| Apologies to Jack, who just posted a diary on the Georgian conflict. I don’t mean to trump, but I’ve been putting this together for a while, and I think it’s important to put some information out there that can help folks contextualize just what is going on, as it is a very big deal.
There are a few things that even the most casual observer should bear in mind. First, that, like so many conflicts in the modern era, fossil fuels very much complicate the dynamics of what can and should be done, and what is underway. Second, that distinguishing who the good guys are isn’t exactly as clean as the media might like to believe.
Third, that something like this has been building for a while, and the Russians have been itching for an excuse. The following is from a piece by Richard Holbrooke in the WaPo going back to 2006:
While the United States is otherwise preoccupied, this small former Soviet republic has become the stage for a blatant effort at regime change, Russian-style. Vladimir Putin is going all out to undermine and get rid of Georgia’s young, pro-American, pro-democracy president, Mikheil Saakashvili…
…Putin’s methods are brutal. He has expelled at least 1,700 Georgians since October, cracked down on Georgian-owned businesses, made repeated statements about preserving the Russian market for real Russians and demonized Georgians as a criminal class. He has doubled natural gas prices two years running and cut off all direct rail, air, road, sea and postal links between the two countries. Russia has also waged an aggressive international disinformation campaign to raise doubts about Saakashvili
And finally, that this should put to rest any pretense that Putin isn’t still very much the man in control in Russia, and that is not good news for Russia or the rest of the world.
My own understanding of the situation is very very limited, so I turned for help to people far smarter than I. With their help – more often than not, through some good ol’ fashioned cutting-and-pasting (is it plagiarism if they say it’s okay?) – I’ve attempted to present a pretty comprehensive picture of what’s happening, it’s historical/cultural context, and what some of the implications are. Obviously, there’s a lot of interpretation involved, so many will disagree with some of the conclusions, but it will still hopefully help to fill in some of the gaps in understanding an issue that is very much below the radar screen to most US observers. Again, I wish I could take credit for this, but I really can’t… |
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First of all, to look at the situation from a strictly Ossetian-Georgian perspective, you do have to go back, despite the claims by many casual commenters in the blogosphere that this is a recently developed conflict. Compared to tensions in places like the Balkans, sure, but the root of this conflict can be traced back nearly a century to the early Soviet “Nationalities Policies” which are hard to pin down, and a point of great scholarly disagreement. Suffice to say that Leninist communism rhetorically aspired to elevate the many, many ethnic groups under the vast Russian Empire into rough equality with ethnic Russians. The policies changed over time, especially into the Stalin era (where there were, of course, large scale atrocities that may have been intentionally, or just incidentally genocidal, depending on which scholars you prefer), but in the end the Soviets made the place pretty ungovernable (without Moscow of course) by design. They instilled a fervent, territorial-based nationalism that made it quite clear that all ethnic groups had their ancestral land, where any other groups present (regardless of how many generations) were “outsiders”. That, combined with an intentionally problematic drawing of internal borders, which made certain that plenty of minority groups were always included, created the foundation for problems across the former Soviet Union.
Having said that, there were issues between the Ossetes and Georgians around the time for the Russian Revolution, but for the most part, during the Soviet days and even well back into Tsarist days, they had amiable enough relations, with plenty of intermarriage and a fair amount of Orthodox brotherhood, given that they were (and are) the only majority Orthodox ethnic groups of the 100 or so groups native to the Caucasus region. Historically, the Ossetes have had more issues with their Muslim neighbors, who always viewed them (correctly, basically) as the Russian colonialists’ facilitators in the Caucasus. This favoritism continued in Soviet days, when Ossetes were granted land and houses of their Muslim Ingush neighbors after Stalin had the entire Ingush population deported to Central Asia. After Stalin died, and the Ingush and others who were still alive were allowed to return, they were not allowed to go to their occupied homes, and laws were passed actually forbidding Ingush from settling in North Ossetia.
This all resulted in a brief Ossete-Ingush War in the early 90s, as the seriously marginalized Ingush tried to get their old homes and land back. Russia stepped in, on the Oesstian side by all accounts, and finally ended that war. But things are still quite dicey between those groups, especially as the Ingush (same linguistic group as their Chechen neighbors and therefore seen as little Chechens basically) made up most of the perpetrators during the Beslan school massacre a few years ago, while the victims were almost all Ossetian. (the whole world seem to think that was a strictly Russian-Chechen thing. It actually more of an Ossetian-Ingush thing) Meanwhile, Ingushetia today is a police state, with arrests and extrajudicial executions by the KGB a regular occurrence for the Ingush.
Back to South Ossetia, things got nasty in the late Soviet days when arch Georgian nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia came to power, and tried to aggressively “Georgianize” every aspect of the country as Georgia pushed for independence. The more Russified Ossetes didn’t like this at all, which resulted in Gamsakhurdia eliminating the South Ossetian Autonomous District upon Georgian independence. By this time, Georgia was a complete mess with Abkhazia and South Ossetia declaring independence and Georgians fighting amongst themselves. Georgian forces eventually attacked South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the war in the former not lasting too long and resulting in several thousand Georgian refugees, and the latter lasting years and resulting in 100,000s of refugees. Russia supplied both the Abkhaz and Ossetes militarily.
When the less nationalistic Shevardnadze came to power (certainly a known quantity in Moscow), things calmed down in South Ossetia (in part because militarily the Georgians could barely supply their soldiers even clothes), but the Ossetes maintained their “independence” and had complete control (or at least Russia did). According to a peace deal, Russian “peace keepers” were stationed in most of South Ossetia (including Tskhinvali) with Georgian troops stationed in the ethnic Georgian villages dotted around of the region. That situation remains today. (Abkhazia has basically the same scenario, though only after a few more years of much more bloody fighting. Shevardnadze was preferable to Moscow, but he wasn’t a puppet) That’s basically how things stayed for years. In late 2001 there was an election (who knows how fair) that saw my contacts there removed from power. (They are mostly in North Ossetia now)
And of course Kosovo recently getting independence (more or less) pretty much set the stage for what is happening now. Russia always insisted that whatever happened with Kosovo should happen with South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Trans-Dniestria (in Moldova) as well, so they have encouraged those folks to become increasingly aggressive.
Now, how things played out in the few days leading up to all out mayhem is not entirely clear, with the Georgians saying the Ossetes started attacking Georgian villages first, and the Ossetes saying the opposite. The fact is, it may never really become clear. In any case, the Georgian attacks on Tskhinvali clearly raised the bar substantially on the violence (though the Russian/Ossetian claims of 1500-2000 civilian deaths should be viwed skeptically… that’s about as many civilians as could possibly have still been there when the city came under attack)
So the fact is, it’s a bit tricky to cleanly label good guys and bad guys between the two in the overall sense. It kind of depends on your view of ethnic separatism in general. In the Georgians favor, even taking into account the relatively brief period Gamsakhurdia was in power, the Ossetes were basically always running the show in their territory and were not particularly oppressed. While the start of the war in the 90s led to horrific atrocities (on both sides), up to then they were not like the Kosovar Albanians, who were truly oppressed. The Russians would be well-advised to take that into account in their comparisons. On the other hand, the US would be well advised not to jump on the Georgian bandwagon as if they were somehow the good guys in the two-way conflict.
Of course, US complaints are all about Russia, not the Ossetes. And as far as Russia is concerned, there is plenty to complain about. Even before Putin, Russia was intent on maintaining the uncertain status quo in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to maintain a degree of control over Georgia. With the paranoid Putin in power, this desire became even more strong. And then it went off the charts when people protested the rigged election that put Shevardnadze back in power, leading ultimately to the “Rose Revolution” that brought pro-American Saakashvili to power.
This was the point at which Putin established himself quite definitively as the most destructive influence on democracy and human rights in the former Soviet Union since 1991 – and maybe earlier. Here’s the weird-paranoia equation: Saakashvili, educated in the US with Soros funds, was clearly put in power as part of some Soros-Bush-CIA conspiracy (yes, you read that correctly) aimed at Russia. (If you suggest to many in Russia and its neighbors that Soros and Bush are not exactly pals you’ll get a roll of the eyes and be dismissed as naive. Never underestimate the degree to which the various powers that be in the countries of the former Soviet Union – including Putin himself – are utterly delusional about American politics.)
The Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan bought into this thinking 100 percent, and began harassing and kicking out local and international NGOs at a rapid rate, particularly those with anything in their missions about democracy and human rights. Putin also has an intense hatred for environmental groups, which he’s quite openly called bastions of spy activity. Then came Ukraine and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan, and these feelings simply grew. That both of those elections were also clearly rigged was deemed irrelevant. Then came the massacre in Uzbekistan, which was not election related, though the same folks tried to pin that on the West as well, though that was even more of a stretch.
The bottom line is that Putin is virulently against democracy in the former Soviet Union because he knows that ultimately he can’t rely on controlling democratic governments.
But with all of this, Saakashvili has always remained Putin’s enemy number one, more so even then Yukashenko. By all accounts, his hatred of Saakashvili is pathological. Saakashvili better have good body guards – with good radiation detectors. Seriously. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that Putin’s primary obsession in all of this is overthrowing Saakashvili.
As for the US, South Ossetia aside, the US support for Georgia (and Ukraine) is certainly warranted. As we all know, it’s far too often that the US gets way too cozy with nasty governments due to “strategic” reasons. And while Georgia is a strategically located country, with the Caspian-Turkey pipeline running through it and all, right next door you have far more resource rich, far more strategic, and also Russia-wary Azerbaijan. But the US has considerably more touchy relations with Azerbaijan, for the single reason that the US, and the West, complain about the lack of democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan. Now, ultimately those criticisms get fairly muted, but they infuriate the President of Azerbaijan, nonetheless. (He just went on an anti-Western tirade a couple weeks ago due to such criticism.) So, with Georgia and Ukraine being clearly the most democratic, open countries in the former Soviet Union (outside of the Baltics of course), the US has, in the big picture, actually got the right idea in this case.
And Saakashvili’s friends in the US are certainly diverse. No world leader has better relations with Bush. Or McCain. At the same time, Soros paid, out of his own pocket, the salaries of Georgian civil servants when Saakashvili came to power as a favor. One wonders what Soros’ take on things is right now, but Georgia has always been considered the model political transformation in the eyes of folks at his flagship Open Societies Institute. Saakashvili’s administration is filled with others who studied in the US through Soros sponsored programs. And to Saakashvili’s credit, he’s done by all accounts a remarkable job reducing corruption. And the economy has picked up as well. And unfortunately, South Ossetia (like Abkhazia and Trans-Dniestria) is very much a land of old-school political thought. That Stalin still enjoys tremendous popularity, even among the young, shows that it’s not exactly a land of progressive thought.
So it’s a mess. And a complicated mess at that. Coming to the defense of Tskhinvali is by no means one of the more objectionable things the Russians have done in the former Soviet Union in recent times. And like I said before, it may not be clear who started it, but the Georgians clearly escalated it, raising the bar on civilian casualties. It’s hard to defend that.
But the way the Russians recently gave ethnic Ossetes new Russian passports, basically to serve as a pretext for invading, is pretty disingenuous at best. Due to the war in Chechnya, and the fear of other Chechnya’s elsewhere in Russia, Russia has always been (officially) adamantly opposed to separatist movements, and ardent supporters of governments’ right to do anything they want to anyone within their sovereign borders. So the Russian passports gave the Russians the excuse to invade without really violating Georgian sovereignty, as they had to “defend their citizens” – as well as their peace keepers. Moreover, the Russians appear to moving troops out of Abkhazia and out of South Ossetia well into Georgia proper. If they’d left it at defending South Ossetia, they would be in a much more defensible political position.
Meanwhile, when things started, the US was way too uncritical of Georgia. Saakashvili’s good points are all well and good, but they really had nothing to do with the actions against South Ossetia. As such, the US should really have looked at that situation in the more immediate, narrow context. As for Saakashvili, who knows what the hell he was thinking.
So ultimately, Putin (or uh….I mean Medvedev…..ha-ha) will likely come out stronger still. If there’s any room for his popularity to rise, it probably will. And unfortunately, a stronger Putin is always a bad thing for democracy and human rights across the former Soviet Union. And I shudder every time Bush opens his mouth on the topic. (Hearing Bush talk about anything I might agree with is far more sickening than listening to him talk about things I don’t agree with) And the Europeans, as usual, are useless. They basically live in fear of offending Russia (who can turn off Europe’s gas at any moment) and therefore will only timidly criticize, with the exception of course of the British, who get rather uppity about Russian government officials running around London with highly radioactive material.
