Russians in Abkhazia: A tool for Georgia's election campaign?

Giorgi Lomsadze: 11/21/07

While international attention focuses on the upcoming Georgian presidential elections, Tbilisi's tussle with the opposition has coincided with a stepped-up campaign against Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia. The opposition contends that the alarm bells about an alleged Russian military build-up in the region are politically motivated. Some analysts, meanwhile, say that President Mikheil Saakashvili's administration stands to gain little, if any, domestic political benefit from confronting Russia at this time.

Shortly after prosecutors began alleging that opposition members and tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili were conspiring with Russian intelligence agents to undermine the Saakashvili government, a report surfaced about the deployment of some 200 Russian troops, five tanks, four multiple rocket launchers, five armored personnel carriers and seven howitzers to the Abkhaz port of Ochamchira, not far from the border with Georgia.

"This ... aims to provoke a conflict there [in Abkhazia]," State Minister for Conflict Resolution Davit Bakradze said at a November 12 news conference. "Apparently, some people in the Russian Federation considered that Georgia is now weakened and that they have a good chance to take advantage of the situation."

As have American and European diplomats, the United Nations Observers Mission to Georgia stated that it could neither confirm nor deny the statement. Russia has categorically denied the report.

Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze has since called on the United Nations to dispatch observers to Abkhazia to assess the situation. Her appeal followed an October 31 decision by Georgia to cancel the mandate of Russian peacekeepers in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The odds of Tbilisi managing to remove the peacekeepers from the two regions, though, are slim, noted Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. "The Georgian government may decide all it wants, but they [Russian peacekeepers] are not going to leave."

That leaves some to wonder whether the government is instead playing to a domestic audience. Amid the political turmoil that followed November 7 declaration of a state of emergency, officials started issuing warnings about Moscow allegedly planning to destabilize the post-conflict areas. State Minister for Conflict Resolution Bakradze, in fact, predicted "provocations" the day before he announced the alleged beefing-up of Russian forces in Abkhazia.

Opposition members have argued that officials are trying to focus public attention on Russia to score points at the ballot box.

The establishment of the Ganmukhuri youth camp near the Abkhaz border in May 2006, well before the November 2007 crisis, was, in fact, "a political PR move more than anything else," argued Paata Zakareishvili, a conflict analyst affiliated with the opposition Republican Party. On October 30, President Saakashvili was televised on site lambasting Russian peacekeepers who had detained Georgian police guarding the camp. The United Nations has called for the camp's removal.

Independent political analyst Ramaz Sakvarelidze believes that Georgia is using Moscow to distract attention away from domestic difficulties. "Amid the political turmoil at home and with the election coming up, the government is trying to change the subject," Sakvarelidze said.

Some experts, however, disagree. Tina Gugeliani, political analyst at Tbilisi's International Center of Conflict and Negotiations, says that the recent focus on Abkhazia and Russia's role is triggered by developments in international politics rather than domestic events. "The international debate around Kosovo's status is forcing the Georgian government to concentrate on Abkhazia," Gugeliani said. "Russia said that recognizing Kosovo's independence could become a precedent that would then be applied to places like Abkhazia. Georgia, therefore, is bracing to protect itself against such a turn of events."

Outrage at increasing calls by Russian politicians to recognize both Abkhazia and the breakaway region of South Ossetia as separatist states – a move that one pro-government Georgian parliamentarian warned would be a de facto declaration of war against Georgia – has cut across party lines.

Some observers add that Georgia has little to gain by increasing tensions with Moscow on the eve of an election. "A foreign threat may indeed create a favorable backdrop for Saakashvili's bid for the presidency, but as his government is already shaken by a domestic political crisis, he would not seek to fuel tensions with Moscow any further," Ghia Nodia, director of the Caucasus Center for Peace, Democracy and Development. "Saakashvili is instead focusing his campaign on social issues as this is the key concern for the population, rather than an outside menace. There is nothing new in his line on Russia and Abkhazia, so the recent flare-up is not really election-related."

But within Abkhazia, the response to November 7 itself may have already fed misgivings about removing the Russian peacekeepers, noted the representative of one international non-governmental conflict resolution organization that is active in the breakaway territory. "Recent developments internally in Georgia only served to confirm opinions in Abkhaz society that Georgia is not a reliable interlocutor and certainly not a political community they want to be part of," commented Jonathan Cohen, Caucasus Program Director for Conciliation Resources. "And that is the biggest issue Georgia has to overcome."

With international peacekeepers stretched thin by various conflict situations worldwide, that skepticism could only further hinder international willingness to consider alternative peacekeeping scenarios for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Cohen noted.

"A bigger problem is that Georgians for 15 years now have not pursued a policy of building confidence among Abkhazians," Cohen said. "The question Georgia needs to ask itself is why the Abkhaz feel more secure with Russia, even though they have a number of concerns about the Russian engagement in Abkhazia."

Editor's Note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.

Posted November 21, 2007 © Eurasianet