“You can probably guess what it was about,” I said.

Silence.

They looked at each other and threw out a few suggestions.

“No, not the deal between Georgia and Turkey to refurbish each other’s historic sites – Yes, I know the Patriarch is pissed about it — but no, not that. No, not the latest domestic political nonsense.”

I was quite surprised that it was the first time that Georgia had been back in international headlines and no one in the local media was talking about it.

Last Monday, a bomb was found attached to the private car of a driver for the Israeli embassy in Georgia. The same day, a bomb exploded on an Israeli embassy vehicle in New Dehli, India, wounding the wife of an Israeli defense official, among others.

The same day, Tehran accused Azerbaijan of aiding Israeli intelligence forces in assassinating an Iranian nuclear scientist who was also killed by a bomb magnetically attached to his car in early January. At the time, a top Iranian official told a local newspaper that “Iran’s reaction will extend beyond the borders and beyond the region. […] None of those who ordered these attacks should feel safe anywhere.”

Azerbaijan claimed this week it had rounded up another Iranian cell, planning to kill “foreigners” in the country and has long complained of a shadowy Iranian buildup in the country. In a 2010 cable released by WikiLeaks, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev complained to U.S. diplomats of “not only the financing of radical Islamic groups and Hezbollah terrorists,” but also said Iran was organizing violent protests in the country.

Baku seems to see the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan as Iran’s proxy in the country, and has arrested several party members and media figures sympathetic to the Islamists.

Georgia’s rapprochement with Iran over the last two years has always been a bit of a peculiar phenomenon, given that Georgia is also the most enthusiastic NATO aspirant company on the planet. While sending thousands of troops to American missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and publicly offering its territory as a location for the European Missile Shield, its officials have also ardently courted Iranian tourists and investors.

The reason this story has gotten very little play on Georgia’s pro-government channels and the government response has been muted is because it reveals a very inconvenient truth about the state of Georgia’s current foreign policy. Over the last decade, Georgia has urgently sought outside allies to support and protect it from its arch-enemy, Russia. Now, Georgia realizes that many of its new friends, in fact, hate each other and it may have just attracted more heat for itself by embracing the interests of both sides.

It was only a matter of time before this paradox would come to a head. Over the past two years, Georgian foreign ministry officials have been splitting time between Washington and Tehran, courting increased American military presence in Georgian territory and pledging to Iranian leaders that Georgia would never do anything to undermine Iran’s security. These two positions obviously run directly counter to one another.

Lincoln Mitchell, a TFT contributor and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs told me in an interview for the Asia Times that Georgia should have seen this coming.

“I may sound like a crazy American, but if you let Iranians come in without visas, this kind of thing is going to happen. Iran has made its views on Israel quite clear, and the notion that some Iranians might come in and do bad things to friends of America and friends of Georgia is not crazy,” he said.

Although there has been near total government silence on the car bomb in Tbilisi, a statement released by the president’s administration ominously called the attack “a serious challenge” to the state. So far, Georgian officials appear to be mulling their options and waiting until the investigation into the foiled bombing runs its course, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already declared that Iran was behind the attacks.

On the other hand, Mitchell said that if Saakashvili plays the situation right, he may be able to dodge American criticism for “pulling a Putin” by returning for a de facto third term on the throne as the country’s prime minister.

“If the Georgian government is smart, then [the current tensions with Iran are] an opportunity to double down on their support for the United States, and if they play it any other way then they are making a huge mistake. Going into a tough two years for himself politically, Saakashvili can cement his indispensability, which is wrong. He’s not indispensable. But it would be very easy for him to say, if there is a war going on, that ‘I have to stay on and be prime minister’,” Mitchell said.

For Armenia, the longer the tensions drag on, the worse it will be for their economy and security. About one-third of Armenia’s trade passes through Iranian territory. Armenia’s only alternatives are land routes passing through Georgia to Russia and the Black Sea, however, heavy snows and avalanche threats regularly close the Armenia-Georgia and Georgia-Russia border crossings.

Iran has also been a key investor in Armenian business and infrastructure, feeding the country natural gas through a recently completed pipeline and an oil pipeline is in the works. Yerevan views these links as key to preventing a near total dependence on Russia for commerce.

In its 2011 report, “Without Illusions”, the Yerevan-based Civilitas Foundation said that both the Karabakh war and the supply disruptions caused by the 2008 Russia-Georgia war proved that Armenia’s “only reliable access to the world was through Iran.”

Armenia sent its deputy foreign minister to Iran last week, “reinforcing” its relationship with Tehran “for the sake of maintaining peace and stability”, according to Armenian state media. Meanwhile both Georgia and Azerbaijan have held high-level meetings with Israeli, American and NATO leadership.

The Georgian media may not be talking about it, but a little hammer has begun tapping at the fragile region, and it remains very unpredictable where the first crack will appear.

The post Quiet Before the Storm as Iran Threatens the Caucasus appeared first on The Faster Times.

The form is standard and designed to eliminate most of the work customs and passport control would normally have to do. You write down for them your flight info, the countries you visited before this particular U.S. arrival and other information readily accessible via air-travel manifestos and the stamp sections of your passport.

You then answer “no” to a series of questions about any fruits, animals or disease cultures you may be carrying with you. Even if you do have them in your baggage, those “no’s” ensure that customs will not check them. Bizarrely, U.S. customs continues to operate on a self-reporting system, meaning the only thing that will hold you up or get you into trouble when arriving to a U.S. airport is honesty. (They will ask you to step aside so that they can investigate any exotic or banal declarations of papayas, salsa – or in my case a few years back, mirabelles – as if they were defusing a chemical weapon.)

The State Department operates under a similar principle, which brings me to the only section of the little blue form that irked me. Under “Number of friends or family traveling with you,” I begrudgingly marked “zero.”

That was not the plan.

In addition to the usual Christmas festivities, this particular trip back to the United States was supposed to be about my family getting to know my fiancée, who is a Georgian citizen. For some naïve and misguided reason, we didn’t think that would be much of a problem. Instead, we entered the strange world of U.S. State Department logic with a smile.

If you are a foreigner traveling to the United States with no intention of staying long-term (or even a month) then you are looking to apply for a non-immigrant visa. Looking at the menu of non-immigrant visas on offer for Georgian citizens, it was easy to narrow down which ones applied to my fiancée’s particular situation, and our particular trip – not going for work, study, etc. Just a visit and a bit of sight-seeing.

So, we applied for the typical DS-160 Tourist Visa like any other unsuspecting would-be visitor to the United States. Thus began a feverous document-gathering process – verification of a $140 application-fee payment, a mugshot befitting the U.S. embassy’s exclusive specifications, a long and detailed application and an appointment for a face-to-face interview with a consular officer. It should be noted that, by contrast, citizens of the U.S. and dozens of other countries can come to Georgia visa-free as a tourist for up to 360 days. To renew the tourist visa, all one must do is leave the country and re-enter during that 360-day period. I have been living in Georgia since June 2009 on a series of tourist stays, none of which have required any documentation.

We made it clear in the application that the purpose of the trip was to visit my family, and that my family was helping to pay for the trip. We were a bit unsure as to whether or not it was wise to officially state that we were engaged, but we (again, naively) assumed that the risk of being caught in a lie was far greater than the benefit of fibbing on a few points. Plus, although the fact that we were engaged might raise a few red flags, the purpose of the face-to-face interview, in theory, is for the applicant and the consular officer to iron out those details and for latter to make a judgment call on whether this person appeared to be the type to violate the terms of their visa.

In the end, the officer asked a few quick questions to my fiancée that were already on the application, and then stamped the denial form. Why? “You applied for the wrong visa. You are engaged to an American.”

Now, there is such a thing as the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which I took a look at, but quickly discounted as inappropriate for our particular circumstance. According to the State Dept. website:

“The K-1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the United States and marry his or her U.S. citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of status to a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).”

Now, I apologize for all of this mundane detail, but as in all bureaucratic nightmares, that is where the devil resides. For a variety of reasons, this K-1 visa made no sense for us because: 1.) We did not intend to go to the U.S. for 90 days or more 2.) We did not plan on getting married during the trip 3.) I do not live in the U.S. and therefore could not file the paperwork from there 4.) My fiancée and I live and work in Georgia and had no intention of immigrating.

But alas, the State Dept. operates under the assumption that anyone who is even thinking about coming to U.S. plans to stay indefinitely, and if they are in a serious relationship with an American, well, then there is absolutely no doubt about their aims. The State Dept. website’s section on visa denials betrays even greater hubris.

“Every alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he (sexism!) establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status…”

“Failure to do so will result in a refusal of a visa under INA 214(b). The most frequent basis for such a refusal concerns the requirement that the prospective visitor or student possess a residence abroad he/she has no intention of abandoning. Applicants prove the existence of such residence by demonstrating that they have ties abroad that would compel them to leave the U.S. at the end of the temporary stay. […]”

“Please Note: Under U.S. immigration law, American citizens may not have any role in the non-immigrant visa application process. Visa applicants must qualify for the visa according to their own circumstances, not on the basis of an American sponsor’s assurance.”

In short: everyone in the world who might, for any number of reasons, desire to come to the United States is an immigrant until proven otherwise. There is nothing any American citizen can say to vouch for any of these so-called tourists. We know evil-doers and gold diggers when we see them.

In addition to not trusting me, the State Dept. also apparently does not trust the governments of Germany, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and a host of other countries my fiancée has worked and studied in – never overstaying her visa in the process.

In a clear attempt to irritate me further, representatives of the embassy’s consular service contacted over the phone claimed there was no rule that fiancées of American citizens were ineligible for tourist visas – although that is exactly what the officer stamping the refusal said. Instead, the voice on the phone said that it would be “very, very difficult” for a Georgian fiancée of an American citizen to be granted a tourist visa, but she encouraged us to try again – starting with a new $140 application fee. According to their website, re-applicants stand no better chance of being accepted until their “circumstances change considerably.”

Translation: Until she dumps me, my fiancée is barred from entering the United States as anything other than an immigrant, but, by all means, continue wasting your time and money trying.

In addition to this being a great disappointment for my family and I, the whole episode disturbed me because it is indicative of a larger trend playing out in U.S. embassies across Eastern Europe, and likely the world. It reminded me of a semi-mandatory meeting my fellow American students and I attended at the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg at the beginning of our studies in Russia in 2007. Apparently, although our coordinator had been ducking their calls as much as possible, the consulate had insisted we go in for an orientation/scare session.

There at the consulate, a panel of awkward young Foreign Service guys – one of which admitted he had just arrived in the country – droned on about the dangers of living in Russia. Russians, in general, were not to be trusted. That much they assured us. Beyond that, we should be wary of public transit, bars, meals prepared by locals, and should probably keep to our own kind — a wonderful introduction to a cultural exchange.

In Georgia, the U.S. Embassy is a fortress, impregnable by U.S. citizen and foreigner alike without a very-difficult-to-arrange invitation by one of the bureaucrats of the Emerald City. The embassy employees, which number in the hundreds, live in walled-off villas on the outskirts of town and very few ever venture out to meet any locals or expats who intermingle with the natives. All receive hazard pay despite the fact that the crime rate in Washington is exponentially higher than that of Tbilisi.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a friend of mine who has long worked as an American journalist in Moscow and is herself betrothed to a Russian. Although her husband is a successful businessman, she said she had received all manner of condescension, inconvenience and outright insult on official and unofficial levels from embassy folks. Despite the fact that Eastern Europe made a stunning rebound out of the ashes of the Soviet collapse over the last 10 years with stabilized societies, strong economic growth and plummeting crime rates, most U.S. officials seem to continue to cling to the notion that it remains the chaotic hellscape that it was in the worst chapters of the 1990’s, all research and data to the contrary be damned.

Meanwhile, the preferred assumption is that anyone born in an Eastern bloc country, given the opportunity to set foot on American soil, would bolt off into the woods like a rabbit free from captivity. I would expect that sort of myopic vision from the America’s less worldly citizens, but it continues to stun me when it comes from State Dept. employees as their own numbers and research contradict that perception, and a simple stroll around town or conversation with a local would tell them otherwise.

Although U.S. Immigration Services do not publish statistics on applications for visas to the U.S. (for some reason), they do publish data on the people it does give permanent residency and non-immigrant visas to, from which I think it is fair to extrapolate relative demand. And, based on the data on visa recipients, the draw of moving to the United States from Eastern Europe is rapidly declining.

According to Homeland Security (DHS)’s “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2011,” over the last 20 years, roughly 6 percent of all people who have received permanent resident status in the United States were from Eastern Europe. While DHS provides incomplete breakdowns of small countries like Georgia, Russia, which represents a large portion of the post-Soviet population, serves as a reasonably good indicator for ex-Soviets seeking residency in the United States. And, with Russia, the trend is stark.

While 433,427 Russian citizens received permanent U.S. resident status from 1990-1999, only 167,152 did so between 2000 and 2009 – a 61.5 percent drop. Furthermore, the number of Russian residency recipients in 2010 was 55 percent lower than their yearly average from 2000-2009. That trend bears out across Eastern Europe, with the numbers of residency recipients from Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia dropping 39 percent and 64 percent respectively in 2010 as compared to their 2000-2009 averages. Therefore, unless Eastern Europeans are suddenly being arbitrarily denied residency in the United States, the numbers show that perhaps they just don’t really want to live in the ole’ U.S. of A.

Meanwhile, the numbers of Russians getting non-immigrant visas is soaring – to 229,725 in 2010 from 111,270 in 2003. What does all of this mean? Citizens of the ex-USSR are honestly more interested in visiting the U.S. than living there, although the State Dept. does their darnedest to make that difficult. Also, immigration into Russia has greatly outpaced emigration from it in every year since the fall of the Soviet Union. But, in the case of my fiancée, visiting the U.S. is still not an option because of unofficial visa regulations — a circumstance that fits nicely into consular officers’ arrogant assumptions about desperate Eastern Europeans and their singular mission to get a green card.

In the end, according to the World Bank, only 12,480 Georgians have permanently emigrated to the United States over the past several decades as compared with 634,372 who have resettled in Russia. Face it, Washington, they’re just not that into you.

Speaking with my Moscow journalist friend, we were only able to come up with one clear reason for the great discrepancy in the numbers and the perceptions of U.S. embassy people – after the Cold War, the U.S. can’t help but be a sore winner. Just like those consular officers in St. Petersburg describing a parallel Russian universe where foreigners have a strong chance of being kidnapped aboard public buses or awake after a one-night stand missing a kidney or two, it was clear they were reveling in a sort of collective victory.

These fantasies that are absurd for anyone who has really lived in Eastern Europe are part of a deeply engrained desire by U.S. officials to continue to look down upon these supposed failed states and the desperate masses that were impoverished due by their empire’s defeat, ostensibly at the hands of the U.S. It is all part of a continuing victory lap, a touchdown dance made all the more inane by its clear break from reality.

Unfortunately for me, that general annoyance with misplaced triumphalism has now turned into a serious inconvenience as I will reluctantly begin filing paperwork for the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which is clearly designed for mail-order brides. The fact that the paperwork has to be filed by me in the U.S. and I am officially referred to in the documents as my fiancée’s “sponsor” makes this offensively obvious. In fact, due to two laws passed by Congress in the wake of several mail-order marriages gone wrong over the past 20 years, as a K-1 applicant, I will also be issued state-ordered reading materials on domestic abuse and will undergo a background check before they let me carry out my “sponsorship.”

In reality, the fact is that it was I who voluntarily emigrated from the U.S. and choose to continue to live abroad with no plans to return the self-styled land of freedom on a permanent basis. While living in Georgia, I fell for a wonderful, bright, independent and successful woman. We live together and have been together for more than two years. Before planning this trip, we hadn’t even thought about, and certainly didn’t plan on, living in the U.S. or her getting citizenship. In the end, we’re pretty much your average young couple.

Unfortunately, we will have to indulge my government’s outdated fantasies and undergo months of migraine-inducing and mildly insulting bureaucracy (plus a $350 fee) for the opportunity for her to go through the rather routine step of visiting my hometown and meeting my family. At the same time, with U.S. population growth at its lowest point since America sent most of its virile male population off to war in the 1940’s, my country should only hope that my fiancée and I decide to settle down there. At the moment, they’re not making the strongest case.

Follow Nicholas Clayton at @ClaytonNicholas!

The post America’s Cold-War Hubris Is Messing Up My Life appeared first on The Faster Times.

The U.S. and NATO claim that the European “Missile Shield” is designed to be able to shoot down nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles emanating from Iran or North Korea. Russia claims it is a NATO attempt to undermine Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence. Turkey claims neither is true.

All are at least part-lying, and they know it. Here’s why.

First, NATO’s initial plan was to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. This was a curious location to defend NATO countries from the Middle East – not directly mid-range between Europe and Iran, but rather in northeastern Europe on the border with Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad and Russian client state, Belarus. Poland was primarily chosen because it was among the most enthusiastic and the eastern-most of NATO’s newest member states.

The Polish government insisted that hosting the Missile Shield was essential to its security, although you’ll be forgiven if you can’t recall what Middle Eastern countries have a major beef with the Poles or why Kim Jong-il was preoccupied with nuking Krakow. Instead, in selling the Missile Shield to its own citizens, Polish leaders nearly always mentioned Russia as the true threat. Speaking to residents of the towns of Słupsk and Redzików where the interceptors would be based in 2008, Polish President Donald Tusk said, “In the past, when Russia threatened to turn its missiles against us, nobody took it seriously. But now, after what happened in Georgia, these words have become much more serious.”

Needless to say, Russia was not amused. It didn’t help that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain held as part of his campaign stance on missile defense that the Shield was necessary to, “hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.” After Barack Obama was elected president in the U.S., the new administration moved the planned Missile Shield south, modifying it to initially rely on ship-based interceptors deployed to the Black Sea area and eventually include interceptors based in Romania and radar in Turkey. Meanwhile, they invited Russia to participate in the project.

Russia said it would participate in the Missile Shield on one of two conditions: 1.) It be made a full partner in the system, with joint control over its operation. 2.) NATO sign legal guarantees stating that the Missile Shield would never be used against Russia.

Thus far, NATO has refused Russia on both counts, implying at the very least that they want to be left to use the Missile Shield as they please, including against a potential Russian strike. In short, NATO’s sheepish assurances that it now views Russia as a partner in world peace and not a threat come off as disingenuous at best.

But Russia is full of it too.

The first stage of the Obama administration’s national missile defense (NMD) strategy involves deploying the sea-based Aegis weapons system in the Black Sea as well as integrating the missile defense networks of NATO states. None of this is particularly new. The Aegis system, which can guide and track dozens of missiles at once, is already deployed on about 100 American ships all of which can access and be deployed to the Black Sea due to the U.S.’s treaties with Turkey and Georgia. As for the land-based missile interceptors, well, Russia has little to fear there either.

So far, there are no indications that the deal approved by Bucharest in December to build a missile interceptor site in Romania will involve more than the 10 active interceptors that would have been located in Poland. The SM-3 missile interceptors that will be eventually be deployed have so far failed to ever intercept a ballistic missile that has counter-measures or evasive-maneuvering capabilities in tests. Not only do modern Russian ballistic missiles have both counter-measures and the capability of evading interceptors, but Russia has 2,200 active missiles in its arsenal, plus an undisclosed number of short-range tactical nukes. Each ballistic missile contains enough warheads to potentially strike several targets each.

Therefore, even if the European Missile Shield had an outside chance of intercepting a Russian missile strike – which it currently does not – heck, even if the interceptors went 10 for 10, there would still be enough nuclear warheads in the air to obliterate every city and military target in NATO.

Russia has responded to the breakdown in the Missile Shield talks by activating radar assets and deploying Iskander nuclear missiles to Kaliningrad, behind the Missile Shield. Militarily speaking, this move is totally irrelevant, but it has served to marginally antagonize Poland, on whose borders the short-range missiles are to be placed.

Meanwhile, as both Russia and NATO are talking tough towards each other about a defense system that has effectively no impact on their strategic balance of forces, proponents of the Missile Shield plan are now more trying to get it deployed more urgently as tensions rise with Iran. This month, the EU is even discussing the previously anathema step of embargoing Iranian oil, which would cause fuel prices to spike in Western economies already mired in recession.

Sensing a sudden lack of absurdity in the situation, NATO member Turkey jumped in to add some silliness to the debate. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Tehran earlier this month that the Missile Shield was not a threat to Iran, and the radar NATO was paying Turkey to deploy on its territory was for some other undefined purpose.

So, to recap, Russia has objected to NATO’s intention to build a missile interceptor system that doesn’t currently work and would pose no threat to it. NATO claims it is not aimed at defending against Russia in the first place, except that’s not what NATO member Poland says, and NATO’s refusal to sign anything on the subject seems to indicate Warsaw is right. Instead, the Missile Shield is meant to defend Europe from Iran, except that’s not what NATO member Turkey says.

While Russia and Turkey here are clearly just being cheeky for their own purposes – Russia wants to keep NATO bases from getting any closer to its territory and Turkey wants to at least to pretend to have good neighborly relations with Tehran – it is NATO that I don’t fully understand in this whole farcical charade.

NATO has claimed again and again that the Missile Shield could not and would not be used against Russia, but refuses to sign any guarantees to that end. Why not? You know it doesn’t stand a chance against Russia’s nuclear arsenal anyway, and it would at least assuage some of the Kremlin’s trademark paranoia. Plus, given that NATO is intent on shutting Russia out of the decision-making portion of the system even if a compromise is reached, what is the danger of at least signing a piece of paper that says, “We won’t shoot down your missiles with this thing”?

Does NATO really think that the world would bring them to The Hague for breach of contract if Russia did really start firing nuclear missiles at its members and the alliance used the interceptors to shoot them down?

Obviously, this prolonged and absurd debate really isn’t about military capabilities, it’s about trust and the rhetoric regarding the Missile Shield has been a bellwether in Russian-American relations since the 1980’s when Reagan first unveiled his idea for the “Star Wars” program. When Bush tried to push the plan forward, Moscow drew battle lines. When Obama extended an olive branch, Russia said it wanted to get involved and was even optimistic about what a potential compromise could bring to world security.

Speaking to Russian newspaper Izvestiya in January 2011, then -Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin said collaborating on such a program could usher in a new era in NATO-Russian relations.

“We want to marry Russia’s and NATO’s interests in Europe,” he said. “In other words, to create such a situation when an armed conflict between East and West on our continent would be impossible.”

One year later, we’re back to nonsense-land.

The frustrating part is that I think the usually americanophobic Rogozin was correct in his buoyant remarks last year. If the Kremlin and Pentagon could set aside their egos and sabers for a second and realize that the world would be much safer if they were to integrate a worldwide missile defense system aimed at making sure no one gets nuked, they could set the stage for prolonged stability and eventually total worldwide nuclear disarmament.

But in the end, the decision-makers in both Washington and Moscow are old Cold Warriors, and two generations spent pondering how to undermine or destroy one another has programmed their worldview as one where there is a constant existential threat with his finger on the trigger. This mentality is ultimately self-prophetic, and as long as the two sides continue to peer at one another from their own ramparts they will also appear to be each other’s enemy, and every incremental change in the military landscape will be talked about like it is the next big thing to destabilize the relationship.

It’s not. The problem is that it’s still the same people doing all the talking.

The post Everyone Is Lying to You About the Missile Shield. Everyone. appeared first on The Faster Times.

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

Countless sociological studies have shown that when economic times are good and wages are rising, populations nearly always favor their incumbent government, even if the people are having their civil liberties curtailed and their voices silenced (see Russia, Azerbaijan, UAE). In the same vein, when economic times are bad, even the most democratic and well-intentioned leaders nearly always fall (see George W. H. Bush 1992, Barack Obama 2012).

Why? Because generally if people are optimistic about their financial futures and feel that their children are going to have a better life than they had, they can overlook the “smaller” stuff (democracy, human rights, peace) and generally agree with the government not to rock the boat. On the other hand, when people feel pessimistic about their futures they nearly always blame the government, rightly or wrongly.

Where does Georgia sit on this formula? Well, it depends on who you ask.

The Georgian government would have you believe that Georgia has been an economic miracle, a powerhouse with the envy of the world at their backs. Indeed, the Georgian economy grew by more than 9 percent for three straight years from 2005 to 2007, and has recovered well from the sudden pull-out of investment following its 2008 war with Russia. Georgia sits comfortably near the top of several international lists for “ease of doing business” and glitzy glass structures are popping up in Batumi and Tbilisi — conspicuous signs of development.

And it’s true that a portion of the population has certainly reaped the benefits of that sudden economic boom. Young, English-speaking Georgians have found their way into fruitful employ in tourism, and many others have retooled their careers, trading in their piddling $100-a-month salaries as physicians in state clinics or rectors of universities for respectable jobs in foreign firms. But that’s only part of the picture.

For all the money pumped into building up beach resorts in Batumi and Anaklia, $145 million spent on a ski resort in Svaneti, countless more thrown at a facelift for Sighnaghi, electric cars in Mtskheta, a new Parliament bubble in Kutaisi and so on, how many people are employed in Georgia’s booming new tourism agency? — Around 60,000 according to government figures.

If tackling Georgia’s crippling unemployment – rated as the country’s biggest problem in virtually every public survey – is the goal of all of this spending, it has to be one of the lowest bang-for-your-buck investments imaginable. Of course, tourism is an industry that has a wide ripple effect on the economy. Foreigners come to Georgia to snarf down khachapuri, burn money at casinos and leave with a few marked-up bottles of souvenir wine from the airport gift shop. Plus, all of these glittering new attractions across Georgia are indeed built by someone, although much of the construction has been carried out by foreign contract workers brought in by their respective firms. Still, for all the pomp and fanfare, the average Georgian isn’t much better off today than they were in 2003.

By Western standards, Georgia’s unemployment rate is very high – officially 16.3 percent in 2010, an increase from 13.3 percent in 2007 – but even that number is largely obscured. Nearly half of Georgia’s population works in subsistence agriculture, and according to humanitarian organization, IFAD, around 80 percent of Georgians living in rural sectors subsist off of their own farms, consuming around 70 percent of what they produce. Obviously, if you are only selling the 30 percent-or-so of your product that you don’t need to eat, you’re not exactly building a nest egg. Nonetheless, if you are in this situation, you are officially classified as an “individual entrepreneur” and any family members who help you tend to the crops are classified as “unpaid family business workers” by the tax authorities. Such terms allow the Georgian government to claim single-digit unemployment figures in rural areas, while implicitly ignoring the regions’ extreme and structural poverty.

In the cities, where it is harder to call scrounging for sustenance an economic activity, the official unemployment rate has wavered around 26 percent since the Rose Revolution, and, by some estimates, is nearing 40 percent in Tbilisi. Indeed, regardless of government figures, Georgians themselves don’t “feel” employed. According to a survey conducted by the National Democratic Institute, almost three-quarters of those polled considered themselves unemployed, and 46 per cent said their standard of living was worse since 2008.

Unemployment and poverty are particularly acute among people over 40, who were educated in the Soviet Union and who seemingly don’t fit into Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s vision of a bright, young capitalist generation. Saakashvili’s own government is a mirror of this trend — of 20 cabinet-level ministers, only six are over the age of 38. Georgian Minister of Economic Development Vera Kobalia is 29.

But, when predominantly middle-aged protesters following fringe opposition leaders took to Tbilisi’s streets in May, they were labeled as pro-Russian provocateurs. Georgian friends of mine who are well-employed took similar stances, saying they were rent-a-mobs and rabble rousers.

So, like I said, it depends on who you ask.

My friends who are getting good salaries – particularly those in government – tend to see the country through rose-colored glasses. Many truthfully believe that Anaklia, a resort built from scratch at the muddy delta of the Inguri river, just a few hundred meters from the Abkhaz conflict lines, will one day become a world class resort. They take pride in the shiny new buildings that are cropping up, and even some who aren’t making any more money now than a decade ago see new construction and feel that the country is at least on a path of development.

These aren’t the only people I talk to, however. In my life and work here in Georgia, I know several who have experienced systemic poverty their whole lives. I can’t think of a single local friend whose entire family is employed. In fact, more often than not, the Georgian families I know, consisting for seven or eight people, are usually supported by the incomes of only two or three of the able-bodied members of the family. This stretching of incomes, in turn, hampers the economic mobility of those in the family who do have employment.

Meanwhile, with an estimated 55 percent of Georgia’s population working in agriculture, a high-ranking U.S. embassy official scoffed to me recently that the (useless) new pedestrian bridge over the Mtkvari river cost nearly double the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture.

So, what do we have? GDP growth? — Check. New buildings? — Check. Jobs? — Well, about half of the country has them. Sort of.

Still, it’s easy to paint a rosy picture of the country, because foreign countries love Georgia for it’s low trade barriers and non-existent labor regulations. Saakashvili makes sure there is a constant onslaught of ribbon-cuttings, concerts and fireworks keeping the the atmosphere bright and hopeful. How could anyone deny the obvious development a midst the constant media blitz?

When complaints do arise, the government drones on about the perilous effects of Russian propaganda and the insidious attempts by Moscow to foment public unrest as the primary causes of dissatisfaction in Georgia. In truth, the clinging discontent of the Georgian public, in spite of stunningly effective police and bureaucratic reforms, in spite of all the glam and festivities and visits by Sharon Stone, has nothing to do with Russia, and I hope Georgia’s leadership – even if not publicly – acknowledges it. If not, then I will.

It’s the economy, stupid.

The post It’s Not the Russians: What’s Behind Georgia’s Discontent? appeared first on The Faster Times.

When I first contacted journalists and NGO workers in Georgia about coming to this country in the summer of 2009, most said that it was poor timing.

“Everyone’s on vacation, it’s too hot to work, so, nothing really happens in Georgia in the summer,” they said, “except the occasional war.”

Still that was enough for me to buy the one-way ticket and I am now moving into my third eventful summer in the South Caucasus.

This year, while the Western world was gearing up for barbeques and summer movie blockbusters, Tbilisi was host to a fascinating spy scandal involving three freelance Georgian photographers. Two of them worked directly for the government, including one who was the president’s personal photographer. They were accused of being paid to transmit sensitive government documents – including the minutes of ministerial meetings, blueprints of government buildings, official itineraries, etc. to another country.

Meanwhile, more details emerged about a series of mysterious explosions the previous fall that had rocked Tbilisi – actually “rocked” is a bit of an overstatement. All of the devices were small, causing hardly any damage and no one in Tbilisi seemed to pay much attention to them.

Either way, it has been an interesting, if swelteringly hot, couple of months.

On the explosions, I actually happened to be at the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi to interview the ambassador the day after the strange explosion occurred outside their walls. Although I was there to discuss IDP issues, I asked every aide and employee at the place what they thought it was all about. Most shrugged, figuring it was some local digging for copper, who accidentally struck a natural gas line, or perhaps some sort of odd practical joke. Who knows. These things happen in Georgia (in March, a Georgian pensioner allegedly cut off the internet for a significant portion of the South Caucasus – including nearly all of Armenia – while scavenging for buried cables).

But then, a few more devices were found, and one exploded outside the headquarters of the Georgian Labor Party, killing a woman several hundred meters away who was watching TV and happened to catch a stray piece of shrapnel directly in the heart. Rumors began swirling. Who was setting these bombs? Terrorists? Georgia does have about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, but this seemed too amateurish to be al-Qaeda’s work. The Russians? No, they’re not that crazy. The government? Maybe, but are they really that crazy?

Then the spy scandal broke, with five photographers rounded up, including a stringer for the Associated Press who was later released along with the wife of the president’s photographer. Another one of the arrested Georgian photographers worked for the European Pressphoto Agency.

The Georgian media immediately cried foul, and launched a series of protests outside Interior Ministry buildings and running blank photos in their publications with captions reading, “No photo available, the photographer is in prison.”

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I was stunned by the number of Georgians that I consider to be rational and levelheaded, who said this was clearly a government attempt to silence the press. A month earlier, the government, which tries its darnedest to live up to its billing as a “beacon of democracy,” had overreacted to an opposition demonstration, sending riot police to bludgeon protester and journalist alike in downtown Tbilisi. In the aftermath it faced considerable Western criticism as photos of and videos of bloodied picketers showed up on TV screens and newspapers worldwide. All of the photographers detained on spy charges were present and snapping away at the protest dispersal.

In the same way, even after arrests were made in the bombing mystery, and the government released the confession of a Georgian who supposedly planted the devices after being blackmailed by a Russian intelligence officer, people in my social circle seemed split 50-50 on whether the government version was believable. True, it did seem to have some holes, and fit a bit too well into Georgia’s narrative that Russia is actively trying to disrupt the country in all manner of irrational ways to drag it back into its pre-1991 orbit, but the only alternative to the government version is that Tbilisi is actively playing Orwellian mind games with its public, even bombing its own people to maintain an atmosphere of fear.

The result of the photographer’s spy scandal did nothing to dissuade the skeptics.

While insisting publicly that the photographers had transmitted sensitive information to Georgia’s enemies, Georgian officials were also reassuring foreign diplomats that they never had access to anything secret. Information about the case remained spotty and rather than waiting for trial, the Georgian Interior Ministry released tapes of the accused vaguely discussing money transfers over the phone. Then, despite one of them initially engaging in a hunger strike, all three confessed to their crimes within a week of one another. What was the punishment for their alleged treason? Probation.

Probation? In the U.S., treason is a capital offense and convicted spies generally only avoid the electric chair by ratting out their colleagues as a part of a plea deal. After several closed-door meetings between Georgian officials and Western diplomats, these guys walked.

In the case of alleged Russian state-sponsored terrorism, the reported motive of the Georgian bomber, whose family lives in the disputed territory of Abkhazia, was that he was blackmailed by a Russian officer who threatened his family with retribution if he did not bomb several targets in Georgia. Many gaps in that story also remain, however, the Georgian government was given a boost when it became public that as of December 2010 American intelligence generally agreed with the Georgian investigation that a Russian intelligence officer had been involved in organizing the attacks.

Now, I could do an entire side-column about the fact that the U.S. has wrongly and naively given Georgia the benefit of the doubt in the past (namely during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, as revealed by WikiLeaks), and there have been plenty of instances in the last decade where American intelligence has been dead wrong in general (see Iraqi WMD’s), but that argument misses the point.

We honestly don’t know what happened in either of these cases, and that’s the problem. But, while Georgians do tend to lend a bit too much credence to rumors and are known be a passionate people, the nearly universal reaction of Georgia’s independent media, and the split opinions of everyday Georgians in these two cases show that the government has a serious credibility issue – and one they have not done much to grapple with.

When international pressure built for a transparent trial for the accused photographers, rather than open it to the public, the prosecution instead brokered deals with the defendants stipulating that they would admit their guilt and walk free, provided they keep all details of the investigation and plea negotiations confidential. Meanwhile, when the Washington Times published the eight-month-old U.S. intelligence report that discussed a link between the Tbilisi embassy bombing and Russian agents, Georgia reacted with a glee of vindication that admitted their insecurity about their case’s plausibility.

In the end, after a summer of intrigue fit for an airport-terminal espionage novel, the picture for objective Georgia analysts and observers is more cloudy now than perhaps ever before. While there is no doubt that Georgia and Russia maintain a rancorous and acrimonious relationship, both of these cases were simply too weird and murky to be taken on face value. And, even if the all of the Georgian government’s claims turn out to be true, it may indeed become a pyrrhic victory. Georgia may have just won the capture of a few minor agents at the cost of the trust of the media and international community.

The post Did Russia Really Bomb the U.S. Embassy in Georgia? appeared first on The Faster Times.

In recent years, internet security has become an issue of increasing concern for governments around the globe, but in the turbulent South Caucasus, local experts say the threats against both the physical internet infrastructure and cyberattacks against governments and organizations are a reality.

The fragility of the South Caucasus internet infrastructure was underlined this March when a 75-year-old Georgian woman allegedly shut off the internet for 90 percent of Armenia as well as large parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, by accidentally cutting a fiber-optic cable while digging for copper wire.

Network monitors in Western Europe alerted Georgian authorities to the source of the disruption, and the internet was restored five hours later.

Currently, most internet coverage in the three South Caucasus countries, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, comes from a single fiber optic line that traverses the Black sea into Georgia. From there, the system is neither properly protected, nor properly backed-up said Thomas Van Dam an internet expert who worked with online marketing firm, MatchCraft, in Georgia until 2010.

“There is zero redundancy in the system,” he said. “This is strange because the concept of ’99 percent uptime’ is only possible when you have fully redundant systems.”

Representatives from Georgian Railway Telecom, which owns Georgia’s fiber optic lines, said the company is currently “undergoing reorganization” and were unable to respond to TFT’s questions.

Of the three countries, Armenia’s internet connectivity is the most precarious. Because its borders with both Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed, it is nearly totally dependent upon Georgia, although Iran supplies about 10 percent of Armenia’s internet. Armenian new media specialist Tigran Kocharyan, said that plans to expand Iranian fiber optic lines along the proposed Iran-Armenia railway — due to be completed around 2014 — would greatly alleviate the problem, but for now, Armenian users remain “hostage” to the Georgian infrastructure, he said.

And this problem is much more than an occasional inconvenience, said Armenian information security analyst Samvel Martirosyan. He said that in the case of all-out war with Azerbaijan, each side would try to cut the other’s internet “for sure.” Even if each country stayed online, Martirosyan said, “cyberspace will be one of the main battlefields.”

Just like the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which has continued partially frozen for the past two decades, a low-level cyberwar has raged unabated between Turkish, Armenian and Azeri hackers, Martirosyan said, and it intensifies around key dates in the calendar year – particularly Armenia’s April 24 Genocide Remembrance Day.

Bloggers and hackers from across the Turkish and South Caucasus blogosphere regularly engage in denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against one another, which overload servers an can bring down websites, particularly if the attack is coordinated among multiple internet users, Martirosyan said.

During the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, several Georgian government websites — as well as Georgian banks and telecommunication companies — were crippled by cyberattacks, which several experts linked to a constellation of individual internet users, but also the Russian Business Network, a murky group of Russian cybercriminals, which has been linked to a number of internet crimes.

Although efforts have been made to reign in attacks and regulate cyberspace, Turkey and Russia have yet to sign the European Convention on Cybercrime, a treaty harmonizing national laws on a variety of cybercrimes, although 43 other countries have – including all three South Caucasus nations. In a report for Radio Free Europe, Khatuna Mshvidobadze, a senior associate at the Georgian Security Analysis Center, said that by not signing, Moscow has intentionally left the door open for future attacks on Georgia. As she noted in her report, Russia’s 2010 Military Doctrine included provisions for cyberwar, calling for “The prior implementation of measures for information warfare in order to achieve political objectives without the utilization of military forces.”

Kocharyan said that both the Armenian and Azerbaijani governments closely observed the cyberbattlefied in Georgia during the 2008 war and have upgraded their security accordingly.

Another scenario that has the region’s bloggers worried is the threat of a shutdown caused by their own governments. As popular revolts spread across the Middle East this spring, several besieged governments cut internet access to the population to prevent protesters from mobilizing via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan host surprisingly large and influential blogosheres, experts say, and Armenia in particular has faced a series of large protests this year as discontent has spread about the lack of political reform in the country.

Kocharyan, however, said he doubts the Armenian government would attempt to shut down the country’s internet in a time of crisis because it maintains large numbers of pro-government bloggers and has a significant presence on the internet itself. And, in any event, Armenians can now use facebook via text messaging and as the protests raged in Cairo earlier this year, Google developed a “Talk-to-Tweet” service, which offered Egyptians the ability to send tweets through audio phone messages. In the event of revolution, war or disaster, this service might too become available to South Caucasus residents, Martirosyan said.

For more from Nicholas Clayton, check out his blog at Three Kings Blog. You can also follow him on twitter: @ThreeKingsBlog and on Facebook!

The post South Caucasus Internet Vulnerable to Shut Down appeared first on The Faster Times.

Misha and the troops (headed for Afghanistan)

Since taking power in 2003 in a revolutionary wave of popular support, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government has faced a number of tests. Following a widely denounced crackdown on peaceful demonstrations in 2007, a disastrous war with Russia in 2008, and months of sit-in protests paralyzing downtown Tbilisi in 2009, Saakashvili appeared to be on his political deathbed. But after a successful campaign in the 2010 local elections, the ruling United National Movement (UNM) party is once again back on solid footing, even if the country still is not.

Many Georgians remain deeply discontented with the Saakashvili government, and several opposition leaders have called revolution “inevitable.” Michael Cecire, political analyst and founder of Tbilisi based news-zine Evolutsia.net, said that primary cause of this is the naggingly sluggish economy. Despite all the talk of the Georgian economy rebounding from the double-barreled crisis in 2008 caused by the war and the global economic meltdown, Georgians have seen little real improvement in their own economic situation, and the bad economy could become tinder to the revolutionary fire, he said.

“Inflation is high, prices for energy and food are rising, and income inequality seems to be getting worse, not better. In many ways, it’s a perfect storm for a smart opposition candidate to run on a forward-looking, policy-oriented platform,” he said.

Furthermore, after enacting radical and effective democratic reforms in the early years after the 2003 Rose Revolution, Saakashvili’s reforms seem to have run out of steam – a situation that is not lost on the public — said political analyst and Tbilisi State University professor Kornely Kakachia.

“The Georgian public is kind of disoriented at this stage,” he said. “It supports the government’s Euro-Atlantic integration policy and democratic reforms, but at the same time it also realizes that this particular government has already exhausted its progressive ideas. The only aim of the current authorities is just to maintain stability and the current status quo.”

However, despite the stalled reforms and underperforming economy, both Cecire and Kakachia maintain that the prospect of another popular revolution in Georgia remains unlikely. “Revolution fatigue” is a common symptom of Georgia’s recent history, and most Georgians remain unwilling to risk the last decade’s gains for an unknown future. Cultural obstacles and external threats also factor in, Kakachia said.

“Georgians are not prone to use deteriorated social conditions as a precondition to demand regime change,” he said. “While they understand the legitimacy of their social rights, most of them still fear that, in case of [revolution], the only country that would benefit from the instability is Russia. The Russian factor somehow halts a real manifestation of social demands and as this important factor remains unchanged.”

Still, with Georgia’s famously unpredictable leadership, nothing is certain. An official from a Washington-backed pro-democracy NGO said that in early 2007, the mood in the NGO community was “mission accomplished.” Many were ready to pack up and leave the country. Then, when protestors disputing an election were attacked by government goons with clubs and tear gas, reality set in again. The following year, despite a gradual ratcheting up of tensions, no one – including the U.S. military units training Georgian soldiers in the country – expected the Georgian army’s sudden assault on Tskhinvali, which led to all-out war with Russia. Although all of the conditions in Georgia point to a continuation of the status quo, Saakashvili is known to like to shake things up.

However, the one condition that has held up change in Georgia perhaps more than any other is the question of who and what comes next. In Russia in 2007, before it was known what would happen at the end of Vladimir Putin’s second and possibly last term as president, a poignant comedy sketch appeared on Russian TV depicting a group of adolescents playing football in a park. Eventually, one of their mothers appeared shouting, “Volodya (short for Vladimir)! Your time is up! Time to come home.” Volodya obeys, taking the football with him, for it was his. With Volodya and the ball gone the rest of the players were left to look around and each other and ask, “What are we going to do without Vladimir?”

As in Russia in 2007, it remains nearly impossible to imagine Georgian politics without Georgia’s preeminent leader, and the opposition has done a sad job of presenting alternatives. Most of the disparate opposition parties continue to be headed by a mix of old guard politicians, UNM defectors, bored millionaires, and professional rabble-rousers, and they have failed to present clear visions for Georgia’s future, formulate long-term plans, or present a credible challenge to the UNM at the ballot box. Kakachia said that the opposition has been unable to focus on core issues and all attempts at presenting a united front have failed. But, Cecire said he sees potential with some of the moderates.

“The opposition groups that get the most headlines tend to be the fringe movements, unfortunately, but there is evidence that other groups are putting together a measured stance on the issues,” he said. “Irakli Alasania’s Our Georgia-Free Democrats have resisted all of the revolution talk and are actively seeking engagement with the ruling party on a number of issues. Meanwhile, Giorgi Targamadze and his Christian Democratic Movement have become more strident, and confident, in their criticism of the government while trying to maintain an image of responsible partners. I would expect that if these parties can channel their respectability into a stronger campaign strategy, they have a shot at doing well in 2012 and even 2013.”

Such efforts may all be for naught, however, with the new Georgian constitution. The new constitution, which will enter into practice after the 2013 presidential elections, moves much of the executive authority away from the post of president and into the hands of the prime minister, who would be elected by the now-UNM-dominated parliament. Although Saakashvili remains coy on the issue, the gates have been opened for him to “pull a Putin” and become prime minister in 2013.

Most Georgians appear to be ambivalent about such a scenario, and despite the prospect of power becoming centralized in yet another personality for a decade plus, Georgia’s rough post-independence history is enough to keep the everyone erring on the side of stability for now, Cecire said.

“Georgians, it seems, are tired. They’re tired from the economic crisis, from the war, from the 2007 crackdown, from the Rose Revolution, and even from the chaotic 1990s. For all the government’s faults, and there are many, this is probably about as close to a feeling of extended normalcy that many Georgians have felt for a long time, and they aren’t prepared to trade it away on the off-chance that something better can take its place. However, this does mean that there is a very big opportunity for the opposition to split the difference and tap into popular discontent without promising the trials and dangers of revolution. But it will take a long period of intense, and very public, credibility-building for this to happen,” he said.

Next up: Armenia

For more from Nicholas Clayton, check out his blog at Three Kings Blog. You can also follow him on twitter: @ThreeKingsBlog and on Facebook!

The post Why Revolution Could Be, But Won’t Be Coming to the Caucaus: Georgia appeared first on The Faster Times.

Russian Coast Guard sailors practice firing flares in the port of Sokhumi in April 2010

On my second full day in Sokhumi, I wanted to focus less on the political opposition, which dominated my first day in the de facto capital, and more on the increasing Turkish trade and investment in Abkhazia.

So, I wandered down to Sokhumi’s main pier past the crowded tables of old men smoking, drinking Turkish coffee and feverishly playing Backgammon and dominos to the docks. The one fully functional pier in Sokhumi is a microcosm of the city itself. Parts of it have rotted and rusted away, left as is. A few fishermen sat alone drinking beer and casting their lines on the sturdier sections, and some workers were trying to weld together a makeshift set of stairs at one of the loading areas – I guess the previous jury-rigged steps had broken. At the end of the 200 ft pier sat a swanky two-story open air sushi bar and lounge called “Apra.”

In the summer, Apra is definitely the place to be if you don’t mind shelling out executive prices. In the warmer months they open the windows and let the sea breeze blow through the billowy white curtains that envelop the main eating area. What’s more, the sushi is actually the best I’ve ever had in this part of the world. This time, however, sushi and scotch were not in the cards. I had come to write for a couple of Georgian magazines, so I didn’t have the budget to treat myself.

Standing around, I furtively snapped some photos of the ships that had come into harbor – all of them Turkish. In between photos of their crews and masts bearing the Abkhazian and Turkish flags, I took some shots of the sea, of the restaurant, of my shoes – whatever to make myself look less like a spy.

Over the two days I had seen four ships in Sokhumi – three fishing boats and one container ship that had been unloading something all day. This was far more than I had seen in previous visits, and Akhra Smyr, the political analyst I had talked to the night before, said that their presence had boomed since late 2009. That fact was quite interesting, because that meant that this sudden increase followed two key international incidents, which likely encouraged the Georgian Coast Guard to halt the enforcement of their blockade on all trade and economic activity with Abkhazia.

Although the Georgian government has never publicly acknowledged ceasing to enforce the embargo (they specifically refused to comment to me on this issue), every sign pointed to the conclusion that they had. After Georgia seized a tanker ship in August 2009 with 2,800 tons of fuel and 17 Turkish crewmembers, Turkey’s previously neutral official position on the blockade-running activities of its citizens began to harden. When the ship’s captain was sentenced to 24 years in prison for violating the blockade, Ankara sprung into action to defend its own. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promptly flew to Tbilisi, and five days after the conviction, the captain was released. Simultaneously, Russia declared that its coast guard vessels would be patrolling de facto Abkhaz waters and would fire on any Georgian ship attempting to interfere with Abkhazia’s maritime commerce.

Thus, by late 2009, the blockade had failed on the two most important fronts. First, Georgia had not only failed to convince Turkey to participate in the embargo, but by overreaching in its punishment of the tanker crew it had provoked Turkey to actively push for protecting Turkish ships that chose to take the risks of illicit trade. Secondly, with Russia involved, Georgia simply could not afford to continue chasing trade ships in de facto Abkhazian waters – Georgia’s two largest naval vessels were destroyed in the 2008 war, and thus the Georgian Coast Guard’s remaining patrol boats would be extremely exposed, risking firefights with ships from Russia’s Black Sea fleet. And, in the end, hampering Abkhazia’s economic development was simply not worth the chance of igniting another conflict with Russia.

Apparently the ports of Ochamchire and Gagra get a bit more sea traffic than Sokhumi, so all and all it seems that Abkhazia, population approximately 150,000, is getting a fair amount of foreign sea merchants.

Later in the day, I met with Raul Khajimba, who heads the Forum of National Unity of Abkhazia and is widely considered to be primary leader of the Abkhaz political opposition. I went to his new office, which was tucked into a courtyard off of the main shopping strip. It took a few confused phone calls to find the right alleyway, and he sent his assistant to come find me. Eventually, a tall, friendly looking guy emerged and beckoned me in. We chatted a bit as we winded through the courtyard and I was struck by how he appeared to be a carbon copy of the awkward young policy wonks from my university in Washington that scurried between Capitol Hill internships.

Khajimba himself was shorter than I expected and during the interview was both modest and engaging. He actually is exactly the type of official that I always enjoy interviewing in the ex-USSR. A former KGB agent with Soviet training in dialogue tactics, they will always turn around your question to point out Western hypocrisy and try to draw you into a debate rather than make it a pure question and answer session. Sure, it was a lot of evasion and deflection, but while some interview subjects get irritated as journalists try to pin them down on specifics, the old KGB guard seem to revel in the game.

Khajimba is an interesting political figure. In 2004, he was openly backed by the Kremlin to win the presidency. After all, in many ways his background mirrored that of Vladimir Putin, and he seemed a like-minded sort of ruler. His opponent, businessman Sergei Bagapsh, was a bit too enigmatic for Russia’s liking. Nonetheless, Bagapsh won the election, but after a dispute over results, the two ended up ruling together with Khajimba taking the office of vice president in a power-sharing deal. After Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia as independent, Khajimba sensed increasing discomfort among the population with the concessions and quid-pro-quos the Abkhazian government had agreed to in return for Russian aid, and resigned in 2009. Now, he routinely criticizes the government for failing to “create the conditions for Abkhazia to be truly independent.”

When pressed him to be a bit more specific with that statement, Khajimba made clear that he was not necessarily saying that Abkhazia needed to be more independent from Russia, but from everyone, the U.S. and the West included.

“But what other political, military and economic partners does Abkhazia have?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, at the moment, there are none, other than Russia.”

“Turkey?”

“Buy-sell is what we call that relationship. We cut down our forests and sell it to the Turks. They build other things out of it and sell it elsewhere. But, if we were building products with our own people and the help of Turkish investment then that would be an equal relationship, but right now they are just getting things from us, just taking,” he said.

Immediately after the interview I was to meet up with my humanitarian friend near his office. Apparently, we had been invited to a supra with a couple of the drivers from his work. A supra, which apparently comes from the Persian/Arabic word “sufra,” is an important tradition in Caucasus social culture. Basically it’s a combination of a feast and a bender, and is initiated for all occasions – weddings, divorces, birthdays, the buying of a new car, the selling of an old car, a meeting of old friends, and making the acquaintance of new ones. While I had survived (sometimes barely) many a supra in my time in Georgia, this would be my first supra held by Abkhaz hosts.

The supra was held in the house of one of the two middle-aged drivers, who we’ll call Ibragim and Sasha. By the time we arrived, the table was already heaping with food, two bottles of vodka and a five-liter jug of homemade wine. It was a nice house in a crumbling district, and from the bit of it that we could see, it was well furnished as well. My friend and I sank into the leather couch with the table up to our chests. On the insistence of Ibragim’s wife, we each sat atop a couple of pillows to reach the food better.

Overall, the spread was exactly what you would expect from a Georgian supra: khachapuri, tomato and cucumber salad, eggplant slices in nut a paste with pomegranate seeds – the one thing I hadn’t seen before was a type of fried fatty meat, the name of which I forgot. And, the drinking got going right out of the gate. As per supra tradition, one person at the table is appointed the tamada and it is this person’s duty to lead all of the many toasts for the rest of the evening.

Sasha, the tamada du jour, kept everyone’s shot glass full with a very pricey-looking vodka that had flakes of gold swimming around in the bottom of it. We drank to our families, to our colleagues, to our countries and to peace. Eventually, Ibragim’s teenage son came into the room, but sat silently aside and mostly played games on his cell phone. Every now and then Ibragim or Sasha would toast to him, in which case he would stand with his hands behind his back like a cadet at attention.

The conversation eventually veered towards the war and Abkhazia’s future. Ibragim and Sasha both recounted how, in the early 90’s they hoped Abkhazia would become independent, but never thought that this aspiration would lead to war. Then, one day, they said, they heard people screaming “The Georgians have come, there are tanks in the city!” As the ragtag Georgian army began petty pillaging and pushing what armed Abkhaz militia’s there were towards the north, Abkhaz residents gathered up primitive weapons – old hunting rifles and bows and arrows. Ibragim said Abkhaz fighters would shoot stragglers in the back of Georgian units and take their weapons.

Eventually, the Chechens and other mountain people’s of the Russian North Caucasus arrived, armed to the teeth and with a particular propensity for seemingly suicidal offensives. Both Ibragim and Sasha recounted how they met and fought along side one of the most iconic figures of the Chechen secessionist movement – Shamil Basayev. Basayev and his guerrilla fighters engaged in a variety of struggles throughout the Caucasus in the 1990’s and 2000’s. He fought for Azerbaijan against an Armenian insurrection in Nagorno-Karabakh, and also against Georgia in Abkhazia, although he is most well known for his role in the Chechen insurgency and terrorist attacks against Russia.

Both Ibragim and Sasha told stories with wide eyes about how the two of them – both untrained in combat – would often times be pinned down by enemy fire. Basayev on the other hand, would walk straight into it.

“He was crazy,” Sasha said. “There would be fire coming from everywhere, rooftops, cars, everything, and he would just walk out in the middle of the street firing like mad at them.”

Basayev would later go on to be one of the chief commanders in both the First and Second Chechen Wars. He represented the most radical element of the Chechen insurgency, eagerly targeting Russian civilians to bring about a withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Moscow linked him to a series of terrorist attacks killing hundreds of civilians, the most dramatic of which was the hostage taking attack on a school in Beslan, which resulted in over 350 deaths, nearly all of them children. In 2006, he died in an explosion, and it remains unclear whether he was killed at the hands of Russian special forces, a rival Chechen faction, or simply in an accident.

After the four of us had burned through more than a bottle and a half of vodka, my friend and I started looking at one another with fear and intrigue. Ibragim had been talking about his homemade wine all night. “Are we really going to have to finish all of this vodka and all that wine? No way.” – our looks told each other.

Eventually, Ibragim started pouring the wine, and as more toasts ensued, we chugged it glass by glass – “Caucasus-style.” At some point a 20-something guy in a military uniform showed up, and sat politely at the end of the table. Sasha said proudly that this was his nephew, who had just completed officer’s training in Novgorod, Russia. He refused several pushy offers by Ibragim to drink with us, and, as we drank ourselves deeper and deeper into oblivion, I realized this guy was our ride home.

Towards the end of the night, my friend and I were asked to give toasts, a responsibility we sheepishly tried to avoid. Neither of us is at our most eloquent in Russian, but we gave it our best shot. Drunk, a guest and feeling the need to be a crowd-pleaser I raised a toast to “a free, peaceful, developed, and independent Abkhazia.” This produced wide smiles from everyone in the room, and Ibragim and Sasha seemed genuinely touched. I could tell they were suspicious of both of us from the beginning, given that we both live in Tbilisi most of the time. But, a toast of that sort coming from two Americans seemed truly remarkable to them.

Finally, with most of us nearly sleeping around the table close to 4 a.m., all of us guests were loaded into the officer’s car, who drove us home to blaring house remixes of Lady Gaga and the Russian pop star, Zemfira.

The next day, around 9 a.m., I somehow made it to the SUV that was to drive my friend and I back to Tbilisi. Ibragim and Sasha were there, looking bright eyed and bushy tailed, and bid us bon voyage. It would be a long ride back to Tbilisi.

For more from Nicholas Clayton, check out his blog at Three Kings Blog. You can also follow him on twitter: @ThreeKingsBlog and on Facebook!

The post Return to Abkhazia: Day 4 – Turks, trade and terrorists appeared first on The Faster Times.

Sokhumi in July 2009

Anyone who has traveled through the former Soviet Union knows that 50 or more years as a part of the socialist empire had profound effects on the countries involved. Today, twenty years since the Soviet Union’s fall, cities from Berlin to the Pacific coast of Asia bear the legacy of Lenin in their skylines, popular culture, and mentalities at both the administrative and family level.

This is particularly true in countries that were barely industrialized or urbanized before the arrival of the Soviets. Traveling east away from Europe, you will find ancient cities where 90 percent of their present-day structures were built during the Soviet times. This is not the case with Sokhumi, however, which was once a thriving port and playground for the Tsars and nobility of pre-revolution Russia. After the Bolshevik invasion, the grand palaces that dot the Abkhazian coastline became dachas for the Soviet elite. Many of the breezy houses with gated gardens full of flowers, palms and tangerine trees that make up most of Sokhumi’s structures have been taking in the salty sea wind since long before the red revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace and the Avrora fired the opening shots of Soviet century.

But, in many ways Sokhumi feels more Soviet than the austere industrial towns of Russia or the extravagant capitals of the ex-SSR’s. This is because, while even the poorest nations of Central Asia have upgraded infrastructure here and there and allowed foreign food and clothing chains to open franchises across their territory — Abkhazia has remained closed zone.

Since beating back Georgian forces in 1993, it has been cut off from the rest of the world. In 1996, the Commonwealth of Independent States – a loose community of former Warsaw Pact countries, including Russia and Georgia – imposed an embargo on Abkhazia over the ethnic cleansing of approximately 200,000 Georgians from their homes once the pro-independence forces took control. This made all trade with Abkhazia and economic activity therein illegal according to the sanctions signed by the majority of the post-Soviet states. Because Abkhazian territory borders only Russia, a Georgian naval blockade essentially formed a wall between the Abkhaz and everything else.

Slowly but surely, low-level black market commerce in raw materials developed between Abkhazia’s remaining residents and Russians through the border (along with the occasional Turkish ship that slipped the blockade lines). I traveled to Sochi in 2008, Russia’s proudest ski/surf resort and the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which is just a stone’s throw from the Abkhazian – officially Georgian – border. There, Abkhazian honey and chacha were easy to find in the markets. Beyond basic bartering and trade, half-empty Abkhazia chugged along by repairing the aging Soviet transit and tourism infrastructure, with rickety 1970’s trams still rumbling through the streets, and a steady flow of Russians tourists (officially illegally) making the trip from Sochi into the old Soviet beach resorts that made up what was once called the “Red Riviera.”

Coming back from Sochi in May 2008, I had just finished an academic paper on NATO-Russian relations and future flashpoints that could cause conflict. In the paper, I wrote that if the West recognized Kosovo as independent, one could expect violence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in six to 12 months. It seemed at the time to be a bit of a stretch, but it generated discussion. I gave a jar of Abkhazian eucalyptus honey to a friend of mine back in the States saying, “Aside from being pretty good, you might see this place, ‘Abkhazia,’ on the news in six months as a war zone.” Four months later the Georgian-Russian war broke out in South Ossetia, and, in assisting its forces there, Russia landed special forces and tanks in Abkhazia to push into Georgia to form a second front.

I had time to take a bit of a walk around the city before my noon appointment at the offices of the Economic Development Party, and things seemed to be changing. Since recognizing the Abkhazia’s independence, Russia has given Abkhazia hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, and Russian companies have officially been allowed to invest there. The beachfront in Sokhumi, after being littered with the rusted wrecks of ships and bombed out buildings during my first visit in 2009, is now fairly clean, with a number of new furniture shops, clothing stores and coffee houses occupying previously empty buildings downtown.

But much of the detritus of the siege remains, however, as the burned out and gutted skeleton of the former Communist Party headquarters still looms as the most prominent structure in the center of the city. There’s hardly a single city block in Sokhumi that doesn’t include at least one shell of a building, now filled with vegetation, trash and human excrement – a stroll through the first few floors of the old Communist HQ required constant attention to my footwork.

I arrived at the offices of the Economic Development Party (ERA) a bit early, and was buzzed through a heavy wooden door that lead to a long corridor of closed doors with no labels on them. I wandered around looking lost for a while before doubling back and knocking on the first door in the hallway, thinking it was most likely to be reception. Behind the door were two people drinking coffee and filling out a crossword puzzle. Another woman appeared to be working behind a desk. I introduced myself and said I had a 12:00 meeting with Beslan Butba. She looked confused, asked me to sit and made a few calls.

Eventually some guy in jeans came in and asked who I had talked to when arranging the interview. It occurred to me that I never got a name; I just exchanged emails with a nameless person answering from their main contact email address, had a quick conversation with him after calling the number he sent me, and was told to show up somewhere around noon. Hearing this, the guy in jeans and the woman behind the desk launched into several phone calls tracking this all down. Everyone else continued their crossword puzzles. Eventually, I was brought up to a boardroom where I met the press officer who said, “This would have been much easier if you would have called in advance.”

Apparently Butba was in a meeting. In the meantime the press person requested I tell her what I was going to ask him. I explained that I would be asking general questions about the party’s platform, long-term plans and expectations for the local elections that would take place in few days. Then she left, and I sat and waited as a series of people – mostly friends and relatives of the workers it seemed – came and went from the large room. Eventually it was explained to me that it would not be possible to speak with Mr. Butba as he was still in a busy meeting, but someone else would be available eventually. I said I could always come back another, but they seemed to want to sort it sooner rather than later.

Around 1 p.m. a man in his mid-thirties in a sharp suit entered and gestured towards the large boardroom table. I took this to be the “someone else.” He introduced himself as the deputy head of the party and made clear through his body language that I was already wasting his time. After 30 minutes, I had gotten very little from him other than generalities about how his party would use the aid money better than current government by spending it on health care services and the regions rather than the tourist infrastructure. I was actually quite surprised at how little he criticized the government directly – in 2009, the ERA and other opposition groups released statements condemning the Abkhazian government for giving away Abkhazia’s sovereignty in concessions to Russia in exchange for aid money.

But, now the official seemed quite neutral, “in principle” most of the investment projects the government had undertaken were good. He said the party was in lockstep with the government on the issue of relations with Georgia, and brushed off accusations of large-scale corruption causing aid money to disappear into the Abkhazian government and the Russian military. He also downplayed a controversial commission that would oversee property disputes involving Russian citizens who fled their homes during the war. This issue had led to major protests by the opposition just months earlier, but now he said that the government “just needs to follow its own laws, and settle its own disputes lawfully.”

That evening, I met with Akhra Smyr, an Abkhaz political analyst who put it a bit more into perspective. Meeting over tea in an upscale café near the boardwalk, he said that the Abkhazian opposition is now in a strange state where they are “on one hand very strong, on the other hand incredibly weak.” He said they have increased their following in the last few years as the public has grown increasingly uncomfortable Russia’s increasing leverage there. Russia now operates Abkhazia’s rail and airport systems, officially patrols its borders and has bought up large chunks of prime resort space in coastal cities. But while opposition leaders can use nationalistic rhetoric — bordering on anti-Russian — to rile up voters, they will never publicly denounce Russia to a Western reporter for fear the Russians might view them as a threat. But, he said, even their occasional fiery statements about the concessions were intellectually dishonest.

“In the end, we all know where the money is coming from – Russia – and the more of it the better. Even if it were the opposition in power, they would have the same set of options in front of them, and would probably be doing the same things,” Smyr said.

Many of the opposition leaders were part of the local old Soviet intelligentsia, and many had served in the government since the war. Their only real complaint against the sitting government, Smyr said, is that they aren’t running it – a situation that squarely reminded me of Georgia.

But Smyr said he has genuine hope for the opposition’s growing strength and influence. Outside Sokhumi, he said, the younger generation is beginning to get involved. Soon, they would be injecting some new ideas and possibly be able to push things in a new direction.

Furthermore, an incident earlier this year seemed to show the government is wary of the opposition’s potential. On Jan. 21, leader of the opposition People’s Party, Iakob Lakoba was arrested on charges of libel for publishing an article on his party’s website accusing Sergei Stepashin, the head of Russia’s state audit chamber, of corruption and ignoring missing funds from aid packages to Abkhazia. Stepashin’s wife, Tamara, is currently the senior vice president of the Russian VTB bank, through which all aid money to the Abkhazian government is transferred.

Immediately after his arrest, Abkhaz opposition leaders denounced the government’s actions leading to public outcries for his release. Lakoba was released within 24 hours and the charges against him were dropped Feb. 18. Smyr said that the Lakoba case was a huge victory for the Abkhazian opposition – one that showed that opposition leaders could not only speak openly about corruption, but that government would bend to political and public pressure on the issue.

But, to a large extent, most Abkhaz that I talked to say they want things to go back to the way they were before the war, before the fall of the Soviet Union. All that Abkhazia has known since then was conflict and poverty, so it’s a natural thought process. Many still carry their Soviet passports and use them as their primary ID. It seems that the prevailing view among the Abkhaz is that its future lies somewhere in its past – back in the days when Abkhazia was a glittering paradise with the finest resorts in all of the Soviet empire, where security and a steady flow of pale Russian tourists were all they needed to stay afloat.

The post Return to Abkhazia: Day 3 – to the Future via the Past appeared first on The Faster Times.

Marshrutkas come in all shapes and sizes.

There are the shiny new Mercedes mini-buses like the one I took from Tbilisi to Zugdidi, and there are sputtering old commuter wagons with DIY seats, which, like the rest of the vehicle, are held together by duct tape, twine and prayer. There are sedans that also technically qualify – mostly 60’s model Volgas and Zhigulis – where every non-claustrophobic person in the neighborhood packs in and rides along a specific route, either splitting the fare or paying a set fee (the word “marshrutka” is short for “marshrutnoe taksi” – a fixed-route taxi in Russian).

As mentioned above, I got lucky with the first leg of my westward journey towards Abkhazia, spending the five-hour ride from Tbilisi to Zugdidi in a stunningly new and clean mini-bus, albeit in the worst seat for a tall person – the back left right corner. Still, at the station, several taxi drivers came up to me offering to drive me to Zugdidi for 200 lari ($120) as opposed to the 15 lari ($8) for the marshrutka ride, a price based purely on my Western appearance I am sure. Fat chance.

I sleepily arrived in Zugdidi’s central square around 1 p.m. and I had already called ahead to Dato Patsatsia, head of the Zugdidi-based Human Rights Centre, whom I hoped to meet with in the city. He met me shortly after I climbed out of the deluxe German marshrutka and led me to a massive Samogrelo-style house where a few human rights workers typed away in a small cold office full of maps and posters.

I wanted to meet him to get some additional perspective on the two major issues I was going to investigate in Abkhazia – the fledgling, but growing Abkhaz opposition, and the growth of (officially illicit) Turkish trade and investment with Abkhazia. From his vantage point in the last major Georgian town in the direction of the politically severed region, he had gleamed quite a lot of what was going on – largely from the few Georgians allowed to cross into the first town across the de facto border, Gali.

One of the first things he told me about was about the systematic severing and destruction of all crossing points across the Inguri River that formed the de facto border, and the digging up of all the roads leading to those bridges. The interesting thing was that this was not only occurring on the Abkhaz side, but on the Georgian side as well. Despite all of the Georgian government’s rhetoric about getting back the breakaway territories in the next five to 10 years, it appears that they are settling in for the long haul.

“There’s something no one’s talking about in Tbilisi,” he said.

Looking at the big old Soviet military map of the de facto border area that he used to plot his organization’s activities, we talked a bit about the situation in Gali.

“Yeah, there are a lot of human rights problems for the Georgians living in this area,” Dato said, sweeping his hand across southern Abkhazia, which is still primarily inhabited by Mengrelian Georgians. “But there’s pretty much just as many abuses on this side too,” he said. Referring to the Georgian-controlled region around Zugdidi.

He said he viewed the whole secession/reconciliation situation as going nowhere because of the useless escalation of rhetoric and forces between Tbilisi and Moscow that was really being driven by American neo-conservative politicians. Republican Senator John McCain and his ilk, he said, hope to make Georgia into an American military outpost on Russia’s southern flank, within striking distance of Iran. Most Georgians readily remember when, as the war with Russia raged in the midst of the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Republican-presidential-candidate McCain said, “We’re all Georgians today.”

It played well in Tbilisi, not so well in America. But, in that contentious atmosphere, he said, the Abkhaz were always going to look to the Russians for more protection from the U.S.-supplied Georgians, and the Georgians would keep trying to get more hardware to protect them from Russia. Either way, it was a win for arms manufacturers and hawkish American and Russian politicians, but a loss for unity and peace in Georgia.

I probably could have talked to Dato for hours about world and local politics, but I was still several marshrutka rides away from Sokhumi, the de facto capital of Abkhazia – a destination I hoped to reach by the end of the day. So I put back on my bright orange backpack (a conspicuous sign of being a traveling foreigner) and headed to the corner by the market where the marshrutkas to the border assembled.

Again, I was approached by gaggle of taxi drivers offering varying fares to the border, but I was also apparently the last person needed to fill the worn-down marshrutka to full capacity and so the marshrutka driver lobbied me even harder. I climbed through the sliding door of the hulking van, which was in the process of being mobbed by women selling various baked goods to the already seated passengers. Since I ended up being the closest passenger to the door, I was the intermediary for several transactions, passing change and pastries back and forth. One man asked his teenage daughter if she was hungry. She said no, but, hearing this, the pastry ladies put all of their attention on the two of them, trying to shove khachapuri (Georgian cheese pastry deliciousness) into their faces. Laughing, he desperately called out to the driver, “Let’s go, let’s go, for the love of God!”

We got to the de facto border 20 minutes later, and I already knew the drill. All of the passengers got out and immediately started walking past the small Georgian police hut, some stopping to load onto a donkey cart that would take them the mile or so to the other side of the no-man’s-land for a small fee. As I was obviously not a part of the usual procession of Georgians shuttling between Zugdidi and their homes in Gali, I was expected to go over and announce my intentions to the police.

Tensions were much lower now than the first time I crossed into Abkhazia in July 2009 – just 11 months after Russian tanks special forces had plowed through this checkpoint amidst Georgia’s brief war with South Ossetian separatists and the Russian army. The process had also become much more official. The Abkhazian Foreign Ministry now sends a pdf document to travelers officially inviting them to enter, and the Georgian police are now accustomed to the occasional adventurous backpacker or foreign journalist who passes through into rebel territory. Bored-looking officers in the booth with AK-47’s propped against the wall took down my passport number and called back to Tbilisi to make sure I was not some sort of registered Russian spy. I am not, so they waved me through.

From there the walk gets surreal. A few hundred feet down the road, I passed the Georgian special forces that man series of camouflaged pill boxes in the remnants of what was once a small town. A crude 1990’s metal sculpture of a revolver with its barrel twisted into a knot points forward at the edge of the Soviet bridge towards the Abkhazian/Russian encampment on the opposite bank.

The once wide Inguri river was mostly dry and eerily silent. The bridge over it, on the other hand, consisted mostly of one large deep puddle after another. At its end, a Russian military base flew the Russian flag next to a tall stone tower. Two men, presumably Georgians, were fishing in the small part of the Inguri riverbed where water trickled through – about 30 feet from the Russian observation post. Life seemed to continue in an absurdly normal way around the imposing symbols of conflict.

The customs post on the Abkhaz side consisting of a few Soviet military trailers with makeshift canopies ground through the crowd of Georgians fairly smoothly. This too, was a change, and it seemed directly related the fact that Russian border guards had taken over the official responsibilities. My first time going in and out of Abkhazia I was briefly detained by the Abkhaz militia and questioned as a spy. The second time I approached the post on my way in about a year later, a drunk-looking Abkhaz militiaman sauntered up to me and read my official invitation aloud.

“Klieyton, Nikohlas Alan, citizen of the Severnoy Shkoli Alkogolikov (meaning “Northern School of Alcoholics,” a Russian play on words mocking the acronym USA, which in Russian is S-SH-A)” – at that moment a Russian officer came over and snatched the document from him.

The Russian took me aside, asked me if I spoke Russian, and proceeded to explain the visa procedures once I arrived in Sokhumi. I explained that I had been there before, and I knew what to do. He still ran me through it one more time to be sure, and wished me a pleasant visit.

This time it appeared that the sloppy militiamen had been relegated to other duties altogether, and were nowhere to be seen. I quickly spoke with a Russian soldier who looked over my invitation and that was that.

Next stop: Gali

In the past, I have always had to take expensive taxis from the border to Gali – expensive because gas is not cheap in Abkhazia and because the heavily cratered road between the border and the town is enough to shred the suspension of any vehicle short of a tank. Therefore, only an elite few cab drivers in the area will make the trip and they know their services are in demand. This time I was again lucky that I got through the border at the same time as the large group of other Georgians, which meant piling in and splitting the fare. The father and daughter from the marshrutka stacked up in the passenger seat and I got in the back with four large women who asked me a series of gossipy questions about whose guest I would be once I got to Gali. When I said I was just passing through on my way to Sokhumi, one asked, “Oh, you are serving up there?”

It seemed a strange verb to use in my case, one with the connotation of a military or espionage mission.

“No, just going for work.”

The Soviet sardine-can taxi dropped me off at a muddy square where a few unlabeled marshrutkas and taxis idled, their drivers standing around smoking, drinking and joking around.

“A marshrutka goes up to Sokhumi from here at 4:30 every day,” the taxi driver said. “Grab a cup of coffee, kill some time, and you’ll be fine.”

And so I got out into miserable Gali. Although my drive into Gali this time wound us through the mostly inhabited parts of the city where the passengers needed to get out, my past drives through the town had given me the impression that it was the most depressing place on Earth. Little more than half of Gali’s pre-war population of 80,000 have returned to the devastated city. I vividly remembered passing though the barely existent streets in 2009 past rows of ruined buildings dotted with the occasional tiny kiosk selling cigarettes, vodka, chewing gum, and potato chips. Residents wandered through the destroyed blocks like zombies in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. This was the first time I had dismounted and wandered around with any considerable time on my hands.

I had been told by journalists with experience in Gali to avoid taking pictures or straying too far from the main activity centers. Paramilitary thugs still prowled through Gali occasionally beating, robbing and harassing the predominately Georgian residents and foreigners, so it was best to stick to the marshrutka park and NGO row – a line of houses used as HQ’s for various humanitarian organizations. I took advantage of the time to get an Abkhaz SIM card that would allow me to call my contacts in Sokhumi, and hopefully set up some interviews for the next day since the train debacle had left me a bit behind schedule.

Behind a desk in a small shop with an “A Mobile” sign out front, a 20-something guy said I could buy a SIM card for 200 Russian rubles ($7) with some credit on it, but, in true Soviet fashion, he would need a number of documents from me. I had them all ready so a time-consuming process of punching numbers, names and dates into the system began. At some point an intimidating-looking guy wearing camouflage pants and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt came in and asked to see my dokumenty. I handed him my passport and propusk, or invitation letter. He clearly couldn’t read Latin letters, and so after thumbing through my passport for the better part of a minute he asked where I was from.

“I’m American.”

“American? How did you get here?”

“The border with Georgia. I got an invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia, and I’m on my way to Sokhumi.”

“Why? What interest do you have here?”

“I’m a journalist, and I have interviews with a number of officials in the Abkhaz government.”

This succinct explanation did not seem to assuage his bewilderment, but he handed everything back to me and said, “Fine, good luck.”

Fifteen minutes later everything was ready for me to sign a few forms and get a card that would allow me to make calls on my Georgian cell phone to people in Abkhazia. First, I called a friend of mine in a humanitarian organization that I intended to meet up with in Sokhumi, telling him I was alive and should be in Sokhumi by the evening. I then called the number for some PR guy from the Economic Development Party of Abkhazia, who said I could come in at noon the next day and interview Beslan Butba, head of the party and one of Abkhazia’s main opposition leaders.

Then I waited. Eventually, I decided to explore the area around the square in a one-block radius, coming across several destroyed buildings now with massive trees growing in the middle of them – trees that would have been among the tallest in my hometown, Topeka. Coming back to the square, several taxi drivers approached me trying to convince me that there was no 4:30 marshrutka — the oldest trick in the book. As they gradually figured out I wasn’t buying it, their offered price for a drive to Sokhumi dropped from $100 to $50. I reminded them that the marshrutka cost $5, and eventually a large rickety van rolled up with a cardboard sign with “Sukhum” – the Russian name for Sokhumi – written on it.

According to my watch, it was scheduled to leave in 15 minutes, but I was so far the only prospective customer. Once inside, the driver put on some loud Russian pop music, and asked if I wouldn’t mind watching the marsrutka for a while. “Just stay and listen,” he said. He then got into a different car and drove off. Interesting. It was then that I realized that this marshrutka would not be leaving in 15 minutes, but an hour and 15 minutes. Georgia is directly south from Moscow and thus it is on the Moscow time zone. However, the Georgian government decided a while back that it would no longer recognize daylights savings time, but the de facto governments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia didn’t follow suit. Therefore, Georgia is one hour ahead of its two separatist provinces for half of the year. I adjusted my watch and got comfortable, realizing that I had just agreed to subject myself to a full hour of some of the worst music in the land, sitting in the back of an abandoned marshrutka that had now become my responsibility.

Fortunately, I would not be alone. About five minutes later I heard someone tugging at the sliding door, which apparently could only be opened from the inside. Hesitating briefly, I opened it to a guy in his early twenties with wearing a wool cap and a smile.

“Is this going to Sukhum?” he asked.

“I hope so, eventually,” I responded.

I could see the wheels turning in his head as he surveyed the situation: no driver, no passengers save for one guy with a big orange backpack speaking Russian with a foreign accent. He shrugged, got in and introduced himself as Temuri.

As I came to find out, Temuri’s life and current situation seemed to perfectly capture the struggles of post-Soviet Georgia. He was born in 1990, one year before Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union. By the end of 1991, ethnic conflict between Georgians and Ossetians had already broken out and Georgia’s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had been chased from power in a bloody coup that continued in the form of a low-level civil war across the country. The mix of the intra-Georgian power struggle, and the interethnic strife ignited by the deposed nationalist leader eventually metastasized into all out wars between disparate forces supporting the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and those trying to maintain Georgian control over the provinces.

By 1993, the secessionists had won and between 230,000 and 250,000 Georgians civilians were expelled from their homes in the two territories. About 50,000, including Temuri’s family were eventually allowed to return to the Gali region, still under Abkhazian control. Most of the Gali Georgians continue to eke out a living shuttling between back and forth to Georgian-held territory selling hazelnuts and tangerines from their properties on the Abkhaz side.

Temuri, by contrast, had been relatively luckily. He was currently studying at a university in Tbilisi, but as often as he could, he came back to help his family in Gali and do some odd jobs in Sukhum – which was quite adventurous as most of the Gali Georgians I talked to in the past would not dare venture into predominately Abkhaz areas since the war. Although they have officially been offered Abkhaz citizenship, accepting it would mean renouncing their Georgian citizenship, making it impossible to return to Georgia (or enter any other country other than Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua or Nauru). Futhermore, even Gali schools focus on teaching Russian and Abkhaz languages, while Georgian schools focus on Georgian and English, and it is now a requirement to speak English at a high-level to graduate Georgian universities. Temuri’s Russian was impeccable but he still struggled with English. Thus, Temuri’s family and the other Georgians lived suspended in a quasi-stateless zone, divided by language, ethnicity, troops and political boundaries from any clear alternative.

Eventually, he asked me if I wanted anything from the shop. I said I was fine, but I knew from experience in the region that no matter what I said, he would end up buying me something. Sure enough, after making a quick trip, he came back with two cans of Lipton iced tea, Choco Pies and a couple of Kit-Kat bars – all processed and packaged in Russia. Globalization.

Slowly but surely, the marshrutka filled up, the driver returned and we were on our way. About 30 minutes north, the bumpy highway began running along the Black Sea, and amidst the palms trees lining the road and the sunset behind the tranquil waters, it was possible to forget you were driving through a blank spot on a map, one that that had been politically and psychologically ripped to pieces.

At some point when we got inside the Sukhum city limits, a car driving along side the marshrutka lurched and skid into the sidewalk spraying sparks across the street. Apparently one of its wheels had suddenly popped off, sending it to a screeching halt. The young marshrutka driver stopped for a bit – not to help, but to chuckle. After a few seconds he got back in and said, “that was awesome.”

I got out somewhere approximately near where my friend’s office was, and was able to find my way there with surprising ease. I plopped down my bag and as he poured a couple of welcoming shots of vodka and asked me, “So, how was your trip?”

“It was … quite a trip.”

The post Return to Abkhazia: Day 2 – Marshrutkaland appeared first on The Faster Times.