In his Annual Threat Assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, recently warned of renewed conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia over the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Georgia claims but Russia has recognized as independent states. What Admiral Blair did not mention is that American support for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili – whose August 2008 attempt to seize South Ossetia by military force triggered a devastating reaction from Moscow – risks turning a Georgia-Russia quarrel into an unnecessary U.S.-Russia confrontation.
Americans therefore need to ask ourselves: what stake does the United States have in backing Saakashvili’s increasingly unpopular regime in any new adventure – especially if it derails progress the Obama Administration has made in “resetting” our relationship with Russia? The obvious answer is: none.
Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s struggles for independence from Georgia have persisted for centuries, before, during, and after their incorporation first into the Russian Empire and then the USSR. They ended up in Soviet Georgia only because communist dictator Joseph Stalin magnanimously handed them over to his native land. But with the collapse of communism the republics’ right to self-determination – guaranteed by the same laws that allowed Georgia itself to become independent – became an unavoidable question of de-Stalinization, notwithstanding Saakashvili’s nostalgic attachment to the legacy of his most infamous countryman.
After the so-called “Rose Revolution” brought Saakashvili to power in 2004, Georgia became a U.S. client state on a fast track to NATO membership. Adopting a policy of pathological hostility toward Russia approximating that of Fidel Castro towards the U.S., Saakashvili expanded Georgia’s military 30-fold (mostly courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, who, of course, has money to burn). With Washington’s backing, and to distract from a moribund economy, election fraud, and repression of political opponents, Saakashvili on the night of August 7, 2008, ordered an all-out assault on Tskhinval, South Ossetia’s capital. While the world was watching the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the tiny, peacefully sleeping city was bombarded by land and air with U.S.-supplied heavy weapons, killing hundreds of civilians and dozens of Russian peacekeepers there under international mandate. Saakashvili had bet on Russia’s unwillingness to confront an aggressor backed by the West. The gamble failed. Within five days Georgian forces were ejected from South Ossetia and from part of Abkhazia they had occupied. A distraught Saakashvili was caught on video gnawing on his necktie.
Shortly thereafter, Moscow recognized the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (Washington categorically has rejected the two republics’ independence claims while championing the invalid secession attempt of Serbia’s Kosovo province, for which there is far less legal or moral argument.) In principle, there can still be a peaceful scenario where relations among Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia are eventually improved allow some sort of confederation, permit refuges to return to their homes, etc. However, this hardly is likely while Saakashvili remains in the office. Despite his August 2008 humiliation, he refuses to renounce use of force and seems generally bent on further destabilizing the situation in the Caucasus, even as increasingly numbers of his political allies desert him.
The foregoing is more than ample basis for the U.S. to decide that Saakashvili is not the kind of client we want to have. But there is worse: Americans must be made aware of Saakashvili’s extending refuge to jihadists responsible for countless acts of terror in southern Russia and his regime’s extraordinary coordination efforts to permit them to step up attacks in the Caucasus region.
Specifically, according to reliable sources, in December 2009 a secret meeting took place in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with representatives of numerous jihad groups based in various Islamic and European countries for the purpose of coordinating their activities on Russia’s southern flank. The meeting was organized under the auspices of high officials of the Georgian government; while Saakashvili himself was not present, officials of his ministry of internal affairs (allegedly Mr. G. Lordkipanidze) and others acted as hosts and coordinators. Georgian Ambassador to Kuwait Mayering-Mikadze purportedly facilitated travel for participants from the Middle East. In addition to “military” operations (i.e., attacks in southern Russia) special attention was given to ideological warfare, for example, the launching of the Russian-language TV station “First Caucasian.”
Are we to believe that U.S. intelligence agencies were unaware of this meeting and other similar actions? The question then is unavoidable: has Washington decided to turn a blind eye – or even worse, to encourage our “ally” Saakashvili to play the “jihad card” against Russia? Could such a thing be possible at a time when the world’s media are filled with reports of jihad attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Israel, Philippines, and other countries – not least the United States (Fort Hood, Fort Dix)? The threat comes from the same ideology that motivated the 9/11 attacks against our country and which seeks to create through violence a worldwide Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law.
Every day American troops fight jihadists in Afghanistan, where prospects for cooperation between NATO and Russia are increasingly promising. But many in the West prefer to look the other way regarding attacks against Russia, or when an unstable politician masquerading as a Georgian reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson offers his country’s land as a terrorist base.
We should have learned this lesson a long time ago. During the 1980s, American support for Afghan mujahidin fighting the Soviets seemed to make sense – but it eventually gave us Islamic “scholars” known as Taliban and the al-Qaeda group headed by of one of our most adept protégés, Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission Report is replete with references to U.S.-supported jihadist activity in the Balkans in the 1990s, allowing al-Qaeda to emerge from its birthplace in the Hindu Kush and morph into a global force capable of striking the American homeland. Will we now, having learned nothing, repeat the same mistake in the Caucasus – at the cost of scuttling improved ties with the world’s second most powerful country, which faces one and the same enemy we do?
James George Jatras - formerly Foreign Policy Analyst, U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer
