Eurasia Daily Monitor
October 14, 2008 — Volume 5, Issue 196
RUSSIA TERMINATES "PEACEKEEPING" IN ABKHAZIA AS NO LONGER NECESSARY
by Vladimir Socor
At the CIS summit in Bishkek on October 9 and 10, Russia announced the
termination of the "CIS collective peacekeeping operation in the
Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone" after 14 years. Moscow describes its move as
a common decision of the assembled heads of state and government. It is a
final attempt to portray the now-discarded operation as having been approved
multi-nationally from its inception to its end (Interfax, Itar-Tass, October
9, 10).
Moscow has decided that it no longer needs "peacekeepers" in Abkhazia
after the August war against Georgia. In their stead, Russia is deploying
combat forces to be stationed in Abkhazia indefinitely, cement the Russian
hold, and — unlike the "peacekeepers" — to pose an offensive threat to
Georgia.
Despite its CIS cover, the "collective peacekeeping" in Abkhazia was
always purely Russian. After 2002 CIS meetings abandoned even the pretense
of examining this operation, let alone prolonging its "mandate." The CIS in
any case is not authorized to confer peacekeeping mandates, and Georgia has
in any case quit the CIS following the Russian invasion of the country’s
interior in August this year. Moscow’s move ends a 14-year-old
"peacekeeping" pretense that culminated in Russia’s full-scale military
seizure of Abkhazia from Georgia, rendering any peacekeeping redundant from
Moscow’s viewpoint. Those troops, who acted under a false CIS label and with
Georgian consent extracted under duress since 1994, are being replaced by
far larger Russian forces in "agreement" with the Abkhaz authorities, whom
Moscow installed in the first place and has now given "diplomatic
recognition."
Although Russia acted from the outset as a participant in the conflict
against Georgia on Georgia’s own territory, Western governments and
international organizations accepted Russia’s claim to be a neutral mediator
between Georgia and the Abkhaz. That international pretense continued
through the years, despite Russia’s military operations, economic embargos,
and political warfare relentlessly waged against Georgia. Admittedly, Russia
never received "special responsibility for peacekeeping in the CIS," a role
that Moscow sought in vain during the 1990s in international organizations.
It did, however, monopolize that role in practice, as the first stage in a
long-term empire-restoration strategy. Whether recognized officially or
conceded de facto, a peacekeeping monopoly is one key ingredient of
sphere-of-influence building.
The United States and West European governments have practically
conceded a "peacekeeping" monopoly to Moscow in post-Soviet conflicts —
Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Tajikistan — from 1992 to the
present. The government of Azerbaijan, however, had the foresight to turn
down the offer of "third-country" peacekeeping by Russia through the OSCE in
the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
On the whole, the Euro-Atlantic community never displayed a sense of
urgency on this issue. It approached it in a spirit of benign neglect when
Russia was weak and later in a spirit of dependency on Russian "help" to
resolve various Western dilemmas, even before Russia grew stronger. The year
2002 could have marked a turning point toward Western hands-on involvement
at the U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia summits, held near Rome in May of that
year. Those summits adopted decisions — as expressed in both communiques —
for joint U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia peacekeeping and conflict-resolution
efforts on Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Karabakh (with Russia
listed in second place throughout the joint communiques). This Western
initiative dissipated within months, however, as the United States and NATO
became distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan, and later a growing number of failed
policies.
It is a tribute to Russian strategy and Western disorientation that
Moscow initiated, conducted, and ended the Abkhazia "peacekeeping" operation
as it saw fit during all these years, without any serious international
challenge. Georgian and other appeals to multilateralize and civilianize the
peacekeeping format fell mostly on deaf, indifferent, or distracted ears in
the West during all this time. Down to the Russian invasion in August of
this year, Washington and European governments continually advised Georgia
to show patience and tone down or indefinitely postpone demands for
replacing the Russian operation. Now, however, Russia itself has ended its
operation in its own way and timing and on its own terms, which are worse
than ever from the West’s and Georgia’s perspective.
The United Nations Security Council had routinely applauded the
Russian "peacekeeping" in Abkhazia. While never officially authorizing that
operation, the UNSC paid it compliments each time when prolonging the
mandate of UNOMIG (UN Observer Mission in Georgia) at six-month intervals.
Moscow demanded and received this genuflection regularly as a condition for
not vetoing the symbolic UNOMIG. In all these years, the U.S. State
Department and other Western chancelleries went along with this semiannual
travesty.
The Russian operation, however, breached the UN’s fundamental rules of
peacekeeping operations. Such operations require consent by the sovereign
state on the territory on which they are deployed. The consent must involve
not only acceptance of the operation as such but also the parameters of its
implementation. Neighboring countries and countries with a direct interest
or stake in the given conflict are not acceptable as troop contributors to a
peacekeeping operation. Such operations are by definition international, not
a monopoly of any one country. Troop contributing nations must be impartial.
Peacekeeping operations abide by the principles of inviolability of borders
and non-interference in internal affairs of the country in which they are
deployed.
In yet another unprecedented breach of peacekeeping norms, the Russian
military backed the ethnic cleansing of Georgians from Abkhazia in 1994 and
has refused to this day to assist in their safe return. Russian
"peacekeepers" helped arm the Abkhaz forces and beefed up arms stockpiles
which they shared with their Abkhaz proxies. Yet no international authority
ever called for Russia’s disqualification from its self-appointed role as
peacekeeper and mediator.
Moscow now takes the position, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei
Lavrov has announced, that Russian troops in Abkhazia will "no longer be
peacekeepers. They will from now on be armed forces," to be stationed there
under a basing agreement with the Russian-recognized Abkhaz authorities
(Interfax, Itar-Tass, October 9, 10). Those forces are slated to include a
combat brigade-size ground force, to be supplemented by air and naval
elements, at reactivated Soviet-era bases and newly-built installations.
–Vladimir Socor