By Asbed Kotchikian, Guest Contributor
Asbed Kotchikian is a lecturer at the Global Studies
Department at Bentley University specializing in the politics of identity, foreign policy as
well as political processes in the Middle East and the South
Caucasus. He frequently travels to both regions (most recently in
July 2009).
Two weeks
ago, Tbilisi announced its withdrawal from the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) over a year after the war between Russia and Republic of Georgia.
The CIS was created on December 8, 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet
Union to “ease” the separation of the 13 republics (the Baltic countries
refused to join) and provide Russia with a new vehicle to keep its cultural,
economic political and military oversight over its former “colonies.” In other words, the formation of the CIS retained
12 non-Russian republics in Russia’s
sphere of influence.
Not so Recent Background
Georgia’s enrollment in the CIS was not
a decision made under “normal” circumstances. Thus in 1994 (the year Georgia’s then President Eduard Shevardnadze
signed the agreement with Russia
that brought Georgia into
the CIS), the followers of the ousted Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia
were gaining ground in a civil war that had threatened to throw Georgia
into an abyss of failed statehood. Not long after the signing of the CIS
treaty, the Georgian army began to gain ground against the Zviadist rebels. Soon
thereafter, Russian “peacekeepers” landed in western Georgia to help quell the rebellion
and consolidate Shevardnadze’s authority.
Georgia’s entry into the CIS came with
tremendous hesitation and mistrust. From the Georgian perspective, the CIS was
nothing more than a new version of the Russian attempt to colonize the “near
abroad” (the term that many Russians used to designate the former Soviet and
now independent republics). However, in the face of imminent collapse of the
country into a disorganized and dysfunctional entity, accepting Russian
protection became the only way out for the continuation of Georgia as a viable state. This
“alliance” – which from the Georgian standpoint - was not based on free choice,
was an important reason for the subsequent tension between the two countries,
since it provided Russia
with a mechanism and the tools to limit Georgia’s
attempts to conduct a foreign policy distinct from that of Moscow.
Russia also retained a heavy military
presence in Georgia (under
the guise of CIS peace-keeping forces) acting as a buffer between Georgia forces on the one hand and separatist
Abkhaz and South Ossetians on the other. In
1994, then Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev stated that “the Russian
military presence in Georgia
was vital to ensure a stabilization of the situation, to protect the rights of
Russian speakers, and to help Georgia
establish its own armed forces.”
Behind
On
August 7, 2008, Tbilisi embarked on a large
scale military operation to retake the breakaway and unrecognized republic of South Ossetia.
Under
Soviet rule, South Ossetia constituted an autonomous
region in Georgian SSR. The population in the region is mostly Ossetian, and
the region has strong ties with the neighboring North Ossetian autonomous
region in the Russian
Federation. South Ossetia was also the first
region in Georgia to take
separatist steps from the central government when in November 1989 the South
Ossetian Supreme Soviet approved a decision to unite South Ossetia with the
North Ossetian Autonomous SSR, part of the USSR.
South
Ossetia declared its independence from Georgia on September 20, 1990. The
declaration of independence by the South Ossetian soviet was soon followed by elections for the regional parliament. Tbilisi’s reaction was to abolish South Ossetia’s
autonomous status within Georgia.
Two years of sporadic violence followed during which some 1,000 people lost
their lives, and some 40,000 of the region’s Ossetian population fled north to
the North Ossetian
Republic, whereas the Georgian
population was forced to flee the region and find refuge in various parts of Georgia.
By June
1992, Georgia and Russia had signed a ceasefire agreement in South Ossetia according to which tripartite (Georgian,
Russian and South Ossetian) patrol groups made sure that hostilities were
contained. During the next 15 years Tbilisi
tried, with not much success, to retake control of the region. Meanwhile, South
Ossetia developed closer ties with North Ossetia (by then a semi-autonomous
region in the Russian Federation)
and with Moscow.
Russia reciprocated by
granting Russian citizenship to many South Ossetians (by some estimates over 70
percent of South Ossetians have Russian citizenship) hence making the
protection of South Ossetia synonymous with
protecting its own citizens.
The "Hot August" of 2008
Georgian
President Mikhail Saakashvili decided to utilize the military solution in
August 2008 for two reasons. The first was the increased pressure on and
isolation of Saakashvili in Georgia
as a growing opposition to his presidency was demanding the delivery of social
and political reforms which Saakashvili had committed to when he came to power
after the Rose Revolution in 2003. Consequently Saakashvili decided to play the
nationalist card to divert attention from his domestic political woes.
The second reason was that in
recent years, Tbilisi
had continued to integrate itself into western security institutions (like
NATO’s Partnership for Peace and the US sponsored “Train and Equip” program). This
increasing integration had generated a false sense of belonging to the “western
camp” and with it the misguided notion that in the event of a war between Russia and Georgia,
the West would come to Tbilisi’s
aid.
By the
end of August 2008, Russian forces had managed to push Georgian forces out of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia (the other breakaway region) and had established military
checkpoints a mere 20 miles away from Tbilisi,
Georgia’s capital.
To add a political insult to the military injury, in September 2008, Russia unitarily recognized the independence of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia pointing to the recognition of Kosovo’s independence
by the US
and many European countries as precedent.
The Repetitive
Nature of Georgian History
The
similarities existing between Georgia’s
first president Gamsakhurdia and the current one, Saakashvili, are striking.
Both came to power with large mandates (Gamsakhurdia was elected in 1991 with
87% of the votes, while Saakashvili got over 95% in the presidential elections
held in 2004). Both waved the flag of Georgia’s
independence from Russia
along with greater integration into the West. Moreover the similarities between
the two presidents can be extended to include the transformation of both
individuals from populist and popular presidents to isolated ones.
Gamsakhurdia
built his popularity on the nationalist wave by aspiring to homogenize Georgia. Yet, not
long after his election as president, Gamsakhurdia alienated not only Russian
and non-Georgian minorities in Georgia
but also to a large extent the various Georgian political forces.
This resulted
in mass demonstrations in Tbilisi
demanding the resignation of Gamsakhurdia, demonstrations which soon turned
bloody when anti- and pro-Gamsakhurdia supporters clashed in front of the
parliament building.
By the
same token, when Saakashvili came to power in 2004, he was surrounded by many
veteran politicians including Zurab Zhvania (who later became the Prime
Minster) and Nino Burjanadze (the speaker of the parliament at the time) and
his major mandate was domestic political reform. However by 2008 Saakashvili
had managed to alienate his political allies (Zhvania was killed in a carbon
monoxide poisoning in 2005) and found himself more and more isolated and
increasingly less popular (during the 2008 presidential elections Saakashvili got
less than 55% of the votes cast).
The
similarities between the two presidents were highlighted even more when in 2007
Gamsakhurdia’s remains were re-interred in Tbilisi’s Mtatsminda Pantheon (a
location reserved for Georgian national heroes) after they were returned from
Grozny where he had been buried after
committing suicide in 1993.
Why and how should Georgia
be on our Mind?
The aim
of this piece is not to provide a narrative of Georgian history for the sake of
history, but rather to utilize this history as a foundation for understanding
the current developments in the South Caucasus.
As a troubled yet important
region, the South Caucasus neighbors the energy rich Caspian
Basin and Iran
and acts as a conduit between Russia
and the Middle East. More importantly energy
pipelines go through the region bringing the much needed “black gold” to the
international market. Because of the closed border between Armenia and Azerbaijan
(the two countries fought a war over the Armenian populated region of
Nagorno-Karabakh) and Iran’s
isolation by the US, Georgia
has become the only alternative for energy transport for Central Asian and
Azerbaijani oil to the West.
Any
country which has oil or oil pipelines going through its territory is of vital
interest to the international community. Nevertheless defining a region’s importance
solely based on the energy needs of the West is shortsighted. Georgia is a country that carries huge
historical and political baggage and as such needs to be viewed in light of a
small state neighboring a larger one (Russia).
Furthermore, the 2003 Rose
Revolution in Georgia (along with the 2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the
one which ousted the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2001) was hailed
in the West as a sign of democratic transition without realization that popular
demonstrations do not automatically result in democracies and that although the
intention of any leader might be as “noble” as to establish democracy and rule
of law, democratization requires institutions, free and civilized political
rivalry and a stable political environment, all things that Georgia is still in
the process of developing.
This
does not mean that we in the West should turn our back on Georgia and to the continuing
evolution of the political situation there. After all, an active and prosperous
civil society movement in Georgia
is what made it possible for the Rose revolution to succeed and to keep
pressure on the government to pay attention to the needs of its citizens.
The Message that Needs Sending to
Georgia
However,
the most important message that needs to be sent to Georgia
is the clarification of Georgia’s
position within the larger context of US foreign policy in the region.
This stems from the fact that there continues to be a misguided perception in Tbilisi that Georgia is more important to the
West than it actually is. This misconception is - to a large extent - the fault
of the West which has not articulated to the Georgians the importance of their
small country when balancing relations with Russia is also part of the equation.
US foreign policy towards Georgia
and the South Caucasus needs to be based on
understanding the multi-nuanced dimensions of civil society, the region’s
complex history and the multiethnic nature of the societies. More importantly
there needs to be an awareness that while US foreign policy is built by
“tabulating” the pros and cons of some of our decisions there, in a region like
the South Caucasus, there are many “hidden” factors that are difficult to
quantify (national pride, historic animosity, etc) yet are of paramount
importance for understanding the leadership of the countries in the region.
Foreign
policy is not just making decisions based on fact-finding missions or by
evaluating the status quo on the
ground, rather it based on deep cultural and historical understanding of the
region we are dealing with. This is a lesson that US foreign policymakers seem
to be learning in Iraq and Afghanistan. It
should be a lesson employed in other parts of the globe as well.
Map of Georgia from the Perry Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas.