Russians may gripe loudly and bitterly about their leaders’ authoritative ways, but, apparently, it takes a real Georgian man to turn Russian anger into a proper, full-force, anti-Kremlin protest.
(The claim appears to rest primarily on a documentary by the pro-Kremlin TV station NTV that explored the alleged Givi question. )
And now they want Georgia's new government -- political opponents of Givi and Misha both -- to help them with their investigation.
The request comes on the eve of a face-to-face meeting between Russian diplomats and Zurab Abashidze, a former Georgian ambassador to Moscow who has become Tbilisi's new point man for trying to get Russia to meet Georgia halfway.
Accusing domestic political opponents of being in cahoots with an enemy state is a classic device in the former Soviet Union's political playbook. Georgia and Russia are especially keen on pulling out that card.
The deadly hostage-taking crisis near Georgia’s border with Russia has been announced as largely over, but the battle between Georgian forces and the unwanted visitors from the North Caucasus may have left Tbilisi with another enemy within the Russian Federation.
It's not always easy to figure out who’s fighting whom in the Caucasus and for what reasons; especially when official reports are inconclusive and leave ample room for speculation.
It is still unclear what drew a purported group of Islamist militants to cross into Georgia from the Russian republic of Daghestan and take several picnickers hostage. The ensuing clash claimed three Georgian military lives and left 11 “armed” and “bearded” attackers dead.
Blaming each other for terrorist activities in the Caucasus may be par for the course for Tbilisi and Moscow, but this time they seem to be up against a common enemy. Tbilisi has thus far refrained from pointing the finger of blame at anyone in particular, but one group of Islamist rebels has threatened retaliation.
“You will acquire another enemy, who will exact a ruthless revenge,” wrote a Daghestani chapter of the Caucasus Emirate, a militant group that seeks to establish Islamic rule throughout the North Caucasus.
Accusing Tbilisi of a provocation with its report of hostage-taking, the group claimed their mujahideen brethren had no intention to attack anyone in Georgia, but “if they wanted to, they could do it easily, Insha’Allah.”
There is clearly a serious armed crisis near Georgia's border with the Russian republic of Daghestan, but it is not fully clear what exactly the crisis is all about. Georgian officials speak cautiously of a hostage-taking situation; 14 are reported dead. Hearsay and conspiracy theories fill in the gaps.
All morning, Georgian TV and online media rolled footage of military trucks carrying troops, an emergency government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili (and featuring Defense Minister Dimitri Shashkin, Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaia and Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili), and shots of scared residents of Lapankuri, the village home of some of the hostages. Security was tightened around military hospitals and officials kept talking about an ongoing pursuit of an unspecified armed group that purportedly had crossed into Georgia from Daghestan.
In short, it all went from a teaser to a thriller, when just enough action is shown not to reveal the plot.
Later in the afternoon, Georgian police posted videos showing two men from villages in the area who said they were taken hostage by about 15 “heavily armed” and “bearded” men; a description that, within the region, suggests a connection to fighters from Russia’s North Caucasus. Later, at about 4pm, the interior ministry said that three members of Georgia's special forces and 11 attackers had died in the standoff. Most of the Georgian hostages have been released, while another six hostage-takers have been surrounded by Georgian troops, the ministry said.
They may be divided by a war and an almost epic feud, but in a trend worthy of a classic Russian novel, Russians are by far Georgians' favorite foreigners to marry.
Of some 2,000 cross-border marriages in Georgia so far in 2012, almost 900 were between Georgians and Russians, according to Georgian Civil Registry data shared with EurasiaNet.org.
In most cases (roughly 500), a Georgian is the groom and a Russian is the bride.
Surprised? You might well be.
Georgia’s 2008 diplomatic break-up with Russia went like a nasty, dish-throwing divorce that left emotional (and physical) scars, plus unresolved property disputes. To hear Tbilisi tell it, the Kremlin has since turned into a creepy stalker that just can’t let go.
In particular, of breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, some 20 percent of Georgia's internationally recognized territory, where thousands of Russian troops are still stationed.
A recent poll indicated that some 73 percent of Georgians think that Russia poses a danger to their country.
But, apparently, those considerations take a backseat when love comes a-calling.
Granted, a running joke in Georgia holds that many men miss the days when they could fly to Moscow on the cheap in pursuit of Russian women, and, no doubt, that line will be trotted out again to explain this marriage trend.
Yet this looks like more than a passing infatuation -- last year, Georgian-Russian unions accounted for almost 50 percent of the 1,362 marriages between Georgians and foreign nationals.
After Russians, Georgian men give priority to Armenian and Ukrainian women, while Georgian women go for Turkish and Greek men.
Little is known about what brings Rummy to George W. Bush’s beacon of regional democracy; perhaps because local media are too busy covering the government's seizure of property belonging to a cable television company accused of bribing voters for Ivanishvili. What we know is that Rumsfeld met Georgian Defense Minister Bacho Akhalia, who thanked him for his contribution to deepening US-Georgia military ties.
The two past and present defense bosses chatted about Georgia’s plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the ongoing military reforms in the country. Rumsfeld will stay in town for a week; perhaps he is working on a chapter for a new installment of memoirs?
Georgia’s hopes to join NATO, reclaim Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and
other running foreign policy matters were the key moments of US
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s June 4-5 drop-in on Georgia,
but her visit had implications for domestic political struggles as
well.
With Georgia's parliamentary elections set for October, all of the
country’s main political players hope for some public display of
Washington’s support. Before Clinton swung by, opposition tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili had hoped to steal her away a bit from the warm embrace of her host (and his arch-rival) Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for an intimate tête-à-tête. But it was not to be.
Clinton chose to get the lowdown on Georgian politics from a less up-close-and-personal sit-down with NGOs and a group meeting with opposition leaders. Ivanishvili was represented at the meeting by allies in his Georgian Dream coalition and the chairperson of the group, Manana Kobakhidze.
He had earlier indicated that he does not want to share his Clinton time with leaders of political minority groups who are not part of the Georgian Dream and whom he describes as a "fake opposition."
But looks like Ivanishvili's envoy, Kobakhidze, did not exactly fade into the woodwork. She claimed that Clinton inquired why Ivanishvili refuses to make use of the government offer -- now sealed in the constitution as an amendment -- which would allow the billionaire to run in the parliamentary election as, yes, a European Union citizen.
Azerbaijan made the trip to the May 20-21 Euro-Atlantic defense pow-wow in Chicago, and Georgia all but rode a rocket there. But Armenia stayed home.
And not because -- to borrow the dating excuse of an earlier generation of Americans -- it needed to wash its hair.
Armenia is Russia’s economic and military protégé in the Caucasus, and some Armenian wonks believe that President Serzh Sargsyan was a no-show in Chicago as a courtesy move to the Kremlin.
But Yerevan says that the real turn-off for Sargsyan was the gathering’s reiteration of the alliance’s commitment to the territorial integrity of nations. In plain words and as far as Armenia is concerned, this means it should let Azerbaijan take back Sargsyan's native land of breakaway Nagorno Karabakh.
“We remain committed in our support of the territorial integrity, independence, and sovereignty of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Republic of Moldova,” the 28-member bloc said. The declaration does not mention the right of self-determination which Armenia advocates in the Karabakh conflict resolution talks. The right to self-determination and the right to territorial integrity -- contradictory though at times they may seem -- are both principles that guide the internationally-mediated discussions.
“Apart from harming the Karabakh peace talks, this may pose a threat to the precarious stability in the South Caucasus,” Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said in reference to the statement.
He was not the first person you might expect to see as an official guest at a US military exercise. But, nonetheless, there he was. Tucked among the ambassadors, diplomats and North American Treaty Organization (NATO) liaison officers watching US Marines and Georgian troops prepare for Afghanistan on March 20, was one of Iran's Tbilisi defense attachés.
The guest list for the annual Agile Spirit 2012 exercises had been the task of the Georgian Ministry of Defense, and, granted, Georgians are renowned for their hospitality to foreigners. The country’s open-door policy with Iran is also well documented.
But so is its desire to please Washington. The US long has maintained that Iran actively works to sabotage NATO operations in Afghanistan; a charge Tehran denies. On March 17, General Masoud Jazayeri, Iran's deputy commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged Afghans to create «resistance groups» and set about «hitting American interests,» the Associated Press reported.
So, against that backdrop, you might think that having an Iranian military attaché at a US-Georgian military exercise for Afghanistan might make for an awkward moment.
The South Caucasus appears to be finding itself in a risky front-row seat for the ongoing international campaign against Iran's nuclear ambitions and, in turn, outrage at Israel for its role in the struggle.
On February 13, a bomb was found under the car of a Georgian employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi. Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Shota Utiashvili told EurasiaNet.org that he could not specify if the foiled bomb attack was targeted against the Israeli embassy premises, but noted that the car "was located near the embassy." Police defused the explosive without incident.
In a separate incident today, the wife of an Israeli diplomat was injured in a car bomb explosion in New Delhi.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed the finger at Iran and the Iranian-funded group Hezbollah for both incidents. Georgian officials, though, as yet have given no indication that Iran -- arguably, Public Enemy Number One for Israel right now -- has been linked to the Tbilisi car bomb.
To Georgia's south, in Azerbaijan, though, another situation allegedly involving Israel already has Iranian government tempers boiling.
Georgia’s feuding Mr. President and Mr. Billionaire went to Washington on January 30 -- one in person and the other in writing -- to compete for the good graces of Barack Obama's administration.
Obama essentially heard two songs from the Georgians -- “Got What You Need” from President Mikheil Saakashvili and “Take a Chance on Me” from opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Saakashvili may have gotten the face time with Obama, but Ivanishvili tried to mitigate whatever political scores the Oval Office meeting may give Saakashvili. In op-eds published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Forbes List billionaire asked Obama to pressure Saakashvili to make Georgia's upcoming parliamentary elections air and competitive.
“We urge the leaders of the USA… to apply all available assets to secure free and fair ballot for our citizens at the October 2012 election,” reads the op-ed.
Saakashvili, in the meantime, emerged from his White House meeting satisfied, telling the BBC it had "elevated" the two countries' ties "to [a] new level," and thanking Obama for Washington's continued commitment to Georgia’s territorial integrity, eventual NATO membership, and for the prospect of signing a free trade agreement.
There are growing signs, though, that the battle for Georgia’s political future will play out inside the beltway as much as back in Tbilisi. Much of the Saakashvili administration’s success is attributed to their lobbying dexterity and ties in Washington. Ivanishvili seems bent on going mano-a-mano with Misha in this field.
