The coming of the micro-states

June 05, 2006 edition

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MOSCOW ` As goes Montenegro, so goes Kosovo, Transdniestria, and South
Ossetia?

As Montenegro officially declared independence this weekend, accepting
the world’s welcome into the community of nations, a handful of
obscure “statelets” are demanding the same opportunity to choose their
own destinies.

In the latest example, Transdniestria, a Russian-speaking enclave that
won de facto independence in the early 1990s, declared last week that
it will hold a Montenegro-style referendum in September as part of its
campaign for statehood.

Experts fear that many “frozen conflicts” around the world – in which
a territory has gained de facto independence through war but failed to
win international recognition – could reignite as ethnic minorities
demand the same right to self-determination that many former Yugoslav
territories have been offered by the international community.

Even more significant than Montenegro’s rise to statehood would be the
international community’s acceptance of Kosovo’s bid for
independence. The province of Serbia was seized by NATO in
1999. Ongoing talks discussing that possibility are being watched with
intense interest by rebel statelets. But as tiny, newly independent
states such as East Timor find themselves mired in ethnic violence,
international observers are wary of the implications of such a move.

“If Kosovo becomes independent, this precedent will cause further
fragmentation of the global order and lead to the creation of more
unviable little states,” predicts Dmitri Suslov, an analyst with the
independent Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow.

Russia has backed the emergence of several pro-Moscow separatist
enclaves in the post-Soviet region, as a means of keeping pressure on
defiant neighbors, but has so far been deterred from granting them
official recognition by international strictures against changing the
borders of existing states. Montenegro’s successful May 21 vote of
independence from Yugoslavia – recognized by the world community – has
encouraged others’ thoughts of following the same path.

The United Nations Charter mentions both the right of
“self-determination” of peoples and the “territorial integrity” of
states as bedrock principles of the world order. But these principles
come into conflict when a separatist minority threatens to rupture an
existing country. Russia, which has a score of ethnic “republics,”
including an active rebellion in Chechnya, has long championed the
“territorial integrity” side of the equation. But the Kremlin’s
emphasis, at least regarding some of its neighbors, appears to be
shifting.

“If such precedents are possible [in the former Yugoslavia], they will
also be precedents in the post-Soviet space,” President Vladimir Putin
told journalists Friday. “Why can Albanians in Kosovo have
independence, but [Georgian breakaway republics] South Ossetia and
Abkhazia can’t? What’s the difference?”

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all of its 15 major republics
gained their freedom and basked in the glow of global acceptance. But
within some of those new states, smaller ethnic groups raised their
own banners of rebellion. In the early 1990s, two “autonomous
republics” in Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – defeated
government forces with Russian assistance and established regimes that
are effectively independent but stuck in legal limbo because they
remain officially unrecognized, even by Moscow. The Russian-speaking
province of Transdniestria, aided by the Russian 14th army, similarly
broke away from the ethnically Romanian republic of Moldova. The
Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan fell
under Armenian control after a savage war; and rebels in Russia’s
southern republic of Chechnya briefly won de facto independence in the
late ’90s after crushing Russian forces on the battlefield.

In all of these cases, the international principle respecting the
“territorial integrity” of existing states has so far trumped the
yearning of small nationalities for their own statehood. Citing that
rule, Moscow launched a brutal military campaign in 1999 that has
since largely succeeded in reintegrating Chechnya as a province of
Russia.

But Russia’s relations with Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan have
soured in recent years, as those countries have broken from Moscow’s
orbit and charted a more pro-West course. That, plus the precedents
being set in the former Yugoslavia, has led some nationalist
politicians in Moscow to demand the Kremlin salvage what influence it
can in the region by granting recognition – or even membership in the
Russian Federation – to some of those breakaway entities.

Transdniestria has already signed an economic pact with Moscow that
will allow the tiny but heavily-industrialized territory to sell its
goods in Russia and eventually join the Russian ruble’s currency
zone. Also in the focus of Russia’s changing policies are the
breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“Russia needs to be more active in solving the problems of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia,” says Igor Panarin, a professor at the official
Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, which trains Russian diplomats. “Both
the people and governments of [these statelets] want to join Russia,
and there’s every legal reason for them to do so. Polls show the
majority of Russians support this, too.”

Eduard Kokoity, president of the Georgian breakaway republic of South
Ossetia, said last week he will ask Russia to annex his statelet,
which has existed in legal limbo since driving out Georgian forces in
a bitter civil war in the early ’90s. “In the nearest future, we will
submit documents to the Russian Constitutional Court proving the fact
that South Ossetia joined the Russian Empire together with North
Ossetia as an indivisible entity and never left Russia,” Mr. Kokoity
said.

South Ossetia, with a population of about 70,000, is ethnically and
geographically linked with the Russian Caucasus republic of North
Ossetia. Experts say there is a local campaign, supported by Russian
nationalists, to join the two territories into a new Moscow-ruled
republic that would be named “Alania” – the ancient name of the
Ossetian nation. “South Ossetia really wants to join Russia, and I
wouldn’t rule this out as a long-term prospect,” says Suslov.

Abkhazia, a sub-tropical Black Sea enclave, expelled its Georgian
residents during the 1992-93 civil war, and now is home to about
200,000 ethnic Abkhaz who eke out a living exporting fruit to Russia
and welcoming the few Russian tourists that visit each year.

Georgians cry foul, and complain the entire issue is a made-in-Moscow
land grab. “South Ossetia and Abkhazia were created as a Bolshevik
divide-and-rule device to control Georgia, and they are still being
used that way,” says Alexander Rondeli, president of the Strategic and
International Studies Foundation, an independent think tank based in
the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. “What is actually going on is the de
facto annexation of these territories by Russia. Since Russia is
strong, the Western powers let it do whatever it wants.”

Many Western experts argue that the process of dismantling the former
Yugoslavia is a unique event, directly supervised by the UN and
carried out with a maximum of democratic safeguards. If Russia acts
alone in its region, it risks alienating the world and multiplying
regional conflicts. “This is a double-edged sword,” says Ariel Cohen,
a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “By
recognizing Moscow-supported statelets, Russia would perpetuate
frictions for decades to come. Post-Soviet borders should remain
inviolate. This would save a lot of headaches, first of all for Russia
itself.”

But for now, the mood in Moscow appears to be hardening. “We disagree
with the concept that Kosovo is a unique case, because that runs
counter to the norms of international law,” Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Vladimir Titov warned in an interview with Vremya Novostei, a
Russian newspaper, last week. “The resolution on Kosovo will create a
precedent in international law that will later be applied to other
frozen conflicts.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress