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.
Pankisi in Georgia has reportedly wrestled with an uneasy reputation fueled by reports and allegations. another issue surfaced in the 2010s when ISIS reportedly recruited residents from the valley While the allegations remained unproven. 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. The people speak Chechen, alongside Georgian and Russian. Every Friday at the Old Mosque in Duisi, local women gather to perform zikr, a rite rooted in Sufi mysticism. 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.
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. 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.
In the early 2000s, Chechens used the valley as a refuge, and Russia had alleged some were former militants, according to CNN. Unemployment was a major reason for ISIS’s success in recruiting the youth online, according to the locals cited in the report. The valley is home to the Kists, descendants of Chechen and Ingush settlers who migrated to Georgia in the 19th century, according to the reports. The people in the valley follow Sufi and Sunni Muslim traditions, the CNN report said. The report said that Pankisi is the only place where women perform zikr.
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.”
