Vol. 73/No. 32      August 24, 2009

The U.S. government has given Georgia $1 billion in mostly economic aid since the Aug. 12, 2008, cease-fire. But Washington has refused to help reequip the Georgian army, which all but collapsed during the war as it faced Russian armor, artillery, and air power.

U.S. vice president Joseph Biden traveled to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, July 22 where he lauded the government as a “vital partner.” At the same time Biden lectured President Mikhail Saakashvili that he must “deepen democracy” there. According to BBC news, a Biden aid called the U.S. policy one of “tough love.”

Moscow occupied the two Georgian regions in the course of a brief but brutal war that began Aug. 8, 2008, when Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia after skirmishes with Ossetian military forces supported by Moscow.

Russian troops, which had been preparing for combat there for weeks, rapidly pushed the Georgians out and advanced deeper into Georgia. Russian forces also flooded into Abkhazia, taking control of a major hydroelectric plant that provides 60 percent of Georgia’s electricity five days after the cease-fire.

The Russian government cynically claimed it had intervened to defend the national rights of the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Both regions were still part of Georgia when it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russian tsars and the Soviet regimes following the counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin trampled on the rights of the Ossetian, Abkhaz, and Georgian peoples, themselves an oppressed nationality. Successive governments in Georgia also oppressed the Abkhaz and Ossetians.

The only exception was during the early years of the Russian Revolution when the Bolshevik-led government under V.I. Lenin championed the right of self-determination of nations oppressed by the tsarist empire.

Since the cease-fire, Moscow has fortified its military presence in the two Georgian regions. It is building an airfield and a deep water port in Abkhazia. In South Ossetia it has built bases and has roughly 3,800 ground troops there equipped with tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers. It has a similar number of troops in Abkhazia.

South Ossetia, with just 70,000 residents and little industry or natural resources, is almost totally dependent on Moscow. In early August, South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoity appointed a Russian citizen as prime minister. Kokoity recently told Reuters that “we don’t rule out that there will come a time when we will become part of Russia.”

Moscow’s relations with Abkhazia—and its 200,000 people—are more complex and uneasy. The Russian government has been granted control of railways and airports there and exploration rights for oil in the Abkhaz Black Sea. With a picturesque Black Sea coast, mountain resorts, and citrus orchards, Abkhazia has more economic resources than South Ossetia.

“We will support Russia,” Abhkaz president Sergy Bagapsh told the London Financial Times, “but there is no question of unifying with Russia.”

Opposition political parties, which said Georgian president Saakashvili mishandled the war and had become a dictator, carried out three months of street demonstrations to oust him. But by August they called off their campaign and accepted an invitation to attend a meeting to discuss what the Georgian government says is a threat from Moscow. Saakashvili made some concessions including holding direct mayoral elections for the first time and helping an opposition cable channel get off the ground.
 
 
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