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              CIVILIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN GEORGIA
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
SchNews | Despite the Olympics, you had probably noticed there’s another war on, this time in the mountainous region of the Caucuses, in a previously little mentioned place called South Ossetia. Whether or not Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili went it alone, or if he was given a nod and a wink from the crazies in the White House, we won’t know until Dubya writes his memoirs (but don’t hold your breath - he’ll have to learn to write first). The question many people are asking is, of course, “what the fack was the Georgian president doing taking on Russia in the first place?” Did he hope that no-one would notice ‘cos everyone’s watching Bejing? Or, more likely, was it a calculated move based on a naive view of US / NATO support? Saakashvili has been promised NATO membership for some time now, ever since he hosted Dubya in ‘05. As a potential member (other former USSR states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already joined), he probably thought he was invincible. It’s kind of like Don Corleone saying he wants to be the godfather of your next son. And with that and a string of corruption allegations dogging him, he decided to play the nationalist card. The plan: whip up a bit of righteous fury against the pro-Russian separatists and then send in the boys to take back South Ossetia with NATO blessing. Unfortunately for the Georgian president, it was a calculation that was way, way out. You see, the Russia of today is not the Russia of the ‘90s. Partly due to some old-fashioned state intervention, but mostly due to its control of so much of the world’s precious oil and gas, Russia is once again a very big and powerful player in the new great game of world power. Russia’s military has been growing and growing under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, but it’s not really this that the West is afraid of. It’s the Russian energy weapon that strikes fear into the hearts of US / EU capitalists. When Ukraine started kissing western backsides a few years ago, all Russia had to do was turn off the gas (in the wintertime-brrr!) and wait for an apology. And Russia could easily do the same to Europe. As US political economist F William Enghadhl put it, “Saakashvili made a colossal miscalculation in that he would have the immediate backup of NATO - but all he has are a few harsh words from a lame duck president in Washington.” This is why of course the West has been trying so hard to build an alternative route for Asian gas to reach European consumers. They even recently built a pipeline - the second largest in the world - to bypass Russia via, er… Georgia (called the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline – see SchNEWS 555). That pipelines is now about a 20-minute tank drive from the Russian army. BP, seeing which way the wind blows, have pre-emptively shut down their bit of the pipeline. And that’s not been the only problem for the BTC Pipeline. Only last week the Kurdish separatists, the PKK, bombed it, and there are reports that the Rooskies have had a go since then. So its back to the drawing board, and it’s back to Russia if you want to boil your spuds. So one in the eye for NATO and the US of A then. Hurrah. Only the problem with Caucasus politics is that whichever Empire gains, the people lose - Russia’s brutality in Chechnya is at least as bad as the US’s in Iraq, only colder. Another way of looking at the carnage in the Caucuses is that it’s the chickens of Kosovo rapidly coming home to roost. In February this year, Kosovo declared independence, supported by 90% of the population, following a referendum on the region’s future. Bush, in his guise as hero of democracy, said that the world must respect the will of the people and recognise Kosovo as the 193rd member of the UN, effectively partitioning Serbia and further dividing the Balkan states that used to be known as Yugoslavia. Cool! - the rights of nations, independence, freedom fries and all that. Russia, meanwhile, points out that South Ossetia also had a referendum, in which 90% of South Ossetia voted for union with North Ossetia (and Russia). If, so the Russian logic goes, Kosovo can leave Serbia, then South Ossetia (as well as Abzhazia) can leave Georgia. But this rank hypocrisy of the USA is also equaled by Russia, who didn’t exactly respect the people’s wishes when it came to that other Caucasian republic of Chechnya. After declaring their independence straight after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has fought two bloody wars, flattened the capital, Grozny, and exterminated perhaps one tenth of Chechnya’s population, all in a bid to keep it part of Russia. In Central Asia at least, the new shape of the world is now clear. From post-Cold War / New World Order, it’s back to the 19th century and the era of the Great Game between rival empires - with the inhabitants stuck between a Russian rock and an American (OK, it used to be British) hard place. Currently about 2,000 civilians have been murdered for the crime of living in a geopolitical fault line, and around 100,000 people have been displaced. The Russians bombed - then occupied - the Georgian town of Gori, outside of Ossetia and deep in Georgia proper, barely 20 miles from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. As it so happens, Gori is the birthplace of a certain Joseph Stalin. He would be proud of what they’ve done to his town - bombed the shit out of it for defying Russia. What’s been most illuminating about this war is just how quickly and how far the US / West / NATO have distanced themselves from the Georgian president following his disastrous military ‘reintegration’ of South Ossetia. Both America and their every willing allies, Israel, have been deeply involved in Georgian affairs for many years now. In fact, President Saakashvili owes his job to the USA, courtesy of the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED, part of the US State Department, is the first choice for pro-American regime change around the world. All of the various ‘colour revolutions’ that have brought pro-US regimes to power (Rose Revolution in Georgia - see SchNEWS 433, Orange in Ukraine, Cedar in Lebanon, and Saffron in Burma) have the NED’s fingerprints all over them. They sent some thousand US special forces to train the Georgian military. In fact, the ‘Georgia-US Immediate Response Military Exercise 2008′ had ended just one week before the Ossetia invasion. Since the rout of the Georgian army, those advisors and any hint of US military involvement have been nowhere to be seen. As the separatist leader of Abzkhazia put it, Georgian forces had received “American training in running away.’’ The Israelis’ response has been just as telling. As soon as events turned sour, they froze all high tech arms sales to Georgia - fearful of Russians wrath if they’re seen as supporting Georgia. But supporting Georgia is exactly what they’ve been doing for years. Not only have the Israelis provided weapons and training, but over a thousand advisors - mostly ex-officers freshly retired out of the Israeli Defense Force - found employment in Georgia’s military. The Georgians should have looked a bit closer. A lot of these officers left the IDF in disgrace after Israel’s own lost war of ‘06 against Hezbollah. Fresh from one defeat, they appear to have taught the Georgians how to lose another war. This conflict (well, war really) is possibly the most dangerous on the planet at the moment. If Georgia ever gets to join NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one country is an attack on all NATO members. Were round three of this conflict to kick off with Georgia as a full NATO member, NATO could be forced by its own logic into full scale war with Russia - with South Ossetia occupying the place in history that Sarajevo held in 1914 just before the start of World War One, only this time round both sides are nuclear armed… Have Your Say: CIVILIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN GEORGIA Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. 2 Responses to “CIVILIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN GEORGIA”
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Hmmm…let’s take a look at how things ended up where they did.
First of all, I am an American who considers himself a Reaganite (don’t freak out libs). Yugoslavia was made up of several nations. They were Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Serbia. Im sure you noticed that I left out Kosovo. Kosovo and Metohija (the real name) has ALWAYS been a part of Serbia, it is considered the Serbian ancestral homeland and in many ways their Holy Land (some of their oldest Orthodox churches are located there, some older then the USA). Kosovo was NEVER a separate country in it’s entire history, ever. Now, over the past 100 yrs the Serb population in Kosovo has been strangled out of this province by ethnic Albanians (there is no such thing as a Kosovar). In the early 1900’s Serbs were 90 percent of Kosovo, after WWII the population had diminished to around 50-52 percent and now we fast forward to the 80’s and 90’s were the population is only about 10-12 percent (if that). Why did this exodus happen?
Unfortunately, after WWII Tito, for reasons we may never know, allowed unmitigated immigration from Albania into the Kosovo region. Serbs in the province were having the usual 2-3 kids, whilst their Albanian counterparts were having 6-8 kids, in some cases more than that. You tell me what the demographics would look like after a 40-50 year period. Once the Albanians reached a majority they decided that they no longer wanted to learn Serbo-Croatian, they decided they wanted their own schools, language based news media, political & social institutions and so on. Also, during the late 70’s into the early 80’s the KLA formed (Kosovo Liberation Army, which was on the US terrorist watchlist until Clinton took them off so he could “wag the dog” during the Lewinsky scandal). These goons decided that the ethnic Albanians should have Kosovo for themselves. They began to murder, rape, bomb, intimidate and persecute the Serbian minority (not to mention the Roma. Goranis and others). Among the so called Kosovo leadership are war criminals who have just as much blood on their hands as the Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian muslims), they are Agim Ceku, Ramush Haradinaj and Hashim Thaci. So, Milosevic did what any leader would do in such a circumstance, he sent the military in to stop the separatists from persecuting the rightful owners of Kosovo and because of this he got Serbia bombed all to hell (more civilians died in the air attacks than military, how nice). Also, if the Albanians are so nice to live with why haven’t the 80,000-150,000 (depends on which refugee organization you listen to) Serb refugees from the province returned and why does KFOR and UNMIK have to place guards around the few Orthodox churches and Serb enclaves left 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Now, one should also factor in that the Serbs were the only people in that part of the world that sided with the Allies in both world wars. The Croats (Ustache) were Nazi collaborators, they even ran the second deadliest concentration camp behind Aushwitz, this camp was known as Jasnevac. The Albanian and Bosnian muslims had their own Nazi SS divisions (the Bosnian muslim wartime leader, Alija Izetbegovic, was a recruiter for the Nazis during WWII). These Nazi allies proceeded to try to rid the Balkans of all Serbs, Jews, Roma, etc.. As you can see, Serbia has had quite a time in dealing with their neighbors, no wonder they were/are wound so tight.
I would like to make one thing clear, Milosevic was no sweetheart, Im sure we can all agree with that premise. He tried to have his way and used military means to get them, which was entirely wrong and misguided. Yet, it was the Serbian people who forced him out of office and had him delivered to the Hague and what did that get the Serbs, more and more demands and eventually, the annexation by foreign elements of their beloved Kosovo.
Ok, let’s fast forward to the Georgia situation. Vladimir Putin told everyone at the UN that the recognition of a independent Kosovo without UN approval would set a dangerous precedent for other separatist causes around the world (one should know that UN resolution 1244 states that Kosovo is a part of Serbia and should be recognized as such). The Western argument of “Kosovo is a unique case” was one of the most arrogant and idiotic things I have ever heard. There’s a reason that only 45 nations out of 190+ have recognized it, many of them have worries that it could embolden separatist causes in their own countries, albeit many of them are quite small at the moment. Spain, with the Basques currently threatening a independence referendum in the near future, did not jump on the EU bandwagon because of this. South Ossetia, just days after the Kosovo declaration, came out saying that Kosovo had set a precedent for their cause, as well as, Abhkazia’s cause. The MILF in the southern Phillipines (Mindanao) want their own independent Muslim entity and are interested in how Kosovo achieved theirs. The Transneistr area of Moldava wants the same. No matter how many times the Western countries pronounce “Kosovo is a unique case” it doesn’t make it so. There’s three reasons the US wants Kosovo apart from Serbia. 1) The US currently has the second largest military base built since Vietnam located there, Camp Bondsteel (it is suspected of being one of the secret CIA interrogation centers). 2) The US wanted to show the Muslim world that it is not anti-muslim and that we will help muslims if need be (especially if it coincides with US interests as well). 3) If Serbia were to keep Kosovo there would be the very real threat of having our military thrown out and Camp Bondsteel taken over or destroyed. There are a few more I could state, but these are the top ones.
So, as you can see, one nation’s territorial integrity, Georgia, should be kept at all costs says the West (can you say US/EU lapdog) while another nation’s should be dismantled, Serbia, which would never cater to having foreign soldiers on their own land. Can anyone say hypocrisy at it’s finest. There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin/Medvedev planned this after their warnings were ignored, after all it was NATO that set the precedent of “humanitarian intervention” and the US with many western European countries that (and a few smaller ones who cater to the West) were the only ones to recognize the ethnic Albanians declaration of independence in Kosovo. The West, since the end of the cold war, has been ignoring, poking and prodding Russia thinking it was still a economic and political basketcase like in the 90s, but it isn’t. It’s oil rich, it’s political situation is more stable and it’s military is still quite capable, as Georgia saw firsthand. Im not condoning what happened in Georgia, but looking at how things have transpired starting with the bombing of Serbia over the separatists in Kosovo in the late 90s and then the mostly western backing of it’s independence against the wishes of Russia and China, no wonder we have what we have now.
Finally, when Reagan and Gorbachev sat down and worked out the deal with the fall of the USSR, the US president promised the Soviet leader that NATO and the West would not try to bring the countries surrounding it into NATO and, of course, the last couple of Presidents have gone back on that word. Reagan would never have gone for the destruction of the territorial integrity of Serbia, let along the inclusion of many of the ex-Soviet bloc members into NATO.
Now, can one see how this all came about, why such circumstances have come to play or are many of you still listening to what the mainstream media and the govt is telling you to believe.