PATRIOT GAMES FOR YOUNG GEORGIANS
By Natalia Antelava
BBC News
Sept 19 2005
President Mikhail Saakashvili is a great supporter of the camps
Seventeen-year-old Nino drops herself into a deep trench, clutches
her Kalashnikov and squints against the bright mid-afternoon sun.
“Attention! Fire!” the instructor’s voice barks into the loudspeaker
behind her, and Nino’s fragile figure shudders as she empties the
magazine into the air.
“That was so cool,” she laughs as she jogs away from the trench,
handing the gun to the next girl in line.
Amid breathtaking mountains and pine forests at the Bakuriani
resort, hundreds of other young men and women, dressed in a bright
orange-and-blue uniforms, load their guns and wait their turn to shoot.
These are the Patriots – Georgia’s answer to the former Soviet
Pioneers.
They are aged 15 to 20, come from poor backgrounds and do well in
school. And their prize is 10 days at a camp, all expenses paid by
the Georgian government.
Presidential visits
By the end of September, 15,000 young men and women will have graduated
from four camps across Georgia. For Maka Chichilashvili, like many
here, it has been a summer like no other.
“Georgian women are really tough, it’s in our nature to be real
fighters,” Maka says. “So it’s always been my dream to learn how to
fire a gun. But the best here is that I’ve made so many friends. It’s
the best way to spend the holiday.”
It’s not about war at all. We are meeting people, we are making
friends. It’s about peace more then anything else
Irakli Khachidze
The idea came from Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili – part of
his effort to rebuild Georgia after the peaceful revolution he led
two years ago.
On his frequent visits to the camps, he proudly wears the bright orange
uniform, plays football with the Patriots and checks on quality of
the canteen food.
As a former Soviet Pioneer himself, President Saakashvili says this
is as different as it can get.
“These camps are about people taking ownership of their country. They
are not run by an occupying force like the Soviet camps were. It’s
theirs, and it teaches them that their country is theirs too,” he says.
“Two years ago, no one in Georgia liked the national flag, or knew
the lyrics of the national anthem. Revolution, and the fact that
people changed the government, also changed that.”
In Bakuriani, every day starts and ends with the new national anthem.
In between, it is guns, sports, leadership training and even safe
sex education.
But in Georgia – situated in the volatile Caucasus, with two unresolved
conflicts in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia –
the military instruction has raised hackles among the president’s
critics.
Football and firearms are on the agenda for the young Patriots
“It’s all part of the militaristic rhetoric of this government,” says
Tinatin Khidasheli, member of the opposition Republican party. “I
would rather see the kids getting a proper education than learning
how to fire guns.”
But the Patriots say they have not come to the camps to learn how
to fight.
“Knowing how to fire a gun is useful, no question,” says 19-year-old
Irakli Khachidze. “But it’s not about war at all. We are meeting
people, we are making friends. It’s about peace more then anything
else.”
Gela Onaidze, who runs this camp, says the point is to create a
new kind of national pride, free of the heavy ideology of the USSR,
or the ethnic tensions that followed its collapse.
Camp romance
That is why the young Patriots come from all ethnic backgrounds and
are free to choose many of their activities.
“We have ethnic Armenians, Russians, even Ossetians and Abkhaz,”
Gela says. “And this is the first time in the history of independent
Georgia that young people have come together from all over the country
and been taught how to get along.”
And some, he says, get along almost too well, bringing unexpected
outcomes.
“I’ve already got six weddings to go to in September,” laughs Gela.
Around him, the Patriots are preparing for an evening of fun after
a long day at the shooting range. As a silver moon climbs over the
tents, figures in orange and blue dart about the camp. Some are
playing sports, others are preparing for dinner.
And on a wooden bench next to a tent a group of young men, arm in arm,
break into song. It is a traditional Georgian song – a patriotic one,
of course.