Steady State

Georgia and its conflicts

November 13th, 2007 by jibs

I tried to avoid writing about the conflicts while there is a political crisis taking place in Georgia. But I suppose the current Georgian authorities want to concentrate on the issues connected to the conflict zones more than anything else.

Saakashvili and his entourage has a very personalized view on what has taken place in Tbilisi over these last two weeks. According to the official logic, the pro-Russian coup was avoided thanks to the great work of security forces. A handful of people got a slightly bruised (around 600 people) and weak opposition has once again shown how easily manipulable they are.

Now that Russia has failed to change the pro-Western democratic government headed by Saakashvili, they are going for plan B — the annexation of the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In today’s public broadcast news, the first half was solely dedicated to Abkhazia. Here is what the conflict resolution minister Davit Bakradze had to say: according to his information five T-72 battle tanks, five GRAD-type multiple rocket launchers, five armored vehicles, seven howitzers plus 200 Chechens were deployed in Ochamchire, Abkhazian conflict zone.

“This is a step directly aimed at aggrevating the situation in Abkhazia and provoking conflict there. It seems that some in the Russian Federation thought that Georgia had been weakened and they thought that it was the right time to implement what they have been trying for many years already in Abkhazia,” he said.

Nino Burjanadze, the Parliamentary Speaker further interpreted the information:

“Russia spares no efforts to capitalize on the situation which has been created in Georgia recently and this situation has been created due to efforts by Russia itself,” explained Burjanadze.

Then was Kote Gabashvili who also had to say something smart about the issue, but apparently not so important to be quoted on civil.ge — one of the few media portals these days from where some kind of news on what is happening is Georgia can be read. I am sure I could dig him up somewhere else, but just don’t want to. You get the picture.

As if it wasn’t enough, Saakashvili himself tried to familiarize the public about the upcoming Russian onslaught:

Now I want to tell you something that I have not spoken about previously.

Last year, President Putin directly told me at the [CIS] summit in Minsk that Russia would stage a new Cyprus in Abkhazia.

And I want to explain what the Cyprus case means, as Russians understand it. There was a huge riot in Athens, Greece in 1973. There were demonstrations against by then the Greek government. In parallel to these events, turmoil was sparked in Cyprus. The Greek government was totally occupied by the internal affairs of Greece and they failed to react [on developments in Cyprus], as a result Cyprus was split into two. This conflict remains still unresolved. This is the Cyprus case and Cyprus model for Georgia.

I want to tell Russians and others. You have failed to split Georgia into two and you won’t be able to do so. Yes, they have managed to portray that as if Georgia is split and weak and by doing so we have suffered with damages on international arena and we should say this directly. But the real split has failed and it will fail.

And now it all makes perfect sense: an internally divided Georgia will lose Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and this has all been planned by Russia!

Now let me think aloud: there is a political crisis in Georgia. Saakashvili used force on the peaceful protesters. He closed and destroyed free media (Imedi TV). He called a lot of opposition members Russian spies and initiated criminal cases against them. The major financial force behind the opposition, Badri Patarkatsishvili, is warmly invited to prosecutor’s office for investigation of the Russian conspiracy to overthrow the Georgian government.

Saakashvili has promised to disclose ample evidence about Russia’s hand in Georgian politics. So far, it has been a few video recordings dating back to 2005 and some barely intelligible phone conversations between the opposition and someone speaking in Russian.

Probably what he meant was that “confessions” from the Kremlin puppets will start to come and this way he will be able to blame everything on Russia.

Currently not so many “Western friends” are buying Saakashvili’s case. There have been so many accusations against Russia, that probably they don’t want to hear the sequels that start to resemble a conspiracy soap opera.

Also, according to Saakashvili, there has been a huge progress in terms of resolving the conflicts. For instance, under his rule, Georgia “got back” 40% of South Ossetia and Upper Abkhazia. Many clips have been shot to lure the separatists back into Tbilisi’s fold. Even Boney M was brought to the conflict zone to convince the Ossetians that disco is better than guns. And, yeah, a massive campaign of “Kokoiti, Fandarast”, which involves a bunch of activists dressed in yellow T-shirts marching around Georgia and shouting Kokoiti (de facto president of South Ossetia), your time is over!

These method, or achievements have brought Georgia close to finishing with these conflicts once and for all. All that is needed now is Saakashvili to be re-elected as President and his rubber stamp National Movement to occupy the Parliament. And this will resolve the conflicts…

Peace, says Saakashvili is his main weapon. The dialogue — is not that exciting and visually ineffective, so why bother with it?

In reality: Upper Abkhazia — formerly known as Kodori Gorge — has been under Tbilisi’s control ever since the war in 1992. So has been that 40% of South Ossetia — only back then there was no Ossetian leader claiming legitimacy over that chunk of land. I must the credit for everything else.

Earlier today, Givi Targamadze — a close ally of Saakashvili — also said something about the conflicts: according to him, the people who beat up the demonstrators should be viewed differently than the Russian forces that beat up the demonstrators (and killed 21) about 18 years ago on April 9. I agree with him, the situation in rather different. But do you know why it is different? Because these guys will be the ones who will return us Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and those guys were the ones who took it away from us. Brilliant logic.

Now I feel better. It turns out that everything is Russia’s fault. What a relief, because at some point I thought the authorities were just making these things up in order to divert attention from their problems to somewhere else. I can put my head back into the ground and think that everything will be fine, as long as Misha and his crew stay longer in power.

By the way — can anyone tell me about prescription drugs for paranoia? I think I start to share that problem with some folks. Could send it to friends in Moscow as well — they too need a big dosage.

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