The recent decision by the United States to deploy military advisors and hardware to the Republic of Georgia highlights the rivalry between East and West that lay at the heart of the Cold War. The rivalry still exists.

Internally, Georgia has another conflict: The breakaway region of Abkhazia, which — with the backing of Moscow — has seen its aspirations for independence become a bargaining chip in this bigger geopolitical game.

Located in the northwestern corner of Georgia between Black Sea and the Caucuses Mountains, Abkhazia declared independence in 1993.

The ensuring war forced most ethnic Georgians from the region, an exodus that has continued despite the presence of United Nations peacekeepers supervising a cease-fire.

“There’s no question that Russia provoked the war, is arming the war and is sustaining the war,” says an official with a US security agency familiar with the conflict.

“They have a strong interest (in the region), and they are using this insurgency as a means of protecting it.”

While the Abkhaz civil war laid waste much of the region, it did have a positive outcome: The mass departure of 600,00 ethnic Georgians put the Abkhaz population in the majority. For this reason, the breakaway government is eager to justify the expulsions, however lamely.

“There two important principals in this work: The principal of territorial integrity, and the principal of self-determination of peoples,” says Sergei Shamba, Abkhazia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. “These principals may contradict one another, but they are equally valid,”

Complicating matters further, the UN has an unofficial partner in its peacekeeping mission: Troops from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), all of them Russian.

“How long will we stay here?” rhetorically asks Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Tishko, Commander of the CIS.

“It’s a question of politics and the military.”

German diplomat Deiter Boden, the UN’s Special Envoy to Georgia, is trying to mediate the crisis, but he acknowledges there are no easy solutions.

“We need more than just the return of people,” says Boden. “We need a foundation, a political foundation, for the co-existence of Abkhaz, Georgians and other minorities who were driven in the war.”

British Petroleum, the multinational oil firm, has a pumping station about 30 kilometers from Tbilisi. A BP pipeline transports oil from the rich fields on the Caspian Sea through the port city of Baku, across Abkhazia and ends on the Black Sea.

Despite the billions generated by the Caspian oil boom, local Abkhazis don’t profit from the pipeline. This is a source of bitterness for the indigenous Abkhaz, whose shortage of energy supplies has forced them to decimate neighboring forests and city parks in their desperate quest for firewood.

Georgia’s president, Eduard Shevardnadze, who once served as Soviet foreign minister, presides over a shaky government rife with scandal. His unwillingness to offend Russia and the West has caused Shevardnadze to lose the respect of the Georgian people.

“I think Russia still thinks a little bit in old-fashioned geopolitical terms and in terms of zones of influence,” Ghia Nodia, a Georgian political analyst, tells journalists.

“And within those terms, this oil pipeline is a very sensitive issue.”

Nodia and other political observers see Russian’s military presence in the region as a bargaining chip as Western oil firms prepare to build a second oil pipeline, which will run from Baku to Tbilisi across the breadth of Turkey to the Mediterranean port Ceyhan.

At a cost of $3 billion, the new pipeline enables oil companies to avoid Russian territory.

“Yes, the Russians do have a political interest here,” says Andrew Baines, BP’s General Manager in Georgia. “(But) I personally don’t see the Russian political influence here as having a very great effect on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (pipeline).”

BP is hoping Russian oil companies with leases on the Caspian will join its consortium, thus easing the political pressure on Georgia.

But the stakes were raised recently when the US sent military helicopters and military advisors to Tbilisi. Officially, America’s increased military support is intended to assist Georgian forces in the hunt for Muslim-backed terrorists in the Pankissi Gorge. But it is the hope of many Georgian refugees from the Abkhazia that the Americans will help the Georgian liberate their homeland and enable them to return.

Ironically, Russia practically dared the US to offer military support to the Georgians:

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Igor Ivanov declared: “It was not improbable, that Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda troops could be hiding in the Georgian Pakissi Gorge.”

Regional experts believe that with such a provocative statement, Ivanov should not have been surprised at America’s sudden announcement to send in troops and equipment.

But what the Russian foreign minister really intended, many believe, was to put pressure on the Georgian government to clamp down on what it sees as a growing concern in the Chechnya-Georgian border region.

Since the beginning of the Russian-Chechnya conflict in 1992, more than 7,000 refugees have fled across the border into neighboring Georgia, where they have enjoyed relative anonymity. Russian intelligence agencies believe many Chechnya rebels, drug dealers and weapons smugglers have mingled within these refugees.

The government in Tbilisi has slowly lost control over the rugged mountains that divide it from Chechnya — a development that Russia finds unacceptable. Moscow has accused Georgia of not being more aggressive in maintaining control of its border, and has even threatened to intervene in its own interests.

Many regional observers see a hidden agenda in Russia’s Georgia politics.

They believe Moscow is unhappy that a small former Soviet republic in the Caucuses is trying to free itself from Mother Russia’s sphere of influence and move toward a closer relationship with the West.

To the Russian leadership, these fears were affirmed two years ago when Shevardnadze promised to lead his country into the European Union and NATO.

Thus far, it’s still not clear how Russia with its 11,000 troops in the region will react to the presence of US troops so close to its borders.

Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov will only say that American forces in Georgia “could aggravate even further the already complex situation.”

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