“South Ossetia is no closer to genuine independence now than in August 2008, when Russia went to war with Georgia and extended recognition,” ICG concludes.
The region's economy centers on menial tasks for the Russian military, which now accounts for about one-sixth of its diminishing population. Half of its de-facto government staff comes from Russia.
"Since recognition, South Ossetia has increasingly come
to resemble a North Caucasus republic, and Moscow’s
approach to it is similar," the report finds. "Over 80 per cent of North Caucasus republics’ budgets come from the federal centre,
and, as in South Ossetia, internal political dynamics mainly
revolve around the struggle for control of these resources."
So far, that control appears to have been fairly one-sided. The hefty $840 million in aid from the Kremlin has not trickled down to the population, but rather went into the pockets of South Ossetian officials, the report claims.
Meanwhile, the roughly 20,000 ethnic Georgians who fled South Ossetia during the 2008 war are still unable to return to their homes. Often, there are no homes to which to return; a "Moscow settlement" has sprung up in one former ethnic Georgian village.
Nor are chances for peace-making with Tbilisi anywhere on the horizon. "Reintegration with Georgia is not considered at any level,
even if there were to be a change of government in Tbilisi," says ICG.
The plan has broad cultural and foreign policy implications. Russia has a long-time status as Armenia’s strategic partner and a key source of jobs for labor migrants.
The plan has also hit a nationalist nerve.
Activists holding posters “Education Only in Armenian!” gathered on June 7 in front of the National Assembly to protest the schools. The concern is that Armenian may ultimately suffer if parents take their kids to the schools in a bid to expand their future professional options.
Armenians are keen to learn anything Russian in lieu of exploring their own cultural roots, opined Armenian bard Ruben Akhverdian recently. “[T]hey don’t know what a sacred cultural ‘burden’ they carry on their shoulders,” he bemoaned.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates came to Baku this weekend to whisper sweet nothings into Azerbaijan's ear after a brief spell in which the Azerbaijani government had threatened to rethink relations with its American suitor.
Coming from a country that is a key route for overflights to Afghanistan, the miffed message appears to have been understood.
In his dispatch, Obama acknowledged that there are "serious issues" with Baku, but nothing that diplomatic attention cannot "address."
Gates, the first top-ranking Obama official to visit Azerbaijan, indicated during his June 6-7 visit that Baku will be seeing more of its American friends soon -- a visit by Secretary of State Clinton is also planned.
A new Russian listening post in breakaway South Ossetia will allow Moscow to track mobile communications and "air movements" all over the South Caucasus, an unnamed senior Georgian official told the United Kingdom's The Telegraph.
Construction of the surveillance station is feeding existential angst in Tbilisi, which fears that Moscow could be bracing for another strike against its 2008 war foe. “Georgia is an unfinished business for Russia,” the official was reported saying in the June 4 story.
The move does not jive well with Tbilisi’s hopes for closer ties with the EU and increased European involvement in Georgia’s conflicts and domestic politics. Tbilisi often looks to the EU’s point man for the Caucasus, Peter Semneby, to help mitigate problems with Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With plans afoot to relegate Semneby’s functions to a lower-ranking functionary in Brussels, Georgians now may have to look elsewhere for intercession.
As RFE/RL writes, the move "signals another lurch toward big-power politics within the EU." And one in which the South Caucasus and Moldova -- with their complicated, long-running separatist conflicts -- look likely to pull significantly lesser weight.
For several days now, Armenian National Congress (ANC) activists have been vainly trying to access the newly renovated central square to call for the release of alleged political prisoners and return ofopposition-minded A1+ television channel to the air. But the city authorities say they did not refurbish Liberty Square to let it turn into a theater for political activism again. Riot police rounded up 15 ANC activists and several reporters and herded them into police vans on May 31. Most have since been released, reportedly.
After years of jostling among the regional giants, the United States and Russia, officials in Georgia seem intent on recruiting a new player for the regional geopolitical game -- Iran.
The South Caucasus can heave a collective sigh of relief. Singing talents from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia all have made it to the final of Eurovision, Europe’s annual pop-glitz fest.
The three countries' singing beauties and their saccharine-heavy songs breezed through the semi-final of this pop music Super Bowl, where voting for participants tends to reflect the continent’s geopolitical fault lines.
British bookmakers predict that Azerbaijan’s Safura will win the contest with her "Drip Drop" song, while Google’s I-Predictor gadget gave Georgia’s Sofo Nizharadze with "Shine" a respectable fifth-place finish.
Last year, Georgia was disqualified for taking a swipe at Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in its contestants' "We Don’t Wanna Put In" disco song.
There is a hackneyed Georgian phrase that represents some of the older generation’s nostalgia for the USSR: "I could fly to Moscow for 37 rubles then!" Translation: Russia's cosmopolitan capital was easy to access before the walls of nationalism arose all over the former Soviet Union, and the Soviet-Georgian marriage ended in a bitter divorce.
For those Georgians who still want to catch that 37-ruble flight to the past, President Mikheil Saakashvili has got some news.
Some older Georgians apparently already embrace that message.
One middle-aged patriot recently spotted driving his red, Russian-made Lada down a Tbilisi road had emblazoned the back of his car (in English) with a single, simple message: "I don’t need Russian women!"
What is democracy? For Ethiopia, it's "fair play"; for Poland, it's "like a keyboard." (?) And for Azerbaijan, it's "possible."
An Azerbaijani entry was the only contestant from the former Soviet Union among the 18 finalists in the "Democracy Is . . . " video contest sponsored by a collection of American universities, film and recording associations and the US Department of State, among others. Online voting will decide a winner by roughly June 18.
But the makers of the Azerbaijani video most likely know a thing or two about why democracy matters. The video links to a website of Azerbaijan’s youth movement Ol! The founder of the movement, blogger Adnan Hajizade, is serving a two-year prison term on what are widely believed to be trumped-up charges of hooliganism.
