ANOTHER WAR IN THE CAUCASUS?

Registan.net, WA
other-war-in-the-caucasus/
April 29 2008

The fallout from that drone shoot down continues. Now Russia is
claiming Georgia is planning to restart hostilities in Abkhazia:

A statement from the Russian foreign ministry said that "a bridgehead
is being prepared for the start of military operations against
Abkhazia".

Russia accuses Georgia of amassing 1,500 soldiers and police near
the rebel areas of the upper Kodori Gorge…

Russia has kept a peacekeeping force in Abkhazia and South Ossetia
under an agreement made following the wars of the 1990s, when they
broke away from Tbilisi and formed links with Moscow.

There are around 2,000 Russians posted in Abkhazia, and about 1,000
in South Ossetia.

Tensions between Russia and Georgia have flared up recently, despite
Russia lifting economic sanctions against Georgia earlier this month.

This is probably tied to Georgia’s quest to block Russia’s membership
in the WTO. Georgia has suspended its bilateral talks with Russia,
which are a condition of Russia’s WTO ascension, on the condition
that Moscow halt its growing ties with the separatist governments in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And now Russia steps forward with talks
of Georgia invading Abkhazia.

It’s not that the timing is too convenient, which it is, but that
is might not matter. Both Georgia and Russia have a habit of badly
overplaying their hand in the battle for sympathetic ears in the
West. In this case, Russia has a particularly weak hand–its fondness
for separatist movements appears not to extend to either Kosovo,
or Chechnya (which is not doing well under the stewardship of Ramzan
Kadyrov). Similarly, the blatantly political nature of its embargo
on Georgian goods two years ago, along with its history of using gas
prices against recalcitrant former vassals, give it relatively little
leverage in these multilateral agreements.

None of this means Georgia will come out on top, or that it will
actually move troops back into Abkhazia ("invade" is too strong a word,
since Abkhazia is still technically a part of Georgia). But the way
Georgian-Russian relations have deteriorated over the last few weeks
is indeed deeply troubling; with the addition of the still-simmering
tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh, is the Caucasus looking at another
round of civil war?