South Ossetian Shakeup?

«Не место этому президенту в Южной Осетии» // Бывший секретарь совбеза республики о конфликте с Эдуардом Кокойты Герой войны в Южной Осетии, бывший секретарь совбеза республики АНАТОЛИЙ БАРАНКЕВИЧ рассказал спецкору “Ъ” ОЛЬГЕ АЛЛЕНОВОЙ о причинах своего увольнения, конфликте с президентом Кокойты, а также о кадровой и экономической политике Цхинвала. открыть материал ...

Kommersant has run a lengthy interview with former Russian army general and former South Ossetian de facto Minister of Defense which puts the region's president, former wrestling champion and phys. ed. teacher Eduard Kokoity, in a rather unflattering light.

General Anatoly Barankevich is one of the examples cited in recent years by Western observers in order to highlight the fact that South Ossetian secessionism at some point shifted from "self-determination" to a situation where the determination of key personnel appointments took place in Moscow. There were other former (or seconded) Russian officers serving in the territory's de facto government, but he was among the most prominent. And now he has come out with an interview mocking Kokoity's flight from Tskhinvali during the five-day war and relating tales of a reconstruction effort paralyzed by corruption.

One of the more damning excerpts reads as follows (my translation, hopefully Kommersant will put this on their English-language website but they haven't done so yet) - Barankevich is relating a scene he observed at a police station in Dzhava on August 10th:

And then I saw the following picture: a Georgian prisoner with his hands tied and shirt off, his hands had already gone blue, you couldn't see his eyes, he couldn't even cry, and the [South Ossetian] militants [бойцы, apparently police officers - trans.] were beating him. I went over to them and said, "What are you doing? You are mountain men [горцы - implying, apparently, that they should hew to some code of honor - trans.]. You can't beat a prisoner, his hands are tied." They looked embarrassed and said, "Sorry, comrade General."

I told them to go get someone from the KGB. To take the Georgian away. Right away they untied his hands. And then the president showed up. He saw me, saw the prisoner and understood what was going on. And the first thing he did was run up to the prisoner and start kicking him. It turned my stomach. The guys from the police looked at the ground, they were ashamed.

Without wanting to engage in too much Kremlinological tea-leaf-reading, one wonders what the publication of this interview means, given that it was published in a newspaper owned by Alisher Usmanov, the Kremlin-friendly oligarch and debt collector for Gazprom who - no doubt out of the goodness of his heart, and certainly not to win a natural resource tender - ponied up a billion rubles in aid for the post-war rebuilding effort in South Ossetia in September.

I somehow doubt that Eduard Kokoity is feeling comfortable in his presidential chair.

Vertical of bureaucrats?

Vertical of Power (chairs)
[image source]

When I first saw Mikhail Khodorkovsky's missive about the importance of voting in the coming elections (the scanned letter, handwritten on school notebook paper, is worth checking out even if some might find MBKh's handwriting challenging in spots) on Ekho Moskvy's elections blog, I planned to translate it. Sean has beat me to it, and the letter has sparked a bit of a discussion at SRB.

But I wanted to focus on one of the things MBKh mentioned in his letter (my translation):

The bureaucracy, and today it in particular is our chief opponent, feels quite comfortable in an environment of social apathy. For the bureaucracy, this [environment] is a confirmation of their monopolistic right to rule the country as they see fit.

It is precisely the fact that citizens are prepared to entrust their choice, their fate, to a little-known bureaucrat that proves to them that it is unnecessary to take into account even minimally the opinion of the people.

Khodorkovsky's conclusion was that people should vote for any the less odious of the smaller parties. I wonder what he would be recommending if Russia still had the "against all" option on the ballot, as it has in previous election cycles.

Veronica at Neeka's Backlog ignited a comments clusterf*** (to use an ATL term, though I'm mildly ashamed to reveal that I read that blog regularly enough to know the local lingo) earlier this fall by declaring her intention to vote against all in the Ukrainian elections, so I guess some regard this as a cop-out option and one that concerned citizens should not take, but I think it is a good option to have on the ballot, and getting rid of it was of a piece with some of Putin's other reforms which strongly enhanced the "management" of Russian democracy. Actually, the Viitorul (Future) Institute's website, where I found the above image, has another poster which is applicable to one of Putin's more spectacular verticalizations of power in Russia:

Democracy without local autonomy is like a ladder without rungs
[image source]

But back to MBKh's focus on the bureaucracy as the rot at the core of the Putinist system. This seems to be one place where the opposition could gain some traction with the public - anyone who has confronted corrupt or indifferent bureaucrats in Russia (or anywhere else, for that matter) knows that such experiences can leave very strong feelings. The Moscow Times had a series of a few articles about various sdownsides of overbureaucratization during this year's slow August news period, though they weren't focused on grass-roots anti-bureaucrat sentiment.

But that sentiment is certainly there - a FOM poll earlier this year found that 23% Russians rated "bureaucracy, arbitrary rule by officials" as an annoying problem, a higher percentage than were annoyed by "lack of money for food and other goods" or "bad roads." And if you add in the 14% who noted "the poor performance of housing and public services" and the 14% who noted "corruption in regional government and legal institutions" as annoying (respondents were allowed to name up to five problems), it's obvious that a fairly large number of people are unhappy with the services they get from their flush-with-cash government.

The government deals with this by using their near-monopoly on the broadcast media to periodically publicize demonstrative anti-corruption crusades and by passing periodic pension increases, and so far it seems to be working - I doubt that any of MBKh's non-loathsome small parties will clear the barrier to enter the Duma, especially since it was hiked up a couple of percentage points by Putin in his earlier reform of the electoral process.

Traffic

Graphic from the "Tu nu esti marfa" ("You are not chattel") ad campaign,
developed by IOM and sponsored by, among others, USAID

A friend emailed me this link to a rather moving slideshow with audio about women who have been trafficked into prostitution from Moldova. This made me think about doing a more comprehensive post on the subject, but what I've wound up with is more like just a collection of links.

Natalia Antonova had a post recently dealing with some of the issues surrounding trafficking and prostitution in the former Soviet space.

The movie Lilya 4-ever does not deal specifically with Moldova but is about the trafficking of women from post-Soviet countries and is so good that it's even been screened by NGOs in an effort to deter young women from naively going abroad with perfect strangers. I've seen it and can recommend it.

This page appears to summarize much of the information about trafficking and anti-trafficking activity in Moldova, though it doesn't appear to have been updated for a couple of years. In 2003, this BBC article described Moldova as "Europe's human trafficking hub," and in 2004 RFE/RL wrote about young rural women being "vulnerable to human trafficking." Organizations that work on this issue (among others) are the Polaris Project and La Strada.

The OSCE Mission to Moldova's website has a page which includes pdfs of major anti-trafficking legislation and other reports on the issue. Jonathan at The Head Heeb has also blogged about some of the legal efforts to combat trafficking. The OSCE's page on trafficking also links to the Moldovan anti-trafficking and gender network, which has a page with a number of reports on the subject and has a profile of the problem in Moldova:

Poverty, inadequate public services, high levels of unemployment, discrimination against women, and domestic violence are among the main factors making Moldova a major country of origin for trafficking in human beings. According to recent data, around 420,000 Moldovans are currently abroad, primarily prompted to leave the country due to economic decline. However, of the Moldovans living abroad, no reliable data on the total number of trafficked persons is available given the multi-faceted nature of the crime and the absence of a standard identification procedure. None the less, information from countries of destination confirms a prominent number of Moldovan citizens among the identified trafficked persons.

From January 2000 to 31 December 2004, the total number of Moldovan nationals assisted as victims of trafficking by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was 1633. Most Moldovan victims are women and children trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, although a number of men have also been trafficked for forced labour and begging. Children are trafficked for sexual exploitation and begging.

The IOM reports that Moldovan victims have been trafficked to some 32 destination countries in Western Europe, South Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, including primarily Russia, and the United States. In 2004, the destination countries included Turkey (45%), South Eastern Europe (18%), the Middle East (15%), Russia (11%), and Western Europe (8%). Thus, the number of trafficked persons returning to Moldova, especially from the Western Balkans, is slowly declining, whilst the number of trafficked women returning from Turkey and Russia is increasing. There is also more information about trafficking from Moldova to Israel and the Middle East, as well as more evidence of children being trafficked to Russia.

Here's another older article from a Moldovan newspaper (in Russian), which purports to be based on an interview with a woman who was trafficked to Israel - the story is interesting because it goes into some detail about the long and winding path that groups of women often take to get to their destination abroad.

Blogger Mihai Moscovici wrote about the "Tu Nu Esti Marfa" anti-trafficking ad campaign in section 4.1 of his university thesis (in Romanian); the campaign was also covered by Newsweek at its peak back in 2002.

Dossiers on Transdniester

While mining the research riches of the internet, I happened upon the English-language website of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (CRJI). They have a couple of sets of stories which touch on Transdniester. The first, called "The Final Frontier," is from December 2003 and is actually about the EU's expansion. It includes only one article on Transdniester, titled "Transdnister [sic] - the kolkhoz of smugglers." While the English translation leaves something to be desired (from the first sentence: "A modern sports complex erects downtown."), and observers have toned down some of the smuggling allegations in recent years, it may be an interesting read anyway.

The second folder I wanted to mention is titled "Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika – Terra Incognita" and contains a number of articles dating from 2006. The following description is offered of the project:

The project "Transdniester - Revealing Europe's black hole" is an investigation of CRJI, financed by SCOOP in Danemark and SAS in Switzerland. The participants in this project are the following journalists: Vitalie Calugareanu (Chisinau), Vlad Lavrov (Kiev), Igor Boldyrev (Odessa), Alexander Bratersky (Moscova) and foto Robert Ghement.

The journalistic investigation was financed by the Scoop project (through the Danish Investigative Journalists Association – FUJ) and by the organization Small Arms Survey from Geneva.

I've become much more skeptical of internet news sources since seeing how slick propaganda sites can be made to look. As with any previously unknown source that one has only seen on the internet, I feel the need to offer some sort of disclaimer. On the other hand, far from looking like something set up just to criticize the de facto Transnistrian authorities, this organization appears to target all of the classic targets you would expect good investigative journalists in the region to go after - corrupt Romanian officials, organized crime, problems in Moldova (including a feature with video - in Romanian only - on the recent scandal about alleged visa-selling at the Romanian embassy in Chisinau) and even Romania's alleged discrimination against Muslims "in its zeal to please the US." So I'm pretty comfortable recommending its fairly recent, firsthand reporting from the PMR. Or how about this - as comfortable as I would be recommending the work of any other equal-opportunity-muckraking outlet. Anyway, I hadn't seen this before, so I wanted to share it.

Abkhazia goes for the gold?

A couple of weeks ago, I translated an article from Nezavisimaia Gazeta which is rather speculative but looked to be about some elements in the Russian government trying to use the award of the 2014 Winter Games to Sochi as an excuse to launder money in Abkhazia, raise the value of their investments there, or perhaps simply help out the separatists' cause. It ran in JRL, but I'm posting it here in lieu of more original content. The transition back to DC and impending parenthood are keeping me from spending my usual excessive amount of time online, which may be a good thing.

When word emerged that Sochi would be hosting the Games, I thought immediately about the repercussions for the conflict in Abkhazia, which is within spitting distance of Sochi. TOL's Steady State speculated that Sochi's hosting the 2014 Games might postpone resolution of the conflict until 2018, because there would be incentives to paper over differences and avoid potential flare-ups until the Games were over, and while I'd hope the opposite would be true and we could perhaps expect an accelerated, more focused approach to conflict resolution, their pessimistic guess is probably better than mine.

Anyway, here's the translation:

Svetlana Gamova
Abkhazia's Olympic Triumph
Nezavisimaia Gazeta, July 26, 2007

Russia to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the unrecognized republic

Sochi's victory in the contest to host the 2014 Winter Olympics has opened previously unheard of prospects for neighboring Abkhazia. Russia is planning to place in the unrecognized republic key elements of the construction complex that will guarantee the erection of the Olympic infrastructure. The amounts of investment currently under discussion are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Abkhazia's undeniable triumph could turn out to be quite costly for Russia itself – it complicates the already difficult relationship with Georgia and could lead to new problems with [Russia's] WTO accession.

As Abkhazia's Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told NG yesterday, in order to supply the needs of the Olympic construction complex, new facilities will be built in Abkhazia to produce cement and bricks and to mine gravel. However, he had a hard time naming the total cost of Abkhazia's "Olympic" program, saying that this issue is currently being discussed within the governments of Moscow and the Russian Federation. At the same time, according to information on the Abkhazian government's website, the construction of a cement factory in Tkvarcheli, which is proposed under the program, will alone cost investors $170 million. And that's just one factory. According to Sergei Shamba, there are also plans to establish a gravel production facility in the Gudauta region and a brick factory in the Gul'ripshskii region of the republic.

The Abkhazian Minister [Shamba] summed up Sukhumi's plans as follows: "In short, Abhkazia has been included in the Olympic zone, and the Russian investments are linked to our hopes for the development of our economy."

According to Shamba, the investment proposals were prepared in Sukhumi and given to the Russian government some time ago, but "Moscow paid attention to them only once it became clear that Sochi would host the Olympics." He also stated that possible investments in Abkhazia's resort zone, adjacent to Sochi, are under discussion within the Russian government. "It's clear that the Olympics will attract a large number of visitors who can also be housed on our territory [u nas]." Overall, though, added Shamba, Abkhazia's participation in Russia's preparation for the Olympics is founded on simple calculations which show that it is cheaper to transport building materials to Sochi from various regions of Abkhazia than from, say, Novorossiisk.

The administration of the Federal Development Program for Sochi [Federal'naia tselevaia programma po razvitiiu Sochi] did not confirm to NG that Abkhazia had been officially included in the Russian Olympic zone. FDP press-secretary Dmitrii Nezdorovin noted that "the Federal Development Program does not provide for sites located on the territory of another country." However, the FDP is only one of the sources of funding for construction related to the Olympics. The placement of construction industry facilities in neighboring Abkhazia is being discussed at the highest levels in Russia. For example, last Thursday, Vice-Premier Aleksandr Zhukov openly stated that Abkhazia would become one of the suppliers for construction materials for Sochi. According to him, cement factories might be built in Abkhazia that would supply material for the construction of the Olympic Village.

Tbilisi has not yet responded officially to this happy news for Sukhumi. Nino Kadzhaia, Director of the Georgian Foreign Ministry's Department of Information and Press, told NG that "Georgia's foreign ministry has no comment for the time being on the Russian Vice-Premier's statement about investment in construction in Abkhazia." At the same time Georgian politicians are not concealing their disapproval. Konstantin Gabashvili, the Chairman of the Georgian Parliament's Committee on External Contacts, had the following to say to NG yesterday about the situation: "I would ask my Russian colleagues not to use the preparations for the Olympics in Sochi as an excuse to complicate Russo-Georgian relations. Investment is possible, but it shouldn't be done over Tbilisi's head. It is essential that everything be agreed with the government of Georgia, whose territorial integrity Russia officially acknowledges. Investment in Abkhazia which is not approved by the Georgian leadership is a direct basis for the deepening of the conflict and damages Russo-Georgian relations."

According to the leader of the political movement "By Ourselves" ["My sami"] Paata Davitaia, "The Russian government's decision to invest $170 million to build a cement factory in Tkvarcheli on the territory of Abkhazia is a blatant violation of several international agreements." The Georgian politician referred to, among others, the agreement of the heads of the CIS states of January 19, 1996, which refers to economic sanctions against Abkhazia. "Another question arises: what tax service will monitor the expenditure of these not insignificant sums? The Abkhazian tax service, which is for all intents and purposes illegal? The Russian tax service? But this is not in their jurisdiction. Perhaps the Georgian tax service, which doesn't monitor the situation on separatist Abkhazian territory? All of this looks like money laundering," concluded Davitaia.

Moscow Carnegie Center expert Aleksei Malashenko told NG that Aleksandr Zhukov's statement could have a negative impact on relations between Russia and Georgia. "We are giving yet another excuse for Georgia to raise a question about Russia's WTO accession," said the Malashenko. According to him, in the story about Abkhazia's participation in the construction of Olympic sites "there is an element of senselessness: if cement is needed, it can be bought from a legitimate company in a legitimate country."

Georgia's official protest was swift enough, published on the IHT website (in an AP story) on the same date as the article I translated:

"Any joint projects between Moscow and Abkhazia failing to take into account Georgian interests wouldn't only draw Georgia's negative reaction, but will call into doubt the rightfulness of the selection of the Olympics' site," Burdzhanadze said Thursday.

The story covering Georgia's outrage also suggested that Shamba was running out in front of the train with his statements about huge Russian investment in the region:

No Russian officials have put forward any plans to involve Abkhazia in preparations for the Sochi Olympics, but Sergei Shamba, the foreign minister in the separatist government of Abkhazia, told Georgian television Thursday that the region was eager to offer construction materials and labor.

Russia has since denied (through Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) that involving Abkhazia in the preparations for the 2014 Games is "on the agenda." Furthermore, according to a post on this topic by cyxymu (heavily commented on, if you're interested in reading more about this and you read Russian), Gref (or at least his ministry) also denied that Russia has plans to invest in Abkhazia in connection with the Sochi Games. Cyxymu thinks this is a simple calculation - $170 million of investment in Abkhazia would lead to Russia losing a billion or more dollars a year by having its WTO membership blocked by Georgia.

Notwithstanding these denials and the above AP report, the statements coming from Russian officials have seemed as conflicted as Russia's long-term approach to settling the Abkhazian conflict:

There have been mixed signals coming from different levels of the Russian authorities on Abkhazia’s possible role in preparation for the Olympic Games in Sochi, which is less than 40 kilometers away from the breakaway region.

Moscow Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, said on July 9 that it was difficult to imagine holding the Olympics in Sochi without the participation of “such a kind neighbor as Abkhazia.”

On July 19 Russian Vice-Premier Alexander Zhukov said that cement-producing factories could be built in Abkhazia to supply the construction of infrastructure in Sochi. [...]

On July 27, Russian ambassador to Georgia, Vyacheslav Kovalenko said although Moscow was interested in Abkhazia’s involvement “no one has ever said that Russia is going to do this without Georgia."

On the other hand, the same article that quoted those statements also quoted Abkhazian "president" Sergei Bagapsh as saying the potential investment from Russia was around $15 million, an order of magnitude less than the figure cited by Shamba in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta article.

It seems obvious that all of the conflicting statements flying around are a result of the divergent interests of elites, even within the same country or de facto country. Some Russian officials have huge investments in Abkhazia and feel strongly that it should be returned more firmly and officially into Russia's orbit. It's a different matter whether their views on this preceded their property holdings, but now anyone who holds property in Abkhazia which was acquired after the shooting war ended has a strong incentive to make sure that Georgian refugees (with their pesky claims to their homes) and rule from Tbilisi (which might contest some of the "privatization" or "leasing" of public property) do not return to Abkhazia.

The approach of the group of Russian elites who seek official economic engagement with Abkhazia, which includes Mayor Luzhkov and some Duma Deputies (some of whom also like to play on the populist potential of Abkhazia) seems to run counter to the views of others who might have other priorities and be willing to use Abkhazia as a bargaining chip to pursue them. There are cleavages in Abkhazia as well, between more Russia-oriented elites (indeed, some officials in the de facto Abkhazian government are current or former officers in the Russian security services) and those who value the small measure of independence Abkhazia has attained, remember Russia's willingness to blockade Abkhazia in the 1990s, and/or realize that some in Russia may be willing to sell Abkhazia down the river if the right incentives come along.

Courtesy of two recent posts by cyxymu (which is easily my favorite blog about Abkhazia) on "How Abkhazia is Being Sold Off" - here and here - here are a couple of articles on the hot topic (especially during resort season) of Abkhazian real estate from Izvestiia and Kommersant-Vlast' (the latter is titled "Подмосковный абхазский округ," or - roughly - "Moscow Suburban District of Abkhazia"). OK, that parentheses-laden sentence tells me I've lost the thread, and it's time to go back to reconnecting with DC - by which I mean baking in the near-record heat on my way to taking refuge from said heat in a movie theater.

[Update Aug 10] I've found a few links I'd saved back when I first translated this piece. They may not be so relevant, but here goes: Russian official (interestingly, the presidential property manager) denying that Abkhazia would pose a "threat" to the Sochi Games; a piece by Molly Corso citing "experts" suggesting that Sochi's getting the Games could "create yet another obstacle to the resolution" of the "frozen conflicts" in Georgia; and a Guardian Unlimited commentator opining about the significance of the decision to give the 2014 Games to Sochi in general.

[Update Aug 11] Vilhelm Konnander also had an interesting post about his first thoughts on learning of Sochi's getting the 2014 Winter Games.

Tangerines, Moldovans far from home, and a river named Psou

This nearly five-year-old story definitely fits into the "truth is stranger - and sometimes more tragic - than fiction" category:

Tangerine Fever Grips Abkhazia By Inal Khashig on the Psou River
(IWPR Caucasus Reporting Service No.156, 21-Nov-2002)

The "yellow fever" season has begun in Abkhazia.

That is what Abkhaz call the time of year when the tangerine harvest is ripe and thousands of residents of the unrecognised republic flock to its northern border with Russia to trade them.

Since the end of the war with Georgia in 1993, the tangerine trade has become the main source of income for Abkhaz families. With the region's chronic lack of employment, the money they earn in the three months of the season must be enough to sustain them over the rest of the year.

With the border closed to the south, the tangerine traders all head north to the river Psou that divides Abkhazia from Russia. Here on either side of a narrow bridge, the respective customs services have set up posts. [...]

"I could trade my tangerines on the Abkhaz side too, but the price here is much lower than on the Russian side and my family badly needs the extra roubles," said Nadezhda, a woman in her fifties, standing in the long queue.

She said the salary she earned after 30 years teaching as a maths teacher was not enough to live on. Which is why she has to spend her weekends ferrying up to 50 kilogrammes of tangerines in a small cart, made out of an old child's pram. When she has sold her cargo, she generally uses the money to buy food, which is cheaper in Russia.

"My daughter-in-law used to come here," Nadezhda said. "But she developed health problems and the doctors told her that if she did not stop dragging heavy loads, she could not have children. So I took over the tangerines. Otherwise we would have nothing to feed the family." [...]

The most industrious of these traders earn up to 300 roubles (a little less than ten dollars) a day, which in Abkhazia is regarded as a good wage. Over the last two years, they have been joined by people from the North Caucasus and places as far a field as Moldova and Ukraine.

"When I was a child, tangerines were a fantastic treat, but now I can't bear the sight of them," said Svetlana Koditsa, from the town of Beltsy [Bălţi] in Moldova.

Svetlana makes three trips across the border a day before she has something left over from what she pays to cover her accommodation, food and bribes to the police, who, she complains, demand money even from those standing patiently in line.

"You try not to give it to them and they might not let you through," she said angrily. [...]

The whole story is worth a read, as it talks a bit about who profits from the trade and why the problem is intractable - an object study in corruption. I would imagine things have changed for the better since 2002, but perhaps not by much.

I found this story last fall while doing research on Russia's passportization campaign in Abkhazia. The article at one point mentions all of the Abkhazians* who had recently begun to receive Russian passports - and perhaps citizenship, depending on what you think constitutes citizenship. I decided to try to find the story once again and post the part about poor Svetlana from Balti, and it was easy to find - I just googled "Psou tangerine Moldova," and the article was, of course, the first result.

Incidentally, IWPR is a treasure trove of searchable, first-hand reporting by local correspondents. They even publish (online it's in pdf format) a locally oriented newspaper, Panorama, in Georgian and Russian, which turned out to be a good source of citations about Russian economic interests in Abkhazia (e.g., the Moscow Military District renting a Sukhumi resort for use by its personnel) and the local controversy they create; and about some of the ongoing debates in local politics. Of all of the post-Soviet secessionist statlets, Abkhazia seems to have the most developed political culture - elections which even Moscow can't fully control, for example.

For some stunning photos from Abkhazia, check out LJ user kunstkamera's recent set (HT Levan); this railway-themed set from cyxymu (who has many other photos from the region), recently featured at Registan; and of course the set I linked to earlier here.


*I prefer to use a non-ethnic term referring to people of all nationalities who live in Abkhazia, since the ethnic Abkhaz are still not a majority there - even after ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Georgians, they are but a plurality in their own land, which they share with Russians, Armenians, and some returned Georgians. And of course, statistics from the region are unreliable and disputed.