MARK ZORYAN: THE WEST IS BEGINNING TO REALIZE THAT THE "GEORGIAN SITUATION" IS ABSURD
Regnum, Russia
Oct 28 2006
The attempts of the US administration and the European structures to
pretend that nothing worth mentioning is going on in Javakhq no longer
make sense. As far as we know, the embassies of almost all European
states and the US embassy in Georgia have informed their governments
of the processes that took place during the local elections in Georgia
and pointed out the peculiarity of the situation in Samtskhe-Javakheti
and Kvemo-Kartli.
Presently the diplomatic circles in Tbilisi are actively discussing
the "bad marks" Georgia has received for its local elections. These
discussions got especially active after the Tbilisi visit of the
US assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried, who was obviously
trying to save the face of the ruling regime. At the same time, we
have received enough reports saying that the US administration are
extremely displeased with the style and outcome of the elections. Now
that the Georgian-Russian conflict has gone beyond any sensible limits
of inter-state confrontation, the Americans and Europeans have faced
a problem similar to the ones they faced in the Balkans and solved
by political and military interference.
The recent – deliberately representative – Washington seminar on
Russian-Georgian relations has come to a conclusion that the propaganda
task has lost any sense as it has become very hard to find arguments
to explain to the world community the point and the political causes
of this conflict, which is already spreading outside the region.
During the seminar, one of the leading US experts on Eastern Europe,
representative of the OSCE office in the US congress Michael Ox said
that the present situation in Georgian-Russian relations does not
serve the interests of the US and is a barren scheme.
On the whole, the American experts on Eastern Europe, who are known
for their colorful language, describe this situation as "an absolute
deadlock," while the attempts of the West to "separate the fighting
sides" are qualified as "rotten politicking." If there is anything
that unites the American and European experts, it is their unanimity
that the "Georgian situation" is absurd.
Exactly now that there is a real want of effective political
expertise, the International Crisis Group – who we know well for its
activities in Karabakh – has been assigned the task of facilitating
the development of proposals – in fact, a plan of how to settle the
situation in Samtskhe-Javakheti. This work will certainly cover
a complex of problems concerning the ethnic rights of the local
Armenian population. Certain Georgian and Armenian experts are
involved in this project. According to the preliminary information,
the group will recommend to enlarge self-government in Javakheti and
Kvemo-Kartli. Well aware of the ICG’s position on the Karabakh problem,
we can hardly expect that they will make any realistic proposals and
that the Georgian authorities will accept them. At the same time, this
initiative is hardly the result of the activities of the Armenian
lobby or of the talks of US administration representatives with
Armenian politicians. The US has just waited for a tenser scenario
in Javakhq to interfere and is now ready to show an open interest in
this region of Georgia.
Today, the problem is that the US has realized that Georgia is
a peculiar country and one can’t just apply general operational
approaches to it. That’s why they have decided to "divide" Georgia into
political or regional-political blocs and to deal with each of them
individually. Obviously, they hope that this will help them achieve
certain goals in the sphere of system security. Still, it seems that
they have not yet fully grasped Georgia’s problems. We don’t mean
the current policy but some more fundamental problems. So, we can
assume that, having learned about new circumstances in the policy of
Russia, Turkey and the South Caucasian states, the US has decided to
work out new scenarios of its political and economic expansion in the
region. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why they have suddenly
taken so keen interest in the processes they formerly ignored.
Mark Zoryan – expert of Caucasus analytical center