Clinton and Saakashvili comission a new Georgian coast guard vessel
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought some goodies with her on her recent trip through Georgia: some "new areas of defense cooperation," which were possibly promised but not specified when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilii visited Washington earlier this year. While visiting with Saakashvili in Batumi (and before partaking of some of the local vintage) she outlined in a bit more detail what this new cooperation would entail:
We have also agreed this year on several new areas of defense cooperation. The United States will provide training and support for Georgian defense forces to better monitor your coasts and your skies. We will help upgrade Georgia’s utility helicopter fleet so it can more easily transport supplies and people throughout your country. We are also going to help Georgia give its officers the 21st century training they need for today’s changing missions. With these efforts, Georgia will be a stronger international partner with an improved capacity for self-defense.
She also commissioned a new Georgian coast guard vessel, one of three that the U.S. has helped Georgia modernize:
I’m delighted to help formally commission this Pazisi patrol boat, which will soon help guard Georgia’s coastline. This ship, with its advanced technology and capabilities, is a testament to the partnership between our two countries. Georgians and Americans worked together to modernize it. And I am proud that since 2009, the United States has contributed $10 million to help the Georgian Coast Guard become a sustainable, self-sufficient service capable of patrolling and protecting its territorial waters.
Three Armenian soldiers were killed by gunfire from neighboring Azerbaijani just as US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton was about to go country-hopping in the South Caucasus.
Clinton arrived in Yerevan today and, after a stop in Georgia, is due in Baku on June 6.
To hear the Azerbaijani news service APA tell it, the “preventive measures,” which wounded three Armenian soldiers as well, were directed at stopping the Armenian military from infiltrating Azerbaijan from Armenia's northern Tavush region.
But, as is the standard case in Caucasus countries hosting Clinton, you need to tune into the news on the other side of the conflict line for the second side of the story.
Armenian news reported that the Armenians died in a shootout as they tried to halt an infiltration from Azerbaijan. “Thanks to [the] courage[ous] actions of the soldiers… [the] enemy was drawn back,” ArmenPress cited Armenia’s Ministry of Defense as saying.
The not-so-frozen Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region is most definitely going to be discussed with Madam Secretary in both places.
Civil rights as well. An area where there's a lot to chat about with both sides; Georgia, too.
Saakashvili in Chicago, trying to channel Ferris Bueller?
There was a lot of discussion and speculation before the NATO summit in Chicago about what would be done with Georgia. Membership was off the table, but U.S., NATO and Georgian officials dropped frequent hints that Tbilisi would get some sort of boost.
The official statement of the summit didn't really add anything to previous statements, other than a mention of the "litmus test" of democratization that Western officials have mentioned before: "We stress the importance of conducting free, fair, and inclusive elections in 2012 and 2013."
While that may not be especially encouraging to Tbilisi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did say that she hoped that "this summit should be the last summit that is not an enlargement summit." But there are three other aspirant states: Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro, and those Balkan countries are probably closer to membership than is Georgia. Clinton said she hoped Macedonia "can join the alliance as soon as possible," and didn't use any such language for Georgia (or the other Balkan countries).
President Mikheil Saakashvili, at the summit, said that Georgia's victory was being grouped with the Balkan countries:
It was rainbow flags versus black cassocks in Tbilisi yesterday, the May 17 International Day against Homophobia, when a gay rights march came to blows with an extremist group led by several Georgian Orthodox priests.
“Do you realize what a great crime you are committing by urging small kids… to engage in a wrong sexual lifestyle?” exhorted one priest, who dismissed the marchers’ assurances that the rally was about fighting homophobia. The altercations degenerated into a fistfight after several followers of the Orthodox Parents Union, an ultraconservative group, physically assaulted LGBT rights activists.
Police made arrests on both sides, but reportedly the detainees were released quickly.
The police seem to have stayed neutral during the confrontation, but the bigger human rights test for Georgia is whether the prosecutor’s office will act on LGBT activists’ complaints against their attackers. This would mean taking on priests in a country where the Georgian Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution.
Given the Caucasus' long record of ethnic and religious violence, alarm bells are ready to go off any time there is a quarrel over borders or churches in this neck of the woods. Both items made headlines this week in a dispute between Georgia and Azerbaijan, perhaps the friendliest countries in a region where it’s all but de rigueur not to be on speaking terms with at least one neighbor.
Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Georgia somehow managed to stay friends during the late-Soviet and post-Soviet period, but now the feathers in Georgia are increasingly ruffled after Azerbaijani border guards stopped letting Georgian pilgrims and monks into a section of the 6th-century Davit Gareja monastery, a beautiful complex that straddles the two countries' as-yet-unofficial border.
Rich with ancient Georgian frescoes and writings, the monastery is a major cultural and spiritual hub for Georgians, but some Azerbaijani officials and historians claim that the monastery was created by ancient Albanians, reputed ancestors of the Azerbaijanis.
Georgian politicos, keen to seize a prime PR opportunity ahead of the October parliamentary elections, hurried to the site to deliver some fiery speeches, while disputes raged online and in the media.
The Georgian government has urged restraint, but it also admitted that the Soviet-era demarcation of the then Soviet republics' borders left some two percent of the complex on Azerbaijan’s territory -- a fact duly noted by some Azerbaijani news outlets.
The plot is thickening in the alleged Georgian-Chechen Sochi Olympics terror plot: the Abkhazian security services are casting doubt on the Russian version of events. According to the Russian Antiterrorism Committee, an arms cache discovered in the Gudauta region of Abkhazia was intended to be used by Chechen terrorists, with assistance from the Georgian security services, to stage an attack in Sochi. The Abkhazian official news agency, Apsnypress, even cited the State Security Service of Abkhazia as confirming that account.
But now a source in the Abkhazian government is saying that the arms cache was not intended for Sochi, but for use in Abkhazia. From a report in the newspaper Kommersant (translation by BBC Monitoring):
Part of the alleged Chechen-Georgian arms cache discovered in Abkhazia
The Russian and Abkhazian security services say they have broken up a Chechen-Georgian plot to carry out terrorist attacks against the Sochi Olympics. According to a report from the Abkhazian official news agency ApsnyPress, the leader of the "Abkhazian Jamaat," an organization affiliated with the Caucasus Emirate, was arrested and a cache of weapons uncovered in the Gudauta region of Abkhazia. The list of weapons Apsny provides is pretty substantial, and includes a variety of anti-aircraft weaponry and grenade launchers.
The operation was masterminded by the leader of the Caucasus Emirate, Doku Umarov, with "direct involvement" of the Georgian security services and their allies in Turkey, according to a statement by the Russian Antiterrorism Committee:
Russian Federal Security Service was able to establish that the militants were planning to move these weapons during the 2012-2014 to Sochi and to use them to commit terrorist acts before and during the Olympic Games. Russia managed security services at an early stage to prevent the thugs attempting to launch their criminal plans....
They [the weapons] were brought into Abkhazia from Georgia. According to operational data, their transfer to Russia directly involved the Georgian special services and allied representatives of illegal armed groups in Turkey. The ringleader of an international terrorist organization "Caucasus Emirate" Umarov, maintaining close ties with the Georgian special services, coordinated all the activities of the organization of delivery of the commission of terrorist acts in close proximity to Sochi and marking these caches.
The Antiterrorism Committee website also has a number of photos of the alleged cache.
The Georgian government had laid out its expectations for the upcoming NATO summit, that it would receive "visible signs" of support from the alliance. The country's deputy secretary of the National Security Council, Batu Kutelia also said that Georgia should "be registered as part of the structure" of NATO, reports Georgian newspaper Rezonansi (via BBC Monitoring):
In his words, "the Chicago forum will not be an expansion summit but Georgia should 'be registered as part of the structure' as an aspirant country, which would confirm that Russia, a country that is not a member of the alliance, cannot veto NATO's decision to expand."
Batu Kutelia: "Aside from specific results, our main goal is to ensure that there are strong visible signs too. By 'visible signs' I mean the things that even someone without a deep knowledge of the question would understand from a distance.
"This is important for our people, the international community, the NATO member-states, and Russia which should see that the process of Georgia's accession to NATO has not slowed down.
"The most important thing that we expect from the NATO summit is that the group of aspirant countries, which includes Georgia along with three other countries, will be registered as a certain separate structure. This would be the kind of visible signal that the whole world, including the Russian Federation, would be able to see."
He's naming no names, but outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claims that Russia can’t follow the suit of some small countries (such as Georgia; nudge nudge, wink wink), and sack its entire (and legendarily corrupt) police force.
“Excuse me, but we are not a midget, a tiny little state that is sometimes brought to me as an example [of successful police reform],” Medvedev elaborated in an April 26 TV interview that some Russian media have termed his political swan song.
In one "tiny little state" south of Russia's border -- namely, Georgia -- the line from the Kremlin provided some grist to the government's ever-ready PR mill. And to its Policeman Number One, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili.
If the Russians hope that some of Georgia’s luck in reforming the police fobs off on them, “we are happy to help,” Merabishvili told the Georgian parliament on April 26.
But while its police overhaul still gives a major bragging point to the Georgian government, it is all too easy to look progressive and reformed given what kind of police forces are in the neighborhood. Shakedowns of drivers, public job-seekers and prisoners may have become a thing of the past, but a whole slew of domestic criticisms stands against the Georgian police, and the sheriff-in-chief was in parliament to address them.
The new complaints focus on abuse of authority by law enforcement officials and the government’s frequent reluctance to take matters in hand. Critics claim that the Georgian police have become a political instrument inseparable from President Mikheil Saakashvili's administration.
Cpl. Giorgi Kharaishvili, Company A, 31st Georgian Light Infantry Battalion, on patrol in Afghanistan.
Georgia lost its 16th soldier in Afghanistan this week, when Sergeant Valerian Khujadze died in a roadside bomb attack in Helmand Province. The mounting death toll has made Georgia's participation in the Afghanistan war an increasingly controversial issue in Georgia, with opposition politicians speaking out against it and soldiers trying to avoid being sent to Afghanistan.
The country's most formidable opposition figure, Bidzina Ivanishvili, does not seem to have spoken publicly about the Afghanistan mission, though he has endorsed NATO membership. Several of his political allies in his Georgian Dream movement, though, have been publicly critical of Georgia's role in Afghanistan, in a series of statements which Vladimir Socor has enumerated:
Georgian Dream’s defense and security working group chief, Irakli Sesiashvili, stated in print: “[President] Saakashvili organized a joint special operation with the Americans in Afghanistan. The [combat deaths] could have occurred because of the badly planned special operation, or due to Saakashvili’s public-relations needs.” Sesiashvili also stated on prime-time national television: “This special operation was carried out for [President] Saakashvili’s public relations needs, to honor his visit to Afghanistan." Sesiashvili is also a member of Georgian Dream’s top political team. The head of Georgian Dream’s working group on regional policies, Mamuka Areshidze, stated: “Georgian troops are now being used as cannon fodder. Armenian troops face lesser risks than do our soldiers. Our soldiers get much less pay than NATO troops".
