Georgia-Russia War

Upgrading Georgia’s education system has been a painful process. Now, introducing students to elements of civil defense and Georgian folk dance could give teachers a fresh headache.

A recent article in Liberali magazine describes civil defense trainers going to great pains to explain to a less-than-rapt audience of village instructors in geography, history and mathematics how to disassemble an automatic rifle, tell a Russian gun from an American one and give first aid to the wounded. [Liberali receives funding from the Open Society Georgia Foundation, part of the Soros Foundations network. EurasiaNet.org operates under the auspices of the Open Society Institute, a separate part of the network.]

“Pay attention, ladies,” says one trainer, as he explains the anatomy of a rifle. “You are particularly unknowledgeable on this subject,” he tells the teachers, who, student-like, giggle and whisper in response.

After attending the three-day training, the teachers are supposed to share their new skills with students. Some teachers commented to Liberali that they could not keep up with the trainer; others wished they knew how to provide first aid when war with Russia broke out two years ago. The teachers will have to rely on their memory for their lessons, as, so far, there is no textbook they can consult.

But not all the pending changes in Georgia's education system are defense-related.

The cover of Ronald D. Asmus's book on the 2008 Georgia-Russia war features a queen casting a shadow behind a pawn. Two years after both the pawn and the queen put down their guns, Georgian officials say that their chess game with Russia continues.


To make that point, Georgia’s public television on August 7 interviewed two key government figures as they sat in front of a large chessboard. “A pawn can be promoted to a queen,” commented State Minister for Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili.  That move happened for five days in August 2008 as other players on the world chessboard watched Georgia's struggle with Russia, he asserted. The "so-called little" war "had much meaning for the system of international relations," said Parliamentary Chairperson Davit Bakradze.

Asmus, as well as many other observers, indeed sees the Tbilisi-Moscow showdown as a manifestation of wider West vs. Russia turf wars. But as longtime Caucasus analyst Thomas de Waal noted, the book is a “satellite photograph” that fails to zoom in on the on-the-ground reality; a picture not as black-and-white as a chessboard. 

Nonetheless, in remembering the war that cost them the remaining strips of Georgian-controlled territory in breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the government prefers a straight-forward message. On August 7, Georgia honored victims of the war and Internally Displaced Persons by holding concerts and lighting 5,000 candles in Gori, a town near South Ossetia that was occupied briefly by Russian troops. The ceremonies held a single message --- the battle with Russia will not be over until the queen retreats.

Members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) face a delicate task late next month when they meet in Yerevan for one of their regular pow-wows -- how to explain why the CSTO declined to send forces to member-state Kyrgyzstan in June to quell ethnic bloodshed.

The refusal sparked accusations that the organization, intended as an FSU version of NATO, is useless.

Speaking at a July 21 press-conference in Yerevan, the CSTO's Russian secretary-general, Nikolai Bordyuzha, had a ready response to that one: “We have all deemed it inexpedient to invade another state as it would only aggravate tensions,” Bordyuzha explained.

Such considerations, however, did not stop Russia from invading non-CSTO member Georgia in 2008.

But not only Georgia will be keeping a cautious eye on the CSTO shindig to its south.

The summit's Armenian venue is likely to give fellow neighbor Azerbaijan pause as well. Yerevan recently requested CSTO to outsource some segments of the Russian defense industry to Armenia. The country could also be the site for the organization's 2011 war games.

A bleep censor might come in handy for France when Russia and Georgia open their post-Soviet mouths. Since taking on the thankless job of mediating between Moscow and Tbilisi, mannerly French envoys have found themselves in the unlikely world of rapster-style dissing.

Two years ago, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy was trying to convince Vladimir Putin to abort the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Russian prime minister reportedly startled his French guest by sharing plans to hang Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili by his private parts. Now that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has instructed Tbilisi to make nice with Russia, Saakashvili has cautioned that Georgia will not “lick" its giant neighbor "in one place as some have proposed that we do."

That said, the French must have known that they would be dealing with people who call ‘em as they see ‘em. Putin once famously offered to "wipe out" terrorists in a toilet, while Saakashvili in 2007 suggested that his old-guard domestic critics had been “flushed down” the toilet.

Neither side has patience for French exhortations on restrained conduct because both believe the Paris-brokered cease-fire deal left key issues unresolved. Russia still maintains a tight grip on breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Russian hopes of regime change in Georgia never materialized. That means more PG-13 diplomacy coming soon . . . 

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner came to Georgia on July 14 with a simple message: Put the emphasis on civil society to put an end to conflicts with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"Working with civil society would be much more effective than declaring war on Russia," Kouchner told a July 15 meeting at Tbilisi's Europe House.

"That's the way that other populations will come toward you . . . . You should concentrate on that which you do very well . . . human engagement" and civil society, he continued.

Coming from one of the founders of Doctors Without Borders, that message might find an attentive audience. With the start of talks on July 15 with the European Union about an Association Agreement, Tbilisi is eager to stress that Georgia is "a country based on European values."

Local media, however, tend to assess visiting dignitaries based on their stance toward Russia and toward the two breakaways.

At a later press conference with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili , Kouchner stressed that the two regions remain part of Georgia. "C'est évident!" ("It's obvious!") he declared, extending his arms wide.

While Kouchner acknowledged Russia's failure to uphold the terms of its 2008 cease-fire agreement with Georgia by withdrawing troops from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he effectively advised Tbilisi that it can kill more flies with honey than it can with vinegar.

Moscow has revoked Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze's Russian citizenship, some eight months after Tbilisi’s chief diplomat, in his own words, mailed his Russian passport to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
 
“The Russian side has finally found the time . . . to satisfy Grigol Vashadze’s application for cancellation of his Russian citizenship," Deputy Foreign Minister Davit Jalagania told a June 28 briefing.

Following the 2008 war with Georgia, Russian parliamentarian Semion Bogdasarov asked Russia's State Duma to deprive Vashadze of his Russian citizenship because of his close association with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who tops the Kremlin’s persona non grata list. The Duma denied the requested, but then Vashadze himself ditched his Russian passport. Vashadze is married to Georgian prima ballerina Nino Ananiashvili, a former Bolshoi Ballet star who is a godmother of Saakashvili’s younger son, Nikoloz.

Forget about the dangers of France selling Russia high-end helicopter carriers. It is apparently the French plans to sell Georgia two helicopters that pose a real threat to regional security, claims one member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Council.    

The French company Eurocopter plans to sell two of it Super Puma helicopters (a series with both military and civilian versions) to Georgia, a roughly $30 million sale that could run the risk of Russian sanctions against the firm, warned Igor Korotchenko, head of the recently formed Center for the Analysis of World Military Trade. In the wake of its 2008 war with Georgia, Moscow called for an international ban on selling arms to Tbilisi and vowed to punish embargo breakers. Korotchenko reminded Eurocopter that Russia is a VIP client and Georgia is not worth risking Russian sales.

Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze called the warnings a bluff. The Georgian government claims that the helicopters will be used for high-altitude emergency operations and to carry tourists into the mountains.   

By contrast, the French-made Mistral helicopter carrier in Russia's shopping bag is capable of transporting 16 attack helicopters, dozens of armored vehicles and around 450 soldiers. Russian Navy commander Vladimir Vysotsky claimed that the carriers would have allowed Russia to complete its 2008 war with Georgia within "40 minutes."

The United States is “not throwing Georgians under the bus” in the name of cooperation with Russia, White House Russian and Eurasian affairs adviser Michael McFaul assured a June 10 audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC.

The Obama administration's Russia strategy is all about decoupling areas where the White House and the Kremlin can cooperate, such as nuclear disarmament and Afghanistan, from unrelated areas, said McFaul. “We are deliberately not pushing for the end of the occupation of Georgia to resubmit” to Congress a nuclear treaty with Russia, he said.

But this “does not mean that we are ignoring Georgia” and not working to secure the withdrawal of Russian troops from the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he claimed. “We are doing these things in parallel, but we are not linking them.”

There may be little love lost between Russia and Georgia, but the quarrelsome neighbors now have something in common -- their low ranking in the Global Peace Index, a scale of countries' peacefulness assembled by the Sydney, Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.


Out of a group of 149 countries, the Index gave Russia's degree of peacefulness a 143rd place finish, while Georgia appears just a notch calmer in 142nd place.


Conflict with neighbors? Check. High number of deaths from organized conflict? Check. Too many weapons? Check. The list of peacefulness criteria goes on. 


The countries ranked as more ill-tempered than Russia and Georgia include Israel, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.


Within the South Caucasus, Armenia carries the peace torch, finishing in 119th place, while New Zealand is deemed the world's least trigger-happy country.

Where does Russia end and South Ossetia begin? Nearly two years after Moscow recognized its independence from Georgia, the breakaway enclave is suffering in the throes of Moscow’s smothering embrace, says a report released by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on June 7.

“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.