Putting Broken Georgia Back Together Again

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had better savor his party’s overwhelming victory in last Sunday’s parliamentary elections, because his chances for similar triumphs as he tackles his country’s serious and longstanding problems are clouded.

For openers, his government doesn’t control much of the territory over which it has nominal jurisdiction -- and hasn’t since 1992. Abkhazia, the northwestern segment of Georgia’s Black Sea coast, is, in effect, independent. The Abkhaz, a predominantly Muslim Caucasian people that, with Russian help, broke away from Tbilisi more than a decade ago, maintain a special relationship with Moscow and are wedded to outright independence. Saakashvili is determined to regain Abkhazia, as are most Georgians, especially the thousands who were expelled from the region. Clashes between Abkhaz and Georgian forces routinely puncture a tenuous cease-fire overseen by a predominantly Russian-dominated contingent. Peace talks have been fruitless. Abkhazia remains a flashpoint and a symbol of the precariousness of Georgia’s political equilibrium.

Another slice of Georgia’s Black Sea coast, which includes the port of Batumi, runs through the dissident region of Adzharia, whose indigenous people are predominantly, albeit nominally, Muslim, a legacy of several centuries under the Ottoman Empire. The local strongman, Aslan Abashidze, rules with scant regard for the central government in Tbilisi. He hasn’t sought full-fledged independence largely because he already possesses its attributes: a constitution, control of local revenues, a police and militia, and unchecked power.

But Adzharia is a crisis-in-waiting. Earlier this month, Abashidze banned Saakashvili from entering his fiefdom, then relented after the Georgian president imposed an economic blockade. The incident highlighted the fragility of Georgian unity. Bringing Adzharia under Tbilisi’s control won’t be easy because Abashidze has independent economic resources, an extensive patronage network and connections to Russia, which maintains a military base at Batumi.

A similar situation prevails in South Ossetia. The Georgia government’s writ doesn’t hold in the region, and Russia exercises considerable leverage there, not least because the Ossetians are a nation divided by state boundaries: Russia’s republic of North Ossetia holds open the dream of unification for Georgian Ossetians -- and for Georgians the nightmare of political disintegration.

Saakashvili’s most formidable challenge, then, is to reunite Georgia -- or at least prevent its fragmentation.

Another more urgent, but also more doable challenge is to revive Georgia’s economy. Despite respectable rates of growth in the last several years and low inflation and little foreign debt, the country’s gross national product is still only 40% of its 1989 level. About the same proportion of people live below the poverty line, and pervasive corruption and persistent doubts about Georgia’s ability to remain whole have made foreign investors leery.

But two pipelines -- one carrying oil from the Azerbaijani port of Baku to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, the other transporting natural gas between Baku and the Turkish city of Erzurum -- are under construction, and their transit revenues will be a significant and steady source of income, or so Georgia hopes. But political chaos could undo both economic ventures, and not only because of Abkhazia, Adzharia and South Ossetia.

The durability of the Saakashvili’s political alliance with Zurab Zhvania, the prime minister, and Nino Burjanadze, the parliamentary speaker, is uncertain. There are no strong personal or political bonds uniting the three. In the weeks before the elections, members of Zhvania and Burjanadze’s Democrats, which united with Saakashvili’s National Movement for the parliamentary vote, were unhappy that the president’s party insisted on getting most of the spots on the party list. While Saakashvili remains immensely popular, murmurs about an imperial presidency, his dislike of press criticism and the inexperience of his top lieutenants have surfaced.

The bigger question concerns the political opposition. Eleven parties, most of them tiny and chaotic, contested Sunday’s elections. To qualify for representation in parliament, a party had to win at least 7% of the overall votes. Some opposition parties complained that the high threshold would freeze them out; three, including the Citizen’s Union, the party of former President Eduard A. Shevardnadze, boycotted the vote; and since the elections, complaints have arisen about irregularities that put the opposition parties at a disadvantage. The problem is that parties left outside the political system may choose to disrupt it.

Then there is Russia, which is determined to keep Georgia within its orbit. Ever since its independence, Georgia has battled to break Russia’s grip, and Saakashvili will not stop that struggle. To diminish Russia’s leverage and create stability and prosperity, he will have to continue Shevardnadze’s policies of more trade with and investment from the West, as well as solidifying political and strategic ties with Europe and the U.S. The pipelines, Georgia’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Partnership for Peace and continuing American training for Georgian border-security forces are examples of such efforts.

Russia, which views the South Caucasus, the larger region of which Georgia is part, as its historic sphere of influence, has plenty of strings to pull. Thousands of Georgians work in Russia, and their remittances are vital for many Georgian families. Moscow can impose travel and employment restrictions on Georgians, and has done so in the past. Georgia owes Russia $157 million (for Georgia, a considerable sum) in unpaid debts, and Moscow has used debt rescheduling as both carrot and stick. Georgia’s economic problems and its dependence on Russian energy have enabled Moscow to link the resumption of gas supplies to an agreement on the debt. This is a matter of simple economics and shrewd accounting; it is also an object lesson to Georgia on the necessity of taking Russia seriously.

Moscow has military sources of influence as well. Russian troops remain stationed at Batumi and Akhalkalaki, the predominantly Armenian region in the south of Georgia and talks to negotiate a schedule for closing the bases have stalled. Russia insists that it needs until 2014 to complete the closures, and, despite reaping a windfall from surging oil prices, also says that it needs help paying for the relocation of its troops. The bases give Moscow leverage on important issues.

Georgia wants to join NATO. Russia wants it to declare neutrality or, preferably, to align with Moscow. The bases act as an impediment to Georgian membership in NATO. While the possibility of Georgia aligning with Russia seems remote, in Moscow’s eyes, Tbilisi’s political course remains uncertain and thus changeable. Its bases in Georgia also give Russia a bargaining chip to prevent the U.S. from relocating some of its forces from Western Europe to NATO’s new East European members.

Finally, the quasi-independence of Abkhazia, Adzharia and South Ossetia gives Russia a foothold in Georgia, which controls the road and rail links to Armenia, a key Russian ally and host to Russian military bases. Not surprisingly, Moscow insists that Tbilisi must agree not to forcibly annex these regions before a deal can be reached on the bases.

The parliamentary elections significantly increased Saakashvili’s political capital, but there are many ways in which his account could be drawn down -- and rapidly. Georgia’s seemingly intractable problems can easily transform heroes into villains. Just ask Shevardnadze.