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Friday,
August 17,
2007, #157 (1424)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Zaramag hydroelectiric station in North Ossetia. It should have been a standard ribbon-cutting, but an otherwise unremarkable photo op attracted attention for a comment on Ossetian unity. "We want all Ossetians to live together regardless of where the border runs. The Ossetians are a single nation," he proclaimed, according to Regnum reports of the event. Georgian officials were less than pleased. Russia hardly makes a secret of its support for the separatist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Tbilisi fears a crawling annexation of the secessionist-controlled territories, done alternatively through economic and political means. In South Ossetia, it's been more political, with Russian passports issued, referenda held, and noises made about the ties between South and North Ossetia (a Russian republic). What those ties could produce is now a center stage question. Lavrov's statement flamed suspicions among Georgians that Moscow is planning, under a lofty banner of respect for cultural integrity, to bring together the peoples in the neighboring regions as one entity under Russian jurisdiction. Inconveniently, one of those two regions is Georgian. The more rabid politicians are happy to take Lavrov up on a slightly-spun version of his offer. Zviad Dzidziguri of the Conservative Party said that if the Russian foreign minister wants all the Ossetians to live together, he can go ahead and take all the South Ossetian separatists to the north for good. Ossetians today are already scattered. Even in Georgia, there are more Ossetians living outside their titular region than inside South Ossetia itself-by some counts, three times as many. Presumably, they're invited to participate in Lavrov's new extraterritorial representation scheme for the Ossetian people. Or perhaps not. Lavrov's rhetoric was a vague generality, but it's been understood correctly: the Kremlin wants to join, or wants to threaten to join, South and North Ossetia under the Russian Federation. Some are counting on Moscow's follow-through. The North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz is inviting the de facto government of South Ossetian for a joint session, where they will trumpet activities carried out together in the last year and highlight ways to bring the two regions closer together in the next. One link is physical. Russia is making quick progress on a 163-kilometer long natural gas pipeline from North to South Ossetia. The separatist region currently depends on Georgia for its gas, and Russia must have profits of a non-monetary sort in mind as they hook up the lightly-populated region to its energy network. The pipeline is being built without any agreements, or even negotiations, with Tbilisi. State Minister for Conflict Resolution Davit Bakradze had that and other encroachments on Georgian sovereignty in mind as he "expressed surprise" at Lavrov's statement in Vladikavkaz. "If he's talking about cultural or humanitarian contacts, those certainly should be promoted, but it's utterly incomprehensible that the foreign minister ignores the concept of borders." Of course, it's
far from incomprehensible. Just the opposite-Lavrov's meaning is clear.
Georgia will need to be continuously wary of threatening pipelines and
exploitative rhetoric. |
All
the Ossetians living together? Russia's lip service to cultural unity
more danger for Georgia