Window on Eurasia: Tbilisi Now Ready for “Everything Short of Recognition” of Abkhaz and South Osetian Independence, Markedonov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 9 – Statements by the leaders of the incoming Georgian Dream government since its parliamentary victory suggest that Tbilisi in the future will be ready to talk about “everything but [diplomatic] recognition” of Abkhazia and South Osetia, according to a leading Russian specialist on the Caucasus.

            In an essay on the Politcom.ru portal today, Sergey Markedonov, who is currently a visiting scholar at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, note that that commitment markes a major change from Georgia’s policies toward these two republics over the last four years (politcom.ru/14648.html).

 During that period, Tbilisi’s approach was “consistent and predictable,” the analyst continues. “these republics according to Georgian law were declared ‘occupied territories,’ and Georgian diplomats had begun to push their own alterntive,” declarations by other governments and organizations that Abkhazia and South Osetia were occupied.

            The US Senate, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, and the legislatures of Lithuania and Romania took that position, but despite that, Markedonov says, “Georgia was in now way able to move along the path of restoring its territorial integrity within the borders of the Georgian SSR.”

            Because there had been no movement on this issue, some members of the Georgian opposition to President Mikhail Saakashvili called for taking a more nuanced approach. Mamuka Areshidze, who is part of the Georgian Dream coalition, even said in June 2011 that “under certain circumstances, “the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia by Georgia was theoretically possible.”

            “In this regard,” Markedonov continues, the new government in Tbilisi said that one of its “first initiatives” was to formulate a conception regarding the conflict regions.” Significantly that conception bears the title: “Everything Except Recognition.” That makes movement possible in five areas.

            First, it suggests that Tbilisi for the first time since the August 2008 war is “ready for direct talks with those whom it until recently called ‘aggressive separatists’and ‘marionettes of the Kremlin.’” Second, there is an apparent willingness to negotiate on the non-use of military force regarding these conflicts.

            Third, such changes open the way for trade. Fourth, they allow for investigations of incidents along the border. And fifth, Markedonov says, they appear to set the stage for what he calls “the correction of [Georgian] legislation concerning ‘the occupied territories,’” a terminologicalshift that could further ease tensons.

            But as the Russian analyst acknowledges, the Georgian Dream leadership has designated “quite clear ‘redlines’ beyond which they do not intend to go. (Georgian Dream leader Bidzina Ivanishvili says he won’t recognize Abkhazia and South Osetia as independent states.  They are “part of Georgia” (grani.ru/Politics/World/Europe/Georgia/m.207206.html).)

            Moreover, he suggests, for talks to proceed, the new government in Georgia will have to “overcome” some “myths” about the conflict. On the one hand, it will need to stop “exaggerating and dramatizing” Moscow’s role in the conflicts. And on the other, it will have to realize that South Osetians are every bit as committed to independence Georgia as the Abkhaz.

            And the Georgian Dream government, Markedonov concludes, will have to recognize that any “status” talks will be long and difficult, and both its members and outside observers need to remember that “a confrontation with reality is capable of converting any ‘dove’ into a practicing ‘hawk.’”

            Tbilisi’s willingness to talk with Abkhazia and South Osetia has raised questions about Georgia’s relationships with the peoples of the North Caucasus and with Armenia, relationships that may prove equally significant not only for Georgia and the region but for the international system.

            With regard to the North Caucasus, Mamuka Areshidze told Kavkaz-uzel that “the Caucasas policy of the new authorities will be much more flexible and directed at traditional values and the inter-relationships which have existed between the North Caucasus and the South” (For a summary of these comments, see avrom-caucasus.livejournal.com/204464.html).

            That does not mean, Areshidze said, that Tbilisi will reduce its contacts with the North Caucasus; rather, the reverse, but the incoming Georgian government will seek to do things in a less propagandistic way and to ensure that any moves it does make are consistent with its broader goals.

            For example, he suggested, Georgia’s official recognition of the Circassian genocide had been “a mistake,” not because there had not been a Circassian genocide but rather because “not ony the Circassians but many other Caucasus peopes had been subjected to genocide by Russia – and if one is going to recognize it, then one should recognize these genocides as well.”

            A change in Tbilisi’s policies could have even bigger consequences for Armenia.  Writing in “Vestnik Kavkaza,”David Stepanyan says that if Tbilisi opens the railways and roads through Abkhazia to reopen, including to and from Armenia, it could change Armenia’s situation dramatically (www.vestikavkaza.ru/analytics/Gruzinskiy-pragmatizm-nuzhen-Erevanu.html).

            It would certainly reduce Yerevan’s economic isolation, but it would also likely lead, the Armenian analysis suggests, to a situation in which the Armenian authorities would end discussions of a rail line to Iran, a decision that by itself would have an impact on the region and more generally.

            

Window on Eurasia: Chinese Workers Coming to Tajikistan as Tajik Ones Go To Russia

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 9 – The agreement signed last week by the Russian and Tajikistan presidents that allows Russia to retain its base in that Central Asian country until 2042 and to have soldiers stationed there enjoy diplomatic immunity has attracted a great deal of reportage in Eurasia and the West.

            Not surprisingly, in Russia in particular, the agreement’s provisions easing immigration on Tajik gastarbeiters have attracted attention, especially those that give such immigrants the right to stay three years rather than one or less and to visit Russia for up to 15 days without registering (expert.ru/2012/10/8/soldatyi-v-obmen-na-gastarbajterov/?n=66992).

            But much less coverage has gone to a related phenomenon: As ethnic Tajiks leave their homeland to work in Russian cities, workers from China are arriving in Tajikistan to work under extremely favorable conditions and despite the high levels of unemployment that have driven Tajiks out.

In an article posted on the Centrasia.ru portal, Saydullo Gadoyev suggests that “residents of the Heavenly Kingdom are literally flooding Tajikistan,” where Chinese investors are building plants to supply not the Tajikistan market but rather the one in their own homeland instead (http://www.centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1348815360

Dushanbe, Gadoyev continues, has made numerous concessions to the Chinese in return for credits of “almost a billion US dollars.”  In addition, China has invested 250 million US dollars in the construction and refurbishing of Tajikistan’s underdeveloped road network and other facilities.

Just how many Han Chinese are now in Tajikistan is now known, Gadoyev says. The government has registered only 3917, but the local media routinely refers to some 80,000 guest workers from China and notes that for bribes of 500 to 1000 US dollars Chinese and other workers can obtain “a false passport of the Republic of Tajikistan.”

The presence of the Chinese is creating problems, the journalist says. On the one hand, they often appear to be taking jobs that unemployed Tajiks would like to have.  And on the other, they are often paid “15 to 20 times” more than Tajiks doing the same work, a situation which led to a strike last year at a Tajik-Chinese gold processing plant.

In order to maintain its ties with Beijing, Dushanbe has even shifted portions of its out population out of place in the Murgab district of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in order to make ways for Chinese firms and Chinese workers – and it has done so, Gadoyev says, without providing any financial support to the displaced Tajik workers.

These arrangements already have the potential to create social, political and even demographic problems, Gadoyev continues.  “The Chinese,” he says, “occupy not only working places of those Tajiks who have gone to Russia, they are gradually replacing the local men” in other ways as well, including marrying or at least cohabiting with Tajik women.

One Dushanbe expert, Feruz Saidov of the Center for Strategic Research, told Gadoyev, however, that “the flow of Chinese migrants” into Tajikistan should not become a matter concern unless purely Chinese enclaves appear. That can be prevented, Saidov said, by “settling the Chinese among the local residents.

Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s New Nationality Strategy Won’t Work, Commentators Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 9 – The nationality policy strategy paper prepared by the Presidential Council on Inter-Ethnic Relation and now to be debated suggests that the Kremlin believes it can solve the country’s ethnic problems by spending money and imposing legal sanctions, but Moscow observers say that the proposals the paper contains won’t do so.

            In an essay posted on the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal today, Aleksey Polubota describes the provisions of the strategy paper which is to govern Moscow’s approach through 2025 that have surfaced in the media so far and then asks four commentators for their reactions to the document (svpressa.ru/society/article/59427/).

            According to Polubota, the strategy paper includes calls for the legal prohibition of any “’ethnic aspect’” in elections or party programs and for criminal punishment against any official who “provokes inter-ethnic conflicts.”  Further, it calls for the creation of a country-wide media monitoring program so as to have early warning of any conflicts.

            The strategy estimated to cost one billion rubles (31 million US dollars) also calls for giving funds to those who conduct “propaganda for civic unity.”  In addition, it urges giving the local population a voice over how many immigrant workers businesses in their region can accept. And it says Moscow should promote culture exchange and ethnic awareness tourism.

            Aleksandr Shatilov, deputy director of the Center of Political Conjuncture, told  Polubota that he “fears” that this program on offer is “yet another imitation of an attempt to improve the situation” in Russia but that such “a bureaucratic scrap of paper cannot resolve the complex of problems that really threaten civic peace in Russia and the territorial integrity of the country.”
            According to Shatilov, “nationalists attitudes are arising recently not among the titular nations in the Russian republics. Now it is already possible to speak about an outburst of “Russian ethno-nationalism,” which now that it is less “super-national and imperial” than it waas is “provoking local nationalisms of some small peoples of Russia.”
            That development, the analyst argues, threatens “a war of all against all.”
            The strategy paper’s call for a ban on ethnic references won’t work in the age of the Internet, Shatilov continues. And unless the powers that be are prepared to impose serious criminal penalties, few Russian officials will change their behavior. But he saves his sharpest criticism for the paper’s proposals on migration and monitoring.
            On the one hand, he notes, the authors of the paper fail to recognize that “today, the problem of internal migration is much more serious in Russia than migration from abroad.”  And on the other, monitoring is a good idea but it is very “resource intensive” and requires more professional specialists than the country has.

            The second commentator with whom Polubatov spoke is Anatoly Stepanov, the chief editor of the “Russkaya narodnya liniya” portal, an Orthodox, Russian nationalist, and pro-Putin organization.  Nonetheless, he says that everything the regime has tried in the area of nationality policy has failed.
            “In the 1990s,” he notes, “the word ‘empire’ was almost a curse word. But Russia in essence even now remains an empire where numerous peoples live.” For that to work, relations among the nationalities must be very carefully arranged, and everyone must recognize that “our country cannot become a nation state of the ethnic Russian people.”
            At the same time, Stepanov insisted that this does “not mean that we must be guided by the much-ballyhooed principles of toleration and the equalization of the unequal.” There needs to be a hierarchy as there was in Soviet times with the Russians being “the elder brother” and everyone else “the junior ones.”
            Contemporary Russia’s “imperial policy” must rest on “the domination of the Russian people among all other Russian peoples” and on the recognition of “equality of peoples among themselves.”  If Moscow does not restrain the new Russian nationalism, it and not the non-Russians “could become the gravedigger of Russia.”
            “The problem of inter-ethnic relations,” Stepanov adds, “is rooted not so much in the contradictions between Russians and representatives of other peoples as in the bureaucracy,” but the corruption of the latter will be hard to eradicate because “the southern peoples are much more complacent about bribes” than Russians area.
            Azamat Mintsayev,, the president of the Union of Waynakh Youth (a Chechen organization), was more positive about the strategy in his comments to Polubatov than the others. But he noted that “if the police were to work as they should, people would not be trying to create international druzhinniki” units to maintain order – as they in fact are.
            And he argued that the authorities must do more than monitor the media: they must intervene to correct ethnic slander such as reports in history textbooks concerning the Chechen and Ingush deportations under Stalin in 1944. “Textbooks must bring peoples together. But often it happens that they [now] do just the reverse.”
            Finally, Valery Khomyakov, the director general of the Council for National Strategy, was dismissive of the new document, saying that he feared that “all this history with the Presidential Council for Nationality Affairs was just the latest empty waste of money” and would not help.
            “For the resolution of problems,” he suggested, “no conceptions or strategies are needed. There is the Criminal Code where it is written in black on white that it is criminal to take or give bribes … It is necessary to observe the law and to punish those who violate it, independent of their position or their nationality.”

Window on Eurasia: Corruption behind Fifty Percent of Inflation in Russia, Khasbulatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 8 – Fifty percent of the inflation in the Russian Federation today is the result of corruption, according the Ruslan Khasbulatov of the Plekhanov Academy, and unless Moscow reduces corruption, “high inflation will continue” as far into the future as anyone can foresee.

            In an interview published today on the Svobodnaya pressa portal, Khasbulatov, who was the last chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet and is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that if corruption forms 15 percent of the economy, then inflation will remain high and damaging to the economy (svpressa.ru/society/article/59459/).

            That is because, he continues, “at a minimum,” 15 percent of the budgets of all governments in the Russian Federation involve corruption, and these funds go into the shadow economy.  This “enormous mass of money, because it is not involved in trade (even if this money is exported) exerts enormous inflationary pressure.”

            And Khasbulatov said that “of the seven percent inflation projected by the Ministry of Economic Development for 2012, half – or 3.5 percent – is the result of corruption.”  If the level of corruption is higher than 15 percent, then the impact of this will be even greater.” Neither the Finance Ministry nor the Central Bank can deal with inflation if corruption is not overcome.”

            Khabulatov notes that he and his colleagues have been studying corruption for some time and have found that “corrupt relationships exist both at the federal and regional level,” involve various offices, medicine, education, and housing. Moreover, he says, corruption is not falling but has been at “a consistently high level for the last five to six years.”

            Corruption and the inflation it causes are cutting per capita incomes, he continues, but what is the most unfortunate aspect of this situation is that “under the existing system and current government policy, [Russians] will always have inflation”  unless and until President Vladimir Putin fulfills his promises to reduce corruption.

            Khasbulatov notes that “Putin has created a regime of personal power in which he alone can make serious decisions.  [But as a result] it happens that around him – both at the federal level and in the provinces are weak people who are not distinguished by their leadership qualities.”

            If Putin is going to address the problem, the academician says, he will have to do far more than he did in Pikalevo and at the Sayano-Shushen hydroelectric station: He will have to remove many governors and “all local bureaucrats.”  People say that “Putin is an awesome wllful leader. In fact, he is giving the impression of a weak and indecisive one.”

            But even if corruption is eliminated, Khasbulatov concludes, “this would not mean that you would immediately get growth.” Ending corruption is only one of the steps needed. But preventing officials from sending their corruptly gained money abroad is, the scholar says, the kind of first step that can make others possible.

            

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Said Sending Army Units Back into North Caucasus Hotspots

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 8 – Facing continued armed resistance across the North Caucasus and mounting losses among its Interior Ministry troops, Russia’s Anti-Terrorist Committee has decided to send regular army units back into hotspots of the region in the hope that they will be able to do a better job in pacifying the region.

            Citing Interfax reporting based on a source close to the Committee, “Vzglyad” reported today that “since the beginning of October, after a lengthy interval, units of the armed forces of Russia are again being called to conduct counter-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus” (vz.ru/news/2012/10/8/601518.html).

            Russian army units are now involved “in a number of regions of the North Caucasus where circumstances are the most tense. They are following their own plans but in close connection with units of the operational group of the Internal Forces of the MVD and other police units and the FSB,” according to the source. The army has already taken losses.

            “In the course of an operation to block and destroy a group of militants in the Daghestani city of Buinaksk at the end of last week and in Ingushetia four contract [that is, professional] soldiers were killed and several were wounded,” at least in part because the army has not yet adapted to “the specifics of counter-terrorist operations at the present time.”

            “Recently,” the source continued, “the group of Internal Troops of the MVD has been taking significant losses in the North Caucasus, and its reserves are running out.” Indeed, he added, “it is not excluded” that Moscow may soon decide to “strengthen groupings of the Internal Forces with Army units.”

            Units of the Russian army led Moscow’s efforts to pacify the North Caucasus between 1999 and 2006. But then Moscow withdrew them and handed over control of the pacification effort to the command of the officers of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

            The decision to send army back into the North Caucasus, assuming that the comments of this source are confirmed, is the clearest indication yet that Vladimir Putin’s claims of success in the region, so lauded during his 60^th birthday yesterday, are not as true as many in Russia and the West appear to believe.

Window on Eurasia: Tatarstan Parents Rejecting Religious Courses for Their Children

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 8 – Unlike their counterparts in many parts of the Russian Federation, not a single family in Tatarstan has signed up their children for “Foundations of Islamic Culture” or “Foundations of Orthodox Culture,” selecting instead courses surveying world religious cultures or secular ethics.

            Just over 61 percent of the parents there chose “Foundations of World Religious Cultures,” while the remainder chose “Foundations of Secular Ethics,” Rafik Mukhametshin, the rector of Kazan’s Russian Islamic University, told a Moscow conference last Thursday (blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=49266).

            The situation in Tatarstan is in contrast with the Russian Federation as a whole. Of all Russian parents, 47 percent chose “Foundations of Secular Ethics,” 28.7 percent “Foundations of Orthodox Culture,” 20.3 percent “Foundations of World Religious Culture,” and 5.6 percent “Foundations of Islamic Culture.”

            Mukhametshin explained the divergence by pointing to the influence of the current and past president of Tatarstan who have always stressed “the secular nature” of schools and “insistently recommended that parents chose for their children “Foundations of World Religions” and “Secular Ethics.

            But while the Islamic educator did not say so, this pattern also reflects the more secular traditions of Tatarstan, traditions that elsewhere in his remarks to the same Moscow Carnegie Center, Mukhametshin suggested are now under threat because of “the radicalization of Islam in Tatarstan” (blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=49265).

            According to the rector in remarks reported by Blagovest-Info.ru today, the reasons for that trend are both obvious and completely understandable, if one considers the nature of Islam in Tatarstan rather than treats Islam across the Russian Federation as if the Russian umma were a single consistent whole rather than the highly diverse community it is.

            Mukhametshin then pointed to another reason that radicalization has happened: the very arrangements the Russian state has created for supervising Muslims. “There cannot be a centralized structure in Islam,” he noted, “and in Russia there are approximately 80 Muslim spiritual directorates (MSDs), each with its own rules.”

            The MSD of Tatarstan, he continued, maintains that its basic theology is the Hanafi rite of Sunni Islam, but “at present, the leadership of the MSDs do not insist on the fulfillment of the theological demands [thus implied,] fearful that their followers, would in that event shift to other MSDs.”

            Among the least respectful of the Hanafi rite are those who have received their theological education in Saudi Arabia, Mukhametshin argued.  But “the pluralism” their appearance has produced has “not done the people of the republic any good.” Instead, it has lead to radicalization which the MSD feels powerless to oppose.

            That is especially true for the young who insist that they “live only according to the Koran and the sunna,” thereby ignoring “the centuries old traditions of Islam.”  Indeed, he suggested, one must “regretfully call this phenomenon the ‘religious mankurtization’” of the population.

            In order to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, the rector said, there needs to be “a precise confessional policy which ‘does not contradict the democratic essence of Islam.’ The absence of such a policy ‘out of a fear of intervening’ has played a negative role.”  That should involve religious training in the schools and restrictions on theological training abroad.

            Further, Mukhametshin insisted in response to questions, “the withering away of the borders [of the Sunni legal schools] opens the way to sectarianism.” And in another comment, he argued that “the Muslim community of Russia is not prepared for reformism and modernism” because it still has not acquired the rudiments of “traditional Islam.”

            He acknowledged that “to give a definition for ‘traditional Islam’ is not so simple in part because this phenomenon is not defined in any of the structures. However,” he added, it involves the serious and respectful study of the theological tradition, “in particular,” of the Tatars in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.