CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Page 102

I NESSA A RZUMANYAN
throughout the document, it here does not refer to the territories of
Pankisi or Adjara, but the ones there were “occupied” by Russia in the
August War of 2008. The document mentions that these regions now
serve as a convenient platform for transnational organized crime and
transfer of terrorists 31 .
Even before the issue of ISIS recruitment from Georgia reached its
peak, the phenomenon of terrorism was included in its NSS
documents. Considering that the document is 27 pages long, having
terrorism mentioned 29 times is quite enough to claim that even in the
days when ISIS was not yet recruiting from Georgia, the issue of
terrorism still highly bothered the government.
The document also mentions that the government of Georgia
"actively cooperates with the UN counterterrorism committee and
strengthens the means to fight terrorism including the Armed Forces
and the special forces of the law enforcement agencies" 32 . This is also
a weighty fact in defense to the Georgian Government’s activeness
towards solving or trying to solve the problem of uprising terrorism.
The annual reports of countries to the Bureau of Counterterrorism
and Countering Violent Extremism under the U.S. Department of
State also include ones about Georgia. Since the years 2014 and 2015
were harsh in the sense of the activities carried out by ISIS, the
Georgian annual reports were concentrated on ISIS, its enlargements
and steps to be taken to fight it.
Georgia’s Country Report of 2014 of the US DS
International media had many times touched upon the Georgian
citizens being recruited by the Islamic State, when Georgian
government started its way towards fighting the spread of
international terrorism in Georgia in 2014. That’s when the Georgian
government announced to be “committed to provide humanitarian
31
National Security Concept of Georgia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, 2011,
http://www.mfa.gov.ge/MainNav/ForeignPolicy/NationalSecurityConcept.aspx?l
ang=en-US
32
Ibid.
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