21.09.2008 Echoes of the Balkans in the Georgia Crisis. By Tim Judah in Tbilisi
"The Tadic Option" (birn) Georgia’s problems may echo those of the Balkans in the 1990s but geography alone means comparisons between the Caucasus and South-east Europe can only be taken so far. Normally, when one talks of “diplomatic sources”, one is referring to the understood rule of thumb by which you do not identify a diplomat who is revealing something controversial or delicate. But I think the British ambassador to Tbilisi will not be cross with me for revealing that it was he who told me: “I have noticed more and more Balkan people turning up here. The ambassador did not mean large numbers of Serbs or Albanians, but rather diplomats, journalists, think-tankers, spies and who knows who else? This became obvious to me on the night of September 8-9 in the café of the Tbilisi Marriot, which serves as a hub for business and diplomacy, where I was having a drink with a diplomat who spends a lot of time in Serbia and now Georgia. “You know, Ivan Vojvoda was here,” he said, talking of the head of the Balkan Trust for Democracy who is from Belgrade. At that same moment up wandered Dan Bilefsky, who covers the Balkans for the New York Times. The diplomat suggested that the agreement hammered out that day by French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Moscow meant Georgia was taking “the Tadic option”. So, I mused, the Balkans are even seeping into the diplomatic lexicon here. What he meant was that just as Boris Tadic, the Serbian President, had pledged not to use force over Kosovo, he had also said Serbia would never renounce its claim to the territory. Meanwhile, he has made the economy and European integration the priority. Georgia then, is indeed taking “the Tadic option”. Substitute Tadic with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and Kosovo with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the Balkan comparison fits nicely. An hour or so later I was at the Georgian presidency for the press conference with Messrs Saakashvili and Sarkozy. But I found myself thinking that Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief who was also there, looked much better than when I had last seen him in Pristina. Then he had appeared rather old and evasive, standing next to Hashim Thaci, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, just after Kosovo declared independence in February. As for Bernard Kouchner, French Foreign Minister and former UN chief in Kosovo, who was also there, how does he do it? He looks almost the same age as he did in November 1991, when, under JNA shelling (and even then a French minister!) he raced into Dubrovnik. He came on a hydrofoil that had been shot at by the Yugoslav Navy and on his arm was dashingly escorting Margherita Bonniver, an Italian minister. But enough of personalities – enough, indeed, of arguments over “Greater Serbia” and the like. What is interesting, though many people have not yet understood it, is the way Georgia is becoming part of the Greater Balkans, even though for some annoying reason of geography, it is in the wrong place. In the Western Balkans every country has now received European Union Stability and Association Agreements, which are basically instruction booklets containing about 100,000 rules and regulations that need to be mastered before you can join the club. No such luck for Georgia, though. It is connected to Brussels only through the European Neighbourhood Policy, which means exactly what it says, i.e. that Georgia is somewhere…in the neighbourhood. But, Georgians are optimists. I went to see Tamar Beruchashvili, who is Deputy State Minister for European integration. She said that the silver lining in the grey cloud of just having been stomped on by Russia is that people in [the rest of] Europe were finally understanding that Georgia is not just “in the neighbourhood” but actually part of Europe. I went to see Beruchashvili because I was writing a pen portrait of her for the European Stability Initiative think-tank. They began in a café in Sarajevo in June 1999 and now, in the general eastward migration of “Balkan people”, are beginning serious work in the Caucasus. Beruchashvili’s portrait, once posted on the ESI site, will stand alongside a similar study of Milica Delevic, who performs the same job in Serbia, and Osman Topcagic, who until recently did similar work in Sarajevo. Interestingly, although Beruchashvili has no direct Balkan links, it is obvious that many of Georgia’s current trials and tribulations of Georgia mean the Balkan experiences of people like Delevic and Topcagic could be very valuable to her. So far, EU “twinning” has meant, for example, sending Dutch customs officers to share their expertise in the Balkans. But perhaps a strategy needs developing by which EU-sponsored twinning projects send experts from the Balkans to Georgia. In the meantime, a few words are needed on the much-talked-about theory that Kosovo “is responsible for South Ossetia”. There are obviously some comparisons. South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Kosovo were all “sub-republican” units of republics that in turn made up bigger federations. However, the idea that Kosovo was the spark that lit the fire in Georgia is absurd. As Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Prime Minister, said on Thursday, in a clear articulation of the “Putin doctrine”, Georgia just needed a good punch “in the face”. His words make one realise that in some areas the Balkans are now well “ahead” of the former Soviet Union, in the sense that few Balkans leaders now use this kind of language. Indeed, with the recent apparent demise of the Serbian Radical Party, we may be able to bury the era in which political dialogue was defined by the likes of the Radical leader, Vojislav Seselj, who once infamously talked of gouging out Croat eyes with rusty spoons. But some comparisons are not welcome, however appropriate. My impression is that Georgians don’t like to accept that their country shares many problems and issues with the countries of the Balkans. Serbia is now hoping to have its motion on Kosovo’s independence tabled at the UN General Assembly, which will ask the International Court of Justice in The Hague to give an advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence. So, I put it to David Bakradze, the speaker of Georgia’s parliament, who is close to Saakashvili, that Georgia would have an interest in associating his country with this motion, or launching a parallel one on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I know certain diplomats have suggested the same thing. But the Georgian speaker thought it a bad idea. The Kosovars had come to independence, he said, though a process in which they were the victims of ethnic cleansing. In Georgia’s case, he continued, they are the ones who have been ethnically cleansed. In 1990, only 17.8 per cent of the population of Abkhazia was Abkhaz. One could answer that with the words, “Yes but the Abkhaz had been ‘cleansed’ previously by the Georgians” – and Serbs argue that since 1999 and before the era of Slobodan Milosevic, it was they who were ethnically cleansed by Albanians in Kosovo. But what would be the result? A lot of hot air. Georgia’s problem is simple. It is just in the wrong place. Had it been the seventh Yugoslav republic, it might have lost South Ossetia or Abkahzia, or even seized them back, as Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman did with the Krajina. But it would now be heading to Brussels, and not torn between Washington and Moscow, seeking salvation in the “Tadic option”. Tim Judah is a leading Balkan commentator and the author of ‘Kosovo: War and Revenge’, ‘The Serbs, History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia’ and ‘Kosovo, What Everyone Needs to Know’. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication. http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=438
