The Economist
August 5, 2006
U.S. Edition
Fighting talk casts a summer shadow;
Georgia and Russia
Georgia’s prospects are still rosy, but could be imperilled by
foreign meddling and domestic impetuosity
SUMMER in Tbilisi. The latticed balconies suspended over the Kura
river alive with chatter; naked boys splashing in the fountains; the
grimy courtyards overrun by unruly vines-and rumours of war.
If it were not for geopolitics and history, Georgia would be rich.
Its 5m-odd population ought to subsist comfortably on its Black Sea
summer resorts, winter skiing, agriculture and transit revenues.
Under Mikhail Saakashvili (pictured above), who was swept to the
country’s presidency by the "rose revolution" of 2003, it at last has
a chance of becoming a prosperous, free country. But the Soviet rule
that followed the tsarist period bequeathed Georgia and Mr
Saakashvili daunting problems-including Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
two enclaves that broke away from Tbilisi in nasty wars in the early
1990s. Each summer, as the weather gets hotter, the political
temperature rises in the enclaves.
This year’s drama has included the Georgian government’s operation
last week to disarm a renegade warlord in the remote Kodori gorge,
the only bit of Abkhazia at least nominally controlled by the Tbilisi
authorities. That alarmed the Abkhaz leadership. There have been a
string of murky assassinations-perhaps political, perhaps criminal-in
South Ossetia. The tension there, says Matthew Bryza, an American
diplomat, is "worrisomely high", not helped, perhaps, by the sacking
last month of Georgy Khaindrava, Georgia’s conflict-resolution
minister. Both Zurab Noghaideli, the prime minister, and Mr
Khaindrava himself say this was for unrelated reasons. But his was a
(relatively) conciliatory voice. Others saw his departure as a
victory for the "party of war" within the government.
War, though, would be crazy-because it would in effect be war against
Russia, whose support helped the two enclaves to achieve their
quasi-secession and sustains them in it. The Georgian parliament last
month told Russia’s peace keepers to leave the enclaves, and the
government may soon follow suit. After us, say (or promise) the
Russians, there will be chaos. Some Georgians detect a Russian hand
behind the opaque events in the Kodori gorge: it is "highly
unlikely", says Mr Noghaideli, that the wayward warlord acted alone.
In a way, though, Russia and Georgia are already at war, albeit a
cold one. Russian ire with Mr Saakashvili and his Westernising
policies have led to increases in the price of gas and the
shutting-off of other energy supplies, border closures, disruption to
the visa regime and a vindictive economic embargo. One example
concerns Borjomi, a chalky, pungent Georgian water. It has, says
Badri Japaridze, vice-president of the firm that bottles it, been
drunk in Russia for 115 years. Russians were consuming half the
production, until it was banned on questionable health grounds in
May.
For its part, Georgia wants to reopen the bilateral trade deal the
two countries have already reached in preparation for Russia’s
accession to the World Trade Organisation: unwise perhaps, if they
were to end up with even worse terms. Mr Noghaideli observes
defiantly that Georgia can have good relations with Russia "if we get
down on our knees".
But an actual war in South Ossetia or Abkhazia would mean disaster
for Georgia, and not only because it would probably lose. It would
make solving the territorial disputes impossible. And it would wreck
one of Mr Saakashvili’s dearest aspirations, and the one the Russians
most resent: his plan to take Georgia into NATO. All that should be
clear, even to Georgia’s young, hot-headed defence minister, Irakli
Okruashvili. Mr Noghaideli says the whole government is committed to
peaceable solutions. "There is a party of war," says Mr Khaindrava,
the sacked minister, "but it is in Russia."
Sabres are indeed rattling in Russia. The foreign minister, Sergei
Lavrov, said recently that his country would use "all means" to
protect its citizens in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Thanks to
Russia’s generous ways with passports there, that applies to almost
everyone in the statelets (though the Abkhaz, unlike the Ossetians,
still covet full independence). During recent military exercises in
the Russian north Caucasus, Russian officials made it clear that they
had had Georgia in mind.
On the other hand, Mr Saakashvili and his team are anxious to do
something about the enclaves, which are being creepingly incorporated
into Russia. That may be part of a Kremlin plan, also involving
Moldova (see page 37). Much more waiting risks losing the territories
for ever. Yet irresponsible talk and ill-considered actions will have
unintended consequences.
Georgians are a proud, nationalistic lot, and virtually all of them
share Mr Saakashvili’s ambition to reunite the country. But 70 years
of Soviet rule have also left them cynical, and some see another
motive in the government’s urgency over the enclaves: to distract
attention from its other travails.
There have been big achievements, chief among them an impressive
crackdown on corruption, which largely explain the president’s
still-high approval ratings. More tax is being collected; economic
growth will reach double figures this year, predicts Mr Noghaideli.
Since 2004 Tbilisi’s writ has run over Ajaria, another once-breakaway
Black Sea enclave. In the summer months it now swarms with Armenian
tourists. Apart from those of the Baltic countries, Mr Saakashvili’s
may be the most accomplished post-Soviet government now in
office-even if many Georgians prefer to see themselves as a
struggling European country than as a better-than-average ex-Soviet
one.
But there have been disappointments too, not all of them part of the
inevitable post-revolutionary come-down. Poverty and unemployment are
still rife. Even in Tbilisi life for many is tough. In the
countryside, it is grinding.
Worse, Mr Saakashvili’s enhanced presidential powers and the pliant
parliament are encouraging his authoritarian streak. The police,
claims Tinatin Khidasheli, an opposition activist, are out of
control. Conditions in the country’s over-stuffed prisons, says one
well-placed Western observer, are medieval. A bloody prison riot took
place in March. Accusations are made of unfair arrests and rigged
trials, as in the case of a banker killed by interior-ministry
employees: a test of the government’s commitment to the rule of law,
says Salome Zourabichvili, a former foreign minister now in
opposition-and one that it looks like failing. Pressure on the media
is the subject of various rumblings.
Mr Noghaideli dismisses them. "Georgia", he says, "will be a
successful democracy very soon." Perhaps. But some recent
developments rather resemble those in another country to which
Georgians do not much like to be compared: Mr Putin’s Russia. Like
other governments in the region, Mr Saakashvili’s sometimes shows
signs of a dangerous contempt for the people it governs. He can still
turn Georgia into the prosperous democracy it ought to be-the best
way, anyway, to win back the enclaves-but, on both scores, he needs
to be rather careful.