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Georgia in the melting
pot
By K Gajendra Singh
Crowds harangued and incited by opposition
leaders led by Mikhail Saakashvili charged through the
portals of the Georgian parliamentary building in
Tbilisi on November 22 and then swarmed into the chamber
itself. Security guards hustled away a tired and dazed
President Eduard Shevardnadze, his hair askew.
Shevardnadze, ruler of independent Georgia for most of
the time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, was
accused of rigging November 2 parliamentary elections,
and he resigned.
Commenting on his resignation,
the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, told
Interfax news agency: "He is not a coward and probably
understood that the moment had come to make this step so
that Georgia would not break up. I think he was right."
In accordance with the Georgian constitution,
the parliamentary speaker, 38-year-old lawyer Nino
Burjanadze, also an opposition leader but opposed to the
storming tactics, became acting head of state. Fresh
elections have been announced for January 4.
Saakashvili, United States educated and with a Dutch
wife, has been proposed as the only viable presidential
candidate, but in Tbilisi rivalry between Saakashvili
and Burjanadze remains.
For almost three
decades, Shevardnadze has been a fixture, first as a
communist ruler, then an interim leader and twice as
president after he returned from Moscow in 1992. He
certainly had a turbulent tenure, facing separatist
rebellions in four provinces, losing control of the
breakaway region of Abkhazia and surviving three
assassination attempts.
He became increasingly
unpopular as Georgia's 5 million people sank deeper into
poverty, pervasive corruption and a collapse of
government services. Georgia's gross domestic product
has been reduced by a third of its 1990's figure,
despite US$1 billion in support from the US. Most of the
money, as in other former communist states, was
misappropriated.
In the communist system, orders
were sent from Moscow and were implemented. After the
collapse of that system, free-for-all theft and
corruption followed, with mafias and ruthless bands of
gangsters acquiring money and control over the levers of
power. The West has done little about it except make
half-hearted noises.
Shevardnadze had no option
other than to resign when his key allies deserted him.
Georgian state television head Zaza Shengelia resigned
after Shevardnadze dubbed him as pro-opposition. Tedo
Japaridze, head of the National Security Council,
publicly distanced himself from alleged rigged
elections. This led to many branches of the security
forces to either defect to the opposition or show
reluctance to heed Shevardnadze's wish to impose a state
of emergency. The National Guard and special forces
stationed on the outskirts of Tbilisi switched
allegiances.
The US has been training Georgia's
special forces since mid-2002, and their defection, led
by their commander Georgi Shengilia, to the opposition
played a decisive role in forcing Shevardnadze to quit,
according to Janes.com.
The delayed election
results of November 20 were widely believed to be
fraudulent. The polls had already been denounced by the
US, the European Union and the OSCE - the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The election
commission claimed that the pro-Shevardnadze New Georgia
coalition won a 21.3 percent share of the votes, while
exit polls gave opposition groups under the National
Movement-Democratic Front (EM-DP) of Tbilisi city
council chairman Saakashvili top place.
On
November 26, Georgia's supreme court annulled the
elections, based on material gathered by the
Tbilisi-based group, Fair Elections. The main evidence
consisted of two identical forms used to note the
official results in each of Georgia's 2,870 polling
stations - one compiled and signed by the electoral
officers at the stations, the other produced later by
the government-appointed Central Election Committee.
When Fair Elections' observers later compared the forms,
they didn't match.
Apart from political
divisions in Tbilisi, other threats face Georgia, such
as instability in the Muslim enclave of Ajaria, which
borders Turkey. Shevardnadze had struck a deal with its
leader Aslan Abashidze not to interfere in Tbilisi , and
Ajaria would be left alone. Ajaria is as corrupt as any
other place. Abashidze's did send his supporters to
Tbilisi to back Shevardnadze. Since 1992, Ajaria and the
breakaway republic of South Ossetia have been out of
central control.
If the more radical EM-DP's
populist leader Saakashvili becomes president and
attempts a military solution to the Ajaria and South
Ossetian problems, it could lead to a confrontation with
Russia, which has long backed the separatists in these
two regions.
Many publications in the West have
called the recent events in Georgia a "velvet" or "rose"
revolution. Said the Economist of London, "Proud
Georgians will point to this non-violence to argue that
their country is fundamentally different to its
Caucasian neighbors, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both of
these held flawed elections earlier this year too. But
the consequences were not a 'velvet revolution' like
Georgia's but, in Azerbaijan's case, violently repressed
riots and, in Armenia's, a weary resignation by the
people that there was little they could do to change
things. That things in Georgia happened differently is a
tribute partly to the vibrancy of the democratic
opposition there, and partly to the fact that the West's
involvement - both in monitoring the elections and in
speaking out about fraud afterwards - was much greater."
However, this does not mean that all will be
smooth in the future, as the dangers of violence and
possible civil war always exist. "The fact that they
[the opposition] couldn't unite before the election,"
says Brenda Shaffer, head of the Caspian Studies Program
at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, "means that
if they get the keys to parliament and to the
president's house, I'm not sure they're going to be able
to keep running together."
Shevardnadze's
legacy
Suddenly, United States favorite
Shevardnadze had feet of clay. Anatol Lieven, an expert
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
Washington who was in Georgia in the early 1990s during
a period of civil war and turmoil said: "What people
forget is that still, today, Shevardnadze has been
leader of Georgia much longer as a communist then as a
so-called democrat or independent president. This man's
whole grip was formed by the communist dictatorship. So
the question is: Can [opposition leader Mikhail]
Saakashvili put the state back together again?"
"He was never a true democrat because he was a
person shaped and molded in the communist system," said
George Khutsishvili, a political analyst at the
International Center on Conflict and Negotiation. "He
was a bearer of the spirit of the system. He was a
pragmatist, politically agile, a man who knew how to
tailor his suit to fit the occasion," Khutsishvili said.
But he never really understood the ideas that underlie
civil society. "He was tolerant, but he was not a
liberal."
Before Shevardnadze's resignation,
Lieven said: "Always on these occasions, one gets into
optimistic mode. But we mustn't make the same mistake
with the Georgian opposition that we made about Georgia
itself, [dividing it into] goodies and baddies, and
cowboys and Indians. All these people come from a
particular Georgian political culture, which so far has
thrown up one catastrophe after another." Lieven also
noted that "family, clan, blood relations and patronage"
are part of the system, and any government is "bound to
reward its followers, its family". "If they win, I hope
this lot will be different," he concludes of the
opposition. "There are degrees; you don't have to do it
as kleptocratically as Shevardnadze. But that is the
cultural expectation."
Shevardnadze was lauded
and feted in the US and Europe. As the foreign minister
of Mikhail Gorbachev, and as a buddy of then US
secretary of state James Baker, they brought down the
Soviet empire without getting much in return.
Shevardnadze was the West's darling, touted as a
champion of democracy, standing side-by-side with the
last Soviet leader Gorbachev and their close partners in
Washington as the Berlin wall came down in 1989.
He was a leading champion of disarmament. Among
his successes was the negotiation of the anti-ballistic
missile treaty between Moscow and Washington.
Shevardnadze also served as one of the chief Russian
architects of German reunification - a fact not lost on
German political leaders, who quickly offered
Shevardnadze exile over the weekend following his
resignation. "Should Shevardnadze decide he wants to
come to Germany," government spokesman Bela Anda said,
"he would, not least because of his service of German
reunification, be welcome."
So the US put up
with his misrule and provided aid worth $1 billion, as
well as other help and support to build Georgia as a
bulwark against Russia's own interests in the region.
But most of the money went into pockets of the ruling
elite.
In return, under Shevardnadze, Georgia
fully toed the US line, becoming an ally of the US in
its "war on terror". And at US bidding, Shevardnadze
purged the top ranks of the security agencies and
brought in the pro-American former ambassador in
Washington, Tedo Dzhaparidze, as his national security
chief, who has now let him down.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin's hostility was compounded by
his conviction that Shevardnadze was less than helpful
on the war in Chechnya, across Georgia's northern
border. In 1999, outgoing president Boris Yeltsin phoned
Shevardnadze and requested using Georgia for a Russian
attack on Chechnya. US deputy secretary of state Strobe
Talbott advised Shevardnadze to say no. Putin, then just
entrenching his power by dealing with the rebels in
Chechnya, never forgave the Georgian leader.
The
US also trained Georgian units, allegedly to battle
Chechen rebels with links to al-Qaeda in the lawless
Pankisi Gorge along Russia's Chechen border to the
north. With little heed for long-term consequences, the
US perhaps let Georgia overlook Chechens using its
territory to establish international links, which were
possibly behind the recent Istanbul bombings against two
synagogues, the British Consulate and HSBC Bank. And
perhaps elsewhere, too, including Iraq.
Prey
and battleground for outsiders
The word Georgia
(Gurjistan in Turkish) derives from Gorj, a name given
by the Persians, who once ruled over Georgia, although
Georgians call their country Kartvelia.
The
Georgians are mentioned in Assyrian and Urartu
(Armenian) annals. The Greeks knew them as Golchis. The
Greek city state Miletus (near Izmir in Turkey)
established many trading posts on the Black Sea coast,
including Trabzon and others in the region. Georgians
came under the direct or indirect rule of Romans,
Byzantines, Parthians (Parthia was an ancient land
corresponding roughly to the modern region of Khorasan
in Iran), Persians and Ottomans. The Arabs reached
Georgia in the 7th century and established an emirate at
Tbilisi. The Mongols in their usual manner destroyed and
ruled over them. Tamerlane was particularly brutal
against the Christian population. For long the Caucasian
region including Chechnya was part of the Ottoman
Empire. The change of ruling elites and the mountainous
nature of the region explains why Caucasia resembles a
patchwork quilt made of Christians and Muslims, with
innumerable races and ethnicities, religious sects and
languages. After the collapse of the USSR, the
dictatorial threads holding them together began to come
apart.
Eighty-five percent of Georgia is
mountainous, so a quick way to get a feel for the
country is to see it by air, which this writer did when
regularly flying between Ankara, Istanbul and Athens to
Baku in Azerbaijan, to which he was concurrently
accredited from Ankara. He also viewed the twin peaks of
Ararat mountain in eastern Turkey, supposedly the
resting place of Noah's Ark. A so-called search for the
Ark was also used by the US to spy on the Soviet regions
of Armenia and Georgia and infiltrate spies (some sent
by Great Britain were betrayed to their sorry end by the
British double agent Kim Philby during World War II).
The Eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey around
Rize adjoining southwestern Georgia is quite similar -
it is a land of hazelnut groves and tea gardens (Georgia
produced 90 percent of Russia's tea). It is mostly
inhabited by Georgia's ethnic and linguistic cousins,
called Laz, who also claim origin from Golchis, whose
princess Medea helped Jason and the Argonauts in
stealing the golden fleece, but was then herself
betrayed. The Laz language belongs to the Kartvelian
family to which Georgian also belongs.
Laz are
fair-haired with blue eyes, and in many remote places
they still speak Georgian. But after early conversion to
Islam, the Laz have stayed loyal and not suffered like
Georgians and Armenians in Turkey. Lazes are energetic
and enterprising and control real estate, contracting
and the restaurant business in Turkey. They dance very
well - a skimming sort of dance form. They are somewhat
like Indian Sardarjis, with their joy for life, with
many similar jokes about them too.
In 1993, when
this writer drove up to the border of Georgia, thousands
of Georgians were pouring into Turkey in their rickety
cars, trying to barter whatever was then produced in
Georgia in exchange for Turkish goods. Some of the
women, all called "Natashas" played havoc with marital
harmony in the region.
Apart from its strategic
location, even commercially as a route to the West for
the energy resources of the Caspian Sea Basin, Georgia
is rich in hydro-electric potential. Many rivers and
streams rush down its mountains. There is not much oil,
but many mineral riches, including manganese, with
reserves on a par with those of Brazil, India and Ghana.
Georgia became a Christian nation around the
same time as Byzantine Constantinople and sided with the
Orthodox Greeks. It was converted to Christianity by St
Nino, hence the popularity of the name Nino. It remains
the only other Christian nation along with Armenia in a
predominantly Muslim region. Queen Tamara remains
Georgia's most famous ruler (1184 to 1213). She
exercised great influence in the region.
As
Russians advanced and the Ottoman Empire retreated
during the19th century, Georgia came under Russian rule
- direct or indirect. By the end of the 19th century, it
was taken over and was later joined to the Soviet Union
as a part of the Caucasian Autonomous Republic, which
was then divided into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Like elsewhere in the world, in the USSR too, the
borders were so drawn up in Moscow, which created
permanent problems. Joseph Stalin and his KGB (the
Soviet state security ministry) chief Laventi Beria were
Georgians. Shevardnadze is the next most well known
Georgian, although he is disliked as much in Moscow as
he is admired in Washington for his role, as Gorbachev's
foreign minister, in bringing about the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
Post Shevardnadze
At the
moment, with all eyes focused on Iraq and around it, all
parties have good reason to keep Georgia stable. US
Secretary of State Colin Powell had telephoned
Shevardnadze, urging a bloodless departure, and he said
in an interview: "An unstable Georgia automatically
results in an unstable Caucasus." He characterizes the
attitude of "the West" toward Shevardnadze this way:
"Shevardnadze was a good man. It was nice to cooperate
with him, but now his time is up."
Earlier,
Powell hinted that US ambassador Richard Miles was part
of a plot to depose Shevardnadze. Later, he said that
American non-governmental organizations that helped
train polling station observers during the parliamentary
vote were responsible. Shevardnadze claims that the army
was ready, on his orders, to shoot at protesters. But he
chose instead to quit because he didn't want to "go down
in history as the one who let the bloodshed happen". On
November 29, he told Russian television that US
multibillionaire George Soros was one of the major
malefactors who led to the change of leadership in
Georgia.
Miles is known to have been actively
grooming Saakashvili to take over. A series of senior US
figures passed through Tbilisi earlier this year to warn
Shevardnadze that his days were numbered, including
Baker, four months ago, who tried to persuade his old
friend to hold an honest parliamentary election and
salvage his tattered reputation. "We would like to see
stronger leadership," Miles told the Washington Post
recently in an unusually public criticism of a
long-standing US ally.
The same tactics were
applied by the US triumphantly in Serbia in 2000 to
topple Slobodan Milosevic. Michael Kozak, the US
ambassador in Minsk, then sought to emulate the success
in elections in Belarus against the authoritarian
Alexander Lukashenko, but failed.
Saakashvili's
more impetuous followers, using his own tactics, tried
to force three old guard regional governors to resign by
storming their offices, which he had to condemn on TV.
He said: "They will be punished." He also had to
intervene to reinstate the rector of Tbilisi State
University, widely accused of corruption and forced out
by the same students who had organized earlier protests
in parliament. "We must go very slowly and not push too
hard," said MP Alexander Shalamberidze, a supporter of
Saakashvili. "The country is very fragile, and the old
guard is still strong," he said.
A little
game in the great game
The US may be tied down in
Iraq, but it has a stake in Georgia as a bulwark against
Russia and to protect the $2.9 billion
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipe line that will run from
Baku in Azerbaijan through Georgia to a new terminal at
Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It is now
under construction and financed by Western oil
companies. This pipeline will counter the present Russia
monopoly of oil transport from the Caspian basin to the
West.
The youthful, US-trained lawyer
Saakashvili was a protege of Shevardnadze and once his
justice minister. But Saakashvili is known to be a
"hothead" who walked out of negotiations with the
president. It appears that he has not thought through a
workable strategy on what to do now. Shevardnadze calls
him a "dangerous phenomenon".
While Saakashvili
might have led the charge into parliament and pointed at
the white-haired Shevardnadze on the podium and shouted:
"Resign! Resign!", he realizes the enormity of the
problem. "The president should stay in Georgia,"
Saakashvili told CNN. "The important thing was that the
military switched sides," which was the turning point,
he added. He was honor-bound, he claimed, to provide
Shevardnadze and his family with "guarantees of absolute
security".
Now, slowly and surely, Russia and
the US are making their moves. US President George W
Bush declared his support for Georgia's "territorial
integrity". Acting President Nino Burjanadze confirmed
that she had received a phone call from Bush promising
help in guaranteeing Georgia's stability. Sean
McCormack, US National Security Council spokesman, later
said: "The president reiterated United States support
for Georgia's sovereignty, independence and territorial
integrity."
Saakashvili intends to push for
membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
the European Union, which will be opposed by Russia.
Among others, Russian protege Aslan Abashidze, who rules
the autonomous southwestern province of Adzharia like
his personal fiefdom, is totally opposed to any such
move. Saying that the popular revolt in Tbilisi might
spill south, Abashidze declared a state of emergency and
restricted movement to and from the province.
Russia still has two military bases in Georgia.
After the resignation, Moscow hosted leaders opposed to
Tbilisi for talks. An ethnic Georgian, Abashidze said
that he has never pursued a policy of outright
independence. But he has denounced Saakashvili's
"aggressive attitude" toward Adzharia and refuses to say
whether his Revival Party, and his province, will take
part in the January 4 elections. Also at the Moscow
meeting with Abashidze were the leaders of South Ossetia
and Abkhazia, whose break from Georgia is widely blamed
on Russian backing.
South Ossetia declared its
independence during Soviet times and the Black Sea
region of Abkhazia separated from Georgia in 1993 after
a 13-month war that left 10,000 people dead. Some
300,000 Georgian refugees fled Abkhazia during the war
and many now live in poverty in Tbilisi.
In
Moscow, Abashidze expressed hope that the Russian
military forces based in Batumi, the Adjaran capital,
would intervene to prevent conflict (between Adzharia
and Tbilisi). He hoped to further strengthen existing
economic cooperation with Russia. He said that he was
ready for talks with the new regime in Tbilisi and
repeatedly denied any intention of declaring
independence.
Abashidze met with Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and separately with Eduard
Kokoyev, leader of South Ossetia (north Ossetia is in
Russia). Abashidze and Kasyanov discussed joint economic
projects and applying a softer Russian visa regime to
Adjarans than to other Georgians. Residents of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia can already obtain Russian passports.
A delegation from Georgia's third separatist
region, Abkhazia, was also in Moscow. Valery Loshchinin,
a Russian deputy foreign minister, said that Moscow
considered Abashidze's regime "an important factor in
stability" within Georgia. He also said that joint
projects could include other regions of Georgia.
Analysts say that the real decision on Georgia's
territorial future will be made in Russia. "Russia will
have to decide whether it wants to calm the situation,
or whether it wants to use Adzharia as leverage to
pressure the new Georgian government," says Ghia Nodia,
head of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and
Development.
Last week, Putin criticized
Saakashvili's revolt, but said that he hoped Georgia and
Russia could restore the once friendly relationship
between them. The Moscow daily Izvestia struck a
different tone. Saakashvili, it said, "was the very man
who is absolutely unacceptable for Moscow. He is seen as
a populist, nationalist and a Russophobe."
In a
conciliatory message, Saakashvili, likely to win the
snap presidential elections in January, said that
Shevardnadze's resignation had created an opportunity to
resolve disputes with Russia and establish "friendly and
warm relations". Speaking partly in English and partly
in Russian, Saakashvili told foreign journalists that
"we have always said that for us a fundamental priority
is normal relations with our neighbors, and in the first
place with Russia". He also expressed readiness for
talks with Abashidze. But he added that it could not
split from Georgia, as Abkhazia and South Ossetia did in
the 1990s.
The turmoil in Georgia is a cause of
great concern for the general stability of the region,
but more so as it adjoins Chechnya, Turkey and
Azerbaijan. The Chechens, also called Cherkes and
Circassians, were relocated by the Ottoman rulers to its
various provinces in Anatolia and Arab lands like Syria
and Jordan. The movement of jihadis through Georgia,
Azerbaijan and even Turkey to Chechnya must have been
known to the authorities in these countries, all of whom
are very close to the US. The chickens could come home
to roost once again.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as
ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is
currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies. Email Gajendrak@hotmail.com
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