WELCOME TO IWPR’S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 474, December 23, 2008
THIS IS THE LAST CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE OF 2008. WE WISH ALL OUR READERS A
HAPPY AND PEACEFUL FESTIVE SEASON
COMMENT: THE CAUCASUS: A BROKEN REGION Short-term interests continue to impede
hopes of a broad transformation of this dysfunctional region. By Thomas de
Waal
in London
UNEASY CALM ON SOUTH OSSETIAN BORDER Georgian villagers begin to rebuild as a
fortified frontier is erected. By Dmitry Avaliani in Gori
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COMMENT: THE CAUCASUS: A BROKEN REGION
Short-term interests continue to impede hopes of a broad transformation of
this
dysfunctional region.
By Thomas de Waal in London
The Caucasus region is a small and troubled place. It should be a common
endeavour for its small and diverse nationalities in Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan as well as the Russian North Caucasus to work together to build
an
integrated region.
Unfortunately, no sense of common purpose is discernible: the sad reality is,
that with its tangle of closed borders and ceasefire lines, the Caucasus more
resembles a suicide pact.
Nowhere in the world can there be so many roadblocks. The two long borders
between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Russia and Georgia are almost permanently
closed. Only two neighbours – Azerbaijan and Georgia – can be said to have
a
genuinely close relationship and even that is based primarily on energy politics
rather than common values and does not translate into many tangible benefits for
ordinary people.
Yet, given the chance, the ordinary folk of the Caucasus eagerly take the
opportunity to do business with one another. A tale of two markets confirms
this. The first was the one at Ergneti where, right on the administrative border
with South Ossetia, the busiest wholesale market in the Caucasus used to
flourish. The Ossetians brought untaxed goods from Russia – from cigarettes to
cars – to sell. The Georgians mainly sold agricultural produce. Because it
was
unregulated, the new Georgian government of President Mikheil Saakashvili argued
that the market was knocking a big hole in the state budget and had to be shut
down, which they duly did in June 2004.
The closure of the market was a justifiable step on legal grounds, except in
the words of former Georgian conflict resolution minister Giorgy Khaindrava,
"If Ergneti didn’t exist it would have to be invented." Ergneti
was possibly the widest "confidence-building measure" in the entire
Caucasus region, with people of all nationalities doing business. Arguably
the
day it closed was the day the countdown to war in South Ossetia began.
On the Georgian-Armenian border, the Georgian village of Sadakhlo used to be
home to another astonishing spectacle: a mass Armenian-Azerbaijani market on
Georgian territory with virtually no Georgians in sight. Azerbaijanis bought
Armenian produce, Armenians Azerbaijani goods that flooded the shops of Yerevan.
Again, governmental pressures have curtailed the market, although it has not
shut down entirely. Again, a magnificent example of inter-ethnic cooperation has
been suppressed.
What politics drives apart, common economic and security interests should drive
together. The South Caucasus is a delicate mechanism in which the malfunctioning
of one part affects what is going in the others.
That became obvious during this August’s war in Georgia. Azerbaijan’s
prime revenue-earners, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa pipelines, were
shut down. When the Grakali railway bridge in central Georgia on August 16
was
blown up, it also shut the only railway line linking Armenia to the Black Sea
coast, thereby cutting Armenia’s entire imports for a week and costing it at
least half a billion dollars in revenue.
This sad state of affairs is partly everyone’s fault.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have adopted intransigent positions which mean they
have
failed to resolve the biggest obstacle to peace and prosperity in the Caucasus,
the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. Georgia has generally ignored its neighbours and
Russia in its push towards Euro-Atlantic integration. In the words of Georgian
analyst Archil Gegeshidze, one reason for Georgia’s problems is that the
Saakashvili government unwisely "put all its eggs in the basket of
mobilising western support" and did not pay sufficient attention to its
neighbours.
Europeans and Americans, though often paying lip service to the idea of
regional integration in the Caucasus, have generally pursued narrower goals.
Europe’s grand TRASECA project, a communication and transport project
linking the Caucasus to Europe and billed as a new "Silk Road", has
received less than 200 million euro of investment since it was inaugurated
in
1993 and its effects are negligible.
Instead, projects such as NATO expansion, energy security and the claims of
Armenian diasporas have all tended to divide Caucasian policy into different
segments. In Washington, it seems at times that the Congress, the Pentagon
and
State Department all have different policies, with a primary focus on,
respectively, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Moreover, several Washington strategists have suggested that Russia could be
"contained" in the Caucasus, overlooking the fact that the region has
figured in Russian minds and plans for two centuries and that much of the
Russian elite has family or childhood ties to places that westerners barely
know.
For good or ill, Russia still has a special role in the Caucasus. Its own
policies have done it no favours. Russia continues to see the region in colonial
terms, seeking to intimidate or control resources rather than use the soft
power
of trade or – its biggest asset in the region but a diminishing one – the
Russian language, to help form a new and friendly neighbourhood.
People-to-people ties are still in place, often despite the best efforts of
governments. Russians and Georgians are tied together by innumerable ties of
history, culture and business. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians continue
to
work in Russia, despite the August conflict. "[Russian and Georgians]
leaders have tried to wreck a good relationship between two peoples," said
analyst Ivlian Khaindrava.
Previous Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze – who after all ran the foreign
ministry in Moscow in the perestroika years – understood this, even if he was
frequently unable to appease the harder-line elements of the Russian elite
when
he had returned to Georgia as president.
In an interview with IWPR on December 3 in his residence outside Tbilisi,
Shevardnadze said – in a rebuke to his successor – that he had always paid
the
Russians maximum respect. For example, Shevardnadze said, when the decision was
made in 2002 to invite American troops to Georgia as part of the ground-breaking
"Train and Equip" programme, he had been careful to inform President
Vladimir Putin in advance. Putin went on the record to say that an American
troop presence was "no tragedy" for Russia.
"I always tried to emphasise that Russia for us is not a secondary
country, that it is a great neighbour with big military and economic
potential," said Shevardnadze.
Conflict gives birth to black-and-white thinking, the view that if your
opponent is suffering that is a good thinking. In the current crisis, says
Ivlian Khaindrava, "many in Georgia are just keeping quiet and waiting for
the situation in Russia to deteriorate, the oil price to go down, tensions
in
the North Caucasus to escalate."
That approach, he believes, could be a disaster for Georgia, as an economic
downturn in Russia will hurt Georgian migrants and the families back home they
send remittances to, while new violence in the North Caucasus could spill over
into Georgia.
This kind of zero-sum thinking is most acute between Armenians and
Azerbaijanis, many of whom seem content to see their country suffer so long as
the other side in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict is feeling pain too.
It is hard for locals to transcend these divisions. It is up to outsiders to
give the big picture and the broad vision of how the Caucasus could begin to
function more harmoniously, as a political and economic entity rather than
merely a dysfunctional geographical region.
Ultimately, it seems likely that only one big international organisation –
the
European Union – has the transformative power to treat these countries as a
single region and promise them benefits that make it worthwhile for them to
overcome bad habits. The Balkans provides good proof of it.
Sadly, the signs are that the EU is still too distant and too inward-looking to
care sufficiently about the Caucasus. A positive development is that European
monitors are now on the ground in Georgia. But the reason that they are there is
a tragic one and let us hope they become the advance guard of a much broader
engagement – not just confirmation for Europeans that this beautiful mountainous
region is a permanent headache that can never be cured.
Thomas de Waal is IWPR’s outgoing Caucasus Editor. This is the last edition
of Caucasus Reporting Service he has edited, after almost seven years with
IWPR.
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of IWPR.
UNEASY CALM ON SOUTH OSSETIAN BORDER
Georgian villagers begin to rebuild as a fortified frontier is erected.
By Dmitry Avaliani in Gori
The wounds Georgia has suffered as a result of its August war with Russia are
slowly beginning to heal. Georgians left homeless by the conflict are being
moved into new houses that the government has built for them. But having a
place
to live is less important to these people than a guarantee that they will live
in peace – something no one has given them yet.
Since fighting ended in August, the landscape on both sides of the Tbilisi-Gori
highway has changed considerably. There is a huge new "refugee town"
near the village of Tserovani, and as you travel further towards Gori, more
settlements, smaller in size, come into view. Almost finished now is an entire
refugee town near Gori, on one side of the road that leads to the South Ossetian
capital Tskhinvali. Workers are busy fitting out the small houses with modern
conveniences such as gas heaters and bathrooms.
IWPR happened to chance upon refugees moving into Berbuki – one of the
newly-built encampments, on another road leading from Gori to the village of
Mejvriskhevi on the border with South Ossetia. The Okropiridze family, who
are
refugees from the village of Disevi in South Ossetia, had been living in a
kindergarten in Gori since the conflict. As other members of the family were
unloading their belongings from the bus that had brought them here, Revaz
Okropiridze said that each house in the settlement was fit to accommodate four
people, which meant that his family of six would occupy two houses.
Asked if he liked his new living quarters, Revaz said, "I don’t have
any choice, do I? This is not our fault, nor the government’s. We all know
well who is to blame."
And asked if he had any hope of going back home, he said, "Of course, we
have to hope. We trust the government. If not this year, we will return there in
a couple of years, that’s for sure."
The family’s home village, Disevi, lies just beyond Georgia-controlled
territory. Shalva Okropiridze, head of the family, said some of his fellow
villagers were still creeping into the village, now occupied by Russian and
Ossetian militaries, to see how things were going there. But his own family
could not get close to their own house. "Our apple trees are groaning with
fruit, I wish we could harvest the crop," complained Tanya Okropiridze.
Russian and Ossetian soldiers now have control of all the heights around
Mejvriskhevi. Local farmer Zakro Ginturi shows us a tent pitched on a nearby
hillside and trenches dug around it. A flag is fluttering above the tent, though
we could not tell whether it was a Russian or Ossetian flag.
Ginturi says the villagers have avoided grazing their cattle in pastures and
going out to the woods after the war, for fear of bumping into Ossetian
militiamen.
The population, except for most of the old villagers, left Mejvriskhevi on
the
morning of December 10 and started to come back only after the Russians had
withdrawn from the buffer zones.
There are no visible traces of the war in the village – all the houses are
as
they were before the conflict, having been spared both burning and looting.
Except for a stolen flock of sheep, the village suffered no damage. Zakro was
even able to keep his cows. That Mejvriskhevi suffered less than other villages
during the war was, he said, due to the good relations with residents of the
neighbouring Ossetian village of Gromi.
"We’ve always had good relations with the Ossetians," said
Ginturi. "On Sundays, they would cross over to trade at our market, some
still manage to come here. I’ve been to every family in Gromi. I am a vet
and residents of that village would often ask me for help. They still call
me
now and then, asking for advice, but I don’t go there any more."
He said he avoided crossing over to the Ossetian-controlled territory not
because of the people living there, but for fear of meeting "fighters from
Tskhinvali", from whom he said he could "feel the aggression".
"In 1991, we stopped Georgian militias from entering Gromi," said
Ginturi. "This time, I think, [Gromi residents] intervened on our
behalf."
In Tkviavi, local workers were busy digging a foundation pit for a cottage.
This is going to be a small house with an area of only six square metres, but at
the least the family that will live in it will not winter under the open sky.
The construction of temporary houses is being funded by the government. People,
whose houses were destroyed during the war, are receiving financial compensation
as well.
A total of around 60 houses were burnt down in Tkviavi. The construction of the
cottages that will temporarily replace them was due to be finished by December
20.
The village of Ergneti is right on the border with South Ossetia overlooking
Tskhinvali. Almost all of its houses were burnt. There were few people about.
The Tsereteli family are building a new house themselves, using money and
building materials provided by the government.
"We are building a cottage in our own field, not in the yard, so that we
don’t have to look at the burnt wreckage of our house every day," said
head of the family Akaki Tsereteli. He said he had not been given compensation
yet, but he is not happy with the sum he is likely to receive. "Even fifty
thousand will not be enough to rebuild my house."
The Georgian side of the Ergneti checkpoint is being fortified with a crane
busy lowering breeze-blocks onto the road. A few metres ahead is another post,
also fortified, but sprouting Russian and Ossetian flags. Beyond that is
Tskhinvali.
Ambulance and Red Cross vehicles stand on the new "border", waiting
to take a patient from Tskhinvali for treatment in Gori hospital. A Georgian
officer said that since the war, there have been several cases of people
crossing over from Tskhinvali for medical treatment.
The villagers of Mejvriskhevi and Ergneti, living right on the edge of South
Ossetia, harbour no great hopes that what happened in August will not be
repeated in the future. Some people in Ergneti have even refrained from
repairing their burnt houses or building new ones. "Who knows what awaits
us," one said, complaining that shots are still fired from the direction of
Tskhinvali now and then.
The locals have not taken much encouragement either from the presence amongst
them of European Union and OSCE observers.
"Thanks to international aid, people were able to work their lands in the
autumn," said Mejvriskhevi, a resident Zakro Ginturi. "But we have a
joke here – what if the Russians, as they watch us from their heights, are
saying, ‘You sow, and we will reap’."
Dmitry Avaliani is a journalist with 24 Hours newspaper in Tbilisi.
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CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE provides the international community with a unique
insiders’ perspective on events in the North and South Caucasus. Using our
network of local journalists, the service publishes news and analysis from
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The opinions expressed in IWPR’s Caucasus Reporting Service are those of
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IWPR.
The service forms part of IWPR’s Caucasus programme, which supports local
media development while encouraging better local and international understanding
of the region.
IWPR’s Caucasus programme is supported by the British government, the
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service is currently available online in English and in Russian.
CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor:
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Editor: Tom de Waal; Associate Editors: Sofo Bukia in Tbilisi, Shahin Rzayev in
Baku and Seda Muradian in Yerevan.
IWPR PROJECT DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT: Executive Director: Anthony Borden;
Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Chief Programme Officer: Mike
Day
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