Independent, UK
Ethnic tensions: War in the Caucasus is Stalin’s legacy
Arbitrary boundaries and forced repatriation are two of the causes
behind the constant conflicts in the former Soviet Union. Shaun Walker
reports
Sunday, 17 August 2008
The Georgians are bombing South Ossetia; the Russians have come
through the Roki tunnel to take Tskhinvali; a second front has been
launched in the Kodori Gorge; the Russians have occupied Gori, Poti
and Senaki. It’s been a week where names and places that previously
didn’t register a blip on the Western consciousness have suddenly
become headline news. Even most of the journalists covering the
conflict, shipped in from big bureaux across the world, had never
heard of Tskhinvali in the morning when they flew in. By evening they
were pontificating about the significance of its fall to the Russians
on live television.
The most intense stage of conflict is over now in South Ossetia, but
hopes for a negotiated settlement remain very slim indeed. The real
bad news, though, is that South Ossetia is not alone as a potential
hot spot in the former Soviet Union. There are many spots that you may
never have heard of, dotted all around the territory that was once
part of the Red Empire.
As well as South Ossetia, there is Georgia’s other breakaway state of
Abkhazia. Tiny South Ossetia is inconceivable as a "real country", and
could only be part of either Russia or Georgia, but Abkhazia might
have a better shot of making it. It has a coastline, which fuels the
tourist industry that is beginning to revive, and means that trade
with countries other than Russia is possible.
Hidden in the lush forest above the coast at Gagra in Abkhazia is a
lime-green mansion; one of several dachas built for Joseph Stalin, an
ethnic Georgian, along the Abkhaz coastline. He’d come for weeks in
the summer, relaxing on the balcony or playing a game of pool with
other leading Bolsheviks. It may have been here that Stalin made many
of the decisions that scattered and divided nations, and led to many
of the conflicts that have flared up since the Soviet Union
collapsed. National and ethnic identi
ties were shifted, encouraged or suppressed during different
periods. Whole nations were deported to Siberia or the Kazakh steppe,
scattered irrevocably like human dust. Borders between the different
entities of the union were changed at will, often with the express
intention of fomenting ethnic unrest.
In Abkhazia itself, huge numbers of Georgian settlers were moved in;
the Abkhaz language was suppressed and the Georgian language was
enforced in schools and universities. In fact, many ethnic Abkhaz talk
about the Georgian rule over their territory in the same terms that
the Georgians themselves talk about Soviet oppression.
While Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin undoubtedly ruthlessly exploit
the tensions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it is a foolish mistake to
think they created them. Ossetians and Abkhaz remember all too well
the aggressive and unpleasant Georgian nationalism during the early
1990s, and have no desire to be part of a Georgian state. Meanwhile,
after the wars in both regions at that time, many ethnic Georgians
still live as refugees in grim conditions in Tbilisi and other
Georgian cities.
The Abkhaz say that all the West’s posturing over "territorial
integrity" is meaningless ` why on earth should arbitrary lines drawn
up by Stalin be the basis for statehood in the 21st century? Now that
Saakashvili has been humiliated over the South Ossetian conflict, the
Abkhaz are more buoyant than ever, and it’s hard to see the territory
ever becoming part of Georgia again. The threat of conflict will
always loom, though, and when the Georgians rebuild their army and
country, we can expect to see renewed conflict.
Over the other side of the Caucasus Mountains, things are just as
volatile. We all know about Chechnya, and the bloody wars that Russia
has fought to bring the region under its control. For now, under the
iron-fisted rule of former rebel Ramzan Kadyrov, the situation is
relatively quiet, and ironically the odious Kadyrov has achieved far
more independence from Moscow than his rebel predecessors could have
dreamed of. He has built a Chechnya that for all intents and purposes
is independent from Moscow, and he’s done it using Moscow’s money.
Not too far from Chechnya is Prigorodny District, a disputed bit of
land between Ingushetia and North Ossetia. Stalin had the entire
Ingush population, along with the Chechens, deported to Kazakhstan
during the Second World War. By the time they were allowed to return
in the 1950s, their houses had been taken over by ethnic
Ossetians. Another small, nasty war in the early 1990s failed to solve
the problem, and there are still disgruntled Ingush refugees who want
to return; some of them were involved in the Beslan school siege in
North Ossetia.
One of the Kremlin’s fears about Georgian actions in South Ossetia was
a renewed stream of Ossetian refugees crossing the Caucasus Mountains
and flooding into Prigorodny, setting off more tensions with the
Ingush and repercussions across the North Caucasus. That’s not to say
that Russia’s response was born purely from security concerns, but if
Britain can feel justified to intervene for strategic reasons in Iraq
and Afghanistan, it’s hardly surprising that the Russians feel they
can use force on their own doorstep to prevent instability across
their southern region.
As well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia, there are two other "breakaway
states" in the former Soviet Union. There’s Nagorno-Karabakh, where a
war in the early 1990s killed 30,000. The territory is ethnically
majority Armenian, was part of Azerbaijan in the Soviet period, but is
now controlled by Armenian separatists. A shaky status quo sees much
of the territory still in ruins, no diplomatic relations between the
two countries, and a large chunk of Azerbaijan "proper" occupied by
Armenia. Malnourished conscripts point rifles at each other from muddy
trenches along the last genuine front line in Europe.
Then there’s Transdniester, a sliver of land controlled by
Moscow-loyal separatists but officially part of Moldova. It’s run by
Igor Smirnov, who might make the Guinness World Records for having the
bushiest eyebrows in the world. His land is a potential conflict zone
right on the EU’s border.
The list goes on and on. In the Fergana Valley, a three-country zone
in Central Asia where impoverished Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Tajiks live,
Islamic extremism is on the rise and the potential for ethnic conflict
growing all the time. All the way across the other side of the former
Soviet Union, the sizeable Russian minority in the Baltic states feels
oppressed and excluded from their countries’ drive towards the EU and
linguistic nationalism.
One of Vladimir Putin’s most-quoted phrases is that the "collapse of
the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 21st
century". This was widely interpreted as being part of the ex-KGB
agent’s hankering for the return of the Soviet past. But Putin spoke
the words while talking about the vicious wars that raged in its
aftermath and the wars that are likely to come in the future. The
week’s events in South Ossetia show how quickly simmering tensions can
erupt into vicious conflict. Look out for more violence in places
you’ve never heard of, coming soon