Militarized Georgia delayed-action bomb in South Caucasus

21/ 07/ 2005

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political analyst Yevgeny Sidorov.)

The inquiry into a failed assassination attempt on Georgian and
U.S. leaders is nearing successful completion, with the prime suspect,
Vladimir Arutyunyan, detained and, though injured in the process of
detention yesterday, already confessing to the recent attempt on the
lives of presidents Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia and George W. Bush
of the United States.

On May 10, Arutyunyan threw a hand grenade wrapped in a handkerchief
at the U.S. President as the latter addressed the Tbilisi crowd. No
explosion ensued, though the grenade, as forensic experts found out
later, was no dummy and failed to go off only by a lucky accident.

Georgian Deputy Health Minister Irakly Giorgobiani cited doctors’
reports saying the detainee “vowed to do it again and stage another
terrorist attack on the presidents.”

According to the Georgian police, FBI officers have visited Arutyunyan
in hospital.

So what? End of story, happy end and curtain, all bad guys placed
where they deserve to be? Hardly. Real problems are just beginning.

After all, it was on his very first visit to a country seen by many in
the West as a toehold of freedom and democracy in the gloomy
post-Soviet realm of authoritarianism and tyranny that the
U.S. President has survived an assassination attempt that seems to
have had every chance to succeed. The host side appears to have failed
to not only provide security to visiting dignitaries but even to
produce a clear and credible explanation of what had happened. At
first Georgia’s Secretary of the National Security Council Gela
Bezhuashvili maintained that the grenade “was of no danger” – a
statement that turned out to be just not true.

There is more to that. Moscow sources say Russian intelligence had
warned Georgian security forces that they should anticipate a
terrorist attack but the Georgians failed to forward the warning to
the United States.

At a time when U.S. involvement in the South Caucasus has yet to
evolve into full-fledged presence, there should be no illusion that
the grenade thrown at President Bush in Tbilisi will be the last
unpleasant surprise the Americans are bound to face there. The next
one could be fast militarization of the country.

This should be considered a likely possibility because today’s
Georgia, regrettably, has all vital signs of a failed state, with
Saakashvili abusing Western support to promote his openly belligerent
policies and tighten his grip on power through such notorious
practices as clampdown on free media, authoritarian amendments to
electoral laws, etc.

A state plagued by disorder and poverty, Georgia spends on defense and
security as much as other poor countries could hardly afford – $324
million, or a fifth of the state budget, this year alone. Defense
Minister Irakly Okruashvili admitted that “Georgia has the highest
budget across the South Caucasus this year; it is equal to the entire
annual state budget under Eduard Shevardnadze.” Additional security
funds come through Georgian Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry’s
“classified” allocations.

Georgia spends heavily on arms, including heavy military hardware,
with most deals signed with new NATO member states who are desperate
to sell off part of their old Soviet-made weapons. In April and May,
Macedonia and Bulgaria agreed to sell seven Su-25 (NATO
classification: Frogfoot) assault aircraft; around 2,000 assault
rifles and plenty of ammunition are likely to come for free from
Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Macedonia. All these deals,
Moscow sources say, are coordinated by the U.S. military.

A legitimate question arises, whether decision-makers who pour weapons
to Georgia today are aware how fast militarization might affect a
country whose security services seem to be not mature enough to
protect their own leader and a leader of a friendly state.

Frozen but by no means dead armed conflicts in the breakaway provinces
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia certainly make the problem worse. Some
Georgian executives and lawmakers have repeatedly called for the use
of force in those areas. The danger is that, given enough military
assets, few of them will resist the temptation, even though bloodshed
could severely destabilize Georgia and broader the South Caucasus.

Regional destabilization is hardly in the best interests of serious
actors in Georgia and elsewhere, especially of those interested in the
operational Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and planned Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
gas pipelines.

Last but not least, proverbial level of corruption in Georgian
bureaucracy makes one see possible spread of weapons beyond the
country, with advanced military systems ending up in the hands of
international terrorists, as a gloomy but by no means remote
possibility.