GEORGIA BORDER HEATS UP AS RUSSIA ENCROACHES ON TERRITORY
ValueWalk
June 13 2013
The Greater Caucasus Mountains form a natural buffer between Russia
and Georgia. But in the absence of a border agreement between the
two states, even some of the highest peaks in Europe are not enough
to protect Georgia from the risk of Russian territorial nibbling,
analysts say.
The 894-kilometer-long Georgian-Russian border is largely delineated –
meaning there is a line on a map, based on Soviet-era documents, that
defines it. But that line has not been confirmed by both sides. Before
the 2008 war between the two states, 86 percent of the border had been
agreed upon, according to Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The
topic has not been addressed since then.
With both sides now divided over the status of the breakaway regions
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – Russia recognizes them as independent
states; Tbilisi does not – further discussion in the near future
is unlikely.
Shota Utiashvili, the former head of the Interior Ministry’s Analytical
Department and currently an analyst at the Free University’s Tbilisi
Center for Policy Analysis, noted that over the past two years Russian
forces within South Ossetia have taken over hundreds of meters of
land, at times dividing Georgian villages in half. He called the
Russian encroachment a “danger.”
“[T]hey are moving this [administrative border line] to basically
wherever they please, and they are telling Georgia … ‘Let’s create
a border demarcation commission,'” he said, in reference to Russian
soldiers’ recent installation of a fence a few hundred meters inside
the Tbilisi-controlled region of Shida Kartli.
Meanwhile, Tbilisi State University political scientist Kornely
Kakachia described efforts to push the frontier forward as part of a
Russian campaign “to somehow propagate the idea that there is a ‘new
political reality’ … that there are the two independent states,
South Ossetia and Abkhazia.”
The lack of an agreement presents potential problems beyond these two
disputed territories. Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, there have been
a few border flaps involving the two countries.
In 1997, Russia attempted unsuccessfully to take over Larsi, now the
sole functioning Georgian-Russian land border crossing, situated in
the northeastern part of the country. A similar unsuccessful Russian
push occurred at the Mamisoni Pass, an area to the west where the
Georgian-controlled region of Racha runs up against the South Ossetian
and Russian frontiers.
In the past, territory near the medieval fortress village of
Shatili, several kilometers from Russia’s Chechnya, also has been
under question, while locals in the southeastern region of Tusheti,
which borders on Chechnya and Dagestan, have raised the alarm at the
appearance of Russian border guards near highland villages.
Kakha Kemoklidze, head of the Analytical Department at the Georgian
Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees Georgia’s border guards,
stressed that no major issues exist at present on the Georgian-Russian
border. At the same time, he allowed that “particular segments” could
be considered “problematic.” He declined to elaborate. Meanwhile,
representatives of the border guards did not respond to written
requests for details.
Demarcation has been a tricky issue for the formerly Soviet republics.
Russia and Ukraine, for example, agreed on their border just three
years ago, in 2010. And although Estonia is a member of the European
Union, its border with Russia is not yet demarcated. Central Asian
frontiers remain in dispute in many places.
For Georgia, the lack of a demarcated border is fraught with risk.
“One never knows how this unfinished business of
demarcation/delineation might come out as a new trigger for additional
military confrontation … given Russia’s ambitions to stop Georgia’s
sovereign development,” said Davit Darchiashvili, deputy chairperson
of the Georgian parliament’s Defense Committee. [Editor’s note:
Darchiashvili is a former director of the Open Society Georgia
Foundation, an entity in the Soros foundations network. EurasiaNet.org
operates under the auspices of the Open Society Foundations in New
York, a separate entity in the network].
The lack of an officially demarcated frontier means that abandoned,
highland villages like Ch’ero and Ints’okhni in Tusheti can end up
serving as a de-facto buffer zone for border guards from both sides.
Utiashvili, the former Interior Ministry official, stressed that the
countries’ border guards do not “share” the Tusheti villages. A Tbilisi
tour company that operates in the region confirmed to EurasiaNet.org
that the villages remain under Georgian control.
While reports about Russian border guards allegedly trying to seizing
strategic spots along the border have caused stirs before among
Georgians, Tbilisi is essentially powerless to prevent such acts,
noted political scientists. “How can you … demarcate a border with a
power that is a thousand times stronger than you and has a different
view than you?” asked Alexander Rondeli, the founder of Tbilisi’s
Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. “It is
a big problem, but this problem has to be solved.”
A special commission was created in 2006 to finalize the border
agreement, according to the Foreign Ministry. The process is also
underway with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia’s only fully demarcated
border is with Turkey.
Although problems periodically flare up on the borders with Armenia
and Azerbaijan, they are less problematic than the border with Russia,
said Darchiashvili.
The Russian-Georgian situation merits close international attention,
said Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation
in Washington, DC. “Borders are only as good as both sides decide
to recognize them,” Cohen noted. “If … one of the sides decided
to push a border, and the international community does not react
… not only does it put in danger the weaker power, it threatens
international order in Europe and in the world.”
Editor’s note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as
editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber
of Commerce in Georgia.
Originally published by EurasiaNet.org