Could Georgia Face Another Civil War?

Posted on Tuesday, March 02 @ 05:50:00 EST by CDeliso

Just when new Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili arrived in Washington to lobby President Bush last week, he was upstaged by sworn enemy Aslan Abashidze- the leader of the autonomous Georgian province of Adjara.

In his cleverly-timed plea to the US president, Abashidze wrote that Saakashvili’s central government had threatened to bomb his province- something that would be “tantamount to a U.S. President threatening to use U.S. military forces to bomb Austin and invade and occupy Texas.” Simultaneously, Abashidze had party members making the rounds in Washington.

While it may be too soon to see what effect either lobbyist had on the world’s most powerful man, we can get a closer look into the recent history and manifestations of the increasingly volatile dispute with this inside view from the Sarke Information Agency’s Sophie Shakhnazarov.

Three months after the ouster of Georgia’s former president Eduard Shevardnadze, a similar fate may be awaiting Aslan Abashidze, Shevardnadze’s old foe and then his last ally during the final failed election. Abashidze presides over the autonomous region of Adjara, tucked between the Black Sea and the border with Turkey, and has run it almost independently from the central government’s control for years.

With less than a month to go until the 28 March parliamentary elections (the 2nd November elections were declared fraudulent by Saakashvili when he took power), the situation in Adjara now reminds us somewhat of the situation in Tbilisi right before the November “revolution.” It is the only autonomous region remaining under Georgian jurisdiction as of now; South Ossetia is in limbo and Abkhazia is also lost pending further delayed negotiations. While it has not resorted to the kind of open rebellion seen in the other autonomous regions, Adjara has a history of making mischief under the charismatic Abashidze. Yet while the “Adjar Lion” commands great power and respect in the region, Abashidze may yet fall victim to the authority of Saakashvili and Tbilisi.

Ominously, considering their conspicuous involvement with the campaign against Shevardnadze, the youth NGOs are also being used against Abashidze. Especially important in this regard is Kmara (‘Enough’), based on the prototypical Serbian youth resistance group, Otpor, which helped unseat Milosevic. Kmara was used along with other weapons from the “civil society” to install the current authorities, Shevardnadze angrily complained.

When the new authorities came to power, the Adjar leader showed his readiness for dialogue and even made some conciliatory steps, despite his previous claims that he would close the border were Shevardnadze to be forcefully removed. In fact, Abashidze did do this for some time, declaring a state of emergency in the region. Yet soon thereafter he opened the border again.

Abashidze also welcomed the new president warmly, allowing Saakashvili to visit the region at his inauguration ceremony. He attended a parade and shortly afterwards, even was allowed to remove a checkpoint at the administrative border of the region, which had been there for more than a decade. But Saakashvili, who had long been a fierce opposition critic of Abashidze and his allegedly “clannish” form of rule in Adjara, had other plans.

The relatively calm situation between the autonomous region and the central government came to an end when Abashidze refused to accept Saakashvili’s invitation to Tbilisi. He declared that first the central authorities would have to investigate a number of alleged assassinations plotted against him, an excuse he’s made for not coming to the capital for years now.

The tension between the sides further escalated when on 20 February forces loyal to the state clashed with Abashidze’s supporters. The offices of the opposition organizations “Our Adjara” and “Democratic Adjara” were raided. The event coincided with the visit of Walter Schwimmer, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who visited the region to promote a dialogue between Adjara and the central government in Tbilisi.

There is no alternative to constructive dialogue,” said Schwimmer in his comments on the event, while the leaders of the opposition directly blamed Abashidze for organizing the clash. In response, Abashidze spoke out against Saakashvili’s government, declaring: “this is a dangerous game that will not bring the country anything good!”

Tbilisi seems to be preparing ground to launch an offensive against Batumi,” reported Mtavari Gazeti (the ‘Main Paper’) on 23 February, in an article called “Adjara becomes a battleground for dangerous games.” The same paper says that the Adjar leader is meanwhile preparing a defense, and troops are being trained.

The whole spat between the government and the province has been carried out through the agency of young activists in one way or another connected to the “independent” media or NGOs. A visit of a group of young people from Batumi to Tbilisi could have been considered Abashidze’s last attempt at dialogue. However, this attempt failed when two young people (members of Abashidze’s Revival Union) were imprisoned, on allegations of illegal possession of firearms. There was a protest held in Tbilisi on the 23rd of February, as four days earlier the government had raided the publishing house of Omega, a magazine owned by Member of Parliament Zaza Okuashvili. The public prosecutor claimed the premises were being used to smuggle tobacco. Interestingly enough, Okuashvili also owns Iberia TV, a television station opposed to the current government of Mikheil Saakashvili.

Since the authorities have not allowed the worker to enter the premises, Omega Magazine and ‘Akhali Epoka’, the newspaper owned by Okuashvili, have not been issued since then.

Aslan Abashidze then appeared on a live program carried by Iberia on Friday. On that day, the detained student activists were released, but the government demanded that the Kmara activists being held in the Adjar capital of Batumi be released. He called the situation a “shame” for the state, and compared it to the war in Abkhazia, where the conflicting sides also exchanged captives.

The following day, a court in Batumi released two relatives of Kmara youth movement activists detained on 6 January for alleged possession of weapons.

Having lost all hopes for any further dialogue, Abashidze said on Friday: “…they [the authorities in Tbilisi] are planning armed aggression with tanks, armored carriers, as happened in Abkhazia- and everyone remembers what the result of this was there."

Although the central government dismissed Abashidze’s statement as “absurd,” the Adjar leader is not alone in fearing Adjara might erupt into a second Abkhazia. And as he announces his readiness to “die in the last ditch” fighting for the tiny province, Georgian citizens both in Adjara and in the rest of Georgia have to wonder, and worry: will this revolution be carried out again with roses, or with machine-guns? For in these all-too-common cases of political infighting, the people are always the real losers.

http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=278