I wouldn’t quite go as far as to call the region “broken” or “dysfunctional”, but Mr. de Wall’s analysis is (as usual) completely correct.
From IWPR:
The Caucasus: A Broken Region
Short-term interests continue to impede hopes of a broad transformation of this dysfunctional region. By Thomas de Waal in London
CRS No. 474, 22-Dec-08)The Caucasus region is a small and troubled place. It should be a common endeavour for its small and diverse nationalities in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as the Russian North Caucasus to work together to build an integrated region.
Unfortunately, no sense of common purpose is discernible: the sad reality is, that with its tangle of closed borders and ceasefire lines, the Caucasus more resembles a suicide pact.
Nowhere in the world can there be so many roadblocks. The two long borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Russia and Georgia are almost permanently closed. Only two neighbours – Azerbaijan and Georgia – can be said to have a genuinely close relationship and even that is based primarily on energy politics rather than common values and does not translate into many tangible benefits for ordinary people.
Yet, given the chance, the ordinary folk of the Caucasus eagerly take the opportunity to do business with one another. A tale of two markets confirms this. The first was the one at Ergneti where, right on the administrative border with South Ossetia, the busiest wholesale market in the Caucasus used to flourish. The Ossetians brought untaxed goods from Russia – from cigarettes to cars – to sell. The Georgians mainly sold agricultural produce. Because it was unregulated, the new Georgian government of President Mikheil Saakashvili argued that the market was knocking a big hole in the state budget and had to be shut down, which they duly did in June 2004.
The closure of the market was a justifiable step on legal grounds, except in the words of former Georgian conflict resolution minister Giorgy Khaindrava, “If Ergneti didn’t exist it would have to be invented.” Ergneti was possibly the widest “confidence-building measure” in the entire Caucasus region, with people of all nationalities doing business. Arguably the day it closed was the day the countdown to war in South Ossetia began.
On the Georgian-Armenian border, the Georgian village of Sadakhlo used to be home to another astonishing spectacle: a mass Armenian-Azerbaijani market on Georgian territory with virtually no Georgians in sight. Azerbaijanis bought Armenian produce, Armenians Azerbaijani goods that flooded the shops of Yerevan. Again, governmental pressures have curtailed the market, although it has not shut down entirely. Again, a magnificent example of inter-ethnic cooperation has been suppressed.
What politics drives apart, common economic and security interests should drive together. The South Caucasus is a delicate mechanism in which the malfunctioning of one part affects what is going in the others.
That became obvious during this August’s war in Georgia. Azerbaijan’s prime revenue-earners, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa pipelines, were shut down. When the Grakali railway bridge in central Georgia on August 16 was blown up, it also shut the only railway line linking Armenia to the Black Sea coast, thereby cutting Armenia’s entire imports for a week and costing it at least half a billion dollars in revenue.
This sad state of affairs is partly everyone’s fault.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have adopted intransigent positions which mean they have failed to resolve the biggest obstacle to peace and prosperity in the Caucasus, the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. Georgia has generally ignored its neighbours and Russia in its push towards Euro-Atlantic integration. In the words of Georgian analyst Archil Gegeshidze, one reason for Georgia’s problems is that the Saakashvili government unwisely “put all its eggs in the basket of mobilising western support” and did not pay sufficient attention to its neighbours.
Europeans and Americans, though often paying lip service to the idea of regional integration in the Caucasus, have generally pursued narrower goals. Europe’s grand TRASECA project, a communication and transport project linking the Caucasus to Europe and billed as a new “Silk Road”, has received less than 200 million euro of investment since it was inaugurated in 1993 and its effects are negligible.
Instead, projects such as NATO expansion, energy security and the claims of Armenian diasporas have all tended to divide Caucasian policy into different segments. In Washington, it seems at times that the Congress, the Pentagon and State Department all have different policies, with a primary focus on, respectively, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Moreover, several Washington strategists have suggested that Russia could be “contained” in the Caucasus, overlooking the fact that the region has figured in Russian minds and plans for two centuries and that much of the Russian elite has family or childhood ties to places that westerners barely know.
For good or ill, Russia still has a special role in the Caucasus. Its own policies have done it no favours. Russia continues to see the region in colonial terms, seeking to intimidate or control resources rather than use the soft power of trade or – its biggest asset in the region but a diminishing one – the Russian language, to help form a new and friendly neighbourhood.
People-to-people ties are still in place, often despite the best efforts of governments. Russians and Georgians are tied together by innumerable ties of history, culture and business. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians continue to work in Russia, despite the August conflict. “[Russian and Georgians] leaders have tried to wreck a good relationship between two peoples,” said analyst Ivlian Khaindrava.
Previous Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze – who after all ran the foreign ministry in Moscow in the perestroika years – understood this, even if he was frequently unable to appease the harder-line elements of the Russian elite when he had returned to Georgia as president.
In an interview with IWPR on December 3 in his residence outside Tbilisi, Shevardnadze said – in a rebuke to his successor – that he had always paid the Russians maximum respect. For example, Shevardnadze said, when the decision was made in 2002 to invite American troops to Georgia as part of the ground-breaking “Train and Equip” programme, he had been careful to inform President Vladimir Putin in advance. Putin went on the record to say that an American troop presence was “no tragedy” for Russia.
“I always tried to emphasise that Russia for us is not a secondary country, that it is a great neighbour with big military and economic potential,” said Shevardnadze.
Conflict gives birth to black-and-white thinking, the view that if your opponent is suffering that is a good thinking. In the current crisis, says Ivlian Khaindrava, “many in Georgia are just keeping quiet and waiting for the situation in Russia to deteriorate, the oil price to go down, tensions in the North Caucasus to escalate.”
That approach, he believes, could be a disaster for Georgia, as an economic downturn in Russia will hurt Georgian migrants and the families back home they send remittances to, while new violence in the North Caucasus could spill over into Georgia.
This kind of zero-sum thinking is most acute between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, many of whom seem content to see their country suffer so long as the other side in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict is feeling pain too.
It is hard for locals to transcend these divisions. It is up to outsiders to give the big picture and the broad vision of how the Caucasus could begin to function more harmoniously, as a political and economic entity rather than merely a dysfunctional geographical region.
Ultimately, it seems likely that only one big international organisation – the European Union – has the transformative power to treat these countries as a single region and promise them benefits that make it worthwhile for them to overcome bad habits. The Balkans provides good proof of it.
Sadly, the signs are that the EU is still too distant and too inward-looking to care sufficiently about the Caucasus. A positive development is that European monitors are now on the ground in Georgia. But the reason that they are there is a tragic one and let us hope they become the advance guard of a much broader engagement – not just confirmation for Europeans that this beautiful mountainous region is a permanent headache that can never be cured.
Thomas de Waal is IWPR’s outgoing Caucasus Editor. This is the last edition of Caucasus Reporting Service he has edited, after almost seven years with IWPR.
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of IWPR.
Here is the original post on the IWPR website.
From IWPR:
Uneasy Calm On South Ossetian Border
Georgian villagers begin to rebuild as a fortified frontier is erected.
By Dmitry Avaliani in Gori
CRS No. 474, 22-Dec-08The wounds Georgia has suffered as a result of its August war with Russia are slowly beginning to heal. Georgians left homeless by the conflict are being moved into new houses that the government has built for them. But having a place to live is less important to these people than a guarantee that they will live in peace – something no one has given them yet.
Since fighting ended in August, the landscape on both sides of the Tbilisi-Gori highway has changed considerably. There is a huge new “refugee town” near the village of Tserovani, and as you travel further towards Gori, more settlements, smaller in size, come into view. Almost finished now is an entire refugee town near Gori, on one side of the road that leads to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Workers are busy fitting out the small houses with modern conveniences such as gas heaters and bathrooms.
IWPR happened to chance upon refugees moving into Berbuki - one of the newly-built encampments, on another road leading from Gori to the village of Mejvriskhevi on the border with South Ossetia. The Okropiridze family, who are refugees from the village of Disevi in South Ossetia, had been living in a kindergarten in Gori since the conflict. As other members of the family were unloading their belongings from the bus that had brought them here, Revaz Okropiridze said that each house in the settlement was fit to accommodate four people, which meant that his family of six would occupy two houses.
Asked if he liked his new living quarters, Revaz said, “I don’t have any choice, do I? This is not our fault, nor the government’s. We all know well who is to blame.”
And asked if he had any hope of going back home, he said, “Of course, we have to hope. We trust the government. If not this year, we will return there in a couple of years, that’s for sure.”
The family’s home village, Disevi, lies just beyond Georgia-controlled territory. Shalva Okropiridze, head of the family, said some of his fellow villagers were still creeping into the village, now occupied by Russian and Ossetian militaries, to see how things were going there. But his own family could not get close to their own house. “Our apple trees are groaning with fruit, I wish we could harvest the crop,” complained Tanya Okropiridze.
Russian and Ossetian soldiers now have control of all the heights around Mejvriskhevi. Local farmer Zakro Ginturi shows us a tent pitched on a nearby hillside and trenches dug around it. A flag is fluttering above the tent, though we could not tell whether it was a Russian or Ossetian flag.
Ginturi says the villagers have avoided grazing their cattle in pastures and going out to the woods after the war, for fear of bumping into Ossetian militiamen.
The population, except for most of the old villagers, left Mejvriskhevi on the morning of December 10 and started to come back only after the Russians had withdrawn from the buffer zones.
There are no visible traces of the war in the village – all the houses are as they were before the conflict, having been spared both burning and looting.
Except for a stolen flock of sheep, the village suffered no damage. Zakro was even able to keep his cows. That Mejvriskhevi suffered less than other villages during the war was, he said, due to the good relations with residents of the neighbouring Ossetian village of Gromi.
“We’ve always had good relations with the Ossetians,” said Ginturi. “On Sundays, they would cross over to trade at our market, some still manage to come here. I’ve been to every family in Gromi. I am a vet and residents of that village would often ask me for help. They still call me now and then, asking for advice, but I don’t go there any more.”
He said he avoided crossing over to the Ossetian-controlled territory not because of the people living there, but for fear of meeting “fighters from Tskhinvali”, from whom he said he could “feel the aggression”.
“In 1991, we stopped Georgian militias from entering Gromi,” said Ginturi. “This time, I think, [Gromi residents] intervened on our behalf.”
In Tkviavi, local workers were busy digging a foundation pit for a cottage. This is going to be a small house with an area of only six square metres, but at the least the family that will live in it will not winter under the open sky.
The construction of temporary houses is being funded by the government. People, whose houses were destroyed during the war, are receiving financial compensation as well.
A total of around 60 houses were burnt down in Tkviavi. The construction of the cottages that will temporarily replace them was due to be finished by December 20.
The village of Ergneti is right on the border with South Ossetia overlooking Tskhinvali. Almost all of its houses were burnt. There were few people about.
The Tsereteli family are building a new house themselves, using money and building materials provided by the government.
“We are building a cottage in our own field, not in the yard, so that we don’t have to look at the burnt wreckage of our house every day,” said head of the family Akaki Tsereteli. He said he had not been given compensation yet, but he is not happy with the sum he is likely to receive. “Even fifty thousand will not be enough to rebuild my house.”
The Georgian side of the Ergneti checkpoint is being fortified with a crane busy lowering breeze-blocks onto the road. A few metres ahead is another post, also fortified, but sprouting Russian and Ossetian flags. Beyond that is Tskhinvali.
Ambulance and Red Cross vehicles stand on the new “border”, waiting to take a patient from Tskhinvali for treatment in Gori hospital. A Georgian officer said that since the war, there have been several cases of people crossing over from Tskhinvali for medical treatment.
The villagers of Mejvriskhevi and Ergneti, living right on the edge of South Ossetia, harbour no great hopes that what happened in August will not be repeated in the future. Some people in Ergneti have even refrained from repairing their burnt houses or building new ones. “Who knows what awaits us,” one said, complaining that shots are still fired from the direction of Tskhinvali now and then.
The locals have not taken much encouragement either from the presence amongst them of European Union and OSCE observers.
“Thanks to international aid, people were able to work their lands in the autumn,” said Mejvriskhevi, a resident Zakro Ginturi. “But we have a joke here - what if the Russians, as they watch us from their heights, are saying, ‘You sow, and we will reap’.”
Dmitry Avaliani is a journalist with 24 Hours newspaper in Tbilisi.
See the original post on the IWPR website
Because Armenians and Georgians are so close geographically and culturally there is some conflicts of interest that sometimes become sources of friction. One such issue is the Norashen church in Tbilisi.
Problems are problems, but his is one thing, and another thing altogether is how people are willing to jump to conclusions or worse exploit situations to further their own agendas.
As usual, Armenian bloggers have been denouncing things without trying to fully understand the issues. Here is one (actually one of the most reasonable) protest blog posts: I Lost My Appetite For Khachapuri.
Now let's look at what IWPR has to say:
Tbilisi Witnesses Unholy Row
Call for commission to settle long-running dispute over ownership of Tbilisi church.
By Fati Mamiashvili in Tbilisi and Sara Khojoyan in Yerevan (CRS No. 473 18-Dec-08)At around midday on November 16, 22-year-old Alexander Oganov saw a bulldozer next to the Armenian church named “Holy Norashen” in the old town district of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
In the churchyard, Oganov saw that the tombstones of 19th century Armenian benefactor Mikhail Tamashev and his wife Lidia had been prized up from the ground. The young man photographed the scene on his mobile phone and then called the police.
“In the churchyard I saw Father Tariel, who is the priest of the Georgian church next door to Norashen,” said Oganov. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry, we’re cleaning the churchyard and levelling the ground and we will put the tombstones back later’.”
Later, after the police arrived, the tombstones were indeed put back. But this did not prevent a furious row from breaking out, with Armenian parishioners complaining that the Georgian priest had insulted the memory of the dead.
The episode has rekindled the long-running row between the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church over the ownership and upkeep of a number of churches on Georgian territory. Amongst them is the Norashen church in Tbilisi, which the Armenians lay claim to but which is still owned by the Georgian state.
The row was poorly covered in the Georgian media, with television not devoting any attention to it at all. In Armenia, however, a series of angry articles was published, some of them accusing Georgians of carrying out “enforced Georgianisation” of Armenian churches in Georgia.
After, Armenian bloggers leapt into action, a protest rally was held outside the Georgian embassy in Yerevan on November 27, with the demonstrators demanding the Georgian authorities stop destroying Armenian cultural monuments.
Vardan Astzatrian, head of the department of nationalist minorities and religion in the Armenian government, called the incident an act of vandalism.
“This kind of thing can only happen in a country which is not taking proper care of things,” said Astzatrian. “Moreover, this kind of action can be very dangerous for the maintenance of stability which is very important now in the region.”
However, Father Tariel, the Georgian priest at the centre of the row, told IWPR that there had been merely a misunderstanding.
“I would never dishonour graves, even if they were the graves of [medieval Muslim conquerors of Georgia] Jalal ad-din and Shah Abbas,” said the priest. “The ground had sunk in that place and I wanted to level it out again but they didn’t let me.”
Mikhail Avakian, spokesman for the Armenian diocese in Georgia, said he doubted Father Tariel’s version of events. “Cleaning up is the job of the appropriate mayoral service and not Father Tariel,” he said.
This was the latest episode in a long-running quarrel between the local Armenians and Father Tariel. In May, he had a fence built alongside one of the walls of Norashen covered in Georgian orthodox symbols. The priest said he had done this with the permission of the mayor’s office to help protect the church.
The Armenian diocese called for the fence to be taken down – something which has not yet been done.
Father Tariel says the Armenians are causing trouble because they want to get their hands on the Norashen church, whose origins are disputed.
According to Georgia’s 2002 census, Armenians comprise 7.6 per cent of the population of Tbilisi. A century ago, the Armenian population in the city was much larger. Georgians and Armenians view the history of the city in completely different ways.
The Armenian diocese says that Norashen is an Armenian church dating back to the 15th century. Avakian said that in the 1930s the Bolsheviks closed it for worship, used it as a book warehouse and handed the building over to the local government.
The Georgian historian Bondo Arveladze says that Norashen was illegally built by Armenians on the ruins of an Orthodox church.
“In the archives you won’t find any document authorising its construction issued by the tsar or the patriarch of that time,” said Arveladze.
Ever since Georgian regained its independence in 1991, the Armenian diocese has tried unsuccessfully to recover Norashen. The church is still owned by the ministry of economics, with the ministry of culture responsible for its upkeep.
Nikloloz Antadze, who is responsible for the protection of monuments at the ministry of culture, said that Norashen was not in need of urgent help and that the issue of its restoration was not on their agenda.
The doors of the church are currently locked. One of the last men to gain entrance was Father Tariel, a decade ago. He briefly began holding Georgian services there.
“I didn’t break into the church I simply opened the doors,” said Father Tariel. “The wooden alter was already rotten, we erected a Georgian one in its place and started to conduct services there, although the patriarch soon stopped us from doing that.”
The Armenian and Georgian churches have agreed to resolve their differences over Norashen and five other disputed churches, but the commission tasked with doing this has not yet been set up.
“The political authorities have to form a commission which will put an end to this conflict,” said Levan Ramishvili, head of the non-governmental Liberty Institute. “If the church is Armenia then it ought to be given back to the Armenians. The commission should first establish whose it is.”
Armenian prime minister Tigran Sarkisian reportedly raised the issue during informal talks with his Georgian counterpart on a visit to Tbilisi on December 9.
In the meantime, the Georgian-Armenian society Nor Serundi (meaning New Generation) has taken on the role of mediator in the dispute.
“We live together in Georgia and nothing should divide us,” read the slogan of around 300 Armenians and Georgians who formed a human chain linking a series of Georgian and Armenian churches, amongst them Norashen. The head of the society, Mari Mikoyan, blamed people for whipping up tensions about this issue.
“This country is still in a state of war,” said Mikoyan, whose father is Armenian and whose mother is Georgian and who was awarded a medal for her services as a front-line doctor in the August war over South Ossetia. “Anyone who artificially raises the issue of disputed churches and tries to trade on it is an enemy of his people and religion!
“The time has come for historians, cultural scholars and diocesan officials to think about this.”
Fati Mamiashvili is a reporter with Rustavi-2 television in Tbilisi. Sara Khojoyan is a reporter with Armenianow.com in Yerevan.
Here is the original IWPR post on the IWPR website.
Readers of this blog may be interested in the Caucasus Analytical Digest.
.It's put out by Heinrich Böll Foundation in Tbilisi.
The following short documentary film was created by the Georgian NGO, New Generation – New Initiative, with cooperation from the Latvian Ministry Of Defense and the NGO, Baltic To Black Sea Alliance.
The fact that I'm posting this should not be construed as an endorsement.
While discussing various issues concerning Georgia, I was invited to post my views on Georgia drive to NATO membership.
Readers of this blog might be interested in following the discussion.
Here is my general thesis:
NATO membership for Georgia is a highly politicized question, and in Georgia, it's often presented as a question of good or bad government, between the past and the future. But the question needs to be considered on it's own merits, in terms of what NATO membership for Georgia can deliver to the country.
First, let's acknowledge that NATO isn't and end itself, it is a means to an end. Let's look at what ends Georgia would like to achieve with NATO membership (or other means).
This in my view is what Georgia goals are (and ought to be):
- Peace
- Security
- Stability
- Economic growth and poverty reduction
- Democracy
- The protection of Georgian culture and the Georgian language
- Return of the lost territories.
Many Georgians see NATO as the delivering theses ends to Georgia, but in my view, the drive towards NATO has in fact hindered all these things.
NATO is above all a military alliance. It was forged during the Cold War to protect it's member states from attack by the USSR. Russia is the successor state of the USSR, and though Russia's policies are markedly different from the USSR (I know that some people believe this is not so but the reality is Russia is not exporting a world communist revolution an longer) NATO is without doubt threatening Russia.
When the Berlin Wall collapsed, and Moscow agreed to the re-unification of Germany (and it's NATO membership) George Bush Sr. explicitly promised NATO would not move one inch eastward after that. This promise broken by Bill Clinton. and it was broken it was broken during the quite unjust bombing of Yugoslavia. While Russia, after the collapse of the USSR, went through a period of disarray and collapse, America used this opportunity to admit the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria to NATO.
These are all countries that border or are very close to Russia, that were under Russia's grip before the end of communism. From a Russian perspective this was betrayal. Russia gave up these smaller satellite countries that were it's buffer zone between NATO and Russia, disbanded the Warsaw pact, and ceased to be a threat (ideologically, and for all intents militarily as well) under the agreement that NATO would not advance towards it.
When Russia was weakened, NATO did just what it said it wouldn't and it bears repeating, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME bombing A LONG TIME RUSSIAN ALLY.
I'm explain all this to prove a point: NATO is a threat to Russia, and it is not just Russian paranoia to acknowledge this.
While all this was going on of course Georgia was a disaster zone, unfit for much of anything really. One may say that the Russians caused this disaster but though there is some truth to this, this ignores the fact that for the most part, Georgians caused much of the problems themselves. Up to the Saakashvili government, Georgia's leaders were terrible, and the Georgian people behaved not much better. All Russia did, was take advantage of a situation created by incompetent and malicious governance.
If Georgia had been ready to Join NATO at that point, there is little the Russians could have done to stop it, instead the country was weakened to the point that it lost territory, that remains a problem to this day.
However, not just Georgia was a mess, Russia, though powerful was also not doing much better. Georgia, reached to NATO and the US to fix it's problems, but... it wasn't ready. It would take years before Georgia could even distribute aid properly, let alone improve it's institutions to the point where it could even properly consider NATO membership.
Georgia put itself on a vector to the West, but because of it's internal problems, wasn't ready like the European countries.
Today, Georgia is trying to use a 1990's solution to a 2008 problem.
Russia today is not Russia of back then. Russia is a power assertive country with a largely rebuilt military, and a developed energy sector, which Europe needs.
Russia, having been betrayed by NATO once, simply isn't going to let it happen again. And it is willing and able to keep Georgia a disaster zone, to prevent it's enemy from encroaching on it's southern flank.
And remember Bush's promises and contrast it to Bill Clintons war with Yugoslavia. Make no mistake about it, NATO is a threat to Russia, and having NATO on Russia's souther flank, is a grave security threat to Russia. Any Russian president would be a traitor if he allowed NATO into the Caucasus without a fight.
Let's look at the US and Europe now. Let's face it, the US is much, much stronger than Russia, but it is also much, much weaker than it was 15 years ago. Iraq and Afghanistan has bled it dry, Islamic fundamentalism is a grave threat, the price of oil is down now, but only because the US economy is in ruins (and even down, Oil is still almost twice the price before the Iraq invasion). The US needs Russia's cooperation on a long list of issues: energy, terror, Iran, nuclear non-proliferation, and so on.
So we have this: A stronger Russia, facing a threat by a weaker US that needs Russia, and poor Georgia is caught in between.
So honestly, is this going to bring peace, security and stability to Georgia? No, all it's going to do is invite further conflict. That takes care of point 1-3.
For economic growth and poverty reduction as well as democracy the consensus is that Georgia will find this in the EU framework. And rightly so, there really is no other option as attractive as the EU.
But the discussion about NATO has become a discussion about westernization and the EU. The proponents of NATO membership for Georgia pretend that NATO is a stepping stone to the EU but is patently wrong. First, there is nothing about the EU that requires NATO membership. Many EU countries are not members of NATO. It's true that the NATO membership came to Eastern European countries before EU membership, but this was NEVER a precondition of the EU, and it's hard to see how NATO membership enabled these countries to fulfill the EU's entrance criteria. It's really a case that the two organization share many similar criteria and NATO has a lower bar.
What the EU does demand (among a lot else) is peace, stability and security, and as I hope I've showed NATO membership is providing the opposite. So the drive to NATO is holding back EU membership, and hence economic prosperity.
As for democratization, it's the same story. The drive to NATO is creating the combative relationship with Russia, and Georgia as a result, has one topic politics. Real political debate is hard to have when you're country is at war, or almost at war. Plurality is hard to have. Debate is hard to have. Reforms are difficult. The drive to NATO is hindering Georgian democracy.
So much for points 4-5.
What does Russia want from Georgia? Why are Russians making Georgia's life hell?
They want two things: First security as discussed above. Second, they want to control the East-West Energy corridor from Azerbiajan and Central Asia to Europe. Georgia sits between Russia and Iran (Armenia for all intents and purposes is Russia) and it is the one narrow corridor that the West can get Energy without going through either of the unpalatable alternatives.
First, two things: one, the Russians over the last 10 years or so, but especially in the last five, have essentially regained Central Asia. Central Asia was leaning quite significantly to the US for a while but it's over now. Uzbekistan is lost, Kazakhstan is totally lost, Kirgistan and Tadjikstan is of no importance, and Turkemenistan is half and half (though they too signed a significant gas deal with Moscow recently).
Azerbaijan, is also half half, but they too, are looking at back at Russia. One factor that makes Russia more attractive is that the Russians don't care how undemocratic Azerbaijan is. Another factor is probably that if Azerbaijan did rout energy through Russia, Russian would probably agree to take a more pro Azeri line in the Karabakh depute. Still, Azerbaijan seems to be playing both the US and Russia.
But still, just to make sure Russia wants to stop the US from gaining Georgia so these countries will have to go through Russia and Russia.
So, Russia want security from Georgia, AND wants to make sure that Georgia doesn't become a conduit for circumventing it and denying it transit fees.
And this is the important thing: that's all there is. Really, that's it.
Put it another way, here's what the Russian's couldn't care less about: Georgian culture and the Georgian language.
This is really remarkable. Russia's history in Georgia either involved exporting it's language and culture, or Marxist ideology. It is kind of a watershed event, that Russians have become pragmatists instead of ideologies.
Put it another way, unlike in the past, political and economic cooperation with Russia does not involve sacrificing the Georgian language and Georgian culture anymore. NATO is not necessary (nor helpful) in protecting Georgia's heritage.
I think Georgia has to really ask itself what it really wants, and how to go about getting them.
True independence in todays modern world is impossible (if it ever was possible). Concessions have to be made. Small countries will always be dominated by lager countries. Even EU and NATO membership comes with the price of loss of sovereignty (every treaty is a loss of sovereignty). Georgians are so caught up with the idea of total independence it looks to me sometimes they're going to lose their whole country.
This is what needs to get done: the drive to NATO has to end. Georgia has to cease to be a military threat to Russia. That's a red line that Russia will not let Georgia cross.
Georgia has to also be a bit more flexible about it's energy policies. Offering to be a US proxy, even if not militarily but for Energy geopolitics, is not the best strategy when your next door neighbor is the US's enemy.
As for point 7, Abkhazia and Ossetia are probably lost now forever. Until the war I would have bet everything I owned that Georgia could have negotiated the return of the territories for satisfying Russia's security and energy concerns. Now I just don't see how that's possible after Russian's recognition. Maybe the Gali Region. But only maybe.
Still, there is the rest of the country to think about. All is far from lost.
I've always said, the move to recognize the Armenian genocide, will come from within Turkey.
This is a very encouraging sign.
It's not about virtue, it's about thinking straight. Here is a great example of a bad argument against interventionism:
Musing among the vegetables: The Age of Virtue is here, people!
And here is the great classic correct argument:
Give War a Chance
The problem with interventionism isn't that it's expensive or costs the intervener casualties or that it's morally ambiguous, it's that it doesn't work.
Letting one side hack the other side to submission works. In the long run, as offensive as it may be to our fine sensibilities, it saves lives.
Check out this cool blog post, from who I suspect will soon become my real archnemesis: Marika Eva: Random thoughts......bzzzz.
Here are my comments on the post:
Well, I certainly agree that Georgia is making a huge strategic mistake in trying to reach across the Atlantic for security. Georgia is just too close to Russia, and Russia wants Georgia in it's sphere much more than America does. America's interests in Georgia start end and end with oil routes. These interests will evaporate under two conditions 1) Russia consolidates it's interests in Azerbaijan and Central Asia (yes, Georgia is critical in circumventing Russia regarding Central Asian energy too) 2) America finds a common language with Iran. Georgia is only useful because it's wedged in between Russia and Iran (Armenia for all intents and purposes is Russia). In any case, it's interesting to note that both of these seem to be happening these days.
For Russia, Georgia is much more important. It's necessary for all the reasons above, plus it's critical protecting Russia's southern flank, pressuring Azerbaijan back into the fold and bridging to Armenia. Of course now it's also become a matter of pride for Russia. Georgia is the Crown Jewels of the Empire for Russians, but most Americans still haven't heard of Tbilisi, let alone could they find it on a map.
So it's all simple really. Georgia has to find a way to accommodate Russian interests while maintaining it's own national interests – or it's doomed
As for Gamzakhurdia, you lived through this, and I didn't... but I think you're being unduly harsh on the man. Understand that thanks to Armenians, Russian and so on, Georgians were fast becoming a minority in their own country (though it's a myth that the USSR caused this – the USSR reversed this trend). I certainly don't support Gamzakhurdia, nor nationalism of any kind, but to see him in isolation is a mistake. The mood was the same all over the former USSR. There were even anti Russian beatings in Yerevan of all places at the time.
The best treatment of Gamzakhurdia phenomenon is written by my friend Jonathan Wheatly: Georgia from National Awakening to Rose Revolution: Delayed Transition in the Former Soviet Union.
Pretty fair treatment and above all a great comparison with the Baltics.
Oh, by the way, Bastard is written with an a. Grandmother in Georgian is ბებია.
This is the main reason why Georgians get pissed off at Armenians sometimes, by the way. Even though they grow up in Tbilisi, with a Georgian grandmother, they often still don't know Georgian very well (or at all!).
Nothing personal :-)
From IWPR:
Georgia Feeling Economic Crunch
Once buoyant economy is hit by downturn and war over South Ossetia.
By Tamar Khorbaladze in Tbilisi (CRS No. 472 11-Dec-08)Having enjoyed double-digit economic growth for several years, Georgia is now bracing itself for hard times as it comes to terms with the double blow of the August war and the world financial crisis.
Since October, increasing numbers of people have lost their jobs, property prices have plunged, banks have reduced lending, and the national currency, the lari, has depreciated sharply.
The country’s leadership had put on a cheerful front but acknowledged the gravity of the crisis in November.
“Winter and spring will be very hard for the economy of the country,” said President Mikheil Saakashvili on December 7, visiting a confectionery factory. “We ought to do everything to keep jobs.”
The 2009 draft budget was recalled from parliament only six weeks after it was first submitted on October 1 and a more modest version was introduced to deputies. The revised bill envisages four per cent economic growth in 2009 and has reduced government spending by a billion laris (around 600 million US dollars) compared to 2008.
The population as a whole first felt the impact of the crisis on November 7 when the lari fell sharply against the dollar from 1.45 to 1.65.
The Georgian banking sector, which had been developing rapidly, has suffered badly. Since the August war, the value of bank deposits, which were worth 4.1 billion laris, has shrunk by more than half a billion laris.
The National Bank says the Georgian government has struck deals with international lenders to receive low-interest credit lines, worth one billion dollars, for Georgian commercial banks. But ordinary people are being hit by a squeeze on credit.
In recent years, an increasing number of Georgians have taken bank loans to start a small business, finance repairs to their house, buy a new apartment, car, furniture or household appliance. Now they are finding it hard to get bank loans.
Two months ago, Giorgy Gegechkori, a computer programmer, decided to buy an apartment. At first, he could not find one, even though prices had fallen. A month ago, he found a two-room apartment for 40,000 dollars – a huge reduction in price given that before August the same flat would have cost him 65 – 70,000 dollars.
Now Gegechkori’s problem is that he cannot find a bank to loan him 30,000 dollars. “All the banks say that they will give loans only to clients whose salary is paid into their bank and who have a good credit history. Even though I have used a credit card and have never been late with my payments I was told that the apartment I had found was not sufficient for me to borrow 30,000 dollars,” he said.
With fewer buyers available, the property market has also suffered badly. According to former finance minister Lekso Aleksishili, accumulated debts in the property market amount to 1.5 billion laris. And yet around a quarter of construction has yet to start.
“This indicates that risks are very high in this field, and if a crisis strikes the sector, it will inevitably spill over to other areas,” Aleksishvili told IWPR.
Businessmen right across the economy are reporting problems. At the end of October, the Young Economists Association conducted a poll among 1000 businessmen. Only two per cent of them said the crisis had not affected their businesses, whereas 71 per cent complained about fewer sales.
The sectors that have suffered the greatest loss in sales are tourism, construction, services and retail.
Two weeks ago, the building materials firm Metekhis Keramika sent 210 employees, with salaries averaging 300 laris (around 180 dollars), on unpaid holiday because of a drop in demand.
The company has three million bricks stacked in its warehouse and still says it wants to see them sold by next April.
Georgian exporters also have been struggling to cope with the increasing strain on their finances. Ferro, a plant that produces ferroalloys in the town of Zestaphoni, has been working at half capacity, using only five of its 11 furnaces.
The company’s management says the plant has been losing orders after the world financial crisis hit and may have to cut back on its 6000-strong workforce
Georgian wine exporters, whose main market is now Ukraine following the Russian boycott, are also seeing lower sales, as are firms trading in household equipment.
Arktika, a network of stores selling computers and mobile telephones, used to make 700,000 laris a month, but after the August war its sales have plunged by 70 per cent, mainly because banks have tightened up on issuing consumer loans, which accounted for 87 per cent of Arktika’s sales.
Anna Katamadze, head of the Young Economists Association, said the slowdown in Georgia was the result of the August war as well as the global financial turmoil.
Experts and international organisations made gloomy forecasts for the Georgian economy as far back as early October.
A joint mission of the United Nations, the World Bank and European Commission carried out a Joint Needs Assessment for Georgia. To date, only an abridged and strongly edited version of the JNA has been made public. The non-governmental organisation Transparency International Georgia managed to get hold of the full version of the document and summarises it in a special report.
The report predicts that 100,000 Georgians will lose their jobs and says, “Between now and 2010, poverty levels are projected to rise from 23.6 per cent to 25.9 per cent, and those already poor may slide even deeper into poverty.”
The JNA was the basis for an international donor conference held in Brussels in October, at which donors pledged to give Georgia 4.5 billion dollars over the next three years to help it cope with the crisis. The finance minister Nika Gilauri said that it has so far received 600 million dollars of the promised aid.
Tamar Karosanidze, who is executive director of International Transparency Georgia, is worried that the global crisis will stop donors providing all of the promised aid to Georgia.
“According to the optimistic forecasts set out in the document, it will take two years to get business activities in Georgia back to normal,” said Karosanidze. “Until then the state has to act as the engine of economy, ensuring, above all, that the aid is used effectively.”
Tamar Khorbaladze is a correspondent with 24 Hours newspaper in Tbilisi.
Here is the original article on the IWPR website.
Or, in English: Workers of the oil producing states unite!
Both these images were brought to my attention by my archnemesis (his words!) at Musing Among The Vegetables.
"For the first time, both the United States secretary of state and secretary of defense have doctorates in Russian studies. A fat lot of good that's done us."
Want some entertainment? Check out: Musing among the vegetables: International Brooklyn Bagel Day
This is pure insanity. Anyone who prefers NY bagels, or buns with holes in them, as I pejoratively but rightly refer to them, over Montreal bagels simply has no brains at all.
And no palate. Ask anyone, I'll eat anything except liver. Anything at all without complain, enjoying it as much as I would enjoy anything else.
But NY bagels over Montreal Bagels? You gotta be kidding! That's insanity!
And listen, anyone will tell you there is only two places in Montreal that does them right: Fairmount Bagel Bakery, and Viateur Bagel Shop.
Don't get into a fistfight over which one is better.
Not convinced? Look: This is what Wikipedia says about New York Bagels, and NY Bagels. Let's try even Brooklyn Bagels.
Now let's try Montreal Bagels.
For God's sake, people fly these things from Montreal to New York.
Put it this way: Our Jews are better than your Jews!
OK, I'm all better now.
From SvanetiProject.Com:
N.B. This blog post does not in any way endorse skiing, a sport I think should qualify any participant as insane. This said, if you must ski, consider sking in Georgia.
