“Shevardnadze perhaps did not imagine, when signing off the Roki project, what a fatal role this tunnel would play in the history of Georgia.”

Tbilisi sent its troops to crack down on the separatist ‘authorities’ in South Ossetia and bring this breakaway region back into its fold. This military operation soon turned into an all-out war and many believe that the reason for the Georgian debacle in this war was the Roki tunnel. The history of the tunnel is a long and tortuous one.

In autumn 1991 then President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia tried to blow up the Roki tunnel in an attempt to stop an offensive by North Ossetians supported by the Kremlin. A truck loaded with explosives entered the tunnel; it was mined but still not destroyed.

After this incident reports started to fly that the Roki tunnel had some special, almost mystical characteristics: that it was built according to a secret engineering plan, that it has a concrete wall 40metres wide, three manipulating points which only the Kremlin knows, etcetera.

The Georgian Times has looked into the history of the tunnel’s construction and the identity of the builders. Who was its architect and is it really an extraordinary tunnel? We have discovered that Roki is just an ordinary tunnel built by professional mountain engineers, to no particularly unusual design.

Paradox

The terms North Ossetia and South Ossetia were coined after the occupation of Georgia by the Communists in 1922. The Kremlin could have required Georgia to build a tunnel linking the so called North and South Ossetia before but it did not have time to think of Roki because of World War II.

Attempts to construct the Roki tunnel eventually began in the 1960s. As the economic situation started to stabilize in the USSR, the construction of the tunnel came onto the agenda.

Kremlin Directives

Giorgi Jusoev, Secretary of the South Ossetia Regional Committee from 1965-1972, says: “The North Ossetian people, urged on by the Russians, demanded the construction of the Roki tunnel. The Georgian authorities of the time used to receive letters saying something like this: “The North Ossetian people want to have tunnel to connect them with South Ossetia. There is no effective means of active communication between the two halves of Ossetia and even Alpinists find it difficult to climb the Caucasus mountains. The Ossetian people are separated by the Caucasus Range and we therefore need this tunnel immediately.” A number of similar letters were sent to the Kremlin, although the Kremlin itself instigated this activity.

“The Kremlin instructed Vasil Mzhavanadze, Secretary of the Georgian Central Committee, to build the tunnel. Mzhavanadze opposed the construction of the tunnel because it would be economically damaging, being very expensive to build with no compensatory benefits accruing from its presence. But he did not reveal the true reason for his objection – he did not want to built the shortest and simplest route for North Ossetians to get to Georgia. North Ossetians used to dash to Moscow to complain about this. Mzhavanadze was on friendly terms with the General Secretary of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev and apparently he managed to get the tunnel plans put on hold.

“When Eduard Shevardnadze took over as the First Secretary of the Georgian Central Committee, the Kremlin pushed the issue to the forefront again and the construction of the tunnel finally received the green light. Unfortunately the Georgian-Ossetian confrontation started as a result.”

Shevardnadze perhaps did not imagine, when signing off the Roki project, what a fatal role this tunnel would play in the history of Georgia.

Can the Roki tunnel be blown up?

Construction of the tunnel finally began in the 1980s. Jimi Pataridze, a mountain engineer at Kavkasia Construction, managed the project. Pataridze is now in Moscow. The mining expert on the project was a certain Nishnianidze and it is not known who the geology expert was.

In Communist times the construction cost of a tunnel was 500 rubles per km. The Roki tunnel is 3,000 square metres long. The construction of 1 square metre of tunnel nowadays costs 30,000 – 40,000 GEL. So, it would cost about 120m GEL to build the same tunnel today. The width of the walls is standard – an 80 cm layer of concrete. The tower is 26 metres tall.

The construction went on for several years and was not completed – it did not meet the relevant standards. Omar Purtsvanadze, mountain engineer, said: “In the Communist era a Commission refused to allow this tunnel to become operational, as it was not fortified or did not have one of the layers it should have. It is still considered incomplete. But since construction ceased the tunnel has been used for smuggling purposes. In Communist times people conveyed smuggled fish from Stavropol to Georgia through it and made a good deal of money. Russians patrolled the entrance and exit of the tunnel and smugglers got through by bribing them. The Georgian authorities at that time turned a blind eye to this as they received hush money, that is, the tunnel belonged to the government mafia.”

After the Communists left the Roki tunnel retained its primary function – the facilitation of contraband flow in both directions. Drugs, stolen cars and a number of other things were trafficked from the North Caucasus to Georgia and vice versa. A number of spies and terrorists also used the tunnel. Thus Zviad Gamsakhurdia tried to destroy the tunnel but was unable to do it.

After August 8 the Roki tunnel has again acquired vital importance. All sides in the current conflict have one question in mind – can the tunnel be destroyed?

Professional mountain engineers say that it is not difficult to blow up the tunnel if you have all the geological data. As a rule, before a project plan is finalized, a geology experts examines the layers in the rock and gives an exact geological mapping of the layers to the engineer. The Caucasus mountains mostly have granite, clay and sand layers. The geological picture pinpoints the location of the layers and the tunnel can be blown up by mining the sand layers. Importantly, blowing the tunnel up in this way renders its reconstruction almost impossible, as the prevention of further collapse of the sand layers becomes impossible.

.