From Johnson's Russia List 2008 #95
Wall Street Journal Europe
May 14, 2008
Bullies of the Caucasus
By THOMAS DE WAAL
Mr. de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
If you're deep in the trenches, stop digging.
Both Russia and Georgia darkly warned last week
of the danger of war over the Black Sea territory
of Abkhazia, but they both keep digging.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said
Moscow and Tbilisi have come "very close" to a
military confrontation. Russia threatened
Georgia, moving in an extra 500 troops to join
the force it leads in Abkhazia. Formally
peacekeepers under an international mandate,
these troops not only keep the peace -- on
Russian terms -- but strengthen Moscow's grip
over a region that is legally part of Georgia.
In Moscow, Georgia-baiting has now become a
popular sport. Vladimir Putin dramatically
stepped up his support for Abkhazia and hostility
toward Georgia in the last two months of his
presidency in what looked like an effort to lock
his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, into a hard-line policy.
Mr. Saakashvili is also using the putative threat
of Russian aggression for domestic political
purposes and to call for Western support. His own
standing has recently suffered after his
crackdown on the opposition last November and a
suspiciously wafer-thin re-election as president
in January. His governing party is now facing a
tough fight in parliamentary elections on May 21.
The talk I heard in Tbilisi 10 days ago was that
some hotheads around the president are tempted to
make a move on Abkhazia, perhaps as early as next
week, to boost popular support for the president
ahead of the elections. Wiser voices, such as
that of Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze, are
warning that this would be a catastrophe.
It is clear that Russia manipulates the Abkhazia
conflict to punish Georgia for trying to escape
Moscow's orbit of influence and move closer to
the West. A telling moment was when Sergei
Mironov, speaker of the upper house of the
Russian parliament, in October 2006 let slip: "We
won't forgive those who spit at us."
As a result of Tbilisi's aspirations to join the
European Union and NATO, Russia has bullied its
southern neighbor. In autumn 2006, Moscow banned
the import of Georgian wine and mineral water --
long a fixture of Russian dinner tables -- on the
dubious grounds that they were "unsanitary,"
imposed a transport blockade, and brutally deported Georgian migrant workers.
Most blatant have been Russian incursions into
Georgian airspace, including two rocket attacks
on remote parts of Georgian territory last year.
Thankfully this demonstration of power did not
cause any casualties. This is where Georgia
deserves the West's unwavering support. A much
swifter investigation into these incidents and a
much blunter response from Western governments
might have deterred Moscow from further
aggression. A Russian rocket attack on Georgia
should be no more tolerated than a Russian attack
on, say, Finland. In addition, it is time for
Brussels to revive a shelved plan to set up an EU
monitoring mission on the Russian-Georgian
border. But as much as Moscow is using the
Abkhazia conflict to settle old scores with
Tbilisi, the Georgians are missing the point by
blaming Russia alone for their trouble with the
renegade province. Russia is a secondary actor in
this dispute. Even if it had not intervened,
there would still be a Georgian-Abkhaz problem that needs to be fixed.
The Abkhaz are a small ethnic group unrelated to
the Georgians, who have shared with them for
centuries the same beautiful stretch of Black Sea coastline.
During the perestroika era the Abkhaz demanded
greater autonomy from the Soviet Republic of
Georgia and felt threatened by a resurgence of
Georgian xenophobic nationalism. War started in
1992 with the Georgian army's sacking of the
Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi, and what could be termed
ethnic cleansing of Abkhaz. Then the Abkhaz
managed to turn the tide and defeated the
Georgians. The majority of the prewar Georgian
population of Abkhazia -- around 239,000 people,
or 45% of the total population -- left in what
amounted to a second act of ethnic cleansing.
The Abkhaz won a bitter victory in a nasty ethnic
conflict in which both sides committed crimes.
For the next decade Abkhazia existed as a
miserable hinterland in a state of self-declared independence.
When Mr. Saakashvili was elected president in
2004 with a huge popular mandate for change, he
had a historic opportunity to be the Charles de
Gaulle of the Caucasus. But instead of offering a
grand peace deal to the Abkhaz, Mr. Saakashvili
maintained a policy of economic isolation and
moral outrage over the secessionists. He even
moved extra troops into the mountains of
Abkhazia. And when he started on the path of NATO
accession, he did so without offering any
assurances to his pro-Russian breakaway provinces
(the other one is South Ossetia) on what this would mean for them.
Two months ago, the Georgian government finally
unveiled a comprehensive peace plan -- almost 15
years after the war. It offered the Abkhaz
substantial powers within Georgia, including the
vice presidency. Unfortunately, the plan broke
the first law of peace negotiations: It was
launched unilaterally and without consulting the
other side. And so the Abkhaz rejected it.
Mr. Saakashvili then last month made an inept
speech to his Abkhaz and Ossetian "brothers and
sisters" in which he told them to fear Russia and
their own "corrupt, criminal" leaders and wildly
inflated the number of Georgian refugees.
There is no love lost between the Abkhaz and the
Russians. Wry inhabitants of Abkhazia like to say
that both the Russians and Georgians, remembering
their idyllic childhood summer holidays by the
Black Sea, want Abkhazia but without any Abkhaz.
It was Georgian clumsiness that drove the Abkhaz
into the embrace of Russia. Any nation would be
alarmed to have a large, well-armed bully as a
neighbor -- this is how the Georgians feel about
Russia and how the Abkhaz feel about Georgia.
Western countries have been happy to pretend that
by maintaining a small U.N. mission of 130
unarmed observers (entirely reliant for their
security on Russian peacekeepers) they are
offering a road map to peace in Abkhazia. This
timidity has allowed the Russians to reshape the facts on the ground.
After much hand-wringing -- and Georgian
resistance -- the EU approved last year a small
aid program for Abkhazia and despatched two
police officers to join the U.N. mission. Compare
this to what the Russians have offered the
Abkhaz: Russian passports that allow them to
travel to the outside world, pensions for the
elderly and, latterly, massive investments ahead
of the nearby 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It is
not surprising where Abkhaz loyalties now lie.
Abkhazia is now virtually lost to Georgia --
almost as lost as Kosovo is to Serbia. The only
chance for Tbilisi to reverse this process and
see Georgian refugees ever returning to their
home is, paradoxically, to let go. Tbilisi should
open up Abkhazia and free it from dependence on
Russia. That means lifting sanctions and
permitting a sea link to Turkey and the
re-opening of a railway line connecting it with Western Georgia.
Such a policy would change the atmosphere and
call the Abkhaz bluff -- forcing them to
negotiate in earnest and confront the issue that
holds the key to their future status: Abkhaz
responsibilities to their prewar Georgian
population. And the rest of us would sleep a
little easier if only this tinderbox in the Caucasus could be damped down.
