In 2012 we will will have many important events to look forward to in the region, first and foremost presidential elections in Russia, parliamentary elections in Georgia, and repeat presidential elections in South Ossetia. The first and the last will be especially interesting to follow, due to the controversy that has surrounded both former Russian president Vladimir Putin’s possible reelection, and the attempts of South Ossetian presidential hopeful Alla Jioeva to confront the power structures left by South Ossetian president Kokoity in the wake of disputed presidential elections last year.

So far in the new year we have had various international organisations, including Freedom House, presenting their take on the general direction of development regarding human rights and democracy in the South Caucasus, and the conflict between the West and Iran has also intensified, with the whole range of repercussions that might have for security, stability and economic development in the region.

Among other developments, Azerbaijan is holding the Eurovision Song Contest among threats of  renewed war with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh, and there are also some interesting dynamics worth discussing regarding the relationship between Georgia, Russia, the Circassians and the Abkhaz in the aftermath of Georgia’s recognition last year of the Circassian Genocide, as well as the run up to the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

I expect to touch upon these, and many other subjects of interest, in the forthcoming year.

On Conflict Resolution and Compromise (Richard Berge © 2011)

During the last two decades of the conflicts between Georgia and its two breakaway republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a few facts have become increasingly clear. Firstly, attempts by the sides to internationalize the conflicts by drawing in outside powers like Russia, the United States and more recently the EU have failed to contribute significantly to conflict resolution. Secondly, attempts to use force to resolve the conflicts have also backfired, and only resulted in making the conflicts more bitter and intractable. Further, the policy of Georgia and the West of isolating Abkhazia and South Ossetia has only driven them further into Russia’s embrace, and the reestablishment of Georgian sovereignty over the two republics looks increasingly impossible. The current status of the “frozen conflicts” remains detrimental to the economic, political and humanitarian situation in the region, and the time is overripe for the sides directly involved to come to the table and work out a negotiated solution to the conflicts based on mutual respect and the common good.

Such a negotiated solution can only be really workable in the form of compromise, where all sides gain some, but also have to make major concession to the other side. For example, a compromise can be agreed on whereby Georgia recognizes the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while predominantly Georgian populated districts of both statelets remain under Georgian control, and a gradual return of Georgian refugees takes places under neutral, international supervision. For example, the Upper Kodori Gorge and Gali district of Abkhazia would remain with Georgia, as would the Akhalgori district of South Ossetia. Important infrastructure like the Inguri Hydroelectric Station, situated across the boundary between Abkhazia and Georgia, will also in its entirety pass to Georgia.

The Georgian refugees returning to the rest of Abkhazia and South Ossetia must refrain from raising any demands for regional autonomy or direction from Tbilisi, and in return the Abkhazian government must guarantee the security and safety of all returnees, including their right to life, dignity, property, linguistic and cultural expression. The returnees should also be given full democratic rights equal with all other citizens of independent Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and towards this goal the citizenship law of Abkhazia should be amended, including the abolishment of the article of the law restricting the right to dual citizenship. In addition, a truth and reconciliation commission should be set up, which aim should not be to prosecute war criminals or ascertain blame for the conflicts, but contribute to acknowledgement of human suffering and loss on all sides.

Unfortunately, negotiated solutions such as the one described above, have so far found few supporters. The political atmosphere in both Georgia and the breakaway republics almost exclusively promotes an “all or nothing” approach to conflict resolution, and there is a general lack of public support, and political will among key politicians, to make the sacrifices necessary for any kind of compromise. There is also the question of how the respective international partners and allies of the parties involved will react to their clients’ moving forward with such a deal. Some critics would argue that Russia and the Western allies between them exert too much influence over the de jure and de facto governments in the region for such a compromise to ever become a reality.

On the other hand, the fact remains that in the South Caucasus, the “puppets” often play the “puppeteers” just as much as the reverse, and that local elites and political forces on the ground in reality have a lot of space for maneuver. Both the Abkhazians and South Ossetians have shown themselves in recent times to be able to act against the will of Moscow, and US and European plans for Georgia have likewise often been frustrated and ignored by Tbilisi. Still, the hope remains that all sides involved will eventually see the benefit of such compromises, and that a political course correction will take place that leaves the road open to real conflict resolution.

http://liberali.ge/giorgi-tskhadaia/rogor-gadavchra

Having spent considerable time studying Mingrelian and Svan language issues, including conducting research among Mingrelian language activist and interacting with ordinary Mingrelians and Svans in both Western Georgia and Tbilisi, I can confirm most of the claims made by Sharia with regards to these issues. First off, it is a fact that that the influence of Mingrelian and Svan is continually declining in today’s Georgia. Although there are few reliable statistics on Mingrelian and Svan language usage, anecdotal evidence suggest that a large portion, perhaps a majority of Mingrelians and Svans maintain only partial retention of their respective languages at best, and prefer Georgian as their language for everyday use. The use of Mingrelian and Svan in everyday situations also appears to be rapidly declining. Research I have myself carried out in Samegrelo suggests that this is particularly true among young people, for whom Georgian is particularly important as a language for social and economic advancement in the current political climate.

It is also generally true that Mingrelian and Svan languages enjoy low status both socially and in an official sense in present day Georgia. By virtue of not being literary languages, Mingrelian and Svan are widely seen in Georgian society as provincial and somewhat vulgar vernaculars, not suitable for general use in public or in situations of high social importance. There is also a lack of special protection for these languages from the point of view of Georgian law, underpinned by the assertion among a majority of Georgian academics that Mingrelian and Svan are not languages in their own right, but merely occupy somewhat remote positions on the Georgian dialect continuum. Hence, the Georgian government has so far declined to extend any level of official status to either Svan or Mingrelian, including refusing to sign the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, one of the cornerstones of protection for language communities in Europe.

However, even if we suppose that there is a conscious policy to suppress Mingrelian and Svan language on the part of the Georgian government, or at least a policy of deliberate negligence; it is not likely that this will result in any greater chance for separatism in the affected areas of Georgia. I would argue that the chances of Mingrelian and Svan separatism are very low, and that this has to do with the following factors:

1. The weakness of Mingrelian and Svan nationalism:

If nationalism is defined as an ideology with the goal of creating an independent homeland for a particular ethnic group, it is quite clear that such a sentiment is virtually non-existent among Mingrelians and Svans today. This is primarily because the vast majority of Mingrelians and Svans in Georgia self-identify not only as Mingrelians and Svans, but also as Georgians, and consequently do not question the national cohesion or territorial integrity of Georgia. In the course of interviewing dozens of Mingrelian language activist both in Samegrelo and Tbilisi as part of my work, and also interacting with countless Mingrelians and Svans on an everyday basis in Georgia for many years, not even once have I heard them express any desire for political autonomy, much less an independent state.

Granted, there is still considerable concern among some Mingrelians and Svans regarding the status and the condition of their respective languages, often expressing the wish that Mingrelian and Svan would at least have the status of regional languages, and also enjoy equal value and respect compared to Georgian. In fact, an interesting duality presents itself among many Svans and Mingrelians especially who consider themselves to be “The most Georgian of Georgians”, while at the same see themselves as distinct ethnic entities within the Georgian nation as whole.

This duality is also evident regarding the individuals Zviad Gamsakhurdia and the Emzar Kvitsiani, which Sharia in his article tries to portray as Mingrelian and Svan separatists. Looking at the life and career of Gamsakhurdia, it is quite clear however that he never entertained any Mingrelian nationalist aspirations, but was actually the prototype of a Georgian ultranationalist whose politics, although ultimately contra-productive, were in large part directed at preserving the unity of Georgia. Not even when he established his “government in exile” in his regional power base of Samegrelo in 1993, following the coup d’état against him and prolonged civil war in Georgia, did Gamsakhurdia argue along Mingrelian nationalist lines or seek the separation of Samegrelo from the rest of Georgia. Regarding Kvitsiani, he no doubt considered himself more as an outlaw of traditional Svanetian extraction rather than a Svan nationalist and political leader. It is also uncertain if he ever harbored any political ambitions past protecting his criminal dealings from Georgian the government crackdown.

2. The weakness of institutions and internal structures in Samegrelo and Svaneti:

One factor often overlooked when discussing the potential for separatism is the factor of institutions. If we have a look at the various separatist movements that were successful in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR it is becomes clear that all of them were federal autonomies with a relatively high administrative status. It appears that the existence of such state-like autonomous political structures provided the respective elites of these entities with sufficient experience and organisation to mount a serious separatist challenge to the state which they were then a part of. In Georgia this was particularly true for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which during Soviet times had the status of autonomous republic and autonomous oblast respectively. The same is not true for Samegrelo and Svaneti, which are both regions with no special status separating them from other Georgian provinces. Svaneti in particular also has the additional disadvantages of being a tiny and remote mountain enclave, with a population that is even smaller than that of South Ossetia, which is in a similar situation.

3. The absence of foreign support:

Again, if looking at the separatist movements in the former Soviet space it is clear that foreign support also played an important role in their success. In fact, both Abkhazia and South Ossetia received considerable foreign support, mainly from Russia, which arguably has proved decisive for their political existence and longevity. However, the same was also true in the Georgian autonomous republic of Adjara, which separatist bid ultimately proved unsuccessful. Even though Adjara enjoyed quasi-state institutions and considerable foreign support, unlike the ethno-nationalist conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, there was not the factor of Adjaran nationalism to contend with. Although the population of Adjara is nominally Muslim as opposed to Orthodox Christian like the rest of Georgia, this fact does not seem to have constituted a sufficient enough difference to stimulate nationalist feeling among Adjarans.

Rather, the situation regarding ethnic identity in Adjara resembles Samegrelo and Svaneti much closer than it does Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and this would explain why Adjaran separatism was ultimately defeated in 2004 by Georgian efforts to reintegrate the republic, and also why it has not been a factor in Georgian politics since then. What this further indicates is that even with substantial foreign support – which there is no strong evidence of being provided to either government critics or anti-state forces in Samegrelo and Svaneti at present – potential Mingrelian or Svan separatism, given the weak nature of institutions and lack of nationalist aspirations among these ethnic communities, would not be very likely to succeed.

To reiterate somewhat; the weakness or absence of Mingrelian and Svan nationalist aspirations, the absence of strong quasi-state institutions, as well as lack of foreign support makes both Mingrelian or Svan separatism very unlikely. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that Mingrelians and Svans today overwhelmingly support Georgian territorial integrity and are fundamentally loyal to the Georgian state. Mingrelians and Svans are mostly interested in addressing their grievances in a purely cultural and linguistic direction, rather than in the direction of political autonomy. This is good news for the government in Tbilisi, and Georgians more generally, whose fear of regional separatism should be assuaged somewhat. These facts might in turn convince some hardliners in the current government to eventually make more concessions towards minority rights, including support for Mingrelian and Svan culture and official status for these languages. On the other hand, this is bad news for any third parties who think they can use internal cultural and linguistic issues in Georgia to their advantage.

Naturally, the sitting Georgian regime has fought back against this challenge in every way possible, firstly by depriving Ivanishvili and his wife of their Georgian citizenship, and then by raiding the Ivanishvili owned Cartu Bank in Tbilisi on the pretext of investigating instances of money laundering. Georgian opposition members from Irakli Alasania’s party, with which Ivanishvili has expressed his intention to cooperate, have also unceremoniously been removed from their positions in the Tbilisi City Council due to accusations of failing to serve the public. Ivanishvili has also received the usual slander and insults that the government controlled media and its supporters reserve for their opponents, including suggestions that Ivanishvili is an agent for the Russian security services, along with other doubts about his sense of patriotism.

It is clear from reading Ivanishvili’s political programme, as well as watching the government’s reaction to it, that his political ambitions represent a real challenge to the status quo. While some Georgians might be apprehensive about such a figure as Ivanishvili entering politics, with his wealth and hitherto unwillingness to sully his hands with dirty politicking, many probably welcome his recent shakeup of the political scene. For many Georgians, Ivanishvili speaks a truth to power which many agree with but which have been reluctant to speak about publicly due to the increasingly suffocating environment for free speech and expression during the reign of president Saakashvili. However, the entry of the oligarch into politics does not have a good track record in recent Georgian politics; suffice only to mention the fate of the late Badri Patarkatsishvili who only managed to get a fraction of the vote during the last presidential election. There is also the question of whether Georgia needs yet another charismatic “saviour” offering quick solutions, rather than focusing on improving key political institutions over time.

In the end, the obstacles standing in the way of Ivanishvili and his political allies are many and it is too early to tell what may eventually come of their political gambit. Like a real bombshell, the initial impact of Ivanishvili’s entry into politics has been massive, but it remains to be seen if the bombshell is sufficiently incendiary to ignite some spark of real political change in Georgia.

Since I have been highly impressed by previous productions by Studio Re, in particular “Absence of Will” from 2008, I was somewhat disappointed by their latest production. First off, the film starts with a 15 minute rehearsal of what can be considered the official Georgian position on the August War and the Georgian-Abkhazian/South Ossetian conflicts. This is neither particularly interesting to someone who already has some basic knowledge of these conflicts, nor very useful from a conflict resolution perspective in my opinion.

The other side including South Ossetian and Abkhazian spokespersons and commentators, as well as non-mainstream Georgian and international experts are also given a voice, which is good, but again there is not much that is really new. Unlike previous films about these topics there is little effort to dig up new material, question recurring myths and assumptions, or even present the material in an engaging and provocative way.

Still, there are some important lessons which one can take away from this film, in particular the extent to which the policies of Georgia and the so-called international community (primarily the West) towards the breakaway republics have failed, and how urgent it is to restart efforts towards direct social, political and economic contacts between the involved parties. The film in its entirety can be watched here.

The Georgian government line has been that the Russian secret services are behind it, and have reportedly sentenced an alleged GRU officer and his local accomplice to long prison sentences in absentia. Not unsurprisingly, Georgia has also demanded that Washington and the international community take action against Russia, but has struggled to get its message through. Recently however, The Washington Times has published an article which corroborates the official Georgian story, citing access to classified US intelligence reports about alleged Russian involvement. The convoluted chain of evidence the paper presents for its allegations has to be quoted in full in order to give the reader the proper feel for it:

“The highly classified report about the Sept. 22 incident was described to The Washington Times by two U.S. officials who have read it. They said the report supports the findings of the Georgian Interior Ministry, which traced the bombing to a Russian military intelligence officer…”

In other words, there is still not much to go on.

So, how likely is it really that Russia is behind these explosions? One of the first things to have in  mind when discussing events like these is cui bono? Well, we do know that Russia and the US are in the midst of the so-called “reset” which represents the biggest rapprochement between these two powers for about a decade, and that both (but perhaps especially Russia) stand to benefit from it in major ways both economically and geopolitically in the coming years.

We also know that Georgia has a serious beef with Russia, primarily over Russian support to the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but also other issues including Georgian membership of NATO, and that Georgia is bedeviled by a number of political, social and economic problems, which have only seemed to increase in severity as the country heads for its next election cycle – and possibly economic meltdown– in about two years time. Consequently, the Georgian regime under Mikhail Saakashvili would only be glad to see the Russian-US “reset” fail, and would be more than happy for anything that could take the attention of the Georgian population away from the regime’s handling of the country’s domestic problems.

What then would be better than a little false flag operation to simultaneously hit out at the country’s main foreign enemy, and shore up additional support at home? I wish this line of argument could be relegated to the category of conspiratorial drivel, but unfortunately, previous events in Georgia compel me to take this possibility seriously.

What I am talking about is of course the Khurcha incident in 2008, which I have also written briefly about on a previous occasion. Basically, the story from the Georgian government back then was that a couple of buses carrying Georgian voters from the separatist controlled district of Gali in Abkhazia into Georgia proper had been ambushed by armed men with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers. The buses were stopped in the middle of a football field near the polling station and completely destroyed by the incoming fire, but luckily (or perhaps predictably) there were no casualties.

The Georgian government tried to pin the “attack” on Abkhazian separatists, but members of local and international organisations, including the Norwegian Helsinki Committee arriving at the scene talked to to the local population, who were convinced that their own government had been behind the attack. Further research also corroborated the story told by the locals, as it was discovered, among other things, that the rifle and rocket fire had come from the Georgian side of the de facto border with Abkhazia, and not from the Abkhazian side. The full report about the event can be read here.

It is also fitting that the individuals that Georgia blames for the Tbilisi bomb attacks were allegedly based in the Gali region. As I have written on an earlier occasion, Gali is an impoverished, mostly Georgian populated, disputed border region with serious security problems stemming from weak, or non-existent, government institutions and organised crime. In other words, this is a place where a lot of murky deals can happen and be covered up without much notice from the outside world. Georgian paramilitaries like the White Legion” and “Forest Bretheren” have a history of operating in Gali, and are known to have made use of violent tactics in the past, including bombings.

There have also been several cases of bombings elsewhere in Abkhazia over the last couple of years which have never been solved, and which the Abkhazians suspect the Georgian security services to have been responsible for. Suffice to say that in the current environment in Gali, it would be no problem for the Georgian secret services (or anyone else for that matter) to pay or otherwise induce someone to carry out acts of terror – and cover the whole thing up accordingly. This could be true even if it turned out that the culprit is indeed a former or serving GRU officer, as elements of the Russian security services have occasionally been known to go “free lance” in Chechnya and a number of other  Caucasus hot spots.

Of course, the “fact” that this terror cell was supposedly based in breakaway Abkhazia also gives the Georgian government more food for its narrative that Abkhazia is a “black hole” which constitutes a danger to regional and international peace, and deserves neither independence nor international recognition. In this way the whole affair is indeed quite ideal as seen from a Georgian propaganda standpoint.

There are also some similarities between these bombings and the Khurcha incident worth noting, most importantly the low casualty count, which might mean that whoever was responsible was trying to avoid a public outcry, which might in turn have raised calls for an independent investigation. The use of the explosive hexogen in the bombings is similar to the one allegedly used by the Russian FSB in the Moscow apartment block bombings in 1999 (an assertion which so far has not been conclusively proven), but these bombs were large in comparison , incurred  massive casualties, and created a huge amount of fear in Russian society.

This again matches poorly with the modus operandi of the Tbilisi bombings, which were relatively small, incurred minimal casualties, and received little public attention in Georgia. The question is why, if the Russian security services were indeed behind the bombings (as they allegedly were in Moscow), did they not use bigger bombs, and why, if we assume the GRU are professionals, did the bomb on the railway fail to explode, and another one was easily disarmed?

I do hope that an independent and credible future investigation will succeed in bringing additional light to at least some of these issues, but judging from past events I think that’s too much to hope for.

However, recent information coming to light about one of the probable assailants behind these attacks has confirmed a hunch I have had since the beginning, that these attacks were not committed by Islamic radicals with ties to international terror networks like Al-Qaida as initially suggested by most commentators and media, but rather by homegrown right-wing extremists. It now turns out that 32-year old ethnic Norwegian and self-styled nationalist Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested for the shootings at Utøya, and that he is also being connected to the bomb blast taking place earlier outside the main government building in Oslo. According to the police, Breivik had taken on ultra-conservative leanings in his late 20s, and had recently posted various extreme opinions on the internet attacking Islam and multiculturalism.

From the very first moment I heard about the terror attacks in Norway, it struck me that the attacks did not fit very well the profile of an Al-Qaida attack. Firstly, the bomb which blew up outside the government HQ was designed to go off on a Friday afternoon in the middle of the holiday season, a time when both the city centre and government offices would be largely empty. This does not correspond well to the signature Al-Qaida attack, which is typically carried out in crowded places during rush hour to maximise civilian casualties. On the other hand, the bomb attack did a large amount of property damage to symbolic political targets in the blast radius, damaging both the main seat of the current Centre-Left Norwegian government, the centres of Norway’s economic and state power in the form of the Minstry of Finance and Ministry of Oil and Energy, the Supreme Court, and also the buildings of the so-called “A-pressen” an agglomeration of the largest left-wing and liberal news outlets in Norway.

The choice of the second target was also quite peculiar, as it involved a shooting at a youth camp organised annually by the governing Labour Party. This camp is seen in Norway as the main yearly gathering of the future Norwegian left-wing elite, and it does not make sense as a target if the main grievances of the attackers were Norway’s pro-American foreign policy or involvement in the wars in Afghanistan or Libya. Exactly the choice of a such a peculiar target and the mode of operation – a shooting spree by a lone gunman – (not typical Al-Qaida modus operandi to say the least) was what alerted me to the notion that these attacks might not actually be related to Islamic radicalism at all, but rather to homegrown right-wing extremism.

It is clear that the ultra-nationalist right has been on the rise in Norway over the last few years. A recent threat assessment by the PST, the main Norwegian domestic intelligence agency, identified growing Islamic radicalism and right-wing extremism as the two main areas of concern. Appart from recent attempts to revitalise neo-Nazi groups in Norway, it states that right-wing radicals in Norway have been particularly active in the new social media, and indicates that individuals and groups mobilising around an anti-Muslim agenda have been receiving increased support.

The current left-wing establishment in Norway is often reviled by many on the right as being too permissive towards immigration, in particular from Muslim countries, and for the alleged failure of the Norwegian multicultural experiment. In light of this it now seems very likely that yesterday’s attacks was an attempt by extreme right-wing elements to strike directly at the “socialist” underpinnings of Norwegian domestic policy, and was designed to make a definitive statement in the “culture wars” of contemporary Europe. I surely hope that more details on the motivation and background on what now looks like Norway’s Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices will be forthcoming shortly, and that this tragedy will not turn out to be the beginning of a new trend in the debate about Islam and multiculturalism in Norway and Europe. 

The report does not differ substantially from previous reports written by various rights organisations about the Gali region in recent years, which, in my view, has received disproportionate attention compared to other conflict areas and minority populated areas (such as for example the Armenian populated Javakheti or the Azerbaijani populated Kvemo-Kartli region) within the internationally recognised borders of Georgia. The report in general is also symptomatic of the skewed viewpoint of the international community on this and a multitude of other minority related issues in Georgia and its breakaway republics, which I will deal with in further detail below.

Firstly, the HRW report fails to mention that most of the Georgian inhabitants of the Gali region are actually ethnic Mingrelians, who belong to a distinct ethnic group with their own language and culture. The Mingrelian language, despite having about 300 000 – 500 000 speakers concentrated mostly in western Georgia, has no official status, and is not taught in schools in Georgia. In fact, the official Georgian government position is that the Mingrelians are an ethnic sub-group of Georgians speaking a Georgian dialect, and has therefore declined to grant Mingrelian status as a regional or minority language.

Georgia even refuses to sign the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which is part of it commitments as a member of the Council of Europe. It is quite peculiar that HRW considers Georgian-language instruction to Mingrelians in Abkhazia to merit more attention than the status of Mingrelian in Georgia, a language which is under pressure, and which without some form of official recognition and support will probably become extinct in the course of a few generations, along with much of the Mingrelian cultural heritage.

Secondly, the two main problems in Gali, which the HRW report chooses not to deal with in much detail, are poverty and organised crime. Gali is a mostly agricultural region where the economy largely depends on cultivation of cash crops such as nuts and tangerines and on subsistence farming. Especially the cash crops are subject to various criminal groups which control the sale and distribution, and which operate on both sides of the de facto border. There are also periodic low level clashes and incidents such as bombings, kidnappings and disappearances in Gali which might either be related to organised crime or aspects of the continuing Abkhazian-Georgian conflict.

In the last couple of decades there have been numerous infiltrations of Georgian supported guerrilla groups across the border, including the now defunct “White Legion” and “Forest Brethren”, and currently also suspected elements of the Georgian security services. While the HRW does mention that the clashes in 1998 which led to a renewed wave of fighting and displacement from the region in part resulted from the actions of of Georgian paramilitaries, there is little discussion of these or other similar events in the report. Instead, the HRW chooses to criticise the de facto Abkhazian authorities for limiting the number of crossings over the de facto border with Georgia, ostensibly for security reasons.

The HRW argues in its report that the decision of the de facto Abkhazian authorities to restrict crossings of the de facto border to a single crossing point amounts to an unacceptable restriction on the right to movement of the Gali population, but again declines to mention that Georgia, on its part, currently conducts a full blown blockade of Abkhazia, designed to restrict all political, economic, educational and even social interaction of citizens of the breakaway republic with the outside world. The Georgian Law on “Occupied Territories”, signed into effect by the Georgian parliament in October 2008 ensures that the only legal crossing point into Abkhazia is across the river Inguri at the de facto border between Abkhazia and Western Georgia, and that crossing into Abkhazia from any other border is considered illegal and subject to either a fine of several thousand USD or up to four years in jail.

So far, several violators of this law, mostly of Russian and Armenian origin have been sentenced, illustrating the arbitrary and discriminatory application of this law in practice. The above mentioned law has also been subject to significant criticism from the Venice Commission, especially since it threatens to limit the activities of NGOs and humanitarian organisations in Abkhazia which are not explicitly approved by the Georgian authorities. Since January 2010 the “Georgian state strategy on Occupied Territories”, which was presented by the Georgian authorities in western capitals as a confidence building measure, appears to  further curtail the scope for direct international engagement with Abkhazia.

Furthermore, the HRW report also comments on the problems encountered by the Gali population when it comes to obtaining passports and citizenship in de facto Abkhazia. In particular, the policy of the Abkhazian authorities regarding dual citizenship ensures that only dual Abkhazian-Russian citizenship is considered legal, meaning – in theory at least – that Georgians/Mingrelians living in Gali would have to renounce their Georgian citizenship in order to obtain an Abkhazian one.  Picking one or the other would either cut them off from receiving benefits from the Georgian government,  or from exercising their civil rights in de facto Abkhazia. However, the extent of this problem seems in reality to be somewhat exaggerated.

Since there are no computerised records of citizenship available to the de facto Abkhazian authorities, and Abkhazian and Georgian authorities do not exchange citizenship records at any rate, there would be no practical way for the Abkhazian authorities to verify if the population of Gali retained Georgian citizenship or not. Evidence from my own fieldwork in Abkhazia suggests that dual, or indeed multiple citizenship is in fact not uncommon among either Georgians or other nationalities living in Abkhazia, and that various informal coping strategies are also utilised to deal with the problem.

Lastly, the suggestion by HRW that the population of Gali might leave permanently as a result of the lack of Georgian-language schooling and other problems encountered in Abkhazia is somewhat of a red herring, since a considerable part of the population of the region are actually not permanently resident there, but live in the neighbouring Samegrelo district in Georgia and commute back and forth on a seasonal basis to harvest crops or the visit their families or graves of relatives. It is also questionable how HRW supposes that more Georgians/Mingrelians could return to Gali or other parts of Abkhazia, when the organisation itself acknowledges that the Abkhazian authorities have limited resources to provide for even the current population.

The increased return of refugees to Abkhazia which HRW advocates would also have to be premised on the solution of a multitude of other problems, including the settling of property rights, provision of housing and security of the returnees – not to mention a resolution to the disputed status of both the Gali region and Abkhazia proper – neither of which the report discusses in any detail. In order not to create an unmanageable situation for the returnees – or increase the potential for renewed conflict – it is imperative that a solution to the above mentioned problems be found first. Sadly, a realistic and thorough analysis of these problems is not likely to be forthcoming from HRW.

So, how would the world be likely to look at the US declaration of independence if it happened today? My first guess is that it would most likely be negatively received. Why is this? Well, for starters, the US declaration of independence was unilateral, and not immediately recognised as valid by its parent state, the United Kingdom. In the international community today, such unilateral declarations of independence are generally frowned upon, and independence resulting therefrom is considered invalid, since it does not involve mutual consent between two sovereign entities. Moreover, the American colonists ultimately had recourse to the use of force to achieve their de facto independence, which runs against the today’s commonly accepted principle of the inviolability of state borders, and the impermissibility of changing these borders by force.

Also, the fact that the secessionists received ample French and Spanish support would probably not go down well with the mainstream media today, at least the part of it that would have been sympathetic to British motives. If we assume that Great Britain then would have had the same influence over international media like the US does today, it is likely that it would have described the American secessionists as “separatists”, and “puppets” of “Spanish and French imperialism”, similar to how the media and commentariat in the West has been conditioned to think about Russia’s support to the Abkhazians and South Ossetians in their conflict with Georgia.

Then what about the justification for US independence provided by the colonists themselves? Did the American colonists have legitimate grievances that made their continued existence under British sovereignty untenable? Apart from some disagreements regarding taxation, it is hard to conclude that this was the case. Certainly, the British, even during the Revolutionary War, neither conducted any repression of American colonists like that which Milosevic subjected ethnic Albanians to in Kosovo, nor did they carry out any mass killings, rape or other atrocities similar to what the regime in Khartoum has perpetrated in Southern Sudan.

Could the colonists have claimed to act within the scope of decolonialisation in order to justify their claim to self-determination? Possibly, although in today’s world it is more likely that the regime in Washington would have been viewed as white minority rule similar to Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, which did not satisfy basic tenets of liberal democratic governance, in particular ignoring the voices of Blacks and Native Americans. If international recognition of US independence would have been forthcoming at all under such conditions, it is highly likely that it would have happened under the aegis of policies similar to “standards before status” practiced today by the EU, and the US been given the same “supervised independence” which today applies to Kosovo.

In other words, I have to conclude that the US would have had trouble achieving its independence had it been declared in 2011 and not in 1776. Indeed, there is one last observation that bolsters my belief to that effect, and that is the behaviour of the Great Britain and the colonists towards Britain’s de facto loss of sovereignty over the United States as a result of the American Revolutionary War. As it turned out, the British finally let the Americans have their de jure independence out of bare necessity, recognising that winning back the American colonies was too costly and difficult an endeavor to pursue. Not only was the attempt to reintegrate the United States into Great Britain militarily a grand failure, but the prospect of having to continue to govern the increasingly resentful locals, which were receiving substantial support from other great powers at the time, was undoubtedly seen as a loosing proposition by the cooler heads in the British administration.

On the other hand, the mutual recognition of sovereignty between between Britain and the colonists resulted in relations between the US and Britain eventually improving, which in turn led to normalisation and ultimately to today’s “special relationship” between the two states. It is sad that such clear-sightedness and pragmatism,  not to so say magnanimity, seems to be lacking among the conflicting sides of most secessionist conflicts today.

The central message of the above mentioned article is that Europe should ignore Georgia’s many human rights violations, democratic shortcomings and unpredictable foreign policy, and instead close ranks with its errant Caucasian “ally” yet again. If Europe refrains from backing Georgia we are told, this will amount to “appeasement” of Russia, which according to the article, will set a “dangerous precedent.”Apart from peddling this simplistic, zero-sum geopolitical narrative coated in Cold War-esque language, the article itself is also so full of omissions, distortions, half truths and downright falsehoods about the current political situation in Georgia, that I don’t really know where to start.

For example, the author starts out by describing the reaction of the Georgian government to recent opposition protests which culminated in a violent crackdown and several dead protesters on the 26th of May as “exemplary”, and goes on to tow the government line that casualties were wholly to blame on the activities of the opposition, despite available evidence to the contrary. While the author is right to dismiss the outlandish claims by the Georgian opposition that the country is a dictatorship, the author nonetheless ignores Georgia’s falling ranking with regard to democratic openness, freedom of speech and corruption, as recorded over the last couple of years by Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, and Transparency International.

Moreover, the author praises Georgia’s “diplomacy” towards its breakaway republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while declining to mention that it was cut short by the 2008 August War which Georgia fought with Russia and the separatists over these territories, a war which even an independent EU inquiry of the events has concluded was initiated by the Saakashvili regime. Apart from nearly leading to a full blown crisis in relations between Russia and the West, this war also extinguished what little trust there had been between Georgia and the populations of the two breakaway territories, making the prospect for Georgia to “win back” the “loyalty” of these territories a near impossibility for the foreseeable future. Georgia’s latest efforts to meddle in the volatile North Caucasus has also caused considerable concern among Georgia’s Western partners, in addition to apprehension in the North Caucasus about Georgia’s true motives.

Furthermore, the author’s insistence that Georgia is a “free-market, law-governed, multi-party success story, the next stop after [...] South Korea” is very hard to take seriously. This is especially since the Georgian government is known for its heavy handed state-led approach to economic development, including pressuring private investors with extraordinary tax claims and entrapment in politically motivated anti-corruption stings. The courts in Georgia are also bedeviled by a lack of independence and have a near 99% conviction rate, unheard of in any developed democracy. Instead of having a vibrant multi-party political system, Saakashvili’s United National Movement dominates the parliament of Georgia, making the country a de facto one-party state. Smear campaigns against the political opposition are also increasingly commonplace, and a string of bombings in the capital Tbilisi and other towns ostensibly blamed on Russian security services operating out of breakaway Abkhazia might actually turn out to be a false flag operation involving the Georgian government. If that indeed turns out to be true, it would not be the first time.

Last but not least, the author overestimates the fiscal soundness of Georgia’s economy, declining to mention that Georgia’s relative robustness in the face of the Financial Crisis has largely been based on massive external borrowing and plentiful economic aid from Western countries, amounting to a one off payment of 4.6 billion USD in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 war, in addition to several hundred million USD on a yearly basis. The impact of this aid has been highly distortive on domestic politics in Georgia, helping to increase the longevity of the Saakashvili regime long past the point where it should have fallen due to its own political mistakes. Reckoning might be fast approaching however, as financial aid by the West is starting to run out, and the mushrooming Georgian sovereign debt, which now exceeds 9 billion USD or about 25-30% of GDP, might become difficult servicing in the near future in the light of lackluster FDI and an increasing import/export imbalance.

All in all, the unconditional support that the author advocates that Europe should once again show Georgia, or in practice more correctly the Saakashvili regime, would be highly misplaced, and ultimately reinforce a host of negative trends in the country today. These range from the deteriorating democracy and human rights situation in the country, to its prolonged dependence on foreign aid, and the continuation of a foreign policy based on unpredictable political gambits and dangerous brinkmanship. This is an atmosphere of tension which neither Europe, nor the population of Georgia, is likely to be well served by in the long term.