A Former Superpower's Hazardous Legacy

The base near Kutaisi has no lights to illuminate its 3 1/2-mile perimeter at night because it has no electricity from midnight to 7 a.m. But that's better than another base in central Georgia that has no electricity at all.

"It's very difficult for the soldiers to defend this place," said Col. Tomas Gagua as he showed visitors around the Tbilisi base. "We need lights, we need signalization."

Those able to get in would find a smorgasbord of weaponry. Probably most useful to terrorists or guerrillas would be the SA-7 Strela shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles or the similar Igla missiles. In addition, S-5 57mm and S-8 80mm missiles, with a range of three to five miles and normally fired from warplanes, can be modified into shoulder-fired weapons, military officers said. Similar missiles were launched from donkey carts at hotels and the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad last year.

There are also thousands of land mines, burlap bags filled with raw explosives, crates of ammunition, mortars and Alazan missiles. "Everything that lies here should be worried about," said Capt. Zaza Khvedelidze, deputy commander at one base.

In many cases, there are no inventories, so if anything is taken it might not be missed. It is unclear how much has been pilfered over the years, but some officers said they suspected Georgian arms have wound up in the hands of paramilitary forces in the separatist regions of Ajaria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya.

"Everything's possible. Nothing's impossible," said Maj. Paatu Enukidze, chief of staff at the Tbilisi base. Soldiers earn just $50 a month and sometimes have to wear civilian clothes because no uniforms are available, so they are susceptible to payoffs. "For $1,000 to $1,500," said Enukidze, "you can buy anything."

At the base near Kutaisi, army officials reported thwarting two attempts to steal rocket parts and gunpowder in the last year, one of them by local police officers. Maj. Guram Chinaladze, the base commander, expressed confidence no one had gotten away with any weapons. But he added, "All the weapons kept here are really dangerous, and we're really trying to secure them."

At the request of the Georgian government, the OSCE last year began a program to recycle and destroy stockpiles of munitions. So far, officials reported that they have dismantled 13,000 rounds of artillery and antiaircraft ammunition and by next month expect to have destroyed nearly 500 air-dropped bombs, 47 ground-to-air missiles and another 2,000 antiaircraft shells.

But the OSCE estimated that the Georgians still have more than 1 million antiaircraft shells, among other ordnance. Officials are seeking funds from OSCE member states to continue the disposal program until next year.

The Georgians are also working with Imanual Yakov's Israeli-Spanish firm to improve security at their bases and destroy as many of the arms caches as possible. But in an impoverished country, funds remain short. Georgia's national security adviser, Ivane Merabishvili, last month sent Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a letter seeking $6.5 million.

"They don't have the money," said Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli diplomat lobbying in Washington for the Georgians' request. "If a power like the United States would come in, it could be taken care of. Otherwise it's going to come back and bite them."