While all the focus is on Iran’s street riots over a possibly-rigged election, let us turn our attention to U.S. ally The Republic of Georgia. Georgia, if you recall, was embroiled in a nasty little border war with Russia this past August, and was pretty successful in pinning much of the blame on Russia’s “aggression.”
An unpublished European Union report, however, casts doubt on that version of events:
The confidential investigative commission documents, which SPIEGEL has obtained, show that the task of assigning blame for the conflict has been as much of a challenge for the commission members as it has for the international community. However, a majority of members tend to arrive at the assessment that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili started the war by attacking South Ossetia on August 7, 2008. The facts assembled on Tagliavini’s desk refute Saakashvili’s claim that his country became the innocent victim of “Russian aggression” on that day.
In summarizing the military fiasco, commission member Christopher Langton, a retired British Army colonel, claims: “Georgia’s dream is shattered, but the country can only blame itself for that.”
Another commission member, Bruno Coppieter, a political scientist from Brussels, even speculates whether the Georgian government may have had outside help in its endeavor. “The support of Saakashvili by the West, especially military support,” Coppieter writes, “inadvertently promoted Georgia’s collision course.”
Now, the report is not as unanimous as that makes it seem, and the commission investigating the war saves a lot of condemnation for both Russia and South Ossetia as well (Russia, for example, violated its own cease-fire more than once, and occupied Georgia longer than was necessary to make its point). But, especially considering the über-heated condemnations of Russia as the new Stalin (or whatever, it got crazy in the U.S.), and the Georgian president lounging around the outrageously decadent Manhattan digs of hack wannabe journalists, and the 5,000-word press releases people seemed to consider actual news… well, it’s worth remembering that Georgia is no innocent lamb in its bickering with Russia.
Then, there are the previous three months of riots in Tblisi. Starting in the beginning of April, Georgia’s opposition movement promised to protest daily until the President quits. They pretty much have since, despite numerous beatings of both activists and the journalists covering them. My favorite? The plainclothes policemen who wade into crowds of protesters before beating them with truncheons.
Now, this is an American ally, the recipient of a billion dollars in U.S. foreign aid right after it started a war, the owner of a shiny new “strategic partnership” with the U.S., who has spent the last several months beating up opposition politicians and even journalists… and there is scarcely a peep either in the halls of Washington or even the blogs now seemingly (and suddenly) obsessed with Iran’s fake “democracy.”
Why is it news when a brutal regime beats up the same wealthy, urban youth they beat up every few years? Why is it not news when a subsidized American ally brutalizes its own opposition movement for far longer than Iran’s weekend of excitement? I really don’t know. But it is really starting to bother me.
Registan.net’s continuing coverage of Georgia’s border conflicts is here.
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Why is Georgia not news? The same reason Bhutto was the Great White Hope for Pakistan: Anglophone newsmedia is going to give the benefit of the doubt to anglophones, especially ones with gaudy graduate degrees. Misha has a LLM from Columbia and was a Human Rights Man of the Year a decade ago. That CV makes him bona fide as for as most folks are concerned.
The facts seem to be less relevant than the narrative, which I’m sure isn’t news to you. And, of course, Georgia is a sleepy backwater with a confusing name, and Iran has tens of millions of people and superpower aspirations. The only thing Georgia really has going for it is oil company and arms company PR engines. Otherwise its kind of 1910 Ottoman Empire in miniature.
FWIW, I wrote a bit about why Georgia needs a PR campaign by someone with an idea of place branding. It’s a bit dated by now, but I think its still interesting. http://asherj.blogspot.com/2007/11/and-whole-world-loves-it-when-youre-in.html
I take issue with your line, “Why is it news when a brutal regime beats up the same wealthy, urban youth they beat up every few years? ”
1) It’s way more than the kids from north Tehran vs the basiji. You know this. And it’s not “every few years” by any stretch. It’s been a decade since the last real outpouring of anger on the streets, and this time it’s even bigger.
2) Hmmm…maybe because the campaigns (especially details like the involvement of Zahra Rahnavard) and the post-election rioting blow a huge, gaping hole in US mainstream rhetoric about Iran. Facepalm over this if you want –I have– but a lot of people in this country are *genuinely* surprised by the stories they’re reading and images they’re seeing. “Suddenly” Iran is a complicated place maybe not entirely full of evil, nuke-happy, irrational Persian Hitlers. As someone generally concerned with oversimplified narratives, you should be happy about this development, however imperfect it is.
3) These are the largest anti-government demonstrations in Iran since ‘79. That is news, however you want to spin it.
4) The demonstrations are getting violent. This could turn into a bloodbath like the demonstrations ten years ago did. (Many of the leaders of those protests are still rotting in jail.)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html
+1 to Transitionland.
These are much bigger than what happened even in 1999. The level of fraud is far greater, the challenge to the old guard revolutionaries by Ahmadinejad is much more threatening. The backdown by Khamanei did not happen in 1999.
I like the wait and see attitude, but to so who-cares dismissive of what is occurring in Iran is ridiculous. The level of violence alone in the past 24 hours, with reports of several people being killed in Tehran and around the country, far exceeds what we have seen in Georgia.
Anybody who doesn’t think all the “news” coming from Iran isn’t a propaganda cover for the repeat of the 1953 US-backed overthrow of Mossadegh his or hers Iq is lower than the dirt I stand on!
Yeah, this is looking more and more like a repeat of 1953.
Yes, it is “best to stay Unknown” when you type exceedingly stupid things in blog comment threads.
I’d say you are not the only one who’s bothered… A friendly regime is a friendly regime is a friendly regime… That’s it…
I am not a foreign policy analyst or expert but there is a question that bothers me – along the same lines. And I hope I am not misusing this forum to ask for your thoughts…
In Pakistan, there is a distinction made between Sufi (or the gentler) Islam vs. the more stringent Saudi Wahabbism sponsored and emanating from Saudi Arabia.
So, when talking about striking the roots of Islamic extremism, why are we not seeing any action against the Saudis – state or non-state actors, as people like to differentiate nowadays? I guess the answer is probably oil…
Is my line of thought totally screwed or whether there really does exist a fundamental barrier to containing Islamic extremism?
Okay you guys. I admit I wrote off Iran before all the craziness, including dead protestors, went down. So take that for what it is.
As for Georgia… I dunno, I still think it’s pretty major news that a country we choose to lavish with billions of dollars, free military assistance, and so on, is rather violently cracking down on its own political opposition. The Iranian situation is absolutely a huge deal, but at the same time we kind of expect there to be upheaval (the pundits were buzzing about this for weeks ahead of time). Georgia? Well, even though they’ve had their own share of democracy protests, to me that’s just as big a deal.
IMO, the difference is that what happens in Georgia is much more a matter of proxy warfare: the ‘revolution’ that brought Saakshvili to power was propped-up by a whole range of opposition groups, media and non-governmnetal organisations that were in one way or another Western-supported or Westre-trained and active in the country for years. Part of the present opposition against Saakashvili is Russian-backed.
In Iran it’s less and more an internal rift. What does calls up sinister memories are the ‘rival rallies’ that are going on in Teheran: the supporters of A’Nejad and those of Musavi, cf. the rival rallies of the Communist Popular Front versus the United Tajik Opposition in Dushanbe back in 1991.
@Transitionland: Cf. “Iran is a complicated place maybe not entirely full of evil, nuke-happy, irrational Persian Hitlers.”
You know what the irony is? Many may associate the Islamic republic with the Third Reich after Ahmadi-Nejad’s little ‘choquez le bourgeois’ games about the Holocaust and Israël. Yet in reality, the most cozy relations between Iran and the Third Reich occured under the very secular Reza Pahlavi senior. In 1936-37 Germany was Iran’s first trade partners and ideologically, the Nazis and the cult of Persian Arians had a match.
@Paritosh: Interesting question indeed. To me though, the most important dynamic within Islam in Pakistan is not between Sufism and Wahhabism, but between Sufism (which is followed by >50% of the population but stagnating) and the Sunni Deobandiyya movement (less than 30% but increasing) which is not Saudi-backed Wahhabism.
“In Iran it’s less and more an internal rift” should of course be “…less clear-cut…”. Scuzi.
Joshua, you are everyone’s favourite perpetually cranky Central Asia expert.
I’m not always cranky! Well, okay I am. But it’s not my fault. I’m a victim here!
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