Earlier this month Stratfor published another piece on radicalization and violent extremism in Georgia, this time on the recent counter-terrorism operation in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Georgia is no stranger to the specter of international terrorism. But never has the threat struck so close to home as it did toward the end of last month. Panic, fear and anger quickly spread among the population when counterterrorism forces conducted an operation in the capital, Tbilisi, targeting a small group of militants believed to have links to the Islamic State. Drawing from the scant information available about the operation, it’s difficult to figure out precisely what happened. Official accounts report that on the evening of Nov. 21, a large number of heavily equipped special forces units cordoned off an apartment complex in the city’s Isani district. A live broadcast from the scene on Georgian television showed an apparent explosion in one apartment with the sound of intense gunfire in the background. Residents also recorded video of the situation on their cellphones and posted the footage on Facebook before they were evacuated. By late the next afternoon, some 20 hours after it started, the operation was over, leaving one officer and three militants dead.
Overnight, the raid shattered any sense of security in the country, from which dozens of citizens are believed to have joined militant groups in Syria and Iraq. Opposition parties and some media outlets in Georgia criticized the operation’s execution — in no small part because, in the absence of official information and updates, rumors ran rampant. The raid drew international attention, too, over speculation that the Chechen jihadist Akhmed Chatayev, a known terrorist returned from fighting with the Islamic State in Syria, was among the dead.
The full article can be read here. Meanwhile, in other news and after spending much of 2017 working with them on another project, I’ve just started another short-term contract with the OSCE Transnational Threats Department / Action against Terrorism Unit (TNTD / ATU).
