- Georgia is eager for another war, but there are other
fires there which refuse to die -- Russia's battles with terrorism and
separatists and Azerbaijan's bleeding wound in ethnic Armenian Nagorno
Karabakh, notes Eric Walberg
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- The Russian Federation republics of Chechnya, Dagestan,
North Ossetia and Ingushetia have experienced a sharp increase in assassinations
and terrorist bombings in the past few years which have reached into the
heart of Russia itself, most spectacularly with the bombing of the Moscow-Leningrad
express train in January that killed 26.
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- Last week police killed at least six suspected militants
in Ingushetia. Dagestan has especially suffered in the past two years,
notably with the assassination of its interior minister in last June and
the police chief last month. The number of armed attacks more than doubled
last year. In February, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev replaced Dagestan
president Mukhu Aliyev with Magomedsalam Magomedov, whose father Magomedali
led Dagestan from 1987-2006. Aliyev was genuinely popular, praised for
his honesty and fight against corruption, but was seen as too soft on terror.
-
- President Magomedov has vowed to put the violence-ridden
region in order and pardon rebels who turn in weapons."I have no illusion
that it will be easy. Escalating terrorist activity in the North Caucasus,
including in Dagestan, urges us to revise all our methods of fighting terror
and extremism." He vowed to attack unemployment, organised crime,
clan rivalry and corruption.
-
- Violence continues to plague Chechnya as well. Russian
forces have fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya since 1994,
leaving more than 100,000 dead and the region in ruins, inspiring terrorist
attacks throughout the region. Five Russian soliders and as many rebels
were killed there at the beginning of February. According to the Long War
Journal, in February, Russia's Federal Security Bureau (FSB) killed a key
Al-Qaeda fighter based in Chechnya, Mokhmad Shabban, an Egyptian known
as Saif Islam (Sword of Islam), the mastermind behind the 6 January suicide
bombing that killed seven Russian policemen in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala.
He was wanted for attacks against infrastructure and Russian soldiers throughout
Chechnya and neighbouring republics.
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- Since the early 1990s, militants such as Shabban have
operated from camps in Georgia's Pansiki Gorge, and used the region as
a safe haven to launch attack inside Chechnya and the greater Caucasus.
The FSB said Shabban "masterminded acts of sabotage to blast railway
tracks, transmission lines, and gas and oil pipelines at instructions by
Georgian secret services."
-
- This is impossible to prove, but Georgia was the only
state to recognise the Republic of Ichkeria when Chechens unilaterally
declared independence in 1991 and his widow Alla has a talk show on First
Caucasus TV, a station located in Georgia and beamed into Chechnya. Interestingly,
from 2002-2007, more than 200 US Special Forces troops were training Georgian
troops in Pansiki, though neither the Americans nor the Georigans were
able to end the attacks on Russia.
-
- Medvedev said last month that violence in the North Caucasus
remains Russia's biggest domestic problem, arguing that it will only end
once the acute poverty in the region and the corruption and lawlessness
within the security organs themselves is addressed. He has undertaken an
ambitious reform of security organs and the police throughout Russia with
this in mind.
-
- Sceptics may point to the parallel between the US-NATO
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and Russian policy in the north Caucasus.
Yes, there is a Russian geopolitical context, but the comparison is specious.
These regions have been closely tied both economically and politically
to Russia for two centuries, which Abkhazian President Sergei Bagpash shrewdly
decided to celebrate last month in order to ensure Moscow's support.
-
- The patchwork quilt of nationalities of the Caucasus
has survived under Russian sponsorship and now has the prospect of prospering
if left in peace. Politicians like Bagpash make the best of the situation,
as do sensible politicians throughout Russia's "near abroad".
To alienate or try to subvert a powerful neighbour and potential friend
as does Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is plain bad politics.
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- The other Caucasian conflict is the long running tragedy
of Nagorno Karabakh, which unlike the other conflicts pits two supposed
NATO hopefuls against each other. The war occurred from 1988-94, dating
from the dying days of the Soviet Union, when Armenia invaded Azerbaijan,
carving out a corridor through the country to seize the mountain region
populated for over a millennium largely by ethnic Armenians. A ceasefire
was finally achieved leaving Armenia in possession of the enclave and a
corridor, together consisting of almost 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory.
As many as 40,000 died, and 230,000 Armenians and a million Azeris were
displaced.
-
- A Russian-brokered ceasefire has been followed by intermittent
peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United
States, France and Russia. But it is clear that Azerbaijan will not rest
until its territory is returned. "If the Armenian occupier does not
liberate our lands, the start of a great war in the south Caucasus is inevitable,"
warned Azerbaijan Defence Minister Safar Abiyev in February. "Armenians
must unconditionally withdraw from our lands. And only after that should
cooperation and peace be established," said Azerbaijan President Ilham
Aliyev last week. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire
line in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, often facing each other at close range,
with shootings reported as common. Last week an Armenian soldier was killed.
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- Russia, culturally closer to Armenia, is resented by
Azerbaijan as biased, and indeed there has been no commitment by any of
the peacemakers or Armenia to return the territory. But the playing field
changed dramatically after Georgia's defeat in its war against Russia in
2008, setting in motion unforseen regional realignments throughout the
region.
- First was rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, which
at first set off alarm bells in Baku, relying as it does internationally
on the support of Turkey, which closed its borders with Armenia in 1993
in response to the Armenian occupation. Turkey established diplomatic relations
with Armenia last year in keeping with the Justice and Development Party's
"zero problems with neighbours", but says ratification by parliament
and a full border opening will not happen until Armenia makes some concessions
to Azerbaijan.
-
- Moscow has also been pursuing a charm offensive with
neighbours in recent years, and was successful in getting both Azerbaijani
and Armenian presidents to sign the Moscow Declaration in November 2008,
though the warring sides subsequently have managed only to agree on procedural
matters.
-
- Key to all further developments throughout the region
is the role of the US and NATO. Until recently, it looked like NATO would
succeed in expanding into Ukraine and Georgia. It is also eager to have
Azerbaijan and Armenia join. Not surprisingly, these moves are seen as
hostile by Russia. If the unlikely happens, this would mean the US has
important influence in all the conflicts in the Caucasus. But would pushing
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two warring nations, into the fold help resolve
their intractable differences?
-
- Though both have sent a few troops to Afghanistan, the
very idea of warring nations joining the military bloc is nonsense, and
noises about it can only be interpreted as attempts to curry favour with
the world's superpower. Azerbaijan has much-covetted Caspian Sea oil and
gas, but Armenia is Christian and Azerbaijan Muslim, and Armenia has a
strong US domestic lobby which will not go quietly into the night. Any
move by Washington to meddle in the dispute without close coordination
with Moscow is fraught with danger for all concerned -- except, of course,
the US.
-
- As an ally to both countries, and with important historical
and cultural traditions, Russia remains the main actor in the search for
a solution. Including Turkey in negotiations can only improve the chances
of finding a regional solution which is acceptable to both sides. Such
a solution requires demilitarising the conflict, hardly something NATO
is expert at. As both countries improve their economies, and as long as
ongoing tensions do not erupt into military conflict, they can -- must
-- move towards a realistic resolution that takes the concerns of both
sides into consideration.
-
- Since 1991 a new Silk Road has been opened to the West,
stretching as it did a millennium ago from Italy to China and taking in
at least seventeen new political entities. All roads, in this case, lead
to the Caucasus, and US-NATO interest in this vital crossroads should surprise
no one. US control there -- and in the Central Asian"stans" --
would mean containing Russia and Iran, the dream for American strategists
since WWII.
-
- The three major wars of the past decade -- Yugoslavia
(1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) -- all lie on this Silk Road.
The US and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance had no business invading
any of these countries and have no business in the region today. Rather
it is Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey et al that must come
together to promote their regional economic well being and security.
-
- War breaking out in any one of the Caucasus disputes
would be a tragedy for all concerned, for the West (at least in the long
run) as much as for Russia or any of the participants. But the forces abetting
war are not rational in any meaningful sense of the word. After all, it
was perfectly "rational" in Robert Gates's mind to help finance
and arm Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1979. The planners in the Pentagon
or NATO HQs argue "rationally" today that their current surge
in Afghanistan will bring peace to the region.
-
- And if it fails, at least the chaos is far away. Such
thinking could lead them to try to unleash chaos in any of the smoldering
and intractable disputes in the Caucasus out of spite or a la General Jack
Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 "Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned
to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", a film which unfortunately has
lost none of its bite in the past four decades.
-
- ***
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/
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