Georgia and Russia Conflict

Russia-Georgia Conflict Has Deep Roots

by Corey Flintoff

The conflict between Russia and Georgia goes well beyond the separatist enclave of South Ossetia. It's also a reassertion of Russian power along its borders. Here's some background on the immediate issues that triggered the latest round of fighting.

What are the separatist issues bedeviling Georgia?

There are two ethnic groups that claim portions of what is now the Republic of Georgia, the Ossetians and the Abkhazians. Like the Georgians, both groups hail from the Caucasus Mountains at the eastern end of the Black Sea. When the Soviets annexed Georgia after the Russian Revolution, they created autonomous regions in Georgia for each of these groups, and those are the regions that are in dispute today.

As the Soviet Union began to break up in the late 1980s, separatists in both regions resisted becoming part of Georgia, preferring to throw their lot in with Russia.

The two ethnic regions — South Ossetia in eastern Georgia, and Abkhazia, on its western Black Sea coast — have been essentially independent since the last round of fighting in 2004. They've had Russian financial support and military backing in the form of Russian troops who were part of a regional peacekeeping mission. Russia has issued passports to most Abkhazians and Ossetians, so it can say that it is intervening on behalf of its own citizens.

Why is Russia supporting the separatists?

Russian nationalists have chafed at the loss of their Soviet-era buffer zone of republics and former Eastern bloc allies. Georgia has been a particular irritant, especially after the Rose Revolution brought pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili to power in 2004. Moscow has strongly opposed Georgia's efforts to become part of NATO, seeing the alliance as a potentially unfriendly military presence on Russia's border. Georgia could become the eastern anchor of a chain of NATO allies that stretches from Poland to Turkey.

Georgia is already a military ally of the United States in Iraq, where Georgia deployed about 2,000 troops. The U.S. airlifted those troops back to Georgia because of the crisis there.

Saakashvili took note of the fact that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the Russian military operation from a command post in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. Saakashvili said the Russian leader's purpose is "to depose the democratically elected government of Georgia."

Why are the two regions so important to Georgia?

Although it's comparatively small — only about 50 miles across — South Ossetia represents a deep bite into Georgian territory. It extends south toward two of Georgia's most important assets, pipelines that carry oil and gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to Turkey. Russia opposed the building of those pipelines, which cut Russia out of some of the action in the oil-rich former republics.

Georgia has claimed for years that South Ossetia has become a haven for organized crime, especially the smuggling of tax-free goods from Russia. Georgia has plenty of its own problems with corruption and has been unable to control smuggling elsewhere along the border.

What about Abkhazia?

Abkhazia is important because it includes more than half of Georgia's shoreline on the Black Sea, including ports and some prime tourist areas. Its western edge touches Russia's Black Sea coast, near Sochi, the resort town where Putin has his summer residence.

Abkhazia had a sizable population of ethnic Georgians who were forcibly expelled from the region during the fighting in the early 1990s. Human Rights Watch reported that the Abkhaz separatists committed widespread atrocities against Georgians, including massacres, rapes, torture and ethnic cleansing. The findings were corroborated in a 1994 country report from the U.S. State Department.

There are still pockets of ethnic Georgians living in South Ossetia, and Georgia asserts that it must protect them from the same fate.

What triggered the current fighting?

It began as a series of sniper-fire incidents and clashes between the South Ossetian militia and Georgian army troops during the first week in August. By Aug. 7, Georgian President Saakashvili was charging that the South Ossetians were using heavy weapons that had been brought into the area in violation of the cease-fire. Civilians began to flee Tskhinvali, the town that serves as South Ossetia's capital. On Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops to capture the city.

Russia responded with airstrikes on Georgian positions, not just in South Ossetia but also in Abkhazia, where Georgian troops still had a foothold in the Kodori Gorge region. Russia has said it is only seeking to restore stability to the two regions, but as its troops advanced out of the separatist regions into undisputed Georgian territory, President Bush accused Russia of seeking to crush the Georgian military and trigger the overthrow of Saakashvili's government.

What can the United States do?

President Bush has called on Russia to stop what he said was a "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence, and he urged Russia to agree to a cease-fire offer by Georgia. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined in a conference call with foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — the G-7 group of leading industrial nations. The group, which often includes Russia as an eighth member, called on Russia to respect Georgia's borders and accept the cease-fire.
The U.S. is also backing mediation efforts by the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.



Russia's Policy Towards Ethnic Conflict in Independent Georgia

By James Graham

Russia's policy towards ethnic conflict in Georgia has reflected the fluid and conflicting nature of Russian domestic politics. During the early 1990s Russia's Defence Ministry helped create an unstable and weak Georgia while Russia's Foreign Ministry pushed the need for a strong independent and friendly Georgia as a bulwark against Islamist expansion. Under Putin Russia has linked Georgia to its Chechnya conflict and the war on terrorism. The result has been a weak and fragmented Georgia that has survived in dismembered state. This has satisfied most of Russia's desires but broken and humiliated, Georgia presents a long-term problem for Russia largely of its own making.

Georgia's strategic position has ensured it is of vital military and economic significance to Russia. Its border with NATO member Turkey has always made Georgia strategically important and warranting the locating of numerous Soviet military bases within its territory. Georgia's opposite border is with the unstable North Caucasus region of Russia including the breakaway province of Chechnya. Georgian territory also contains vital Black Sea ports and sits astride potential routes for Russian controlled oil and gas pipelines. Additionally communications and pipelines linking Russia and pro-Russian Armenia run exclusively through Georgia. Russia's policy towards ethnic conflict in Georgia had to take account of numerous geo-strategic factors.

Complete text of this article can be seen in the site:

http://www.historyorb.com/russia/georgia.shtml




Russia-Georgia conflict
by Staff

Georgia and Russia Nearing All-Out War

Michael Schwirtz, Anne Barnard, C. J. Chivers and Anne Barnard., New York TimesThe conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward all-out war on Saturday as Russia prepared to land ground troops on Georgia’s coast and broadened its bombing campaign both within Georgia and in the disputed territory of Abkhazia.

The fighting that began when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the 1980s war in Afghanistan.

Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that Georgia was in a state of war, ordering government offices to work around the clock, and said that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of his country.(9 August 2008)

Georgia: oil, neocons, cold war and our credibilityJerome a Paris, Daily Kos

This is another diary critical of the West's position on Georgia.
... First, let's be clear: there are two reasons only we care about Georgia: the oil pipelines that go through its territory, and the opportunity it provides to run aggressive policies towards Russia.
... OK, first, the oil angle.
Georgia does not have oil, but it is a transit country. This is valuable because it provides the only outlet for Caspian oil and natural gas which is not going either through Russia or through Iran. (See the maps and the wider context in that diary) And after a 15-year tug-of-war, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was inaugurated two years ago: it takes roughly 1 million barrels per day from the Azeri oil fields run by BP to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, via Georgia. That's over 1% of world production, and it is fully controlled by Western oil majors. There is also a smaller gas pipeline that follows the same route and brings smaller volumes of gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey.

These pipelines have been at the heart of the relationship between Georgia and the USA over the past 15 years, but, oddly enough, they have played a very small role in the current crisis. In fact, the BTC pipeline has been cut off for the past few days, not because of events in Georgia (which are in the north of the country, whereas the pipelines go through the south), but because of a bomb attack in Turkey before the conflict started, with claims by the PKK, the Kurdish movement.

The reason the current conflict is not about the oil is because, now that the pipeline is built, that game is, in effect, over. Now, the only thing that could stop the flow of oil is, other than localised attacks (like the one conducted by the Kurds, something that has long been expected, and which was mitigated by building the pipeline on a route that avoids kurdish territory) would be for Russia to actually invade all of Georgia and physically take control of the pipeline, ie an outright act of war not just against Georgia, but also against the US.

The reason for that is that, as part of the process to put in place the pipeline, Georgia invited the US military to set up a base on its territory, near the route of the pipeline. Thus, any attack on the pipeline by Russia would become an attack on the USA.

But the important thing to note is that this base was not set up by the current Georgian government, but by its predecessor, that of Shevarnadze, Georgia's previous president (and, if you remember, Gorbatchev's - and the Soviet Union's - minister for foreign relations in the 80s), which was kicked out of power by Saakashvili's bunch in the rose revolution a couple of years ago - more on this below. That base was seen as a defensive gambit, and was relatively small. Indeed, with Georgia still hosting Russian military bases (see the map I posted here), anything bigger would be ... interesting. Which is what's happening today.

But before we go into the internal politics of Georgia, the thing to note at this point is that it is oil that brought the West to care about Georgia, but that this was a settled situation, and no longer a source of conflict in itself.(9 August 2008)In contrast to Jerome's analysis, the New York Times backgrounder hardly mentions oil at all:

Taunting the Bear .
Analysis: energy pipeline that supplies West threatened by war Georgia conflict

Robin
Pagnamenta, The Times

The conflict that has erupted in the Caucasus has set alarm bells ringing because of Georgia's pivotal role in the global energy market.

Georgia has no significant oil or gas reserves of its own but it is a key transit point for oil from the Caspian and central Asia destined for Europe and the US.

Crucially, it is the only practical route from this increasingly important producer region that avoids both Russia and Iran.

The 1,770km (1,100 miles) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which entered service only last year, pumps up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from Baku in Azerbaijan to Yumurtalik, Turkey, where it is loaded on to supertankers for delivery to Europe and the US. Around 249km of the route passes through Georgia, with parts running only 55km from South Ossetia.

The security of the BTC pipeline, depicted in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough, has been a primary concern since before its construction.
The first major attack on the pipeline took place only last week - not in Georgia but in Turkey where part of it was destroyed by PKK separatist rebels.(8 August 2008)

Georgia Clash Provides a Lesson on the United States’ Need for Russia
Helene Cooper, New York Times

The image of President Bush smiling and chatting with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia from the stands of the Beijing Olympics even as Russian aircraft were shelling Georgia outlines the reality of America’s Russia policy. While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.

And State Department officials made it clear on Saturday that there was no chance the United States would intervene militarily.

... For the Bush administration, the choice now becomes whether backing Georgia - which, more than any other former Soviet republic has allied with the United States - on the South Ossetia issue is worth alienating Russia at a time when getting Russia’s help to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions is at the top of the United States’ foreign policy agenda.(9 August 2008)

Complete Story of the Articles can be found in the site:
http://energybulletin.net/node/46173