Once again, Georgia has managed to undergo important political change without a drop of blood being shed. The rebel leader of the key Ajaria province, which controls the country’s important port of Batumi, has thrown in the towel and fled to Russia. Georgia’s new President Mikhail Saakashvili, who came to power after peaceful mass demonstrations forced the departure of Eduard Shevardnadze, has repeated the trick.
When Ajarian strongman Aslan Abashidze refused to recognize the new president, Georgia faced a serious crisis. Both Moscow and Washington have been busy meddling in the affairs of the Caucasus state, the Russians because they wish to keep their leverage and influence, the Americans because of their multibillion-dollar investment in a pipeline to carry Caspian crude to the Black Sea, bypassing Russia. The Russians — who have already encouraged ethnic tensions elsewhere in Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia — must have been delighted with this challenge to the new government. The Americans, their thoughts deeply involved elsewhere, must have been wringing their hands when they thought of their oil pipeline plans collapsing. They may well have been urging that the Georgian Army, which has been trained and equipped by Washington, attack the militias of Abashidze.
In the event it was not Muscovite deviousness or US brute force that won the day. It was people power. Abashidze discovered that the local populace were fed up with him. Great demonstrations filled the streets of Batumi. The rebel leader realized that even his well-armed militia could not take on the crowds. He decided to quit while he was still ahead. Saakashvili will no doubt be blamed in future for letting an old-style Communist hood like Abashidze escape to enjoy the funds he stole. But it was right to let the man go. Bringing him to trial was not worth a single drop of Georgian blood. It would anyway have laid the grounds for future enmities.
Now the Georgians have control of most of their own country and can look to building a future without the old political figures from their past. However, the biggest danger confronting Saakashvili is the very extent of his success in the face of considerable difficulties. Ordinary Georgians may know or care little about his political program. What matters to them is that their new president represents a decisive break with a miserable past. By the simple but courageous act of twice taking to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to confront the security forces of failed but still powerful regimes, the Georgians have seized their destiny with their own hands. In the exuberance of their victory, anything now will seem possible. Political reality and disappointments will strike home soon enough, and they will be the harder to bear after the effervescent hopes of the present.
