I'M
SO GLAD
Shevardnadze,
the former Soviet Foreign Minister, seized power in a post-Soviet
coup and has been clinging to office ever since – often
by a thread. The revolt of the ethnic Abhazians, in which
they won de facto independence, nearly drove him out of Tbilisi,
a humiliation he has avenged several times over. On December
17, 1998, opposition leader and former government official
Nuzgar Lezhava was beaten to death by police during a police
raid on a conclave of opposition politicians. The police claimed
that Lezhava had fallen out of a tree. Doctors from the British
Helsinki Human Rights Group who examined the body contradicted
the official story: according to their testimony, he had been
tortured to death by Shevardnadze's political police. Gee,
I'm so glad Georgia is a "model" of democracy –
just imagine how bad it would be if it were a dictatorship!
A
DEMOCRATIC UTOPIA?
While
the precise number of political prisoners is open to dispute
– with estimates as low as 180 and as high as 2,500 –
virtually all observers agree that this democratic utopia
imprisons dissidents. Meetings held by the opposition Zviadist
movement have been regularly broken up by police using electric
prods. Another Georgian custom of equal charm is jailing people
as hostages for others the authorities have not yet apprehended
– and the courts are powerless to intervene. In 1998,
Shevardnadze decreed that all sitting judges were required
to take a new set of "exams" and those who failed
to pass the test or refused to take it were purged from the
bench. One can only conclude that, in describing Georgia as
a "model" democracy, Secretary Cohen was using a
new, distinctively Clintonian definition of democracy that
wouldn't even pass muster in deepest darkest Arkansas.
INQUIRING
MINDS WANT TO KNOW
As
reported in this column on several occasions, Shevardnadze
has been calling for a "Kosovo solution" to Georgia's
internal problems and the Cohen visit was a key indication
that Washington is receptive to the idea. Shevardnadze is
claiming that the refugee problem unleashed by his war against
secessionist Abhazians requires another "humanitarian"
intervention by NATO. While Shevardnadze claims hundreds of
thousands of refugees have been forced from their homes by
rebel Abhazians, the authorities inflate these numbers in
order to maximize the flow of Western aid. Theft by government
officials is rampant, and the conditions under which refugees
are forced to live cannot be blamed on the Abhazians. For
example, 600 refugees crammed into a sanitorium in Kutaisi
supposedly receive $4 a month from international aid agencies
– but the Georgian government deducts half this amount
before the refugees even get it, ostensibly for electricity.
But then why is the electricity turned off most of the time
in the Kutaisi camp? Inquiring minds want to know . . .
SELECTIVE
COMPASSION
For Shevardnadze to point to
the plight of the Georgian refugees as the rationale for Western
military intervention is the height of hypocrisy: for it was
under his rule that many thousands of Ossetians were "ethnically
cleansed" from Shevardnadze's own capital city of Tbilisi,
in 1992, and deprived of their property. Under the so-called
"privatization" scheme inaugurated by this "free
market" ex-Commie, the confiscated property of the Ossetians
was sold off: even if the Georgian government agrees to let
them back into Tbilisi, they no longer have homes to which
they can return. The humanitarian concern of the West is highly
selective, and if – or when – the NATO-crats take
up their Georgian friend's invitation to intervene, you can
bet we will hear nothing about these refugees.
THE
BALKANS OF THE STEPPES
The
Transcaucasus is the only region on earth that rivals the
Balkans in the complexity, longevity, and ferocity of its
ethnic rivalries. Hundreds of tribal groupings and ethno-religious
divisions split the rugged landscape, and the story of their
bloody feuds, and the endless waves of Transcaucasian ethnic
cleansings, is far longer than can be related in a single
column. Yet one twist in the ethnic fabric of this volatile
flashpoint requires our special attention because it shows
how clearly and unmistakably the heavy hand of the West is
the cause rather than the solution to the region's problems:
the planned reintroduction of the Meskhetian Turks to their
historical homeland in Georgia, near the Turkish border.
A
CRIME REPEATED
Ignoring
the mountains of evidence that disqualify Georgia from membership
in an association of ostensibly democratic nations, the Council
of Europe has admitted Georgia. While this, given the ghastly
record of the Shevardnadze regime, is shocking enough, the
real shocker is the condition attached to the Council's invitation
to join: the repatriation, within 7 years, of the descendants
of Meskhetian Turks deported to Central Asia by Stalin in
1944. The Council demands that as many as 300,000 of these
people be rounded up and sent to their ancestral homeland,
in what used to be Meskhetia. While no one denies that Stalin's
policy of forced mass migrations was a monstrous injustice,
the question is whether justice would be served in displacing
the Armenians who now make up the majority in that area. Instead
of nullifying a great crime, the Council of Europe proposes
to repeat it.
LIGHTING
THE FUSE
Not
only that, but in insisting on this condition, the Council
is planting a tripwire that is bound to trigger Western intervention
sooner rather than later. The repatriation of the Meskhetians
would double the number of refugees in Georgia; yet the Council
does not specify how nearly half a million people are to be
housed, fed, and ministered to, nor is there any indication
of who will foot the bill. Given the tensions which are already
high in that area, the Meskhetian exodus seems designed to
exacerbate an explosive situation. As the British Helsinki
Human Rights Group put it: "It should be remembered that
the Council insists that the Georgian state should provide
linguistic and religious facilities which will emphasize the
differences between the Meskhetian Turks and the resident
population. Not since President Wilson created the Polish
corridor and other anomalies has such an ethnic tinderbox
been gratuitously created by people who will not have to face
the consequences." Light the fuse, and then stand back
– this is the time-tested method of the War Party. It
works every time.
CONSPIRACY
THEORIES
I
have written before of the various financial interests that
stand to make a killing when the great Caspian Sea oil bonanza
comes through: interests directly tied to both parties, especially
the oil companies, but also including the big defense contractors
and its ancillary industries. Beneath the waters of the Caspian
Sea lies the greatest known untapped source of oil: the trick
is to transport it. The projected pipeline has many proposed
routes, but all of them intersect the ethnic wars and endless
border disputes that plague the Transcaucasus. Of course,
it is just a coincidence that the presence of NATO troops
will ensure that the pipeline is built and protected –
and if you don't believe that, then you must be one of those
screwball conspiracy theorists, either a right-wing extremist
or a blame-America-first Commie, possibly both.
MARCHING
THROUGH GEORGIA
The
U.S. is already providing Shevardnadze's increasingly beleaguered
central government in Tbilisi with plenty of military aid
– helicopters, training, and no doubt covert aid of a
more serious nature. But it is doubtful that this will be
enough to prop up the regime. The central government is facing
yet another challenge in the secession of Adjaria, an autonomous
region whose president accuses Shevardnadze of masterminding
an assassination plot. (Shevardnadze, for his part, accuses
the Abhazians of plotting his own death, with the connivance
of Russia.) There is also the problem of what to do about
Nagorno-Karabakh, the object of a low-level war between Armenia
and Azerbaijan. The presence of Western troops on the ground
would solve the pipeline profiteers' problems in a single
blow. With transport facilities already under construction
in Albania, NATO's newest colony – paid for out of "reconstruction"
costs for Kosovo and other economic aid to the region via
the "Stability Pact – the way is being paved for
a Transcaucasian – Trans-Balkan pipeline that will transport
Caspian oil to market in Western Europe. There is, however,
just one little problem . . .
THE
BOTTOM LINE
If
Shevardnadze should lose control, again, like he nearly did
in 1992, Georgia would devolve back to its pre-Soviet condition
of autonomous local communities. Instead of dealing with the
central authorities in Tbilisi, the oil barons would have
to negotiate with as many as a dozen independent "republics,"
each with its own demands and greedy for increased state revenues.
The costs and the risks of investing in the Great Caspian
Oil Bonanza – grandiosely referred to by its boosters
as "reopening the Silk Road" – would be unsustainable
in a free market. As advocates of a "Third Way"
between capitalism and socialism, however, the Clintonian-New
Labor wing of the War Party does not concern itself with such
arcane questions. Like their "right-wing" mirror
images in the Republican and Tory establishments, these modern-day
mercantilists are talking about the bottom line here, and
it is this: without the protection of the Western military
machine, that pipeline will never be built, and those profits
will be "lost."
A
NEW COLD WAR
While
the prospects for U.S./Western intervention are scattered
across the globe, literally on every continent, from Africa
to South America to the Pacific island of East Timor, to date
the most dangerous by far is the steady escalation of Western
involvement in the Transcaucasus. Behind the threat to tame
the Abhazians and subdue the Armenians is the likelihood of
a confrontation with Russia: not the Russian Empire of the
Soviet era, but a shrunken and seriously weakened Weimar Russia
– encircled, resentful, and still armed with nuclear
weapons.
THE
BIG QUESTION
Would
the mercantilists in Washington and London risk World War
III to reap the profits from what has been widely touted as
the biggest oil deal in history? To ask the question is to
answer it.
|
