"OCCUPIED" OR "LIBERATED" TERRITORIES?
The smoke and mirrors of caucasian semantics
Almost two decades of de facto
independence became de iure in August 2008 with Russia’s recognition,
and Russia’s military presence now provides the necessary bulwark for the
freedom which the Abkhazians and South Ossetians secured at the cost
of so many lives and damage inflicted on the infrastructure and
economy of their countries. Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru have followed
Russia’s lead, and the Abkhazians and South Ossetians are working hard
to gain even wider diplomatic support, which they readily acknowledge will
be a slow process, given the international community’s initial folly
of precipitately recognising Georgia within its Soviet boundaries and that
unsympathetic and largely ignorant community’s consequent perception
of a need to go on mouthing support for
an unsustainable territorial integrity — fine-sounding words but with
absolutely no relevance to the facts on the ground.
On 31 January 2008 Georgian president
Mikheil Saak’ashvili and his prime minister Lado Gurgenidze changed the name
of the previously styled Ministry for Conflict Resolution, rechristening
it the Ministry for Reintegration, with Teimuraz (Temur) Iak’obashvili
at its head. Whilst the Abkhazians and South Ossetians had been largely
amenable to negotiating to resolve their conflicts with Georgia and
to establish good-neighbourly relations with Georgia, there was
no way they would engage with ministerial representatives whose goal was
to reintegrate their territories within a unitary Georgian state.
South Ossetia had been effectively free of Georgian control since the
Daghomys Accord of June 1992, which ended a low-intensity 2-year war,
whilst Abkhazia had gained de facto independence from Tbilisi when
Georgian troops suffered a humiliating defeat at the end
of September 1993, ending the high-intensity 14-month war initiated
by Eduard Shevardnadze. As for the negotiations, these had already
been suspended by the Abkhazians after Saak’ashvili’s illegal introduction
of military personnel into their Upper K’odor Valley in the summer
of 2006, and this new development merely confirmed their determination
to have nothing to do with Saak’ashvili’s administration.
Iak’obashvili’s post suddenly became a high-profile sinecure
on 26 August 2008 when Russian president Dmitry Medvedev formally
recognised, and established diplomatic relations with, both South Ossetia and
Abkhazia in the wake of the 5-day war in South Ossetia (and the
flight of the Georgian troops from the K’odor Valley) earlier that month.
Unfortunately, the Georgian minister has obstinately refused to face this
reality, and Georgia’s Western friends have failed to find the courage
to persuade him or his mercurial president, whose decision
to launch an assault on the South Ossetian capital (Tskhinval)
brought the full force of Russian nemesis down on his own (and his
country’s) hubristic head, to do so. Instead, Tbilisi continues
to delude itself into believing that the world’s two youngest republics
can still be returned to the Georgian fold. And the prime
illustration of this delusion was the unveiling by Iak’obashvili
on 28 January 2010 of his ’State Strategy on [the] Occupied
Territories: Engagement Through Coöperation’.
Since, quite naturally (sc. in view of the constant threat
of belligerence from the Georgian side of the respective borders),
both the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians have concluded defence-agreements
with Moscow, which grant Russia the right to protect their frontiers from
renewed Georgian aggression, Russian troops have a presence in the
border-regions of both republics. This is the flimsy justification
for the use of the sensational term ’occupied territories’ in the
aforementioned document and in much of the rhetoric emanating from
Georgian sources. Needless to say, the Georgian government takes great
satisfaction from hearing the use of this time by foreign
governments, organisations and leading political figures, the latest and most
prominent of whom is US Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton, who voiced the term when visiting Tbilisi on the final leg
of her recent Transcaucasian tour.
Mrs. Clinton has had her fingers burnt in the past in connection with
a too poorly-grounded assessment of a Georgian leader, which,
one might have thought, would have made her more cautious about accepting
Georgian propagandistic claims at face-value thereafter. But she seems
to have fallen into the same trap as in 1999. This was when the
American National Democratic Institute awarded its W. Averell Harriman
prize to Georgia’s then-president, Eduard Shevardnadze, in the
presence of Hillary Clinton (who brought along her husband, President Bill
Clinton, as a surprise-guest), an award which the Institute
later preferred to consign to oblivion. This was hardly surprising
in view of what closer inspection of the nature of the
Georgian state under Shevardnadze revealed. For example, Human Rights Watch
published a damning 63-page document (vol. 12, No. 11 (D))
in October 2000 entitled Georgia. Backtracking on Reform: Amendments
Undermine Access to Justice, in which one of many criticisms
read: ’Georgia has an abysmal record of torture and other
ill-treatment in pre-trial detention and of unfair trials’
(p. 6). When Shevardnadze was overthrown by the young pretender
Saak’ashvili in November 2003, the US dropped him like a stone
and promptly transferred its allegiance to his usurper.
It would be interesting to hear how Mrs. Clinton could justify
her parroting of the term ’occupied territories’. Has she any first-hand
knowledge of what life is like in the said republics? No. Are
Russian troops in those republics against the wishes of the local
governements and peoples? No. Are Russian troops visible on the streets
of local towns and villages, brandishing weapons to keep resentful
residents in order? No. Is Russian investment and influence growing
there? Yes, but, then, what is the alternative, given the West’s dogged
refusal for almost two decades to do anything more than accede
to Tbilisi’s request to isolate the regions and their populations,
which simply pushes them ever closer to their northern neighbour?
Almost two decades of de facto independence became de iure
in August 2008 with Russia’s recognition, and Russia’s military presence
now provides the necessary bulwark for the freedom which the Abkhazians and
South Ossetians secured at the cost of so many lives and damage
inflicted on the infrastructure and economy of their countries.
Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru have followed Russia’s lead, and the Abkhazians
and South Ossetians are working hard to gain even wider diplomatic
support, which they readily acknowledge will be a slow process, given
the international community’s initial folly of precipitately recognising
Georgia within its Soviet boundaries and that unsympathetic and largely
ignorant community’s consequent perception of a need
to go on mouthing support for an unsustainable territorial
integrity — fine-sounding words but with absolutely no relevance
to the facts on the ground.
Mrs. Clinton was reported to have timed her return to America
to be there in time to meet Israel’s prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, on the occasion of his recent visit. This
is somewhat ironic, for, if the Obama administration is eager
to raise the issue of ’occupied territories’ in the hope
of engineering their deoccupation, their most appropriate interlocutor
must be the Israeli Prime Minister. Might one, then, look forward
to a change in US policy towards Israel, which would surely
be the most effective way to ensure the deoccupation of the
actual Occupied Territories of Palestine?
by George Hewitt
http://www.abkhazworld.com/headlines/509-occupied-or-liberated-ghewitt.html
George
Hewitt, Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and
Middle East (Professor of Caucasian Languages), Centre
of Contemporary Central Asia & the Caucasus (Member, Centre
of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus).
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