US moves in as Russia retreats from
Caucasus
By Julius Strauss
09/01/2004
High in the snow-covered, ragged
mountains of northern Armenia, just a few miles from the Turkish border, a
detachment of Russian soldiers was on patrol this week.
Just as they have for the past
200 years, they marched out of the Bolshaya Krepost camp in woollen greatcoats
and high leather boots with bayonets fitted to their rifles.
"We are here to protect this
land from Turkish aggression," said Oleg, a 26-year-old lieutenant from
Moscow, in language that might have been uttered a century ago.
To see the lines of determined
faces it would be easy to imagine that little had changed in the region since
the days of the Tsars. But today, for the first time in more than two
centuries, the Russians are being pushed out of the southern Caucasus, one
country at a time.
Their forced retreat was given
added momentum this week when Mikhail Saakashvili, a stridently pro-western
lawyer, was elected president of Georgia.
Mr Saakashvili has made it a
priority to ensure that Moscow closes its remaining military bases in his
country and stop supporting its three breakaway republics.
The Russians are hugely proud of
their conquest of the southern Caucasus, which began in the 18th century as
Tsarist forces pushed south towards the Black and Caspian Seas.
The expansion into the region
spawned some of the country's greatest romantic literature.
Pushkin and Lermentov both wrote
about the subjugation of the proud and cruel Caucasian tribes. Mayakovsky, the Russian
poet, was born in Georgia.
In the centre of the camp where
Oleg is based are the ruins of a majestic Orthodox church, destroyed by the
Ottomans when they overran the area in the early years of the last century.
Russian rule came to the Caucasus
piecemeal at the end of the 18th century when imperial troops offered to help
fend off attacks from the Ottomans and the Persians.
They swiftly established the
infrastructure of empire. Russian engineers built the Georgian Military Highway
to supply troops and administrators in the area.
Following the 1917 revolution,
the Red Army crushed nationalist revolts in the region and Stalin, then
"people's commissar" for nationalities, divided the area into
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The republics were heavily garrisoned,
partly to quell endemic ethnic unrest and, later on, to guard against an attack
by Nato through Turkey.
But with the collapse of
communist rule in Moscow, Russian domination of the region began to fray.
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all declared independence in 1991.
Today the Georgian Military
Highway is pot-holed and almost deserted as traffic to and from Russia has
slowed to a trickle.
The Soviet-era railway was cut by
a separatist war in the Black Sea region of Abkhazia a decade ago and intense
negotiations to re-open it have failed.
The main road south to Yerevan
from the north is often little more than a muddy track.
Where the Russians have been
steadily pushed out, the Americans have moved in to fill the gap.
The US military is training the
Georgian army and there are rumours of air bases being planned in Azerbaijan.
Last month, the US defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, demanded that Russia speed up the withdrawal of
their remaining forces in Georgia, eliciting a fierce protest from the Kremlin.
For Russian soldiers, such
humiliation at the hands of their Cold War enemy is difficult to swallow.
Oleg said: "I think we are
still every bit as strong as the Americans. We have modern arms and equipment
and very high morale. They are just better at advertising themselves."
Col Ashot Karapetyan, who also
serves at the Bolshaya Krepost base, said: "The Americans are pursuing an
aggressive and expansionist policy. The Russians first came here in 1775 and
our presence today is more important than ever.
"Without us the Muslims
would overrun this area and in no time would be on the southern borders of
Russia."
But in Georgia and Azerbaijan,
few locals are convinced. They see their future as wedded to the US and Europe.
The younger generation is learning English rather than Russian. Only in
Armenia, sandwiched between historical enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey, is there
still a desire to see Russian soldiers on the streets.
"With the Russians here we
sleep easier at night," said Anjella, a 48-year-old housewife in Yerevan.
"We are Christians in a sea
of Muslims and Russia protects us," said Narine, 37, a government
employee. "Of course we'd prefer the Americans too, but they are so far
away and Russia is just next door."