Monday, January 21, 2008

NEWS: Georgia News Digest 01-21-08

A service of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies

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1. video: Saakashvili sworn in
2. Saakashvili sworn in for new term
3. Saakashvili sworn in to new term in ex-Soviet nation of Georgia after disputed election
4. Georgia, Russia pledge better ties at inauguration
5. Saakashvili starts second term
6. Saakashvili inaugurated as opposition protests
7. Saakashvili gets another chance
8. Saakashvili marches into the new term
9. video: What is the state of Georgia’s democracy?
10. Saakashvili takes office, opposition holds protest
11. President Saakashvili’s inaugural speech talking points
12. ‘I am President of entire nation’ – Saakashvili
13. Polish president to attend Georgian leader's inauguration
14. Kazakh PM to participate in inauguration ceremony of Georgian President
15. Tymoshenko's visit to Georgia depends on her health, while date of visit to Moscow depends on president
16. Chinese president congratulates Georgian president on his re-election
17. Iran FM attends Saakashvili inauguration
18. Lavrov to visit Saakashvili's inauguration Sunday
19. Lavrov holds meetings in Tbilisi
20. Lavrov meets Georgian opposition
21. Russia interested in overcoming temporary problems with Georgia
22. Russia govt decision to send him for inauguration was not simple-FM
23. Saakashvili meets Russian Foreign Minister
24. Kremlin congratulated Saakashvili: A thaw in the Russian Georgian is not to occur in the nearest future
25. Russia to do its best to prevent provocations
26. Saakashvili confirms wish to improve relations with Russia
27. Russia hopes to improve relations with Georgia - foreign minister
28. Head of Orthodox Church meets Russian Foreign Minister
29. Bryza meets opposition leaders
30. U.S. diplomat visits Tbilisi
31. US diplomat urges better Georgian democracy, hints opposition should accept vote
32. Time to focus on parliamentary elections – U.S. diplomat
33. U.S. recognizes Georgia presidential election – official
34. Ambassador denies U.S. backs individual Georgian parties
35. As Saakashvili prepares for inauguration, opposition plans to take to the streets
36. Tbilisi police tightens security ahead of inauguration ceremony
37. Thousands rally in Georgian capital to protest Saakashvili inauguration
38. Opposition rallies against Saakashvili's inauguration
39. Opposition issue ultimatums before Saakashvili’s inauguration
40. People will be brought for inauguration from regions
41. Opposition’s criticism of west only goes so far
42. Opposition demands resignation of government head of Adjara
43. Opposition starts universal disobedience on Monday
44. Georgia escaped civil confrontation thanks to restraint of opposition
45. New Right party demands runoff poll
46. UNC's members meet US envoy
47. Peter Semneby, United Opposition to Meet
48. UNC's presidential candidate meets UK envoy
49. Davit Usupashvili: I’m sure Georgia will soon feel backing from U.S. administration
50. Levan Gachechiladze: American side promised that upcoming parl. elections will be freer
51. Laborites will not recognize Saakashvili as legitimate president – secretary
52. ‘We will not stop’ – opposition tells thousands at rally
53. Gachechiladze warns of "popular revolt"
54. Okruashvili urges opposition to stand together
55. US gives wrong assessment of Georgia's pres poll – opposition
56. US official to meet Burdzhanadze, Gachechiladze in Tbilisi
57. US official, Georgian opposition discuss forthcoming parliamentary election
58. As opposition challenges election outcome, judiciary finds no serious violations
59. In elections, religion plays a role
60. Election reform: Looking ahead to the parliamentary elections
61. "War of complaints" in Samtskhe-Javakheti Region
62. The last word on free and fair
63. Georgia offers lessons with its elections
64. More than 75% of Georgians vote to join NATO, spring parliament elections
65. CEC approves plebiscite final vote tally
66. Parliamentary elections will take place in late April or early May
67. May parliamentary elections planned
68. GYLA: 'This election was not democratic, fair or transparent
69. Davit Bakradze: Authorities working on remarks of observers
70. Intl observers critical of Georgian election authorities' performance after polls
71. OSCE report critical about post-election process
72. Politicians comment on OSCE post-election report
73. Government responds to OSCE post-election report
74. Opposition says OSCE report on presidential poll "extremely negative"
75. Subari: I'm happy that people made their choice
76. Public defender congratulates Saakashvili, calls for end to policy of violence
77. Targamadze: I have never been a puppet in somebody's hands
78. It is planned to put Imedi back on the air late next week
79. Contest on staffing GPB Board of Trustees to be kicked off today
80. In first major concession, government agrees to public broadcaster reform
81. Public TV reform: a step in the wrong direction
82. Law enforcers started to examine facts of pressure exercised upon Radio Hereti
83. Bidzina Baratashvili – Patarkatsishvili and News Corp made progress at talks in regard to Imedi TV
84. Officials in UK over "coup" tycoon
85. Georgia’s new government: Outreach to opposition, dialogue on key issues & plans for reform of government structure
86. Most ministers, governors to be replaced - Saakashvili
87. Saakashvili confirms plans to refresh government
88. Saakashvili opens military base, hails army's switch to Western weaponry
89. Saakashvili vows holy sites in Abkhazia will be subordinated to Georgian church
90. Georgia plans economic shake-up pro-business regime also wants to appeal to foreign investors
91. Saakashvili opens new base, speaks of new weapons in army
92. President dumps Kalashnikov for US rifle
93. Saakashvili to address PACE session
94. PACE trades Saakashvili for Margelov
95. Georgia in comms push to build links with the EU
96. Tbilisi expecting EU officials' arrival in February
97. Emotions run high as Georgia rotates troops in Iraq
98. Washington expresses 'deep support' for Georgia's NATO bid
99. Modernization of Georgian tanks as per NATO standards
100. Georgia and Ukraine aspire to NATO membership
101. NATO will not accept Georgia without Baku and Kiev – German expert
102. Georgia doesn't fit NATO bill: Russian ambassador
103. Russian TV talk show focuses on Georgia
104. The risk horizon for 2008: Six questions for Ian Bremmer [excerpt]
105. Russian State Security head reconnoiters Georgia from Elbrus
106. The way to Russian market might be thorny
107. Winemakers, government looking to lift Russian embargo
108. Big trading in the Caucasus
109. Saakashvili may try to heat up tensions over Abkhazia
110. Balkans tie Russia and Georgia tights
111. book: The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus

Charles King, Oxford University Press, 2008: The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus for most of the twentieth century lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya. Combining riveting storytelling with insightful analysis, The Ghost of Freedom is the first general history of the modern Caucasus, stretching from the beginning of Russian imperial expansion up to the rise of new countries after the Soviet Union's collapse. In evocative and accessible prose, Charles King reveals how tsars, highlanders, revolutionaries, and adventurers have contributed to the fascinating history of this borderland, providing an indispensable guide to the complicated histories, politics, and cultures of this intriguing frontier. Based on new research in multiple languages, the
book shows how the struggle for freedom in the mountains, hills, and plains of the Caucasus has been a perennial theme over the last two hundred years--a struggle which has led to liberation as well as to new forms of captivity. The book sheds valuable light on the origins of modern disputes, including the ongoing war in Chechnya, conflicts in Georgia and Azerbaijan, and debates over oil from the Caspian Sea and its impact on world markets. Ranging from the salons of Russian writers to the circus sideshows of America, from the offices of European diplomats to the villages of Muslim mountaineers, The Ghost of Freedom paints a rich portrait of one of the world's most turbulent and least understood regions.Reviews:"Charles King's Ghost of Freedom is a work that's gripping and important, scholarly and wonderfully readable. It not only explains and analyzes one of our world's most strategic regions but also delivers all the exotic and romantic turbulence of these flamboyant warriors and poets and the extraordinary peoples of the Caucasus."-- Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin"This vividly written and impressively researched history is an excellent introduction to a much discussed but little understood region."-- Anatol Lieven, King's College London"The Ghost of Freedom is a brilliant tour through the past and present of a critical borderland between East and West. Enlivened by compelling anecdotes, colorful characters, and first-hand reportage that bring the Caucasus to life, this remarkable book is a highly original and beautifully written analysis of the forces that have shaped the region, from a whirlwind of imperial conquest and nation-building to Soviet engineering, mass deportations, and the bitter consequences of imperial collapse: ethnic wars, banditry, refugees, and misrule. It is an indispensable guide to the Caucasus-- and to contemporary global affairs."-- Robert D. Crews, author of For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia

112.book review: Tracking the complexities of the Caucasus

Alex van Oss, Eurasianet, January 19: The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus

By Charles King, 2008 Oxford Press: Most Caucasus writing these days is either journalistic or academic, obsessed for the most part with conflicts or oil. The Ghost of Freedom manages to break the mold: Charles King, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, has produced a work that is at once informative, eclectic, and immensely satisfying.In fewer than 300 pages King provides a comprehensive and gracefully written account of the South and North Caucasus, plus Black Sea regions of Russia, such as Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.Excellent maps by Chris Robinson depict political boundaries of 1780, 1890, and 2008, showing dramatically how Persian or Ottoman territory one century became Russian the next, and now, independent. The title, "The Ghost of Freedom," comes from Pushkin’s 1821 poem "Captive of the Caucasus" whose Byronic protagonist, tiring of Mother Russia,"...quit the confines of his native land, and flew away to a far off strand with freedom’s cheerful apparition..."… Or its illusion. The hero gets captured by locals, finds romance, and then escapes. The poem inspired sundry other stories, operas, a ballet, a book, plus a film or two--all with the same title; and it prompted thousands of restless Russians to "go West" (go south, that is) and seek love, profit, epiphany, and adventure in the mountains.

So much for Pushkin. When pondering this seductive part of the world, it is useful to keep a couple of points in mind; first, the Caucasus is not Russia, and second, Russia is not the Caucasus. The Ghost of Freedom explains why the region is no longer the "jewel in the crown," or a proving ground for a Big Brother; nor can it in any way be considered a single political entity. Rather, its extremely variegated terrain also harbors distinct cultural ecosystems that at various times have been called a "museum of mankind," a "mountain of tongues," and even a "sculpture" (see below), with a bewildering array of languages, ethnicities, and views of history.Indeed, the Caucasus can be likened to the classic children’s finger-puzzle in which 15 little sliding squares, enclosed in a frame, must be reconfigured in correct sequence. This is devilishly hard to do. In the living puzzle of the Caucasus there are of course many more pieces, which King rearranges in various illuminating ways, while neatly summarizing vast amounts of history. King begins at the beginning, 25 million years ago, with the collision of continents that forced up most of the mountain ranges of Eurasia, including the Caucasus and its deposits of oil and gas. (By the way, this geological train-wreck is still in progress, albeit in extremely slow motion.) There has been much cultural as well as tectonic grinding in the Caucasus over the centuries. Scores of indigenous peoples and invaders have collided, traded, and genetically intermingled, leaving remnants and pockets of themselves in valleys, among alpine meadows, and in isolated auls (aerie-like highland villages) between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Caucasus has paid the price of being a cultural crossroads, and has weathered incursions from every quadrant: Persians from the southeast; Greeks and Romans (plus Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, and Turks) from the southwest; Huns, Avars, Mongols (and Russians, British, Germans, and so forth) from the north. The result--as cartographers soon discover to their dismay -- is what King describes as "borders on the move" (a concept reminiscent of certain ancient Caucasus legends that describe a time when the mountains could actually walk around...on ’legs’ of clouds!)Maps are never the territory, of course, but King’s "surfeit of borders" precisely describes a neck of land historically chock-a-block with feudal clans and feuding vassalages, suzereinties, satrapies, and client states--and their shifting alliances. Add to this the poking and prodding by great powers and no wonder Caucasus politics displays a certain operatic quality (Bolshevik Revolution here, Rose Revolution there, charming folk dances and drinking songs over yonder, while oil wheeler-dealers and ’frozen conflict peacekeepers’ wait in the wings). Readers of The Ghost of Freedom will perhaps not be surprised to learn that the maneuvering continues, the United States being but the latest partner (or padrone) active in the South Caucasus. Tomorrow--who knows?--that role may revert to Russia, Turkey, or even China, and once again we would need to redraw the maps.

Today’s nations can be old or spanking new. Azerbaijan, King writes, is only a 20th-century construct; but even ancient entities such as Georgia and Armenia can wink on and off over the centuries:"Two hundred years ago the map of the Caucasus looked very different from the one that exists today. Unified places called Georgia and Armenia had long ago disappeared, the former in the fifteenth century, and the latter in antiquity. Both were geographical rather than political expressions. A place called Azerbaijan, when the term was used at all, was more likely to refer to what one would now call northwestern Iran [p. 14-15]."Modern maps that show great swaths of colored territory as clearly belonging to one or another khanate, kingdom, principality, or empire are fundamentally misleading about the real nature of sovereignty on the ground. The goal of any political power was to control the locus of extraction, such s a key bridge, port, mountain pass, or fortress. When borders did serve something like a modern purpose, they were usually meant not to keep people out but to keep them in." [ p.21]The photographs in this volume are subtle and bear close examination. Two poignant images from the Library of Congress depict victims of war and massacres in 1919: one shows a row of Armenian orphans (bareheaded, barefoot), the other a similarly posed rank of Muslim/Turkish orphans (shod, hatted, holding staves). A 1935 photograph from the Hoover Institution Archives portrays Stalin’s henchman, Lavrenty Beria, standing next to three colleagues from Armenia, Abkhazia, and Azerbaijan. In retrospect it is a chilling artifact, for the following year the Armenian and Abkhazian would die under unusual circumstances after meeting with Beria (expiring by ’suicide’ and spasms, or possibly a ’heart-attack,’ respectively); the Azerbaijani was liquidated three years later. The Caucasus can be unkind to its own.Battle and treaty dates can make for notoriously tedious reading; happily King manages to quick-march through history with panache, pausing frequently to clarify events and their wider implications (which events in the Caucasus always have). He also de-romanticizes the region:"The legendary horsemanship and daring of Caucasus fighters were acknowledged even by their enemies. Russian painters depicted engagements between [Russian allied] Cossacks-of-the-line and their Circassian and Daghestani counterparts, with riders galloping at full tilt toward one another, meetings with the clash of saber and lance. However, such engagements were probably the exception rather than the rule. The Caucasus wars were always partly guerilla campaigns--what would today be called seasonal counterinsurgency operations. They rarely involved anything approximating pitched battles, at least of the type that Russian officers and men knew from their wars with other empires." [p.73]The world learned about the Caucasus from travel accounts, 19th century Russian writers (Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and others), and from press coverage of the long wars between highlanders and tsarist armies. To this must be added the allure of show business: Buffalo Bill Cody featured "Cossack" horsemen--actually Georgians--in his Wild West Show, while P.T. Barnum hawked "Circassian Beauties" (Irish, perhaps) as sideshow attractions. Exotic representations of the Caucasus continue to this day: John le Carré’s spy-thriller Our Game takes readers to some of the wilder-and-woolier parts of southern Russia; and John Ringo has a popular series of science fiction novels set in eastern Georgia: Ghost, Kildar, Choosers of the Slain, Unto the Breach.The Caucasus was home to early Christian and Muslim states, and even earlier Jewish and Zoroastrian communities; paganism, once widespread, continues to exist. While never a paragon of tolerance, the Caucasus has avoided "clashes-of-civilizations"--although imperial Russia periodically used religion in its recruitment of Armenians to fight the Ottomans, and radical imams sought to unite the North Caucasus in jihad against the Russian advance. But somehow the spark never caught fire, due in part to the region’s heterogeneity. This was its strength and also its weakness. King describes the tsarist strategy of dividing and conquering the Caucasus by way of its geographical "flanks" (corresponding roughly to the Caspian and Black Sea watersheds):"The middle ground... between the right and the left flanks was also home to a variety of peoples, some of whom were loyal to the tsar, while others lived in out-of-the-way areas and consequently posed no immediate threat to imperial power. Among the latter groups were the Turkic-speaking Karachai and Balkars; the Ossetians, whose villages helped insulate the road against highlander attacks; and the peoples of mountainous Georgia, the Svans, Khevsurs, Pshavs, and Tush. The great dream of some highland leaders was to unite the two flanks, which were separated by no more than 150 miles, into a single front. The great success of Russian policy was that it prevented them from ever doing so." [p.68]The quaint term "Caucasian," as an ethnic category, harks back to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s On the Natural Variety of Mankind (1775), in which the German physician tried to link physical characteristics (such as skull size) to culture. Blumenbach considered Caucasians to be the world’s most ancient--and beautiful--white people. (Caucasians actually come in all shapes, sizes, and hues of hair and skin color.) Ethnography has often been politicized, and in the Caucasus Russian and Soviet academics demonstrated what King calls the "Enlightenment urge to taxonomize." As King puts it, Russian popular imagination fed upon the works of writers and painters (sometimes one and the same, as with Mikhail Lermontov), who in turn fed on volumes of ethnography. Their curiosity was wide and deep; King includes the instructions from the St. Petersburg imperial academy to a German explorer, Julius von Klaproth, in 1807; the academy wanted to know:"Are there traditions respecting the existence of Amazons? Who are the likely descendants of the Scythians, the ancient steppe dwellers described by Herodotus? Where are the passes in the mountains? What is to be found in the districts south of the highlands, especially along the black Sea? What s the word for "tribe" in the Lezgin dialects? Are the women of the Caucasus as beautiful as is often claimed?" [p.104]Another scholar, Semyon Bronevskii, toiled for years over a massive two-volume overview of earlier explorers’ notes, all the while working at administrative posts. The fruits of his labor, titled The Latest Geographical and Historical Information on the Caucasus, brought the Caucasus out of academia and into Russian consciousness--and King continues this tradition for western readers.

The Ghost of Freedom perforce covers a lot of ground. Divided into five chapters, the book describes geology and geography; imperial and colonial designs on the Caucasus (and staunch resistance to it); Caucasus ethnography and imagery in popular culture; the Bolshevik, Soviet, and independence periods--and much more. Thirty subsections bear catchy titles, such as "Ermolov Comes!," "There is Something to Be Gained on the Heights," and "Eros and the Circassian."For the most part it is smooth sailing, but some sections are filled to bursting and dense. Chapter Two, for example, covers the complexities of Islam, Caucasus military strategy, fighting techniques, biographies of imams, Georgia’s bureaucracy, the Circassian diaspora--all fascinating, but a lot to absorb. More headings would have been helpful; as it is, readers will need to rely on the index or write notes in the margins (a shame, for this book is too handsome to mark up).That said, King certainly writes engagingly: he leavens the narrative with anecdotes and verse, and swoops and soars on his magic Caucasus carpet from region to region and one time period to another. Such verve conveys a marvelous sense of the Caucasus as being almost a work of art, physically and culturally: a natural sculpture, no part of which can be truly understood without awareness of the whole--a whole which underwent considerable modification in the 1800s, as Russian troops fortified, cut down vast forests, and built military highways in order to extirpate resistance.

The Ghost of Freedom brings together current research, and also classic works by English, French, German, and Russian adventurers, and scholars. We read of Douglas Freshfield’s epiphanies while climbing in the Caucasus mountains in 1869--epiphany, King points out, being a crucial aspect of climbing in those days that was soon to be overcome by the newer craze of seeking ever greater technological challenges, not just a good view. (This is a pity: I recall my own delight at discovering in my local public library a rare masterpiece of Victorian nature writing by James Bryce, a British parliamentarian and ambassador to the United States. Bryce climbed Mount Ararat in 1876 in one of the earliest ascents on record. It was an arduous adventure; nevertheless Bryce took careful notes and describes every interesting pebble encountered, every geological formation, every species of flora and fauna, and every fog patch, cloud and shift of light. Evidently Lord Bryce carried no camera.)Charles King offers a wealth of surprising and trenchant perceptions about, for example, the ambiguous role of British officers during the fighting between Russians and highlanders, and the fate of soldiers taken into slavery. There is a long Caucasus tradition of slaves, hostages, deserters, and renegades; the analogy to North America is inescapable: many soldiers in the Caucasus "went Indian" by choice, or by an offer they couldn’t refuse.Sometimes Caucasus history can seem like musical chairs, and in this regard King tackles a delicate subject: the fact that Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, despite their ancient artistic and religious heritage, owe a considerable cultural debt to Russia and Europe. Printing, jurisprudence, pedagogy, theater, literature, music, philosophical inquiry, and more: all got a vitamin injection from 19th century graduates of universities in St. Petersburg and abroad. Consider the remarkable British-educated Mikhail Vorontsov, whom Tsar Nicholas I made commander-in-chief of Caucasus forces; he was certainly ruthless, but also cosmopolitan:"Vorontsov was convinced that the Caucasus needed a genuine political, cultural, and economic center--much as Odessa had become the effective capital of New Russia--and Tiflis was to be it. Parts of the city had remained in ruins since the Persian onslaught of 1795. Vorontsov laid on plans for its rebuilding, creating wide thoroughfares and designing new residential districts...the first drama theaters were established in 1850 and 1851 (one for Georgian plays, another for Russian), and the famous Tiflis opera house was soon inaugurated, complete with an Italian company regularly performing well-known pieces...the booming cultural life in Vorontsov’s Tiflis was a sign of the city’s gradual rise from garrison town to urban imperial outpost." [p.86]Baku was soon to boom as well, thanks to oil; Yerevan had to wait until after the First World War, when its population swelled from the influx of Armenians uprooted from Ottoman Turkey.***One of the lesser known chapters of world history concerns the 19th century mass expulsion by Russians of Circassians and other groups from the northwestern Caucasus and Black Sea coast. Highlanders and Abkhaz were forced into Anatolia, the Balkans, and further corners of the Ottoman Empire. Inadequately housed and fed, a great many perished from disease or in storms at sea. Up to 500,000 Caucasus peoples (often labeled as ’Circassians,’ regardless of origin) left in the 1860s; King puts the total from 1859-1878 at 2 million. These deportees resettled and often attained high military and administrative positions in their new homes. From revolutionary Russia and the Middle East, thousands emigrated to Europe and the United States, not infrequently maintaining their traditional vocations and codes of honor, and finding employment in diplomacy, various military or security agencies, and other government services. To this day there are Circassian villages in Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and elsewhere.The ripple effects of Caucasus politics spread outwards, even to the United States, in the form of business ventures to political misadventures (an Armenian bishop was assassinated in New York in 1933) and political lobbying. Wrangling on Capitol Hill over official United States recognition of an Armenian genocide has, directly or indirectly, ended the career of one American ambassador to Armenia, obstructed the ratification of another, and threatens to be a perennial stone in many peoples’ shoes. On the matter of Ottomans, Armenians, and genocide, King states bluntly:"In nearly all instances of large-scale violence, state manipulation and local circumstances come together in a contingent, complicated, and ultimately deadly mix. The Armenian genocide was neither explicitly ordered as a single act of violence, nor was it the unavoidable consequence of some ancient quarrel between Muslims and Christians. Rather, it was the result of communal fear, ethnic reprisals, government paranoia, and fitful experimentation with targeted killing as a tool of modern statecraft." [p 197]King continually reminds us of the multiple dramas unfolding in Anatolia at the turn of the 20th century: the collapse of empires and the formation of new nations, the First World War, the brutality and chaos of times a-changing, and the eruption of local antagonisms into something widespread and genocidal. Such a saga ought to inspire great novels, films, and television series--of the scope and subtlety, say, of Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet, about the final years of British rule in India--but they have yet to appear.

The last part of The Ghost of Freedom brings us into the present, and shows how today Caucasus is is of a piece with the region in earlier times, and how post-Soviet changes have been a mixed blessing:"The real story [post-Soviet] ... is not about deep-rooted sentiments of ethnicity or ancient grievances but about the ways in which personal ambition, structural incentives, and the simple presence of sufficient quantities of guns led to bloody conflict." [p.212]The author evenhandedly describes the political ecology of the intractable "legacy conflicts" in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and in the North Caucasus. Too often the dreary occurrences in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and increasingly other regions--lawless police arrests, citizen ’disappearances,’ executions, systemic brutality, and also acts of terrorism, such as the occupation of the Beslan elementary school in North Ossetia--are viewed as remote and internal Russian affairs. Journalists traveling to those regions risk their lives. The sad truth is that Caucasus unrest only undermines Russia’s security, as it lines the pockets of the purveyors of weapons, narcotics, and contraband. Human trafficking and illegal wheeling and dealing, while not new or unique to the Caucasus, is increasingly profitable and international.Paul Goble, a specialist on CIS minorities, asserts ominously that Russia has never controlled the North Caucasus without first controlling the South. But control need not be the result of invasion or occupation. Russia now owns and coordinates much of the Caucasus energy infrastructure, while militarily it fosters close ties with Armenia and maintains proxies and "peacekeepers" in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However, Russia is not the only player in this region: newcomers to the game include the United States (which openly pursues its interests and maintains agents of influence, including military, in the South Caucasus), not to mention Kazakhstan and China.Finally, The Ghost of Freedom touches upon an old and extremely important question: Is the Caucasus a part of Asia, the Middle East, or Europe? The first two certainly. As for the latter, I have heard all kinds of enthusiastic assertions: that, for example, Europe and the Caucasus have a natural affinity, and that everything from chivalry and horsemanship, to the "look" of Hellenic statues and temples, to Romanesque and Gothic construction techniques, to the fancy footwork of "Irish" dancing--in short, many of the key aspects of European culture arose in those parts. Be that as it may, the European Union, motivated by its need for Caspian energy resources, has finally begun to adjust its bureaucratic gears to become more usefully engaged in the Caucasus. Should Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan ever find themselves in the EU, it would mean radical changes in self-perception throughout Europe, and the Black Sea and Caspian regions. Charles King’s The Ghost of Freedom helps us understand why.

113. Illusive gas-contract
114. Government elaborates act on global competitiveness of financial services sector
115. Budgetary revenues exceed forecast in 2007, monthly cpi growth declines drastically
116. Gilauri declines reports on empty treasury
117. Georgia's foreign debt rises
118. Railway diplomacy: Value of overland communication could influence blockade
119. Heir to the Georgian throne dies in Tbilisi
120. Who wants Irakli Okruashvili’s holiday house?
121. Bail of five thousand lari and six-year-imprisonment for taking scattered fire-wood from the forest
122. Amnesty – pre-election campaign or “mollified tone of the president?”
123. Local resident injured in Abkhazia

full digest: Georgia News Digest - Ansicht in Groups BetaNeu!

Jonathan Kulick, Ph.D., Director of Studies, Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, 3a Chitadze, Tbilisi 0108, Georgia (Republic),
jonathan.kulick@gfsis.org, office: +995 32 47 35 55, mobile: +995 95 33 33 40, USA voicemail: 310.928.6814

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