RUSSIA BACKS INDEPENDENCE OF GEORGIAN ENCLAVES
By Clifford J. Levy
International Herald Tribune
ope/27russia.php#
Aug 27 2008
France
MOSCOW: Russia on Tuesday recognized the independence of two enclaves
that have long sought to secede from neighboring Georgia. The action
deepened strains with the West over the conflict in the economically
vital crossroads of the Caucasus and roiled a broader debate over
how to respond to separatist movements around the world.
The Russian decision was intended to consolidate its political and
military gains in the two and a half weeks since it invaded Georgia
after hostilities flared over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia,
an ally of Moscow.
The Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, declared in a nationally
televised address that South Ossetia and the other pro-Russian enclave,
Abkhazia, would never again have to endure what he described as
oppressive Georgian rule.
"This is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives
of people," Medvedev said.
With Russia’s image and financial markets suffering in recent days,
Medvedev took the unusual step of giving a series of interviews to
foreign media on Tuesday to explain the move. He said Russia had
abided by international law in recognizing the two enclaves, but he
left no doubt that the decision was in part retaliation for the West’s
support earlier this year for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia,
which Russia had opposed.
The United States and its allies denounced the decision, saying
that Georgia must not be broken apart and contending that Russia
was violating the cease-fire framework that it signed to halt the
fighting. The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, accused Russia
of trying to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"This is a challenge for the entire world," Saakashvili said. "Not
just Georgia."
In Washington, President George W. Bush said, "Russia’s action only
exacerbates tensions and complicates diplomatic negotiations."
While the dispute centers on two slices of land, it has been playing
out against a much broader backdrop of historic antagonism among the
major powers over separatist movements.
World leaders have for years struggled to determine which ones
to recognize, often making decisions and then trying to limit the
repercussions by warning that each situation is unique.
The questions now are: whether that hesitance to bestow recognition
could be eroding, as witnessed by Kosovo and Russia’s action in
Georgia; and whether other independence movements will use the
recognition of the two enclaves to further their own ambitions by
citing similar grievances. Not far from Georgia, for example, is an
Armenian enclave that wants to secede from Azerbaijan, and Kurdish
separatists are seeking their own homeland in regions of Turkey
and Iraq.
In the past, most countries feared that if they waded into one such
conflict, it could be used against them in a future one. On Tuesday,
no other big power followed Moscow’s lead and voiced support for
South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence.
Many in Abkhazia have expressed the desire to be separate both from
Georgia and Russia — and some experts say it might be viable as an
independent nation, albeit a very small one, because of its larger
size and busy port.
South Ossetia, in contrast, has only 70,000 people and borders on the
Russian region of North Ossetia. Suspicions have long arisen that after
seceding from Georgia, South Ossetia would be absorbed by Russia and
joined with North Ossetia — and most Ossetians say they support that.
The Kremlin said Tuesday that it had no plans to take over South
Ossetia. It has already given Russian passports to many residents of
both places, thereby widening its influence.
Medvedev announced the enclaves’ independence with unexpected
swiftness, only a day after the Russian Parliament unanimously called
upon him to do so. Diplomats and analysts had surmised that the Kremlin
might draw the process out as part of negotiations with the West.
But tensions between the sides have been escalating, and not only
over the status of the regions. On Tuesday, Russian military and
diplomatic officials continued to complain about NATO efforts to
assist Georgia, suggesting that the alliance might be trying to send
military equipment, rather than humanitarian aid. The Russians also
expressed discomfort about the presence of NATO ships in the Black
Sea off the coast of Georgia.
Russia has for months been seething over the West’s decision this
year to recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, a traditional
Russian ally. The Russians were especially angered when Western
diplomats emphasized that Kosovo was not any sort of precedent and
had no bearing on the standing of the breakaway enclaves in Georgia.
As if to drive home the idea that recognition of the enclaves was
in some sense payback, Medvedev used an interview on Tuesday with
Russia Today, the Kremlin-financed English-language channel, to turn
the West’s rationale on Kosovo against it.
"There was a special situation in Kosovo, there is a special situation
in South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said. "Speaking about our situation,
it is obvious that our decision is aimed at preventing the genocide,
the elimination of a people, and helping them get on their feet."
Still, Russia, a sprawling nation with many nationalities, has faced
its own secessionist pressures, notably in the Muslim region of
Chechnya, where Moscow has fought two wars to crush an independence
movement. Even as they were hailing the independence of the two
enclaves, Russian officials were trying to explain why Chechnya did
not deserve the same right.
They contended that when Chechnya had had autonomy in the late 1990s,
it became a source of tremendous instability, and Russia had no choice
but to reassert complete control.
"You know what they did to their own place," the Russian foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov, said Tuesday. "They turned it into a place
where international terrorists were feeling at home."
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this part of the world has
been a locus of the problem of addressing separatist aspirations.
For a time, a consensus developed in the West, but with two aims
that sometimes appeared to be in conflict. On one hand, the allies,
led by the United States, were quick to recognize the independence of
former Soviet republics, including Georgia itself, the better to wrest
these countries away from Russia’s orbit and into the arms of the West.
"Depending on where you sat, you could easily call those places
breakaway republics," said Derek Chollet, a senior fellow at the
Center for a New American Security in Washington, adding that many
hard-liners in Russia did see those countries as breakaway regions.
On the other hand, a post-cold-war understanding, hardened by the
experience in Bosnia, developed that the West should be very careful
about recognizing breakaway regions, so as not to set a precedent,
or embolden secessionist areas, Chollet said.
That consensus held until February, when Kosovo declared independence,
and the West said Serbia lost its right to Kosovo because of actions
over the years by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died
in 2006.
Igor Lukes, a professor of international relations at Boston
University, said international law contained clear standards for
evaluating whether an independence movement should be recognized, in
part based upon whether such a territory has well-defined borders,
a well-established central authority and a populace that strongly
desires secession.
The problem is that these judgments typically become hostage to
conflicts between large nations, as in the case of Kosovo, South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, Lukes said.
"These situations are not really murky," he said. "What makes the
situations murky is each superpower tries to exploit ad hoc situations
as they emerge to advance its interests and to hurt its rivals. It’s
really the way the superpowers manipulate the reality. It’s not the
reality that is complicated."
On the border area around Russia and South Ossetia on Tuesday, there
was mostly joy. Hundreds of South Ossetians streamed south to their
homes, buoyed by Russia’s decision.
At a rest home in Alagir, an hour’s drive from the border, aid
workers sat alone, eating sardines. It was one of the first moments
since the crisis began early this month when they looked out at an
empty dormitory.
Three hundred refugees had left in the morning, and 400 more were
expected to pass through on Wednesday on their way to the narrow Roki
Tunnel, which cuts through the nearly vertical ridge of the Caucasus
to South Ossetia.
"This was the only hope of people who live on the other side of the
pass to return to a normal way of life," said Avan Galachiyev, an agent
of the Federal Migration Service who had been helping the refugees.
Artur Dzhoiyev, whose family fled their village, Hampalgon, 18 years
ago, was thinking idly about returning to his "historic motherland,"
maybe building a house.
Now, he reasoned, things would be different. No Georgian checkpoints,
no need to lurch along rocky bypass roads, no rooting for documents
under the hostile gaze of soldiers.
The Georgians, Galachiyev said, have lost control of the road.
"And they won’t get it back," he said.
Reporting was contributed by Ellen Barry in Vladikavkaz, Russia;
Helene Cooper in Washington; Nicholas Kulish in Tallinn, Estonia;
and Steven Erlanger in Paris.