POST-SOVIET ‘FROZEN CONFLICTS’ HEAT UP AS BIG-POWER INTERESTS COLLIDE
Fred Weir
Christian Science Monitor
June 25 2008
MA
Tensions are growing as NATO and a resurgent Russia divide over future
of breakaway statelets.
OstIngur, AbkhazGeorgia border – Tensions are again spiking here on
the lush, subtropical Black Sea coastal plain, where heavily armed
Russian troops aided by United Nations observers have held apart the
warring armies of Georgia and insurgent Abkhazia for 15 years.
Last Wednesday, two powerful bombs exploded in the Abkhaz capital
of Sukhumi, destroying a section of a railroad recently repaired by
Russian construction troops that Georgia says are illegally in the
rebel statelet, which Tbilisi – supported by most of the world –
views as Georgian territory.
The next day, a few miles from this border post, Georgian police
arrested four of the Russian peacekeepers, who have been in place
under a 1994 cease-fire deal, leading a top Russian general, Alexander
Burutin, to warn that if it happens again, "the consequences will be
grave and there could be bloodshed."
If the fragile 1991 settlement that enabled the former Soviet Union
to break relatively peacefully into 15 countries starts to unravel,
the flash point may well be right here. But the antagonists would
not be ragtag irregulars of the 1993 war but real armies, probably
backed on one side by a resurgent Russia, on the other by NATO.
Peering over the half-mile-long bridge that separates Abkhazia from
the Georgian town of Zugdidi, Ruslan, a burly Abkhaz border guard,
says he helped to drive the fleeing Georgian Army across that bridge
15 years ago and expects to see them – now trained and equipped by
the US – attempt a return any day now. "We will never agree to be
part of Georgia again," he says. "I intend to live as an Abkhazian
in a free country, and I’ll fight for as long as it takes."
Most of the world breathed a sigh of relief when the USSR’s collapse
did not bring vast Yugoslavia-like upheavals, and cheerful scenarios
seemed to be borne out when the former Soviet Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania joined the European Union and the NATO alliance
in 2004.
Little-noticed wars
Amid the hopeful 1990s, few people noticed the savage wars of secession
that rocked the Caucasus region, leading to the emergence of fiercely
pro-Moscow statelets like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the Armenian
enclave of Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan.
Along with Transdniestria, a rebel Slavic republic in Moldova,
these little pieces of post-Soviet unfinished business were tagged
"frozen conflicts" because it seemed unlikely that any big country,
even Russia, would ever recognize their de facto independence.
But dramatic geopolitical changes are threatening a return to hot war,
this time with an oil-rich, stronger Russia standing unambiguously
behind the separatist territories.
After many Western countries recognized the former Serbian territory of
Kosovo earlier this year, despite Moscow’s angry opposition, Russia
eased its 14-year-old economic embargo on Abkhazia and the State
Duma passed a resolution demanding full recognition. The prospect
of NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine – a question that was
postponed at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April – has prompted Moscow to
crank up its rhetoric against Georgia and send construction troops,
not covered by the 1994 agreement, into Abkhazia. Those troops were
tasked with reopening a dormant railroad link that runs from Rostov,
Russia, through Sochi to Sukhumi, and would be crucial for supplying
troops in the event of a conflict.
Though war does not appear to be on the immediate horizon, many here
fear that it’s coming. "Tensions are growing very fast, and we find
ourselves on the line of confrontation between Russia and the West,"
says Oleg Damenia, director of the Center for Strategic Studies, an
official think tank in Sukhumi. "Georgia’s military budget is now 10
times larger than Abkhazia’s. In this situation, we have no choice
but to turn to Russia for support."
The Kremlin says the existence of separatist statelets in Georgia
should make Europe wary of admitting such a fissiparous country to
NATO. At the Bucharest summit, then-President Putin reportedly told
President Bush that Ukraine is a similarly unstable place, whose
pro-Russian east could tear away.
"Russia is trying to demonstrate the possible price of NATO expansion,
by warning that Ukraine is an extremely fragile entity," says Fyodor
Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow foreign
policy journal. "If NATO will push toward Ukraine, Russia might turn
to very ugly means. There is huge potential for Russian irredentism
in Ukraine," he says.
Last month Moscow’s nationalist mayor, Yury Luzkhov, was declared
persona non grata in Ukraine after he said that Moscow should take back
Crimea, a Russian-populated peninsula that is still headquarters of
the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet and which was a "gift" to Ukraine
from former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.
Some Russian nationalists go further and suggest the time is
approaching for a wholesale redrawing of the post-Soviet map, to
gather in Russian minorities and other pro-Moscow ethnic groups who
felt stranded on foreign soil by the USSR’s collapse.
"NATO expansion endangers our national interests, but at the same
time Russia has grown much stronger and is in a position to revisit
the status quo in the post-Soviet space," says Alexander Dugin,
head of the International Eurasian Movement, a Moscow-based group of
nationalist intellectuals, businessmen, and policymakers. "Russia
understands that we cannot allow Ukraine to enter NATO as a whole
state. We will witness a wave of separatism in Crimea and eastern
Ukraine. Russia is no longer weak and at the West’s mercy; it’s on
its way to recreating itself as an imperial power."
Future redivision of territory?
Mr. Lukyanov says that such extreme views are unlikely to get much
traction in the Kremlin, but neither do Russia’s leaders rule out
a future redivision of post-Soviet territory. "The Russian elite
does not consider the current status quo as final," he says. "All
the countries of this region are highly unstable, and subject to
unpredictable shocks. No one here believes that the transition of
the post-Soviet space has reached its final destination."
The new tone in Moscow is music to the ears of Abkhazia’s rebel
leaders, who believe all the attention now being paid them after 15
years of isolation could be their ticket to full statehood.
"Until now the world community has only recognized the partial
collapse of the Soviet Union. But why can’t the captive nations
inside those states also have their freedom?" asks Garry Kupalba,
Abkhazia’s deputy defense minister.
"The world thinks we don’t exist, but we do. We’re building our own
state, with all the attributes of a state, including armed forces. And
Russia is helping us," he says.