Beyond the shadow of doubt: A valley welcoming tourism against the odds and a US warning list

For decades, the outside world knew Pankisi Valley through warnings, conflict dispatches, and fear. However, things seemed to have changed with visitors witnessing something different.

Now, residents are fighting back by opening their homes to tourism. (Representative Image/Unsplash)Pankisi in Georgia has reportedly wrestled with an uneasy reputation fueled by reports and allegations.

In the early 2000s, Chechens used the valley as a refuge, and Russia had alleged some were former militants, according to CNN.

Furthermore, following the tragic 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US alleged that al-Qaeda operatives were present in Pankisi and that even Osama bin Laden was hiding among them.

While the allegations remained unproven, another issue surfaced in the 2010s when ISIS reportedly recruited residents from the valley. According to the locals cited in the report, unemployment was a major reason for ISIS’s success in recruiting the youth online.

Now, residents are fighting back by opening their homes for tourism, not just as a means of income but for a better image of the valley.

Online searches for Pankisi Valley return listings for local food, stays with families, Sufi culture, and even horse-riding tours.

The valley is still new to tourism and thus has limited in comparison to other destinations in Georgia, it added.

According to the reports, the valley is home to the Kists, descendants of Chechen and Ingush settlers who migrated to Georgia in the 19th century.

The people speak Chechen, alongside Georgian and Russian.

The people in the valley follow Sufi and Sunni Muslim traditions, the CNN report said.

Every Friday at the Old Mosque in Duisi, local women gather to perform zikr, a rite rooted in Sufi mysticism.

The report said that Pankisi is the only place where women perform zikr.

In 2017, a native resident left a law career in Tbilisi, using a USAID grant to start Kisturi Draft, a small brewery producing a traditional non-alcoholic beverage brewed from rosehip and hawthorn.

Kist cuisine is a mix of Chechen and Georgian influences, with ingredients from the valley itself, the BBC report noted. One of the most popular dishes is zhizhig galnash.

The US State Department reportedly still cautions its citizens against travel to the region.

However, CNN quoted Margoshvilli, a member of the Pankisi Valley Tourism and Development Association (PVTDA), as saying, "In the past two, three years, 80 per cent of our guests have come from America."

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