The Post, Ireland
Aug 10 2008

Georgian leader chose his moment

10 August 2008

Seamus Martin examines the background to the conflict between Russia
and Georgia.

The volatile Caucasus region is strategically important as a transit
route for oil from the east. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili
is, without question, the region’s most volatile leader.

His decision to shell the South Ossetian city of Tshkinvali while most
world leaders were in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games has
threatened to cause the biggest crisis in Europe for almost two
decades. His action appears to have been a calculated gamble at a time
when world attention is focused elsewhere.

Saakashvili, who is ostensibly pro-western, gambled correctly that
Russia would respond in such away that it would leave itself open to
allegations of expansionism and invasion. In fact, Russia’s new
president, Dmitry Medvedev, had little option but to send in the
tanks. The bombing of the Georgian town of Gori, Stalin’s birthplace,
is less excusable.

Saakashvili has also gambled that the west will come to his aid
militarily in any conflict with Russia. He is likely to lose that
second bet. Concerted peace efforts by Europe, the US and the
international community, in general, appear to be the only hope of
avoiding catastrophic warfare in the area and the main catastrophe
could be on the Georgian side.

These efforts will, on the one hand, need to take the form of strong
pressure on Saakashvili, since he is the party in this conflict most
likely to be open to western influence. On the other hand, calm
requests to Russia to accept a negotiated ceasefire will need to be
made.

Saakashvili’s continuous and consistent tweaking of the Bear’s tail
has finally brought a serious response with Russian tanks rolling into
South Ossetia. In a technical sense, Russia can be seen as invading
Georgian territory, but South Ossetia has been independent of Georgia
on a de facto basis since the early 1990s.

Another and perhaps more serious situation could now arise in
Abkhazia, a second area that broke away from Georgia in 1993.

Known throughout Georgia simply as `Misha’, Saakashvili came to power
in the name of democracy during the Rose Revolution of 2003 that
ousted former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze from the
Georgian presidency.

His democratic credentials were damaged by ill-treatment of opposition
supporters, and media censorship then began to erode his support in
the west. His continuous and sometimes baseless allegations of Russian
aggression have not helped relations with Moscow, which has
traditionally been a major trading partner.

Georgia inherited two major ethnic problems from the dissolution of
the Soviet Union. To the north of the capital, Tbilisi, lay South
Ossetia an enclave of ethnic Ossetes, a group historically supportive
of Russia.

They wanted unity with their compatriots in the Russian area of North
Ossetia, the people whose children were later tome massacred by
Chechens in the school at Beslan.

To the west was the incredibly beautiful region of Abkhazia, where the
Caucasus Mountains reached the coast of the Black Sea. Early in the
Soviet era Abkhazia had become a Constituent Republic, a status that
would have automatically given it independence on the dissolution of
the USSR. But the area was later granted to Georgia by Stalin who was
a Georgian.

A fierce war raged in Abkhazia in 1993, during which the region’s
ethnic Georgians were driven off their land. Ethnic Greeks and
Armenians also fled the area leaving the Abkhaz people almost on their
own.

Although technically part of Georgia, the two regions, with Russian
help, gained de facto independence. The original ethnic reasons for
separatism added to by the near collapse of Georgia’s economy. As the
years passed, they settled into what has become known in international
affairs as `frozen conflicts’.

The shelling of Tskhinvali has ensured that the conflict in South
Ossetia is no longer frozen. While many former Soviet states, notably
Russia itself, improved their economies and the living standards of
their various peoples, Georgia descended into a tumult of clan and
inter-ethnic hostilities upon the dissolution of the USSR.

These conflicts, allied to serious corruption, militated against
economic development. Infrastructure crumbled, unemployment soared,
and energy sources dried up and the political jokes so prominent in
the Soviet era began to resurface.

One told of a typical Georgian apartment in which the macho husband
sat on the balcony drinking wine while his wife prepared to burn the
furniture in a stove in order to cook dinner. Suddenly there was a
flicker and the electric light came on. Then a hiss and the gas
returned. The wife ran to the balcony shouting: “I have very bad
news. I think the communists are back.’

Under Shevardnadze’s rule there was little progress towards settlement
of the two separatist issues and on the economic front he failed to
improve matters. Saakashvili and his supporters took to the streets
successfully to force Shevardnadze from power.

The Rose Revolution and its supporters were, paradoxically, allowed
virtually free rein on the streets of the country’s ancient and
beautiful capital, Tbilisi. They triumphed in the name of democracy,
and Saakashvili was elected president by an overwhelming majority of
the voters.

When, four years later, those opposed to Saakashvili’s presidency took
to the same streets they were met with a brutal response from special
police forces armed not only with conventional weaponry but also with
modern sonic devices designed to disorient them.

Opposition protests continued and Saakashvili called an early
presidential election in January of this year at which he was
re-elected with a massively reduced majority.

Europe’s main election watchdog, the Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights, a section of the Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), while noting that the vote
was the first genuinely contested election since Georgian
independence, also verified allegations of intimidation on public
sector employees and opposition activists.

Its report also noted that “the distinction between state
activities” and the campaign of Saakashvili was “blurred”,
shorthand for the use of the state’s resources by Saakashvili in his
election campaign.

These election tactics and the earlier brutal treatment of opposition
protesters by the US-educated Saakashvili caused some western
governments to question the almost unqualified support they had given
the Georgian president. His major aim – to succeed in gaining
membership of Nato for Georgia – was believed to have been badly
damaged in the process.

Even his blatant sycophancy in naming the main road from Tbilisi
Airport to the city centre as George W Bush Avenue had begun to wear
thin in Washington political circles. He may not be able to count any
support greater than strongly worded statements, such as that issued
by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who called on Russia to
respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Seamus Martin is a retired international editor and Moscow
correspondent of the Irish Times. His memoir, Good Times and Bad, was
published earlier this year

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