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GEORGIA WANTS STRATEGIC ALLIANCES IN RUSSIA'S BACKYARD
By Nathan Thornburgh
TIME Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2091392,00.html
Monday, Sept. 12, 2011
Three years after a war that was essentially a failure of friendship
-- his far-off allies in Washington had not warred alongside him
against Russia and they had not prevented the loss of huge amounts
of Georgian territory -- President Mikheil Saakashvili wants to show
off some new friends.
Here they are: a convivial ring of summer campers in Anaklia on the
Black Sea, some still dripping wet from the pool, gathered around
a bonfire. Saakashvili sits among them and gives a speech, but he's
not just talking to them. He's talking to the cameras recording the
speech for national broadcast. He's talking to me, certainly, and
therefore to you. He wants us all to know about the kids in this camp,
how they are a group of teenagers made up of ethnic Georgians, ethnic
Armenians and ethnic Azeris. The camp is called Tolerance. They play
volleyball there and learn one another's songs and wave the Georgian
flag. The idea is that they want peace, not like the Russian troops
who patrol the border of breakaway Abkhazia just 5 km away. "What
you see here is an answer to the occupation," Saakashvili says. "We
are making history."
Making history has always come easily to Saakashvili. First elected in
2004, he arrived as a democrat in a region of despots. While everyone
else knelt before the Kremlin, he taunted Russia's then President,
Vladimir Putin. He took Western political stagecraft with him: in
Anaklia, his personal film crew is shooting his speech in HD as his
official photographer, a slim man with an improbably long camera lens,
clicks away. More important than American-style image control, though,
Saakashvili took American interests into the heart of a country that
had been contested by closer powers -- Persians, Turks, Russians --
since the time of Herodotus. But these days, now that membership in
NATO and the European Union is a distant dream, his prospects rely
on the good graces of his non-Russian neighbors. He needs them to
trade with Georgia, to be tourists in Georgia, and should war break
out again, to at least not take Russia's side. With his final term
ending in 2013, and tensions again rising between Georgia and Russia,
the survival of Saakashvili's legacy, and perhaps his country, may
well depend on it.
(See photos of the aftermath of the Georgian conflict.)
A Charm Offensive Georgia is separated from the majority of its
neighbors by the Caucasus, home to some of the highest mountains
in Europe. In early summer, the Georgian Border Police, 2,700
troops who guard the mountaintops, took me and photographer Yuri
Kozyrev on its troop-rotation flights: stalwart Russian-made MI-8
helicopters flying from peak to peak, sometimes half-blind through
clouds, landing on narrow outcrops next to outposts that seemed to
be policing the roof of the world. It's a humbling landscape, but
the remoteness and isolation of those mountains also gave rise to a
huge diversity of clashing tribes, ethnic groups and interests. The
Chechens are suspicious of the Ingush, the Georgians mock the Avars,
the Armenians and Azeris share a rich mutual hatred. Saakashvili now
wants to be friends with them all.
The Russians, however, are experts at playing these groups off one
another. The Russian republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus
fought two unsuccessful wars of secession against Russia, but the
Chechen people also warred over the centuries with Georgia, which
had its own imperious moments. Now, especially after Kremlin-backed
strongman Ramzan Kadyrov took over in 2007, Chechnya is a potential
menace to Georgia again. When the Russian military poured into South
Ossetia during the five-day war of 2008, for example, the most feared
units came from a war-hardened Chechen battalion.
(See pictures of the Russian-Georgian war.)
So Saakashvili has launched his own charm offensive to win over the
people of Chechnya and neighboring republics. Since last October,
residents of the Russian North Caucasus can pass through a northern
border crossing with Georgia without a visa -- a unilateral move that
infuriated Moscow. Some 48,000 visitors have gone this way already.
Over tea in the Black Sea resort of Batumi, Saakashvili tells me
that if Chechens arriving in Georgia see "everyone smiling at them,"
it's good for national security. "For us, it's a protection," he says.
"They can say, 'We've been there, and we don't want next time to come
to rampage and pillage.'â~@~I"
Security through tourism: it's an idea aimed not only at the
North Caucasus, but at regional powers Azerbaijan and Armenia as
well. Those landlocked countries are very much the target market
for Georgia's Black Sea resort boom. Anaklia, which was little more
than a village with a pleasant beach when I visited two years ago, is
being transformed at a dizzying rate. It seems half-finished already;
when complete it will have a water park, casino, open-air disco,
yacht rental, a strand with 5,000 imported palms and, confusingly, a
Chinatown located just a rifle shot away from the disputed Abkhazian
border. Saakashvili calls close trade and tourism with Azerbaijan
and Armenia "absolutely crucial" to Georgia's development as a focal
point of a more unified Caucasus.
(Read "One Year On, Could Russia and Georgia Fight Another War?")
A Finger in Moscow's Eye Georgia's Pankisi gorge -- a string of
muddy villages that was an infamous Chechen rebel hideout before
Saakashvili regained control there in 2004 -- shows signs of regional
bonds Saakashvili can build on. After accusations of being hostile
to Chechen refugees early in his career, Saakashvili seems to have
won many over by giving them citizenship and equal rights under
Georgian law. Acet, who didn't want her full name used because it
might endanger relatives still living in Chechnya, is one of some
800 civilian refugees from the Chechen war still living in Pankisi;
she arrived after being denied citizenship in Turkey. "I'm so glad our
brothers took us in," she says. "We are free here." Even the revered
Alla Dudayeva, whose husband General Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed
himself the first President of "free" Chechnya before the Russians
killed him, has moved to Georgia after long exile in Europe. "Anywhere
in the mountains, you are with your people," Dudayeva tells me at
her home in Tbilisi. "Georgians and Chechens are one."
That's the message of Kanal PIK, an ambitious government-funded effort
to start a Caucasus version of al-Jazeera. The programming is all
Russian-language and beamed into homes throughout the region from
Tbilisi, including into the Russian republics of the North Caucasus.
The idea is to do for the Caucasus what al-Jazeera did for the Middle
East: provide an independent source of news to break through the
regional censorship. "There's a big problem with an information vacuum
in the region," says Katya Kotrikadze, PIK's head of news. Coming soon,
for example: a series of documentaries called The Truth About Chechnya,
billed as showing war footage "prohibited on Russian channels."
By Nathan Thornburgh
TIME Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2091392,00.html
Monday, Sept. 12, 2011
Three years after a war that was essentially a failure of friendship
-- his far-off allies in Washington had not warred alongside him
against Russia and they had not prevented the loss of huge amounts
of Georgian territory -- President Mikheil Saakashvili wants to show
off some new friends.
Here they are: a convivial ring of summer campers in Anaklia on the
Black Sea, some still dripping wet from the pool, gathered around
a bonfire. Saakashvili sits among them and gives a speech, but he's
not just talking to them. He's talking to the cameras recording the
speech for national broadcast. He's talking to me, certainly, and
therefore to you. He wants us all to know about the kids in this camp,
how they are a group of teenagers made up of ethnic Georgians, ethnic
Armenians and ethnic Azeris. The camp is called Tolerance. They play
volleyball there and learn one another's songs and wave the Georgian
flag. The idea is that they want peace, not like the Russian troops
who patrol the border of breakaway Abkhazia just 5 km away. "What
you see here is an answer to the occupation," Saakashvili says. "We
are making history."
Making history has always come easily to Saakashvili. First elected in
2004, he arrived as a democrat in a region of despots. While everyone
else knelt before the Kremlin, he taunted Russia's then President,
Vladimir Putin. He took Western political stagecraft with him: in
Anaklia, his personal film crew is shooting his speech in HD as his
official photographer, a slim man with an improbably long camera lens,
clicks away. More important than American-style image control, though,
Saakashvili took American interests into the heart of a country that
had been contested by closer powers -- Persians, Turks, Russians --
since the time of Herodotus. But these days, now that membership in
NATO and the European Union is a distant dream, his prospects rely
on the good graces of his non-Russian neighbors. He needs them to
trade with Georgia, to be tourists in Georgia, and should war break
out again, to at least not take Russia's side. With his final term
ending in 2013, and tensions again rising between Georgia and Russia,
the survival of Saakashvili's legacy, and perhaps his country, may
well depend on it.
(See photos of the aftermath of the Georgian conflict.)
A Charm Offensive Georgia is separated from the majority of its
neighbors by the Caucasus, home to some of the highest mountains
in Europe. In early summer, the Georgian Border Police, 2,700
troops who guard the mountaintops, took me and photographer Yuri
Kozyrev on its troop-rotation flights: stalwart Russian-made MI-8
helicopters flying from peak to peak, sometimes half-blind through
clouds, landing on narrow outcrops next to outposts that seemed to
be policing the roof of the world. It's a humbling landscape, but
the remoteness and isolation of those mountains also gave rise to a
huge diversity of clashing tribes, ethnic groups and interests. The
Chechens are suspicious of the Ingush, the Georgians mock the Avars,
the Armenians and Azeris share a rich mutual hatred. Saakashvili now
wants to be friends with them all.
The Russians, however, are experts at playing these groups off one
another. The Russian republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus
fought two unsuccessful wars of secession against Russia, but the
Chechen people also warred over the centuries with Georgia, which
had its own imperious moments. Now, especially after Kremlin-backed
strongman Ramzan Kadyrov took over in 2007, Chechnya is a potential
menace to Georgia again. When the Russian military poured into South
Ossetia during the five-day war of 2008, for example, the most feared
units came from a war-hardened Chechen battalion.
(See pictures of the Russian-Georgian war.)
So Saakashvili has launched his own charm offensive to win over the
people of Chechnya and neighboring republics. Since last October,
residents of the Russian North Caucasus can pass through a northern
border crossing with Georgia without a visa -- a unilateral move that
infuriated Moscow. Some 48,000 visitors have gone this way already.
Over tea in the Black Sea resort of Batumi, Saakashvili tells me
that if Chechens arriving in Georgia see "everyone smiling at them,"
it's good for national security. "For us, it's a protection," he says.
"They can say, 'We've been there, and we don't want next time to come
to rampage and pillage.'â~@~I"
Security through tourism: it's an idea aimed not only at the
North Caucasus, but at regional powers Azerbaijan and Armenia as
well. Those landlocked countries are very much the target market
for Georgia's Black Sea resort boom. Anaklia, which was little more
than a village with a pleasant beach when I visited two years ago, is
being transformed at a dizzying rate. It seems half-finished already;
when complete it will have a water park, casino, open-air disco,
yacht rental, a strand with 5,000 imported palms and, confusingly, a
Chinatown located just a rifle shot away from the disputed Abkhazian
border. Saakashvili calls close trade and tourism with Azerbaijan
and Armenia "absolutely crucial" to Georgia's development as a focal
point of a more unified Caucasus.
(Read "One Year On, Could Russia and Georgia Fight Another War?")
A Finger in Moscow's Eye Georgia's Pankisi gorge -- a string of
muddy villages that was an infamous Chechen rebel hideout before
Saakashvili regained control there in 2004 -- shows signs of regional
bonds Saakashvili can build on. After accusations of being hostile
to Chechen refugees early in his career, Saakashvili seems to have
won many over by giving them citizenship and equal rights under
Georgian law. Acet, who didn't want her full name used because it
might endanger relatives still living in Chechnya, is one of some
800 civilian refugees from the Chechen war still living in Pankisi;
she arrived after being denied citizenship in Turkey. "I'm so glad our
brothers took us in," she says. "We are free here." Even the revered
Alla Dudayeva, whose husband General Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed
himself the first President of "free" Chechnya before the Russians
killed him, has moved to Georgia after long exile in Europe. "Anywhere
in the mountains, you are with your people," Dudayeva tells me at
her home in Tbilisi. "Georgians and Chechens are one."
That's the message of Kanal PIK, an ambitious government-funded effort
to start a Caucasus version of al-Jazeera. The programming is all
Russian-language and beamed into homes throughout the region from
Tbilisi, including into the Russian republics of the North Caucasus.
The idea is to do for the Caucasus what al-Jazeera did for the Middle
East: provide an independent source of news to break through the
regional censorship. "There's a big problem with an information vacuum
in the region," says Katya Kotrikadze, PIK's head of news. Coming soon,
for example: a series of documentaries called The Truth About Chechnya,
billed as showing war footage "prohibited on Russian channels."