Georgian Army-Boot Camp to Battle Ground
Donald Rumsfield in Tbilisi at the Press Conference with the Leaders of Rose Revolution, Nino Burjanadze, Mikheil Saakashvili and Zurab Zhvania. December 2003
Before the conflict with Russia, the United States provided training and equipment to Georgia's armed forces, which contributed troops to Iraq. The US has also been the main supporter of Georgia's bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
U.S. military involvement in Georgia grew step by step. The Russians, battling to crush the revolt in Chechnya in the late 1990s, complained that Chechen fighters were holed up in a border area of Georgia, the Pankisi Gorge. Tensions between Russia and Georgia increased over Tbilisi's inability or unwillingness to control the Pankisi Gorge and in 2001 Moscow had threatened to invade Georgian territory to eliminate the Chechen “terrorists.”
Washington believed also some in Pankisi Gorge had ties to Al Qaeda. Georgia's forces were too weak to oust the Chechens, so in 2002 the Pentagon stepped in, training and equipping three Georgian infantry battalions in the Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP). Putin supported the GTEP program despite internal criticism that the United States was encroaching on Russia's sphere of influence.
It was United State's first direct military assistance program in Georgia. The 18-month, $64-million plan was designed to train and equip four six-hundred man battalions with light weapons, vehicles and communications in order to successfully confront the situation in the Pankisi Gorge. That program ended in spring 2004.
Then Georgia, proposed contributing some of those troops to the Coalition in Iraq. Since July 2005 the United States has trained an additional three Georgian brigades for Baghdad and equipped them with U.S. gear: armored Humvees, devices to detect roadside IEDs, radios and other basics. Georgia sent 2000 troops to Iraq, making it the highest coalition contributor per capita.
