a small Muslim minority, opposition parties have criticized Saakashvili's use of the deployment to receive U.S. counterinsurgency training for the Georgian Army, saying it is a sign that he intends to use military force to regain control of two Russian-supported separatist regions in Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Extending NATO membership to Georgia would entangle the alliance in these two conflicts on Russia's unstable southern border and along the export routes for Caspian Basin oil, in a region that Russia considers its sphere of influence. Just this year, Georgia twice accused Russia of releasing rockets from aircraft that had flown into Georgian airspace.

Meanwhile, the coalition supporting U.S. operations in Iraq is dwindling. Foreign troop numbers peaked at 23,500 soldiers in January 2005 and were down to 12,200 in September, according to the Brookings Institution tally.

That compares with 165,000 U.S. troops deployed in Iraq in September, in what is officially called the Multi-National Forces-Iraq but is 93 percent American.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced last week that an additional 1,000 British soldiers would leave Iraq before Christmas, bringing Britain's overall troop level to 4,500. He announced Monday that the number would be reduced to 2,500 by next spring. The Poles, who during the invasion commanded a brigade, are down to 900 committed through the end of the year.

Wasit, a large province south of Baghdad where Georgia is now the primary coalition force, is 98 percent Shiite but is divided in its loyalties between the Badr Organization, a party with origins among Iraqi defectors to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The two groups are fighting for dominance.

American commanders say Iran is backing both groups. The Badr Organization, formerly called the Badr Brigade, is not believed to be staging attacks on the American and Georgian troops. While militias loyal to Sadr have observed a cease-fire that he has called, not all the fighters have laid down their arms.

The Georgians here, a rough-hewn group of Caucasus Mountain men, many veterans of one or another post-Soviet conflict, carry Kalashnikov rifles with scuffed wooden stocks. The brigade, however, has adopted tactics based on outreach to the local population and tribal sheiks, an approach also in vogue now with U.S. commanders.

Georgian soldiers have taken to treating Iraqis who have non-life-threatening ailments and are showing up at their checkpoints, typically children with burns from kerosene lamps, a common cause of childhood trauma in a country with intermittent electricity.

Captain Mamuka Tskrialashvili, an officer trained in one of Russia's elite paratrooper schools, credited the free clinics in creating a buffer of good will in the local population around Georgian checkpoints.

Tskrialashvili conceded, however, that these efforts would take them only so far Iraq.

This spring, Georgians guarding a checkpoint on a bridge befriended a man who drove past often and always waved. One day, the man drove to the middle of the bridge and blew up, collapsing the span.

"He waved when he went past," Tskrialashvili said.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com