| 摘要 | To visit Abkhazia and South Ossetia, armed separatist enclaves in Georgia, as I did two weeks ago, is to watch the ongoing destruction of international law and order by a brand-new modus operandi. Put simply, it is the de facto absorption of territories of a sovereign neighboring country into the Russian Federation — on multiple levels in the short term, to be followed in due course by “legal” formalization of the results. Western-oriented Georgia has been singled out as the first target of this experiment. Moreover, precedent setting in this case may lead to repeat performances elsewhere, if international organizations and the West remain silent.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are dirt-poor, heavily militarized and under the control of Russian security services (in a familiar symbiosis with organized-crime networks). The absorption of Abkhazia and South Ossetia gives Moscow two major military footholds to the south of the High Caucasus range. They can hold Georgia, a Euro-Atlantic strategic asset, in a vise.
Russian President Vladimir Putin openly encourages this policy. This week, for example, he held an effusive meeting in Moscow with Abkhazia’s hardline leader Raul Khajimba. Mr. Khajimba had told me in Sukhumi two weeks earlier that the ethnic cleansing of Georgians (45% of Abkhazia’s population, compared to 17% Abkhaz, prior to the 1992 Russian-led war on Georgia) was justified and irreversible and that he sees Abkhazia’s future only in close association with Russia.
Building on the separatism orchestrated in Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Moscow more than a decade ago, the policy of de facto absorption is currently advancing along at least eight parallel lines, coordinated by several Russian ministries and agencies: First, the manipulation of ethnic issues by freezing settlement negotiations, through Russia’s monopoly on “peacekeeping” troops, and by ethnic cleansing if need be, which is what Ossetian troops attempted in Georgian-inhabited parts of South Ossetia last month. Second, installing local political leaderships loyal to Moscow, usually affiliated in one way or another with the secret services. Third, isolating the territory from the international information space and media, while connecting it to Russia’s. Fourth, creating a corps of separatist troops, led by specially seconded Russian army officers. Fifth, introducing the ruble as the only “legal” tender.
While movement in those directions was well advanced before Mr. Putin came to power, it was not yet approaching the point of de facto annexation because other major elements were missing. Mr. Putin has introduced those elements, considerably accelerating the absorption process this year.
His most “creative” ingredient—sixth in our listing—is the conferral of Russian citizenship on residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, en masse and with almost no formalities (never mind that it short-circuits Russia’s own law on citizenship). The official excuse is that any citizen of the former Soviet Union is entitled to Russian citizenship irrespective of his place of residence, e.g., in any ex-Soviet republic. The political effect became suddenly and dramatically visible in August, when top Russian politicians—Andrey Kokoshin, Dmitry Rogozin, Vladimir Zhirinovsky—made demonstrative forays into South Ossetia and Abkhazia to show that they care about the “rights of Russia’s citizens.” By now, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government bodies routinely claim a right of intrusive protection of “Russia’s [newly-minted] citizens” in those territories.
Thus, the stage is being set for de facto annexation through what may be termed citizenship export; or citizenship dumping, as it is being done on the cheap. Moreover, a destructive precedent is being created in Georgia, potentially usable in other places with highly destabilizing effects.
Seventh—to continue our enumeration—Russian state and private economic entities are taking over Georgian state properties in Abkhazia and establishing railroad and shipping links with it, without bothering to ask permission from Georgia, which is the legal sovereign there. Remarkably, the Russian departure point of those shipping and railroad lines is Sochi, where Mr. Putin spends much time. This July and August, those unlawful activities picked up under the presidential gaze. Mr. Zhirinovsky sailed from the port of Sochi to Abkhazia on a Russian gunboat, which he turned over to the Abkhaz forces as a gift—complete with its Russian training crew.
Finally, eighth: Russian troops, along with Abkhaz and Ossetian troops, control those two sectors of the Georgia-Russian border on the Georgian side, while Russian political officials no longer refer to those sectors as the Russia-Georgia border. In other words, the internationally recognized, legally valid border is being erased in practice.
In South Ossetia, meanwhile, a Russian-led mobile-telephone operating company simply took over the airwaves and transmitters, without applying for license or paying taxes to Georgia, and while interfering with operations of Georgian telephone companies. Georgia describes this move as “piracy.” According to Georgian companies and authorities, the Russian intruder operates in a joint venture with a major Finnish company. Perhaps the European Union’s special representative for the South Caucasus, Finnish diplomat Heikki Talvitie, can look into the matter?
In the Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatist leaders’ remarks to me in their respective capitals of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali, two common themes seemed especially striking. First, both groups dismissed the option of independent statehood: Their stated goal is that of incorporation into the Russian Federation or, as a transitory solution, close association with it. They did not formulate their goals in terms of an ethnic-nationalist agenda, and displayed only a scant interest in classic-type national revival goals (language, education, statehood). Instead, they framed their argument in terms of loyalty to Russia as successor to the Soviet Union. None commented on the military-intelligence and organized-crime links that run from Russia to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and on which these leaders’ power and income are based. On the whole, these discussions suggested that “ethnic conflict” is a misnomer for the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The other striking feature of these discussions was the Abkhaz and South Ossetian leaders’ view that they need not factor the West into their political calculations. After more than a decade of Western passivity, these leaders appear smugly convinced that all significant issues will basically be decided in and by Moscow, with them and for them. Clearly, the West’s pallid role boosts these leaders’ self-confidence and intransigence.
International organizations and Georgia’s Western partners have yet to react to the destruction of international law and order in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They’d better act fast, lest the destabilizing precedent be repeated in other post-Soviet territories and beyond those.
Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, publishers of the Eurasia Daily Monitor. |
