RUSSIA DISCARDS ITS "PEACEKEEPING" OPERATION IN ABKHAZIA
By Vladimir Socor
Eurasia Daily Monitor
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
DC
Russian troops withdrawing to Abkhazia after the August 2008 conflict
with Georgia (AP) At the CIS summit in Bishkek on October 9 and 10,
Russia announced the termination of the "CIS collective peacekeeping
operation in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone." Moscow describes
its move as a common decision of the assembled heads of state and
government, in a final attempt to portray the now-defunct operation
as having been approved multi-nationally from its inception to its end
(Interfax, Itar-Tass, October 9, 10).
Despite its CIS cover, the "collective peacekeeping" in Abkhazia
was always purely Russian. After 2002 CIS meetings abandoned even
the pretense of discussing this operation, let alone prolonging
its "mandate." The CIS in any case is not authorized to mandate
peacekeeping operations, and Georgia has in any case quit the CIS
following the Russian invasion of the country’s interior.
Moscow’s move ends a 14-year-old "peacekeeping" pretense that
culminated in Russia’s full-scale military seizure of Abkhazia
from Georgia, rendering any peacekeeping redundant from Moscow’s
viewpoint. Russian "peacekeepers," who acted ostensibly under a "CIS
mandate" and with Georgian consent extracted under duress since 1994,
are now to be replaced by far larger Russian forces, by "agreement"
with the Abkhaz authorities, whom Moscow installed in the first place
and has now given "diplomatic recognition."
Admittedly, Russia never received a "special responsibility for
peacekeeping in the CIS," a role that Moscow sought in vain during the
1990s in international organizations. It did, however, exercise that
role in practice, as the first stage in a long-term empire-restoration
strategy. Whether recognized officially or conceded de facto, a
peacekeeping monopoly is one key ingredient of sphere-of-influence
building.
International organizations and Western governments accepted Russia’s
claim to be a neutral mediator between Georgia and the Abkhaz, even as
Russia acted from the outset as a participant in the conflict against
Georgia on Georgia’s own territory. That international pretense
continued despite Russia’s military operations, economic embargos,
and political warfare against Georgia.
The United Nations Security Council, nevertheless, routinely applauded
the Russian "peacekeeping" in Abkhazia. While never authorizing that
operation, the UNSC paid it compliments each time when prolonging
the mandate of UNOMIG (UN Observer Mission in Georgia) at six-month
intervals. Moscow demanded and received this genuflection regularly
as a condition for not vetoing UNOMIG. The U.S. State Department and
other Western chancelleries went along with this semiannual travesty.
The Russian operation, however, breached the UN’s fundamental rules
of peacekeeping operations. Such operations require consent by the
sovereign state on the territory on which they are deployed. The
consent must involve not only acceptance of the operation as such
but also the parameters of its implementation. Neighboring countries
and countries with a direct interest or stake in the given conflict
may not be troop contributors to the peacekeeping operation. Such
operations are by definition international, not a monopoly of any
one country. Peacekeeping operations abide by the principles of
inviolability of borders and non-interference in internal affairs of
the country in which they are deployed.
In an unprecedented breach of peacekeeping norms, the Russian military
backed the ethnic cleansing of Georgians from Abkhazia in 1994 and
has refused to this day to assist in their safe return. Russian
"peacekeepers" helped arm the Abkhaz forces and maintain arms
stockpiles shared with their Abkhaz proxies.
On the whole, the Euro-Atlantic community never displayed a sense of
urgency on this issue. It approached it in a spirit of benign neglect
when Russia was weak and later in a spirit of dependency on Russian
"help" to resolve various Western dilemmas, even before Russia grew
stronger. The year 2002 came close to a turning point toward Western
hands-on involvement. The U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia summits, held
near Rome in May of that year, adopted decisions, as expressed in
the respective communiqués for joint U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia
peacekeeping and conflict-resolution efforts on Abkhazia, South
Ossetia, Transnistria, and Karabakh (with Russia listed in second
place throughout). This Western initiative dissipated within months,
however, as the United States and NATO became distracted by Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The United States and West European governments have
practically conceded a "peacekeeping" monopoly to Moscow in
the "CIS space"–Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and
Tajikistan–from 1992 until now. Only the government of Azerbaijan
under then-president Heydar Aliyev had the foresight to turn down the
offer of "third-country" peacekeeping by Russia through the OSCE in
the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
It is a tribute to Russian strategy and Western disorientation that
Moscow began, conducted, and ended this "peacekeeping" operation on its
own terms during all these years, without serious challenge. Georgian
and other appeals to internationalize the peacekeeping format fell
mostly on deaf, indifferent, or distracted ears in the West during
all this time. Down to the Russian invasion in August of this year,
Western governments continually advised Georgia to show patience
and tone down or postpone demands for replacing this purely Russian
operation. Now, however, Russia itself has ended its operation in
its own way and timing and on its own terms, which are worse than
ever from the West’s and Georgia’s perspective.
Moscow now takes the position, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei
Lavrov announced, that Russian troops in Abkhazia will "no longer be
peacekeepers. They will from now on be armed forces," to be stationed
there under a basing agreement with the Russian-recognized Abkhaz
authorities (Interfax, Itar-Tass, October 9, 10). Those forces are
slated to include a brigade-size ground force, to be supplemented by
air and naval elements, at reactivated Soviet-era bases.
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