Far from the capital city of Grozny -- indeed, far from anywhere -- people fleeing the Russian attacks on Chechnya are moving over the Caucasus Mountains into Georgia. The road is nearly impassable, the national and tribal borders complex, and it is clear that those coming this way must be driven by extraordinary fear. PNS correspondent Thomas Goltz, one of the few Americans familiar with this area, has been writing from the region for more than twenty years.

SHATILI, GEORGIA -- Exhausted city people trickle by twos and tens over the cow and donkey path cut in the ridges above the roaring Argun River. They seek safe haven in the territory beyond the point where the forks of the river flow together, the point on maps where the towering Caucasus mountains of northern Georgia become the towering Caucasus mountains of southern Chechnya.

The difference is that one side of the ill-defined frontier is being shelled by Russian forces, while the other side is not.

But Americans -- or anyone else, for that matter -- appear to be doing nothing for the growing number of self-exiles from Chechnya arriving in Georgia -- the only country, except for Russia, with which Chechnya shares a border.

That frontier is incredibly beautiful but almost impassable -- only 50 miles long, and marked by 9,000 foot passes between 12,000 foot peaks. Indeed, the 1,000 or so Chechen refugees who have come into Georgia are only an insignificant fraction of the numbers moving to the Russian republic of Ingushetia, and to Russian Dagestan. They are the forgotten victims of the most recent paroxysm of violence between Moscow and the breakaway republic.

"All the bridges leading from Etumkale to the border have been bombed out, and everyone must travel by night for fear of random bombing," said Sultan, a 28 year old Chechen when he arrived in this remote, Georgian regional capital of Shatili in early October. He declined to give his family name.

"The Russians say they are bombing terrorist bases and hide-outs but the truth is they are only killing civilians who are sick of the war, sick of everything."

Nearby, a score or more of Chechen refugees were making pathetic fires trying to stay warm against the mountain chill while awaiting some form of transport over the hair-raising dirt and shale road that leads, eventually, to safety. There were no tents or medicines, no food, no evidence that anyone knew they were there, or cared.

"They collect all night near the frontier, and start coming across when we open the border at 8:30 in the morning," said Colonel Irakli Kopadze, commander of the last--and only--frontier post that Georgia maintains along the border. "We have been receiving about 100 a day and expect that number to rise as Russia intensifies its campaign. But there is nothing we can do for them aside from register those with passports and let them fend for themselves. Even the local villagers have no food to speak of."

The colonel, who resembles the actor Lee Marvin, insisted he could not allow anyone to pass in the Georgia-Chechnya direction. Georgia must not become complicit, he explained, in allowing "Wahabite" mercenaries to cross, possibly in disguise.

Complicating the situation, about half the arrivals are actually citizens of Georgia -- local Chechens known as Kstenians, who live on the northern slopes but in Georgia, rather than Chechnya, due to the whim of Soviet map makers. Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, however, many Kstenians relocated to Chechnya proper -- most by a circuitous route, traveling first south to Tblisi, and then north either via Dagestan or Osetia.

Chechen refugees are now moving under the most trying conditions imaginable: up from the Chechen capital of Grozny and other low-land towns being blitzed by Russian artillery to the main mountain town of Shatoi, also under constant fire, and then up a bad and now bombed mountain road to Etumkale and finally across the twisting path carved into the ridges over the Argun River to Shatili.

The total population of this region is less than 500 souls, most of whom belong to a clan of mountain men -- the only Georgians who live on the North slope of the mountains. Some say these are descendants of a group of Crusaders who got lost here in the Middle Ages, known as (Upper) Khevsurs. The Khevsurs are deeply ambivalent about their Chechen neighbors--and have been for centuries, as demonstrated by the impossible shale and stone guard towers and fortress villages that mark the rugged terrain.

"As North Caucasians, our hearts go out to the refugees arriving from the war," said Shamil, 44, a botanist originally from a mountain village named Khoni which was mixed Khevsur/Chechen before Stalin expelled all the Chechens. "But they are all involved in weapons and drug smuggling and stealing cattle and even people."

The charge echoes Moscow's claim that the Chechens, long accused of involvement in all manner of criminal activity, are now moving "Islamist mercenaries" from countries such as Saudi Arabia and even Afghanistan through Georgia into Chechnya along the route that the refugees use coming out, and threatening retaliation unless Tblisi locks its frontier.

The construction of the main road to the region -- if it can be called a road -- was only done after extreme pressure was put on the government by the authorities in Grozny, desperate to have any sort of connecting link to the Black and Caspian Seas. But it only goes as far as Shatili, not to the frontier.

Certainly, the white-knuckle drive to Shatili and nearby settlements makes one wonder how anyone, no matter how motivated by greed or ideology, could possibly move any quantities of contraband much less human beings up or down the gut-wrenching gravel paths. The 100 miles from Tblisi to Shatili up and over an 8,000 foot pass takes five hours in a solid four-wheel drive vehicle during the day, and is far too dangerous to traverse at night. Georgian security check-points on the southern face of the range easily suffice to interdict any and all traffic, not to speak of the small garrison under Colonel Irakli's command on the frontier itself.

And yet traffic is moving from Georgia into Chechnya -- although of a very limited kind, and partially disguised as shuttle traffic over a shallow ford across the confluence of the twin channels of the boiling white Argun.

Even as the last batch of exhausted women and children arrived from Chechnya at Colonel Irakli's post before its 6 pm closing, two white Toyota landcruisers with Russian license plates carrying six Chechen toughs arrived at the security bar, demanding unique access across the frontier in order to escort a sole European representative of a best-nameless NGO to a best nameless town in Chechnya.

As night fell, the Chechen escorts became increasingly vocal and pushy toward the Georgian guards, evoking eternal friendship and demanding bread by turns. Tension rose, and all others gathered around the post were advised to leave, lest they become involved in an unspecified event. Then, sometime in the middle of the night, unobserved by other witnesses, the high-mounted cars crossed the check point and disappeared across the river to Chechnya at war.