He is wanted by Russian federal investigators. He is suspected of raising “millions” of protesters in Moscow and nearly bringing down Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin. He is Givi the Georgian.
A Moscow court just issued an arrest warrant for Givi Targamadze, a 44-year-old Georgian parliamentarian, staunch supporter of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and, apparently, a lone crusader against the Putin regime and a bespectacled mastermind of international conspiracy.
Russians who rallied against President Putin in 2012 claimed they wanted to end human rights abuses, the monopolization of power and rampant corruption, but Russian investigators knew that there just had to be something or someone else behind it.
After many late hours perusing evidence under a dim, desk lamp light, the investigators have found their man, the "true" source of evil. It was Givi Targamadze, who, Russian prosecutors say, secretly tutored Russian opposition leaders in the art of revolution, the craft he learned so well during Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution.
Along with sharing little tricks of the trade, Targamadze also allegedly slipped a big $3,000 to the dissenting Russians, telling them to go get Putin.
Some in Ukraine might nod their heads knowingly, claiming that he also tried to stop the 2010 election of Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych.
But Tbilisi, much though it is attempting to smooth over past differences with Russia, has refused to hand Givi over to Moscow for prosecution.
The U.S. is proposing to cut State Department aid to the Caucasus by about 24 percent, while decreasing the portion of that aid devoted to security-related programs by about two percent, according to recently released budget documents (pdf). In Central Asia, while total aid would drop 13 percent, security assistance would remain roughly the same. The aid packages, if approved by Congress, would continue a pattern by the U.S. of increasingly placing a greater emphasis on security than on political, economic or health programs in the region.
Overall, State Department aid to Central Asia would drop from $133.6 million in fiscal year 2012 to $118.3 million in the current fiscal year, while aid programs under the rubric of "Peace and Security" would stay roughly steady at $30.3 million. (Programs in the "Peace and Security" category include not only military aid programs but also those targeting police, border control agencies and so on.) In the Caucasus, the aid would drop from $150.2 million to $121.6 million, with the security portion of that declining slightly from $35.6 million to $34.9 million.
Georgia would remain the largest U.S. aid recipient in the region, though its assistance package would drop from $85 million last year to $68.7 million this year. Most of the decrease would affect programs under the rubric of "Economic Growth." Aid programs in the "Peace and Security" category, meanwhile, would remain steady, at $21.7 million, with particular focuses on preparing Georgia's armed forces for NATO interoperability and retraining weapons scientists to work in counterproliferation.
The Armenians of Akhalkalaki, Georgia, celebrate Trndez, the traditional festival of newlyweds, on February 13. A local priest conducts a religious service to bless the newlyweds and presents each couple with a copy of the Bible. Following sunset, a bonfire is lit and the couples jump over it holding hands.
In Akhalkalaki, where unemployment runs higher than the Georgian national average, winter has been a traditional wedding time following the breakup of the Soviet Union. In spring most of male population leaves Georgia to look for work abroad, mostly in Russia and Armenia, and then returns home in late fall.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
Women dance in downtown Tbilisi as part of the global One Billion Rising event on February 14. Women and men across the world, including Kyrgyzstan, danced to raise awareness of rape and violence against women.
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.
Didgori armored personnel carriers, soon on their way to Azerbaijan and Korea?
Georgia's brand-new domestically produced armored vehicles may already have interest from foreign buyers, some government officials are saying, according to a report in Georgian newspaper Mteli Kvira (via BBC Monitoring). One of the officials is President Mikheil Saakashvili:
"Before the [1 October 2012] election, I often heard people saying that the Georgian military hardware production is a bluff. However, the public knows very well that it is not a bluff. Lazika and Didgori really exist and are so good that even South Korea and Azerbaijan got interested in them. I know it for sure...", the president said.
And though Georgia's defense industry has been the source of some political sparring between Saakashvili's United National Movement and the rival governing Georgian Dream, the latter confirmed Saakashvili's claim (while still using it as the occasion for some additional sparring).:
Defence Minister Advisor Vako Avaliani told Mteli Kvira ... that the fact that South Korea and Azerbaijan expressed interest in the Georgian military hardware is a top secret and in contrast to the president, he is going to respect the rule.
However, Parliament Defence and Security Committee Chairman Irakli Sesiashvili openly spoke about other countries' interest in the Georgian-made armoured vehicles.
"Delta is intensively working on different orders, which is a rather important issue. It should be noted that until present, the state has never worked in this direction and was only restricted to the domestic market.
"At the moment, South Korea, Azerbaijan and some other countries, too, show interest. What matters is that we correctly work out every detail when working on orders," Sesiashvili told Mteli Kvira.
A vicious power fight between Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and President Mikheil Saakashvili appears to be pushing Georgia fast into a vortex of political confusion with unpredictable results.
And the fight, as of today, is quite literal. On February 8, scores of pro-Ivanishvili protesters and ex-prisoners gathered outside Tbilisi's National Library with the apparent intention of preventing pro-Saakashvili parliamentarians and other supporters from entering the building to hear the president's annual speech to the country.
Police struggled to maintain any semblance of order; the situation calmed only when, to the crowd's cheers, a tight-lipped Interior Minister Irakly Gharibashvili arrived on the scene and went on the air to ask ex-prisoners to leave the territory surrounding the National Library.
The president's speech, originally scheduled for 6pm, began three hours later, from the presidential residence, and was boycotted by Georgian Dream MPs. Sounding familiar themes, Saakashvili underlined that the national priorities of independence, freedom, territorial integrity and European integration do not belong to one party alone or one person alone, and noted that "cohabitation," in Georgian, means living together to build a state. The Georgian Dream's response, for now, boiled down to televised comments by Interior Minister Gharibashvili defending the police performance outside the National Library and pledging to investigate alleged violations of the law.
The brouhaha, though, is more than just a one-time flare-up in a city known for getting into fisticuffs over politics. Rather, it is raising the question of whether or not Georgia is moving further back into its chaotic political past, based on personal fiefdoms, rather than into a stable future based on rule of law.
Georgia's domestically produced Lazika armored vehicle
During last year's election campaign, leader of the Georgian Dream coalition Bidzina Ivanishvili expressed skepticism about President Mikheil Saakashvili's drive to create an indigenous defense industry. Ivanishvili wasn't the only one -- as EurasiaNet's Molly Corso reported last year, "Many analysts say the development of Tbilisi’s defense industries won’t do much to make Georgia more secure in a potential conflict against a military power like Russia. They see it mostly as an exercise in national pride." That impression was bolstered by the splashy PR efforts exerted to roll out domestically produced armored personnel carriers and drones (the latter of which turned out to not be especially homegrown, borrowing very heavily from an Estonian production).
During a speech on Tuesday, Saakashvili alluded to plans of the new government to scotch defense production, Civil.ge reported:
“It will be a huge mistake if Georgia says no to production of military hardware,” President Saakashvili said, adding that now it was no time for pre-election rhetoric and saying that armored and infantry fighting vehicles produced by [state-owned defense manufacturer] Delta were “bluff” – a reference to remarks of PM Bidzina Ivanishvili who during his pre-election campaign voiced skepticism over Delta’s potential.
But now that the campaign is over and Ivanishvili is prime minister, his government appears to be interested in keeping Georgia's defense industry on the path that the previous government forged. In response to Saakashvili's comments, Ivanishvili's defense ministry appointees say that there is no need to fret:
Russia’s criminal world has been bereaved of its top gangster, 75-year-old Tbilisi-born Aslan Usoyan, known to friends and enemies alike as Grandpa Hassan. First among equals in the Soviet-born and ex-Soviet-wide system of criminals, Grandpa Hassan died a soldier’s death, shot by a sniper bullet in central Moscow, on January 16.
The Russian news agency Interfax reported symbolically that the killer fired from the roof of the apartment of the late Soviet poet Sergei Mikhalkov, who penned the lyrics of the Soviet Union's anthem.
A career criminal, Usoyan was born to a Yezidi Kurdish family in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, once the main exporter of mafia bosses. In his teen years, he began his ascent through the Soviet mafia hierarchy known as the thieves-in-law.
His authority soon outgrew Georgia, but Grandpa Hassan kept on climbing the career ladder.
As perhaps no other institution did in Soviet times, thieves-in-law embraced the spirit of multiculturalism with Georgians, Russians, Armenians and others all participating, coexisting and fighting one another.
That code held true for Grandpa Hassan well into old age. Russian media reported that in 2008 he clashed with the competing clan of Tarieli Oniani (also Georgian) at a mafia summit, where plans for appropriating the funds for Sochi's 2014 Winter Olympics were supposedly discussed.
Proud of his ethnic roots, Grandpa Hassan was also known for affirmative action policies to promote the Kurdish minority through the criminal ranks.
He is survived by many fellow mafia bosses in Russia and outside its borders. His criminal remains may be buried near the Moscow grave of another assassinated criminal mafia boss, Yaponchik ("Little Japanese man").
President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili vie in pleasing the patriarch.
Georgia’s two squabbling rulers, the prime minister and the president, both need love . . . the love of the country’s spiritual leader, the guardian of national unity, the primus inter pares, Georgian Orthodox Church Patriarch Ilia II.
“You love him more,” Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, apparently in a sudden grip of jealousy, told the patriarch at a January 14 gathering, pointing at President Mikheil Saakashvili, who stood towering over both men with a happy smile.
“Now, why would you say he loves me more?” responded the president, tapping his diminutive rival on the shoulder.
The aging prelate, caught in the middle of the awkward exchange, maintained a diplomatic silence.
The footage of the meeting cuts there, so we don’t know the outcome of this telling conversation, but the party at the patriarch’s showed rather clearly that Georgia’s political system is not a diarchy, but a triumvirate, and that secular leaders need to vie for the holy graces of the chief of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
Georgians’ infatuation with their political leaders is pretty much a one-night stand and they tend to lose interest the moment leaders take office. But the patriarch always tops the national love charts.
And, so, well aware of the patriarch’s star power, Saakashvili and Ivanishvili turned up at the celebrations that marked Orthodox New Year, plus Ilia II's 80th birthday and the anniversary of his 1977 enthronement ; “a celebration of love,” as the church leader himself put it.
A goat dragging a snapped rope around its neck calmly hoofs it over a crosswalk in a Tbilisi suburb on January 10. Once common during the economic breakdown of the 1990s, some Tbilisi residents still keep domestic animals in the city.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
