Revival

I expected to finish this blog after covering the war. I’m on my way to Pakistan for a new gig in Peshawar, but have just been back in Georgia talking to people there again, so I might add at least a few more posts before I shut down.

Parliament today endorsed Grigol Mgaloblishvili  as Prime Minister

But Saakashvili is in trouble. Popular support is fading. However, the opposition is just so disunited and dysfunctional it will buy him some time.

Filling the streets

Amazing protest yesterday. Probably at least 100,000 people filling Rustaveli and Freedom Square.

Of course, many were bused in — I watched the yellow public transport buses dropping them off and then driving up the hill. But there was a lot of spontaneity and feeling. Quite stirring. Been a long time since I’ve covered a rally that is peaceful and not about causing trouble.

Made it to Gori today, and the city is in better shape than I expected.

There’s still a sense of anger and resentment among Georgians. But most just want peace. As a friend, Rasha, said: we just want to be able to feed our families and live in peace.

 

Journalist killed

A colleague. Killed. And they don’t seem to even bother trying to hide their actions anymore.

Your move, NATO

My latest at www.newmatilda.com

Payback for Kosovo.

Russia in charge

TBILISI – ALMOST 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, its legacy remains striking within its former republics. From the impossibly absurd yellow above-ground water pipes that loop crazily into the sky to bend over driveways and loop around buildings, to heroic Stalinist worker statues and haphazard ethnic enclaves that still spark wars.
But Russia’s invasion of Georgia and its recognition of the independence of Tbilisi’s two breakaway regions, has sent a new and chilling reminder to other former satellites such as Azerbaijan, Poland and Ukraine that it still wields immense power over them.
And that the West is powerless to help.
Despite clear warnings from the United States and Europe, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week recognised the independence of the rebel Georgian regions of Abkhazia, in the west, and central South Ossetia after a short but bloody war with Tbilisi, upping the ante in a bitter stand-off with the West that has triggered warnings of a new Cold War.
“Russia will try to explain that there was no other way, and that if anyone doesn’t understand, it’s ready to confront (them),” says the head of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), Alexander Rondeli.
“This is a lie. They still play this superpower game. This was always part of the plan to destroy Georgia and show the world who’s boss. They’d already decided (on independence) months ago.”
Medvedev himself has made it clear the unbending support of Europe and the United States for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia this year over strenuous objections by Russia – Serbia’s ally – was a key reason for Russia moving to help Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the invasion of Georgia and the wider confrontation with the West.
“We’re not scared of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War, but of course we don’t want it,” Medvedev said on Kremlin-sponsored Russia Today television during the week.
Analysts say there is virtually no chance Russia will now withdraw its support for independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia – both of which it has pledged military support to if they are attacked.
“Russia is not going to go back on what it has done, in the same way that the United States and Europe are not going to go back on Kosovo,” says the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) Tbilisi-based Caucasus expert Lawrence Sheets, a 20-year veteran of the region.
Their declarations of independence supported by Russia, the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is unclear. Trying to get into South Ossetia, barely 30 km from Tbilisi, to investigate reports returning Georgians are being attacked and killed, journalists are abused and threatened at checkpoints manned by vodka-swilling Ossetian militiamen at villages such as Alkhagori.
It’s not safe to go on.
“People going back to Georgian villages are being killed by Ossetians. That’s not ethnic tension – that’s ethnic hatred already,” says Rondeli. “It’s a disaster, what’s happening.”
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes. And despite two weeks of heavily publicised aid deliveries from overseas, little is actually getting through to those who need it because of distribution problems, arguments among agencies about what to do and the continuing Russian military presence, aid workers say.
With the invasion and as Russian troops continue to hold key ground – including the major Black Sea oil port of Poti, forcing the United States to redirect a shipload of aid to Batumi to the south—what is its message to other former Soviet states?
“Scare the hell out of them,” says Thomas Goltz, an author of three books on the Caucasus and who has been covering this region for almost 20 years as a reporter and US-based academic.
“This has been a seismic event,” he says. “This is, if you want to call it, the revival of the Cold War or whatever terms you want to use.”
Russia’s neighbors are nervous. Azerbaijan has stopped piping its Caspian Sea oil and gas, and lot of Kazakhstan’s, through Georgia to the Georgian and Turkish coasts; Ukraine is looking at beefing up its military and has raised the idea of charging more for Russia’s Black Sea fleet to base itself at the Crimean port of Sevastopol; and Kazakhstan is considering pumping more of its oil and gas directly through Russia instead of building an undersea pipeline to Azerbaijan.
Baku, which loses $50 million every day the Georgian pipelines are empty, has already started shipping light crude through Iran – undermining US efforts to financially isolate Tehran over its nuclear program.
And as the war started, Russia warned Poland it had made itself a “100 percent” target for nuclear attack for signing a deal with Washington to allow part of its new missile shield to be based on Polish soil.
“The most disastrous part of this thing is that it has exposed the hollowness, the emptiness of this thing called NATO, this thing called the West, this thing called Europe, and particularly this thing called the United States of America,” Goltz says.
Analysts such as the ICG’s Sheets warn against alarmism. Of the anxious response of some former Soviet states, he says:
“It’s psychological scar tissue after being part of the Soviet Union for so long.”
While most former Soviet republics worry, it’s NATO aspirant Ukraine, with 47 million people divided between Ukrainians and Russians and a history of secessionist movements in its southeastern Crimean peninsula, that may be next.
“What has happened is a threat to everyone, not just for one country,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko warned during a visit this week by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband aimed at bolstering the pro-Western Kiev administration.
“Any nation could be next, any country. When we allow someone to ignore the fundamental right of territorial integrity, we put into doubt the existence of any country,” said Yushchenko, who almost died in a mysterious poisoning after he led his country’s 2004 Orange Revolution.
Many ethnic Russians in Ukraine, especially in Crimea, may in fact take heart that Moscow’s actions in Georgia demonstrate a commitment to pro-Russian communities, analysts say.
“It would take just a few levers to make something go down in Crimea,” Sheets says, adding Russia would be more likely to stir local dissent to trigger political ructions than to go in militarily.
The agreement for Russia’s fleet to use Sevastopol is due to expire in 2017 and Yushchenko has said it will not be renewed, another issue weighing heavily on Russia’s mind. It needs its warm water Black Sea fleet. Two years ago, Kiev accused Moscow of stirring protests over a NATO naval exercise in Crimea called Operation Sea Breeze. The Operation’s scenario: a breakaway peninsula caught between the clutches of a totalitarian government and a democratic one.
With a Russia immune to diplomatic slaps on the wrist, wielding veto power in the United Nations Security Council, and all major Western military forces mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little the world community can do, analysts say. Moscow has already said it no longer cares about its bid to join the World Trade Organisation. Threats about trying to have the 2014 Winter Olumpics shifted from Sochi, just north of Abkhazia, carry little weight.
“Russia doesn’t care about respectability,” says Rondeli. “Russia only cares about respect and fear.”
Russia also controls about 40% of Europe’s oil and gas supplies, giving it major economic leverage and fuelling its income — and national pride at home— with record-high energy prices.
The crisis has highlighted the diplomatic and military impotence of both the United States and NATO – sending a clear signal to would-be NATO members such as Georgia and Ukraine that they can’t rely on the alliance for protection.
The Georgian war is Russia’s most aggressive international move since its disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 — another country that is exposing NATO’s lack of diplomatic and military solidarity as the alliance struggle to muster enough troops and agree on how best to deploy them to fight a resurgent Taliban.
Russia’s Georgian invasion this month was ostensibly about protecting South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Tbilisi’s aggression. Georgia says it was forced to act to protect ethnic Georgian villages under attack from militias in South Ossetia. Both Georgia and Russia accuse each other of atrocities, which cannot be independently verified.
South Ossetians are a tough people, split by the soaring Caucasus mountains and a Soviet-drawn border from North Ossetia. Local historians even claim a genetic link to King Arthur of Camelot.
Largely Muslim Abkhazia on Georgia’s northern Black Sea coast was once a playground of the Soviet powerful, a favorite Politburo getaway that had one of the highest living standards in the Soviet Union. Both saw fierce fighting in the early 1990s before ceasefires and Russian peacekeepers moved in.
With tens of thousands of Georgians left homeless from the latest crisis – some until recently literally hiding in 4,500-year-old caves just outside the capital – about a dozen US-led NATO naval vessels have moved into the Black Sea. They are helping deliver water, tents, medicine and food to war victims and at the same time display a show of force to Russia, analysts say. And the Russian Black Sea fleet led by the cruiser Moskva is more active than normal.
“The West, which has consistently backed the idea of Georgia’s territorial integrity, broadly condemned the (independence) move, but has taken no action beyond rhetoric. Nor is it likely to in the short term,” US-based thinktank Stratfor.com says.
“The West could deploy naval forces that can outmaneuver and box in Russia as a whole, but that requires time and political will. In the meantime, Russia has forces on the ground in the two territories and loads more nearby. The West doesn’t. The Russians clearly are the ones determining the reality on the ground, and that — for now — is that.”

Georgian Defiance

Georgians are watching their country disintegrate, live on TV.

And it’s heartbreaking.

Russia goes on roaring

Just when you think Russia could not be more brazen, President Dimtry Medvedev has decided to recognise independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia — the ostensible reasons for Russia’s invasion.

It’s likely to, as much as the original invasion, at once test the West and prove its impotence.

Of bigger concern is the reaction on the ground in the two regions — it could be enough to trigger a bloody round of violence pitting neighbour against neighbour and don’t be surprised if it triggers a new flood of ethnic Georgians fleeing.

While Georgians — critics as well as supporters — have rallied around their President, Mikheil Saakashvili, it’s worth remembering effectively losing Abkhazia and South Ossetia played a major role in the downfall of his predecessor, former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

With the rest of the world largely powerless to do anything more than hurl insult and empty threats, this latest move effectively mean Georgia no longer exists as it did.

Analysis of geopolitical shift from Russia-Georgia crisis

My analysis, on www.newmatilda.com, on the seismic geopolitical shift caused by Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

Sending a message

Almost 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, its marks remain striking in its former republics. From the impossibly absurd yellow above-ground water pipes that loop crazily into the sky to go over driveways and around buildings to heroic Stalinist worker statues and bizarre ethnic enclaves that still spark wars.
But with the invasion of Georgia, Moscow has sent a new and chilling reminder to former satellites such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine that it still wields immense power over them. And that the West is powerless to help them.
Amid signs Russia is interpreting its one-page, French-brokered ceasefire in Georgia liberally at best, what is the message for other former Soviet states?
“Scare the shit out of them,” says Thomas Goltz, an author of three books on the Caucasus and who has been covering this region for almost 20 years as a reporter and US-based academic, after we return from today’s front line.

It’s the new Cold War.

“This has been a seismic event. This is, if you want to call it, the revival of the cold war or whatever terms you want to use,” says Goltz.

He says it’s too early to gauge the impact on countries such as Ukraine – like Georgia, aspiring for NATO membership – and Azerbaijan, which exports most of its Caspian Sea oil through Georgia.
“If were in Baku, or in Kiev or elsewhere, I would be looking over my shoulder right at this time,” he says.
“The most disastrous part of this thing is that is has exposed the hollowness, the emptiness of this thing called NATO, this thing called the West, this thing called the Europe, and particularly this thing called the United States of America.
“This is a show of force, and a very successful one.”
With a Russia unconcerned about diplomatic slaps on the wrist, wielding veto power in the United Nations Security Council, and all major Western military forces mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little the world community can do, analysts say.
Russia also controls about 40 percent of Europe’s oil and gas supplies, at once giving it both major economic leverage and fuelling its income — and national pride — with record high energy prices.
And while threatening some former republics, there are already signs Moscow’s actions are forcing others, such as Balarus, to come in closer rather than risk Moscow’s further wrath.
“Like other Former Soviet countries, Belarus is reassessing its relationship with Russia and the West after Moscow’s conflict with Georgia,” says US-based think tank Stratfor.com “While not long ago Minsk may have entertained the idea of gradually opening up to the West, the Georgian example will drive it back forcefully into the Kremlin’s orbit.
“Though isolated, Belarus already has exceedingly strong ties with Russia. The Georgian example will persuade Belarus’ autocratic president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, that whole-hearted pandering to Russia is the only way he can maintain his position of power.”
The Georgian conflict has also weakened Turkey’s opposition to the deployment of NATO navy forces on the Black Sea, the Hurriyet newspaper has reported, citing unnamed source.
And Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko personally called US President George W. Bush, according to Stratfor. Yuschchenko has also ordered Russia to give details of destination and cargo for all naval vessels moving through his territory.
The division between Ukraine’s pro-Russian east and pro-European is threatening.
“Any overt moves, either political or military, that would put Ukraine on the path toward conflict with Moscow will therefore be difficult to stomach for about half of the country’s residents, who could sympathize with the Russian intervention in Georgia,” says Stratfor.
“In fact, many pro-Russian Ukrainians might be comforted by Russian actions in Georgia, as they signal a level of commitment by Moscow to regions within the former Soviet Union that are not willing to sever their ties with Russia.
“Specifically, this means that Yushchenko’s edict on Russian naval forces is almost impossible to implement. Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, is in Crimea, which is overwhelmingly pro-Russian and in fact mostly Russian by ethnicity.
“Any attempt to interdict Russian naval vessels, either by Ukraine’s already weak navy or by overland troops taking over the actual port, could spark civil unrest in the region and in neighboring pro-Russian Ukrainian oblasts (autonomous regions – South Ossetia was an oblast within Georgia). Considering that eastern Ukraine is the industrial heartland and main economic powerhouse of the country, any unrest there would cripple Ukraine.”
Analysts say the war also sent a message to oil companies such as BP, which operates the pipelines from Azerbailjan through Georgia and on the Turkey’s southern coast, that it can take those lines out any time it wants.
This is Russia’s most aggressive international move since it invaded Afghanistan in 1979  – another country that is exposing NATO’s lack of diplomatic and military solidarity  now. Analysts say countries in the region are taking note of what they call a shocking return to the DNA and imperialism of the Soviet empire.
“They will be more careful,” says the head of Georgia’s Foundation for Strategic and International Studies Alexander Rondeli.
“They will be more balancing. But because Russia revealed it’s inner essence and the DNA of Soviet imperialism, now they will be very, very careful.
“I think this was the message to Georgia and then to others — that Russia is still the master in the house and that everyone has to respect them.”
The former Soviet states have remained largely quiet, for fear of angering the Russian Bear under hardline prime minister Alexander Putin.
Many former Soviet republics, such as oil-rich Azerbaijan, nestled between Russia and Iran and bordering Georgia’s east, have for years been playing delicate balancing games between the United States and Russia using mainly trade, energy and defence.
Azerbaijan, for instance, still pipes oil through Russia, but its oil and gas pipelines through Georgia offer major alternatives for breaking Russia’s energy stranglehold on Europe. At the same time, it paid US-based Blackwater $50 million to million to train its coastguard and hosts a major Russian military radar station – which Washington has turned down offers to share.
Ukraine has a large ethnic Russian minority and Moscow has been ratcheting up claims to the Crimea – which through the port of Sevastapol houses its Black Sea fleet and gives it its only warm water navy.
The military imbalance mirrors the population: According to the CIA Factbook the population of Russia is 140 million, against 4.6 million in Georgia, eight million in Azerbaijan and 46 million in Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion after Georgian military action in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia – North Ossetia was included in Russia proper as part of the Soviet policy of divide-and-rule by isolating or splitting ethnic communities – was well-planned. Months ahead, analysts say. A cyberwar hacking Georgian web sites started as long ago as early July, according to US-based Internet security experts.
Of all the former satellites, Georgia is militarily the weakest and the to rolling plains near the capital, Tbilisi, the easiest terrain strategically to fight. It’s also the closest to the US. The army is trained by the US and some of the equipment captured by the Russians was US-supplied. The downtown Tbilisi Marriott if full of young US soldiers here for a massive military-led operation to help up to 100,000 victims of the war.
Russian troops even now command the main east-west highway, which links Tbilisi with the central city of Gori, in the centre of the county, just south of South Ossetia and a little over an hour’s drive from Tbilisi.
Whatever the results of the ceasefire, they appear to be set to do so for some time. Russian armoured groups are dug in off the highway that leads through the step hills of the Caucasus. At one checkpoint, at least two soldiers appeared to be Chechen irregulars in Russian uniform.
The Russian control plits the country in two, down the centre from north to south. Travel west from the capital is blocked by heavily armed Russian soldiers, tanks and armoured personnel carriers hidden under camouflage netting.
“Go back. No media allowed,” said one soldier as we tried to drive into Gori.
To that Russian checkpoint, it’s an eery drive through farmland with tanks – Russian and Georgian – digging into the high ground of the hills or hiding in the lowlands. Large areas have been burned and the smell of smoke and ash hangs heavily in the air. Georgian orthodox churches tand out on the hills.
Georgia’s National Security Council chief, Aleksander Lomaia, who has been making daily visits with suited armed guards to the front line, told The Age at the last Georgian checkpoint before Russian control there were signs of a Russian pullback.
“I consider them, at last, to be keeping their promises,” he said, sweating heavily in the Georgian summer heat and humidity.
But Russian troops also command the main Black Sea oil port of Poti, which accounts for almost a third of all oil throughput.
While it’s sent a chill through former Soviet republics, the war may have strengthened the position of the controversial US-educated and backed Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvilii His second, and what he says is his final, term is due to end in early 2013.
“There is more unity, I think, than before the war,” says Rondeli, of the ialways mmaculately dressed and intelligent, but inflammatory and emotional Saakashvili.
“The opposition has now a very good excuse to criticise him, but I don’t think that this opposition is capable of doing anything.
“One of the main aims (was to oust Saakashvili), without a doubt, because this little man in the Kremlin (Putin) is so vengeful he could not forgive Georgia that Georgia is so independent.
“I don’t think that he will be overthrown.

“We don’t like overthrowing presidents. We are fed up with it.
“And I think that because of the character of Russian aggression and the way they behaved in Georgia, Saakashvili will be preserved by Georgians.
ends