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Maybe,
when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was infeasible for the West to hold
Nuremberg trials for all the Communist Party nomenklatura members
who had hounded, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed dissidents
and political prisoners for so many decades. Maybe it was impractical
to even try to take such people to task in any way at all. Maybe it
was inevitable that the West would acquiesce in the return to power
of the more prominent of these communist henchmen in the new states
of the ex-USSR. But surely, if we had any sense of responsibility to
these imprisoned nations, we could have refrained from rewarding their
former bosses, and applauding them as great liberators and reformers.
THE WEST SALUTES
THE OLD GUARD
For
the people of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, fact has been stranger
than fiction in the post-Soviet era. On September 23, 1999, the National
Democratic Institute (NDI), which monitors democratic development around
the world on behalf of the Democratic Party, awarded its prestigious
Averell T. Harriman Medal of Freedom to one of the most brutal rulers
of any Soviet republic in the seventy-odd years of the USSR's existence:
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. In a double ceremony in which
First Lady Hillary Clinton also received the award, the Georgian leader
was lauded for "building democracy" in Georgia in the aftermath
of the Soviet break-up. No doubt the average American watching such
a spectacle had little reason to doubt the justness of these proceedings,
since the only Georgia most Americans could locate on a map has a capital
called Atlanta. But for the average Georgian, the event represented
another milestone of Western infamy toward their beleaguered country.
On November
8, 1999, the Pope appeared in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, next
to Shevardnadze, hailing the ex-Politburo member as a champion of liberty.
Even if it were possible for the 71-year-old Shevardnadze to personally
entertain the principles of charity and mercy which characterize Christianity,
or to believe in God at all, there is no indication of this from the
way he runs his country's political system. There are currently over
100 political prisoners in Georgia, "political" because their
only crime was having been partisans of an elected president who was
overthrown in 1992. Economically, Georgia today is by any standards
a depressed and dirty hole in the wall. Its industry now functions at
10-15% capacity, its roughly 2 million pensioners receive the equivalent
of $6 per month, and hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally
displaced persons (IDPs) are homeless or inhabit derelict buildings
in the country's cities. Meanwhile, Mr. Shevardnadze and his ruling
political clique ride around in Mercedes limousines and enjoy fat bank
accounts. After his recent world tour, during which Shevardnadze was
toasted in Western capitals for having "brought down the Berlin
Wall," he returned to Georgia to see the victory of his ruling
Citizens' Union party in elections marked by violence, arrests, and
intimidation of opposition figures, and by the usual irregularities
at the ballot box.
A
SECRET POLICEMAN'S PAST
Shevardnadze's
past gives no indication that he ever dreamed of democracy or the rule
of law during his formative years. For roughly thirteen years, from
1972-85, Shevardnadze ruled Georgia on behalf of the Soviet regime as
First Secretary of the Georgian SSR. Before that, from 1965-72, he headed
Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, which ran the republic's police
and prisons. During these twenty years, Shevardnadze gained the nickname
"Bloody Eduard," for his treatment of dissenters and supporters
of Georgian national independence, and credible evidence exists that
he personally participated in torture. He enthusiastically "Russified"
Georgia, and thoroughly condemned the brief period of Georgian national
independence (1918-21). Shevardnadze also accepted the exclusion of
the Georgian language as an official language of Georgia until widespread
protest forced the Soviet regime to reaccept Georgian on a par with
Russian within the republic.
In 1985,
Shevardnadze threw his lot in with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose star was
in the ascendant. The gamble paid off, and Gorbachev rewarded Shevardnadze
with the post of Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs. The choice seemed
strange, given that Shevardnadze had no foreign policy experience and
spoke no foreign languages but Russian (which he spoke with difficulty).
But his affable manner and white-haired, grandfatherly appearance, combined
with the fact that his face was new in the West, evidently convinced
Gorbachev that Shevardnadze was a good pick. Georgians were pleased
to see Shevardnadze depart for Moscow, and lived under conditions of
relative leniency with regard to cultural and national expression for
the next six years.
In the
late 1980s', Georgia was in the forefront of national independence movements
in the USSR. Famous Georgian dissidents who had been imprisoned repeatedly
under Shevardnadze's tenure and alleged torture of political prisoners
by Shevardnadze's regime, became active and staged large demonstrations
in the republic. But despite Shevardnadze's duties abroad as foreign
minister, he always kept at least one eye trained on events unfolding
in Georgia. On April 9, 1989, Soviet special forces troops (Spetsnaz)
attacked peaceful demonstrators in the capital, Tbilisi, with poison
gas and shovels, killing over twenty people, many of whom were elderly
women. Most Georgians believed Shevardnadze instigated the killings,
and his mysterious appearance in Tbilisi the day before the atrocity
seemed to confirm their suspicions.
THE RISE AND
FALL OF GEORGIAN DEMOCRACY
As
cracks widened in the fabric of the Soviet state, the Georgian national
movement culminated in the free election of a Georgian parliament in
1990 and a president in 1991. The first free election of a Georgian
president in May 1991 saw the accession to power of a famous dissident
nationalist writer and staunch admirer of Ronald Reagan, Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
Gamsakhurdia only had seven months in office before being overthrown,
but during that time his parliament passed certain important laws, including
the decree that the seventy years of Soviet rule over Georgia were legally
a period of "occupation," and that all laws and leaders of
Georgia for that time were "illegitimate." Back in Moscow,
meanwhile, Shevardnadze realized that he would soon be out of a job
if he did not act. When the USSR was being dismantled, Shevardnadze
was faced with retiring from public life or returning to Georgia to
seize power with the aid of Russian-backed forces. He chose the latter.
When US
Secretary of State James Baker came to Moscow in 1992, shortly after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gamsakhurdia had already been overthrown
by a junta acting on behalf of Shevardnadze. After a closed-door meeting
with Shevardnadze, Baker emerged in support of Shevardnadze's returning
to Georgia to assume the presidency. Shevardnadze returned from Moscow
to Georgia, where armed gangs were terrorizing the countryside under
the orders of a Shevardnadze ally and one of the putsch leaders, Jaba
Ioseliani.
There
followed a period of civil war in Georgia which lasted for the better
part of two years and resulted in the de facto dismemberment of the
country. The very Russian forces Shevardnadze had invited into the country
to get rid of Gamsakhurdia's loyalists succeeded in separating two regions
from Georgian control, Abkhazia to the northwest and South Ossetia in
the north central area. Over 300,000 refugees and IDPs resulted from
these wars in a country with a population smaller than Philadelphia's.
Ioseliani, a convicted mafia godfather, was made a deputy premier and
his army of thugs called the "Mkhedrioni" (Horsemen) rampaged
throughout villages and towns, pillaging and raping the inhabitants.
Shevardnadze thus consolidated his rule over what remained of Georgian
territory by means of terror, a tried and trusted Soviet method.
Gamsakhurdia
was hunted down and murdered in a small town in western Georgia in late
1993, reputedly by Russian troops with the aid of Shevardnadze's allies.
Shevardnadze then signed agreements with Russia concerning the permanent
stationing of Russian troops in Georgia, which Gamsakhurdia had categorically
refused. He staged elections in which the organs of his newly-implanted
regime held all the cards. Although Gamsakhurdia was able to rally hundreds
of thousands of demonstrators in central Tbilisi during his tenure as
president, the elections of 1992 and 1995 brought not a single ally
of the former president into the new legislature. This fact combined
with highly visible violations made it strange that Western governments
and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) so readily endorsed these
elections as democratic.
THE WEST AS
ACCOMPLICE
Western
governments evidently greeted the results of the most recent parliamentary
elections in the Republic of Georgia on October 31, 1999, with similar
applause and sighs of relief. Shevardnadze's Citizens' Union party again
won an absolute majority of seats, leaving the main opposition party,
the Democratic Revival Union (Revival), unable to make laws or significantly
affect Georgian national policy. Yet any impartial observer could only
conclude that, far from spelling relief for democracy and stability
in the region, the results reflected an attempt by the Georgian authorities
to suppress the immensely discontented electorate, and to hold the lid
down on an increasingly restless, political Pandora's Box.
The elections
were a travesty of democracy at very least. Reports of attacks and other
electoral violations against representatives of Revival were myriad,
and the ruling Citizens' Union claimed about 80% of television air time
reserved for campaign ads. Revival candidates were in many instances
physically assaulted or denied access to voters, sometimes by tanks
and troops. The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Georgia, whose
top officials are presidential appointees, disqualified literally hundreds
of opposition candidates from running, and, in an unprecedented move,
denied accreditation to hundreds of election observers. In the midst
of all this, could Western governments and NGOs honestly have believed
that the CEC and the Georgian government reported the final count fairly
and accurately?
On October
28, Shevardnadze received two US Army Hughes helicopters in time for
the election. On election day, and the few days preceding it, Georgian
pilots were flying the new choppers over Tbilisi at low altitude and
making a deafening noise. Shevardnadze also issued the ridiculous warning
that an electoral victory by Revival would be a "coup d'etat."
In a country where the police force is four times larger than the military,
Shevardnadze evidently intended for Georgian voters to go to the polls
in a climate of fear. Apparently, a further twenty American attack helicopters
are expected to arrive in Georgia in coming weeks to beef up potential.
In a democracy,
when living standards and general economic conditions plunge radically
and do not improve within a reasonable time, the government (which in
a parliamentary system sits within the legislature) is usually flung
out come polling day. Yet somehow, the United States and its European
allies expect this not to be the case in a country like Georgia, where
the people are highly literate and aware who their leaders are. The
squalid poverty of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and the destitute
conditions in Georgia's countryside and smaller towns are, supposedly,
conditions which the Georgian people tolerate ad infinitum in the interests
of some wonderful life which Shevardnadze and the Citizens' Union are
arranging for them in the near future. Such a premise is incredible
to anyone objectively viewing the current situation in Georgia. The
desperate population is actually shrinking, as Georgians leave their
country in droves in search of a more dignified life abroad, and within
the country there is little or no faith that President Shevardnadze
and his government have either the ability or inclination to turn things
around.
So how
does the West put a good face on events in Georgia? It isn't too difficult
when one considers that the big international NGOs, such as the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Council of Europe,
can make more or less unchecked public pronouncements about the level
of democracy in ex-Soviet republics. After all, the only voices to oppose
them are small organizations with little influence, or domestic human
rights groups whose members conduct their activities under constant
fear of harassment or arrest. Clearly, groups such as the OSCE and Council
of Europe have agendas in the former Soviet bloc which have little or
nothing to do with the development of democracy or sovereignty. Funded
and organized by the governments of Western member states, these organizations
have repeatedly put their seal of approval on elections which any dispassionate
observer with two eyes in his head would conclude were a sham. The agenda,
therefore, is not democracy, but rather "stability" as Western
governments conceive of it.
STABILITY VS.
DEMOCRACY
Many
might argue that a policy of promoting "stability" at the
expense of democracy is the wisest, most cautious one for the West to
pursue. The problem is, the policy hasn't worked very well in the Caucasus,
and has served to make the natives either cynical or contemptuous of
the United States. As a result of Chechnya being once again bombed into
oblivion by the Russians, the leadership of Azerbaijan appears to be
turning away from its pro-Western stance in fear of spillover from the
new Chechen war. Armenia's government was decimated on October 27, when
a group of gunmen claiming only to want "the people to live well"
entered the parliament building and shot dead the prime minister, the
speaker of parliament, and six other ministers from the ruling "Unity"
party.
The massacre
in Armenia was especially illuminating as to the effectiveness of the
West's "stability" policy. In the Armenian parliamentary elections
in May 1999, "Unity" won an absolute majority of seats in
the legislature, and the result was immediately proclaimed by both the
OSCE and Council of Europe as representative of the move toward genuine
democracy in the country. Yet the popular base of support for this party
was, to say the least, obscure. When factoring into the Armenian equation
the West's plans to build oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea to the
Mediterranean, and the fact that the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan
over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh is a fly in the ointment for such
plans, one can easily see how the West might have plotted to leave democracy
out in the cold in the last Armenian elections.
The West
considered the leaders of "Unity" more likely to compromise
in the OSCE negotiations with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Furthermore,
the victorious party had enough seats to impeach the nationalist Armenian
president, who had thus far proven unwilling to consider compromise.
So the stage was set for legislative victory for Western pipeline plans
until, that is, the gunmen entered the parliament and massacred the
leaders of "Unity" on October 27 (it may have been more than
coincidence that earlier that day, two senior US foreign policy aides
had met with the slain leaders, no doubt to talk about Nagorno-Karabakh).
The act of terrorism was condemned in Western capitals. But what was
unsaid was that this desperate act by fanatical malcontents may have
been, and likely was, a product of Western support and legitimation
of electoral victory by a party enjoying little active support in Armenia.
That such leaders (one was former First Secretary of Soviet Armenia)
could have been elected by such a vast majority, and yet have received
no discernible public display of sympathy after their murder, only lends
credence to the view that their popularity was a chimera. So much for
"stability."
Georgia
hardly looks more stable than Armenia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are
now de facto partitioned from the rest of Georgia, and Shevardnadze
is now accusing another region, the Autonomous Republic of Adjaria,
of "separatism." There is no basis for the accusations, except
that the head of the regional government of Adjaria, Aslan Abashidze,
is also the chairman of Revival, the first party to mount a real opposition
to Shevardnadze's Citizens' Union since the overthrow of Gamsakhurdia.
Abashidze does enjoy rather a "separate" reputation in Georgia,
in that he is famous for having refused entry of the Mkhedrioni to Adjaria
in 1992, thus sparing at least one region of Georgia from certain plunder.
He has accused Shevardnadze of repeatedly trying to orchestrate his
assassination, and believes the central government plans to launch a
civil war against Adjaria in the near future.
It remains
to be seen how long the Western policy of "stability over democracy"
will be pursued in Georgia, but one thing is fairly certain: it is failing
fast. Georgia is a dismembered state, and Shevardnadze has arrested
several people in the last few years on allegations that they were involved
in attempting his assassination. Shevardnadze may be planning another
war against the relatively prosperous region of Adjaria to remove Abashidze
in the near future (perhaps with the aid of his new US helicopters).
This could result in further partition if the Georgian government forces
fail, as occurred in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Only the most cynical
or negligent observer could characterize this state of affairs as reflective
of "stability."
But even
more troubling for the United States should be the fact that in our
unconditional support of a deeply unpopular leader, the United States
has created a high level of anti-Americanism in a nation which, during
the Cold War, was fiercely pro-American and looked up to us as the only
power which could help them realize their national aspirations. Most
residents of Tbilisi now refer disgracefully to the wall which Washington
constructed in front of the US Embassy as the "Berlin Wall."
Georgians no longer take the OSCE and Council of Europe seriously as
promoters of either democracy or human rights in Georgia, and many in
fact suspect them of being staffed largely by intelligence officers.
The same goes for NDI, which in its 1999 pre-election report for Georgia
referred to Shevardnadze as "respected leader" (presumably
they meant "respected by NDI"). Sadly, Georgians now wonder
pathetically whether the course of their country's history might have
been different had Ronald Reagan still been president at the time of
the Soviet Union's collapse.
THE TICKING
TIME BOMB IN THE CAUCASUS
We
are wrong to throw enthusiastic support behind old Communist Party nomenklatura
figures such as Eduard Shevardnadze, both from an ideological and a
practical standpoint. Not only will these people never have the knowledge
or will to allow democracy in their countries, no matter how great the
myths we build around them, but they will never be able to guarantee
stability either. When Reagan spoke of fighting for freedom in the "Evil
Empire," most politically aware people in the constituent republics
of the USSR believed he meant it. But the weakness of Reagan's successors
ensured that bringing about the Soviet system's demise would only be
a job half done. The Clinton administration sponsors heads of state
in the Caucasus who are willing to kick their people in the face, so
that pesky domestic political movements and the development of sovereign
democracies do not get in the way of the flow of oil. In Georgia, Shevardnadze
is one such leader, but it is not clear he will be able to keep the
place under thumb forever on the West's behalf. It is more likely that
before long the whole region will blow up in our face.
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