TBILISI, 25 August 2004 — Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has raised the stakes in his confrontation with separatists in his homeland with a show of military strength that has alarmed the West and annoyed big neighbor Russia.
Though he has pulled back his troops from rebel South Ossetia and set himself firmly against any war, he remains bent on reuniting his fractious country. So where does he go from here?
“There’s an air of unpredictability. He’s pulled back his forces. But all the elements are there for them to go back in quickly if Georgian lives are at risk,” said a Western diplomat.
Saakashvili, a 36-year-old US-trained lawyer, knows he could squander enormous Western goodwill with any hasty move that plunges the Caucasus region into fresh war.
“A war ... is the worst thing that could happen to us. I have no intention of provoking one. I’m not mad,” he said in an interview with the French daily Liberation yesterday.
In the few days since the crisis blew up, diplomats say, the United States — a big backer of Saakashvili — and other Western powers have urged restraint. Any new conflict in the Caucasus, where Russia is already bogged down in separatist war in Chechnya, would spell bad news for the future of a pipeline taking Caspian oil to the West.
But going back to a stalemate on South Ossetia — a 4,000 sq. km territory rolling north into the mountains whose economy is shackled to smuggling food, oil and tobacco from Russia — is not an option for Saakashvili.
Theatre to one of a handful of frozen conflicts hanging over from Soviet times, South Ossetia has had de facto independence since a 1991 war in the last days of the Soviet Union.
Then, its leaders complained of Georgian nationalism and pushed for union with Russia, across the Caucasus mountains. Until violence erupted in early August, an uneasy peace had been kept by peacekeepers from Russia, Georgia and the Russian region of North Ossetia. Smuggling has continued apace, pouring black market goods into Georgia.
Saakashvili, elected in January, has pledged to reunite his homeland and eradicate “black holes” like South Ossetia that he says doom development and ultimately Georgia’s wider ambitions to be part of the European mainstream.
“A ‘frozen’ conflict is worse for us than a real conflict because it is like a Damocles sword that is hanging over us and can fall any time,” Goga Khaindrava, Georgia’s state minister for conflicts, told Reuters.
The Caucasus region is home to dozens of ethnic groups like the Ossetians, many with ancient grudges and scores to settle. The international community recognizes South Ossetia as part of Georgia.
But Saakashvili has still to get the ear of the West — and then get the West to press Russia to pull the rug from under South Ossetia’s leadership.
Russia, the former colonial master which has two military bases in Georgia, holds the key to solving the dispute, Tbilisi believes. But hopes that Russian President Vladimir Putin would give a hand to the new Georgia — as he did by helping negotiate an end to a similar crisis in Adzhara province — have been dashed by tough Kremlin language.
His Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has come out against the idea of an international conference — a Saakashvili plan to raise the profile of the problem. Putin has incensed Georgians by blaming the crisis on “stupid” decisions taken by Tbilisi years ago and shown little sympathy for Georgia, dropping plans for a visit.
