ETHNIC AZERI ACTIVIST SAYS FOREIGN SERVICES BEHIND REPORTED TROUBLE IN GEORGIA

Ekho, Baku
26 Aug 06

A leading member of an Azeri ethnic body in Georgia is perplexed
about recent unconfirmed media reports about a campaign by the
Georgian authorities against ethnic Azerbaijanis. In an interview
with Ekho newspaper, Zumrud Qurbanov said it was probable that the
foreign services of a number of countries were behind the recent
trouble in Kvemo Kartli Province and it is high time the Georgian
authorities expressed their view on the matter. The following are
excerpts from R.Orucov’s report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 26
August headlined "Who is stirring up trouble? Georgian Azerbaijanis
are lost in conjectures and official Tbilisi simply keeps silent";
subheadings have been inserted editorially:

With some strange regularity more and more blatantly false reports have
been appearing in the local media recently about incidents allegedly
happening in eastern Georgia, in Kvemo Kartli Province which is
populated primarily by Azerbaijanis. The original information, as a
rule, comes from Baku, then it creates a natural stir in Georgia, and
finally, without being backed up by any facts, is somehow forgotten.

[Passage omitted: reports in Regnum agency about arrests of members
of National Assembly of Azerbaijanis of Georgia which turned out to
be false]

Yesterday, Ekho asked an inhabitant of Marneulskiy District, a
former Georgian MP and member of the board of the Qeyrat [Honour]
National Movement of Georgian Azerbaijanis, Zumrud Qurbanov, to give
his assessment of these events.

Insulting leaflets distributed

"To start with, all the cards have become shuffled, in the sense that
much is being hyped up. All kinds of factitious forces have joined
in the Georgian political game, and at times like these it is very
difficult to sort out what is the truth and what isn’t. Take a recent
incident when leaflets with an insulting content were distributed
en masse in our district. They carried the words: ‘Tatrebo (Tatars –
author’s note), the land is ours. You were warned in 1991 – Georgia for
the Georgians.’ These fliers were circulated around Marneuli, during
the night in 10-15 villages, and no-one noticed anybody. This is very
strange. Is someone carrying out somebody’s orders? After all, if these
actions are not being done openly, not by definite political forces,
and at the same time various statements are being heard from public
platforms, the people are at a loss to know where an attack might
come from, whether is it worth worrying about it, or whether it is
serious or not. Let us try and work out who is benefiting by all this.

"If one proceeds from the AzTV version, it is the Armenians who are
behind this. But I live here and I can see this is not the work
of Armenians. They are not interested in coming to Kvemo Kartli,
where none of them live, to set Azerbaijanis against Georgians. And,
incidentally, the Armenian media in Georgia has never paid any
attention to this, especially as Armeniaphobia has been spread among
the Georgians themselves.

"Of course, it is easy for the Azerbaijani and Georgian leadership
to attribute all these incidents to an Armenian trace. This helps
them to maintain political and economic relations at the present
level. In the past 15 years hundreds of interviews have appeared in
which Azeri and Georgian politicians accuse the Armenians alone of
all the sins of Kvemo Kartli. But if this is the case, then why in all
these years have they been unable to find a single Armenian who could
be accused of such actions? Where then are the authorities, where are
the special services? This is a very important question. I do not rule
out that these might be Armenians, but why then are the Georgian and
Azerbaijani special services not working together on this question?

Foreign services behind trouble

"On the other hand, Russia, too, has always been named as the third
force.

We all know that there are certain problems at the moment between
Georgia and Russia, and Russia has a vested interest in destabilizing
the situation in Georgia. Let us suppose that Moscow wants to create
the same tension in Akhalkalaki and Kvemo Kartli as in Abkhazia
and South Ossetia. But if the Russians are behind this, that means
some people here are working for their special services. Why, then,
has not a single case of the participation of the Russian special
services in these activities been proved based on the facts? Why is
nothing being done at all and all we get is empty statements?

"In other words, it cannot be ruled out that the special services of
various states are operating in Georgia today, and there are local
people who are serving the interests of different states. These
could be Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, and so on. For example,
instability in Georgia is of no benefit to Azerbaijan, since it is a
strategic partner for Baku, and it is important that everything here
is stable and normal. But then Azerbaijan must work side by side with
Georgia in all crimes against the Azeris.

"One thing is clear – some people are trying to exacerbate the
situation in Kvemo Kartli and to use it either against the state or
against the present government. But it is also perfectly possible
that this is being done not from outside but from within, simply to
give an impression that somebody is heating up the situation – in
other words, by the state itself. Here we have thousands of leaflets
being distributed surprisingly quickly and unnoticed.

"This caused excitement among the Azeris. If the government was
concerned, it would have immediately made a political statement about
it. But neither the country’s leadership nor the province has expressed
any opinion about what happened, and they could have reassured the
people and told them where they stood on it.

"But everyone is keeping silent. And people are starting to say that
it is not only external forces, but also the country’s authorities who
are benefiting from this. There are also Azeri emigres from Georgia
who are living in Russia and writing articles in which they sharply
and wrongly criticize the Georgian authorities, accusing them of things
that are not happening or which are not important (although there are
things which the authorities should be criticized for). And I have a
feeling that these people are operating artificially, again one does
not know on whose orders, so that in the future, when the Azeris have
a real problem, nobody pays any attention to our complaints and does
not take us seriously. Recently these people have been saying that
they killed some Azeris in Marneuli or they beat up some people and
detained them and their newspapers. But when one starts investigating
the facts, one suddenly discovers that one person was killed in an
accident, or something like that.

One gets as far as the deputy Interior Minister and finds out that
nobody of that name has been arrested.

"These people should be putting their questions in another way –
for example, why, when the Azeris are being treated unfairly, is not
one single investigation taken to its conclusion and it drags out for
years? It is not the Russians who are behind all this but some kind
of local forces who offend the Azeris when they feel like it and try
to portray us as professional swindlers.

All this is being done artificially. I would even suggest that it is
the Georgian special services, who have been given the task to prove to
everyone that there are no problems among the Georgian Azerbaijanis,
who are behind all this. Therefore, I think that the intelligence and
special services of many different states in the region, including
Georgian, are mixed up in all of this.

It may even be that they are working together on some issues. And by
the way, according to Georgian official data, 119,000 Azeris have
left Kvemo Kartli and the country as a whole for good in the past
ten years. This is 70-80 per cent of the overall number of people
who have left here. And nobody gives this a thought."

Azerbaijani MP and a member of the interparliamentary group of
friendship between Georgia and Azerbaijan, Nasib Nasibli, found it
difficult to say who might be behind all the intrigues and provocations
of the past month in Kvemo Kartli.

"We want to know what is the official attitude of the Georgian
authorities to all this – how do they explain such incidents? But,
in theory, there are those who want the Azeris to quit Georgia. And
having followed all this for ten years, I believe there are certain
forces of a chauvinist hue in Georgia who are putting pressure on
the Azeris. That is a fact. On the other hand, theoretically, Russia,
too, has a vested interest in a pocket of tension being created there,
because of their relations with Georgia. It is a pity that we do not
hear anything from representatives of the Georgian leadership about
all this," Nasibli said.