Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008
From: Patrick Armstrong <gpa@magma.ca>
Subject: Re Some truths regarding Georgia
1. US military assistance to Georgia. LCol Hamilton is correct about the initial reason for the US Train and Equip program in Georgia to make it possible for Tbilisi to do something about the miniature jihadist centre in the Pankisi Valley. What he does not mention or perhaps even know is that Moscow had been complaining about this for years and its complaints had generally been dismissed as more Russian falsehoods to pressure Tbilisi. But, after 911, it transpired that the Russians had been telling the truth. This is from a Georgian account in 2003 of what had been going on: “According to the Ministry's information, there were around 700 Chechen and 100 Arab fighters in the gorge… Laliashvili stated that the Arab emissaries were very well organized. Along with the fighters, there also were Arab religious emissaries in the Pankisi gorge, who were responsible for functioning of the wahabist schools in Pankisi…. There also was an Internet center in Pankisi, with several notebook computers and a satellite communication system, used for propaganda and volunteer recruitment activities… Along with wahabist schools and the Internet center, the gorge also had several fighters' training centers as well.” (http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=3033). There’s a lesson here, that doesn’t seem to have been taken to heart, which is this: sometimes Moscow is telling the truth and Tbilisi is not.
However, I personally do not believe that Washington encouraged Saakashvili to attack last month. But I do believe that Saakashvili thought it had. To this extent, therefore, Washington bears some of the blame: blame for not noticing what was going on (see the nature of Georgia’s arms acquisitions below) and for having the arrogance as many a great power has had before to think that it fully controlled its client. But, in this case, the tail was using the dog for its own purposes.
2. LCol Hamilton does not believe that “The Georgians had long prepared to use force in Abkhazia and South Ossetia”. I suggest he take up his argument with Irakly Okruashvili, Georgian Defence Minister from December 2004 until November 2006. He was quoted last week as saying that “Abkhazia was our strategic priority, but we drew up military plans in 2005 for taking both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well”. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLD12378020080914?sp=true).
3. Casualties. The HRW report that LCol Hamilton quotes doesn’t seem to be on the HRW website any more. This source (http://www.osetinfo.ru/spisok) gives a list, by name, that is now up to 365 people. Many of them, it will be noted, were buried where they were killed and never appeared at the hospital. This list is being updated as more information comes in. The 365th entry is a 14-year old girl killed by a Georgian sniper as she was being evacuated. (See, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPTxzX1WYjY).
4. Nationalism in Georgia in the 1990s. I am always a little amused by someone who states, as LCol Hamilton does: “The origins of the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are complicated…” and then, at another point, actually goes back “as early as August 1st” to decide who started what is, in fact, the third Georgian invasion of South Ossetia in the last 100 years. I personally have been keeping a chronology of events in the South Ossetia-Georgia issue that begins in 1989 (which is simply the year I began it) and now has about 750 entries. This particular chapter of the problem started in the late 1980s when Tbilisi, in thrall to the “host and guests” theories of Georgian chauvinism, denied to the South Ossetian AO and the Abkhazian ASSR any retention of the autonomous status that they had had in the Georgian SSR. As a sample of the sort of thing that Abkhazians and Ossetians could read in the press at the time, consider this: “What devil ruled our minds, when we yielded up our land, gained inch by inch over the centuries, defended and soaked with our blood, to every homeless beggar that has come down from the fringes of the Caucasus, to tribes that have neither history nor culture?... We must persuade other nationalities, which are multiplying suspiciously in the land of David the Builder, that ideal conditions for the development of their personalities are to be found only in their homelands.” (Prof. Revaz Mishveladze, Georgian newspaper Young Communist, 29 July 1989). Were I an Abkhazian, Ossetian or any other “homeless beggar”, I think I might agree with Professor Hewitt that this is a “madness of nationalism”. However, both Ossetians and Abkhazians go farther back and speak of the wars that the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) fought in these (and other) areas. An outside observer said at that time: “The free and independent Social-Democratic government of Georgia will ever remain in my memory as a classical example of an imperialistic minor nationality both in relation to its seizure of territory within its own borders and in relation to the bureaucratic tyranny inside the state. Its chauvinism exceeds the highest limits.” (Carl Eric Bechhofer quoted in Denikin's Russia and the Caucasus, 1919-1920, London 1921). When the Ossetians speak of the “1920 genocide” it is that time that they are referring to.
5. Democracy. Democracy these days is very much in the eye of the beholder. And I confess that I see in Saakashvili’s Georgia something rather similar to what Professor Hewitt sees. I see dodgy elections (the reader is invited to read the OSCE report of the latest presidential elections and decide for himself whether the chicanery described would have given Saakashvili the three or four percentage points he needed to avoid a runoff election against a single opposition candidate http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2008/03/29982_en.pdf). I see suppression of dissent LCol Hamilton may see the security forces’ action last November as “a significant mistake”; I see it more as a significant revelation. (but let the reader decide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj1hGarg8lk). I see control of the news media here is an interview with the American executive of Imedi TV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYjAOtHm65k; again “a significant mistake”, or revelation? I see a Potyomkin economy: what percentage of Georgia’s income is gifts from foreign friends (http://undp-usa.org/projects/georgia/) or remittances (http://www.bendixenandassociates.com/studies/EBRD_Russia_Presentation.ppt)? I am also struck with the number of former allies of Saakashvili who are now in opposition, most of them saying that he is intent on centralising his own power: Okruashvili (former Defence Minister), Burjanadze (former Parliamentary Chair), Zurabishvili (former Foreign Minister), Khaindrava (former State Minister for Conflict Resolution), Davitashvili. This is a very incomplete list. Again, I see this as a significant revelation.
6. Budget. When I read Professor Hewitt’s claim that 70% of Georgia budget had gone on weaponry I thought that sounded a little high. So I did a little research. LCol Hamilton quotes the 2007 Georgian military budget of about 1.5 billion Lari (about one billion USD). According to the website he makes reference to, the Georgian 2008 budget allocated 28.7% to “Self-Defence and Security” with “Health Protection and Social Welfare” at 20.6% and “Other Expenditures” at 33%. Georgia certainly manages to get a lot of weaponry for this amount of money: according to the SIPRI Arms Trade Register (http://armstrade.sipri.org/arms_trade/trade_register.php), between 2004 and 2007, Georgia acquired the following weaponry from Ukraine: 12 2S3 152mm self-propelled guns, 40 BMP-2 IFVs, 23+ BTR-80 APCs, 6 Mi-24P/Mi-35P/Hind-F combat helicopters, 2 Mi-8/Mi-17/Hip-H Helicopters, 16 T-72 Tanks, 1 9K33 Osa/SA-8 Mobile SAM system, 48 9M33/SA-8 Gecko SAMs. It obtained from the Czech Republic, over the same time, 55 T-72 tanks, 24 Dana 152mm self-propelled guns, 6 RM-70 MRLs and 55 guns or large mortars. It has been reported that Israel refused Tbilisi’s request to sell it 300 Merkava tanks (http://en.rian.ru/world/20080904/116547799.html).
So even a cursory look at what Georgia managed to buy and was trying to, suggests either that Tbilisi has discovered a miraculous way to stretch its money or its published budgets are illusory. And this does not include outright gifts a significant amount of Georgia’s navy appears to have been given to it: (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/georgia/navy.htm). So, Georgia’s official budget cannot be said to be a very accurate indication of the weaponry it acquired.
Many people seemed to be able to see what Washington apparently could not: that a large-scale acquisition of Soviet-pattern tanks, other AFVs and heavy artillery is not the most appropriate weaponry for a COIN force seeking to join NATO. For one example, see http://circassianworld.blogspot.com/2008/08/some-thoughts-on-recent-fighting.html. Many people warned Washington, when it began the training program, that Tbilisi had other aims. And now we see that it did.
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