Georgia Wins Fashion Battle - Update

"Advertisements for Benetton clothing have often promoted international harmony and goodwill, but the fashion company's controversial plan to launch a fashion shop in a war-ravaged corner of the former Soviet Union has drawn it into a bitter political dispute..." There's more about this unusual row in my report for the Wall Street Journal here.

Georgia Wins Fashion Battle

Benetton clothing shops in Georgia have been closed for several days in protest against Benetton Turkey’s announcement that it was planning to open a store in Sukhumi, the capital of the disputed region of Abkhazia. "Protest Against Opening of Benetton Shop in Sukhumi" read signs hung in the shops’ windows in Tbilisi this week.

The Black Sea region of Abkhazia broke away from Georgian government control after a civil war in the early 1990s; Russia recently recognised it as an independent state, but Georgians still consider it part of their sovereign territory. Any international investment there without permission is seen by Georgia as a crime; hence the anger at the proposal from the Turkish associate of the Italian fashion firm.

Now it seems the Georgians have carried the day, in fashion terms at least, with reports that Benetton Turkey won’t open the store in Abkhazia after all, leaving the rebellious Abkhazians without a source of chic knitwear products. A statement said the company had reversed its decision to "decrease tension that would have nothing to do with a commercial firm".

It’s a small consolation for Georgia, however, which lost the only little piece of Abkhazia it controlled – a remote mountain gorge – during the war with Russia last year. Tens of thousands of Georgians who fled the original conflict still live in dilapidated temporary accommodation, 15 years afterwards, many of them still dreaming of going back to their homes, but now having to face the depressing likelihood that it may never be possible.

'Black Hole' in South Ossetia?

After the war with Georgia last year, Russia recognised the tiny, impoverished rural region of South Ossetia as an independent state. Moscow has now deployed border guards to police the frontlines and is in the process of establishing military bases there to defend against what it describes as potential Georgian "aggression" in the future. Russia also promised large amounts of aid to help rebuild and revitalise the area. But according to the Associated Press, some former South Ossetian officials are deeply unhappy about the post-war situation, alleging that "tyranny and official corruption" have flourished. "What has happened practically a year after the war? Nothing. Not one apartment has been rebuilt, not one business has recuperated," claimed a former security council chief who is now in opposition. Citing the same former-officials-turned-dissidents, analyst Paul Goble also suggested in a recent column that South Ossetia is now a kind of black hole; an area "free from law". The allegation of institutional corruption has been strongly rejected by the South Ossetian authorities, who insist that only around a fifth of Russia's promised reconstruction aid has actually arrived and therefore, in the words of the information minister, "there is literally nothing to steal". Either version of the 'truth', however, appears to represent bad news for people living in the conflict zone as they try to recover from the wartime devastation - not to mention the many thousands of people who were driven out of South Ossetia by the fighting and have little prospect of ever going home.

(The photograph which accompanies this entry shows the sign for Stalin Street in the centre of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. I took the photo in 2006, and the Georgian version of the street name is clearly visible between the Ossetian and Russian-language versions - although that, of course, may now have changed.)

Pop Goes the Frontline

More notes on the musical showdown between Georgia and Russia, from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

Pop music became the latest political battleground between Georgia and Russia over the weekend, as the government in Tbilisi tried to take some of the glitterball shine off the Eurovision song contest in Moscow by financing a rival rock festival which celebrated “freedom” and “European culture”. The implication being, presumably, that Tbilisi’s enemies in the Kremlin cherish neither of them.

Georgia had withdrawn its entry to this year’s Eurovision after the lyrics to the song, We Don’t Wanna Put In – an impudent snipe at the Russian prime minister set to a kitschy disco beat – were judged to be unacceptably political by the organisers. If the song was intended to cause controversy, have some fun at Moscow’s expense and put Georgia back in the international headlines, it worked. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman described it as an act of musical “hooliganism”, although Georgian officials insisted that Eurovision’s ruling was politically-motivated censorship. They responded by backing a lavish three-day festival called Tbilisi Open Air - Alter/Vision, one of the biggest musical events ever held in this country.

This isn’t the first time that pop has been used for political purposes here in Georgia. During the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003 which swept President Mikheil Saakashvili to power, the country’s best-known rockers fuelled insurrectionary fervour by playing live to protesters outside parliament as they struggled to oust Georgia’s former leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. In recent weeks, demonstrations against Saakashvili have been partly inspired by a controversial pop star who has ‘imprisoned’ himself in an imitation jail cell to create an unusual anti-government reality-television show. Opposition activists have followed his lead by blocking streets outside parliament and other state buildings with hundreds of similar ‘cells’.

Georgia may have received a propaganda boost from this year’s Eurovision, but in 2008, it wasn’t so fortunate. Last year’s entry was sung by Diana Gurtskaya, a blind refugee from Abkhazia, the Moscow-backed rebel region which split from Georgian government control during a vicious civil war in the early 1990s. “My land is still crying, torn in half,” she wailed. “Something’s gotta change, something’s gotta change!” But the title of her song, Peace Will Come, could hardly have been a more inaccurate prediction: just three months after the Eurovision finals, Georgia was at war again, and the “cold bitter tears” of Gurtskaya’s lyrics continued to flow.

Everyday Chaos in Tbilisi

Last week was another remarkable few days of chaos, intrigue and unresolved mystery in Georgia. An alleged uprising at a military base the day before prestigious NATO exercises were due to begin; arrests of alleged coup plotters; late-night clashes between protesters and policemen at police headquarters; the continued opposition blockade of several main streets in the centre of the capital... as Paul Rimple notes on his Tbilisi Blues blog, what’s abnormal in most countries is everyday reality here.

Saturday marked a month since the non-stop protests began, and the opposition held one of its biggest rallies for weeks - intended to send out a message that although they are now negotiating with the authorities, they aren’t about to back down. “No one believed we would still be here after a month,” declared one opposition leader, who went on to insist that the government had “stopped functioning” and that President Mikheil Saakashvili was “on his way out”. But although government sessions are currently being held in Tbilisi hotels and provincial overnment offices because parliament is permanently under blockade, there is absolutely no sign that Saakashvili will step down, as the opposition is demanding.

At the rally, some opposition leaders and activists wore bandages and plasters, indicating that they were wounded during the clashes with police last week. The most dramatic moment came when one opposition leader with his head swathed in bandages was theatrically helped to the microphone by one of his comrades. He was welcomed as a hero - but even though the protest had a real sense of energy and enthusiasm for a change, a mere 20,000 people on the streets will not exactly shake the foundations of the Saakashvili regime. In other words, the political stand-off here is not over yet.

Deadlock in 'Cell City'

More notes on the continuing opposition protests here in Georgia, from my column in The Moscow Times:

The struggle for power in Georgia is now in its fourth week, with parts of the capital, Tbilisi, under constant blockade. The opposition has established what it calls a ‘city of cells’ – hundreds of imitation prison cells, built from steel bars, rope and polythene sheeting – to seal off roads outside parliament, the presidential residence, and the state television channel. Opposition leaders say the cells, which symbolise the alleged authoritarianism of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime, will stay until the Georgian leader steps down. Saakashvili isn’t about to do that, so activists are settling in for war of attrition.

One strange thing about the ‘city of cells’, however, is how few people actually live in it. Daily rallies are poorly-attended, usually attracting a couple of thousand protesters, but far fewer are dedicated enough to brave the elements day and night for their cause. Their encampment also doesn’t have the flamboyant creativity of the tent city in Kiev during Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004, or the courageous urgency of the youth activist camp which held out briefly but defiantly for a few days after disputed elections in repressive Belarus in 2006. For most of the time, the serene atmosphere on the near-deserted streets of central Tbilisi is more like a public holiday than a political uprising.

But the cell-dwellers genuinely believe that they’re engaged in a battle of good against evil. A middle-aged man called Lado, who travelled from the Black Sea region of Adjara to join the protests, said he was once a Saakashvili supporter during the optimistic early days of his presidency.

“I was enthusiastic about Misha – he was clever, good-looking, the youngest president in Europe,” he recalled. “I hoped the world would love him.” After a series of flawed elections and last year’s disastrous war with Russia, that hope is long gone, Lado said ruefully: “I’m not motivated by personal hatred,” he insisted. “Misha just didn’t do the right thing.”

Another middle-aged man, Gela, said this was an all-or-nothing struggle for the nation’s future. “If this protest ends in failure, we are lost,” he argued. “There is no other choice left. We have no way back.”

This kind of rhetoric illustrates why compromise has been so hard to find. Opposition leaders simply don’t trust Saakashvili, and say they’ll settle for nothing less than his resignation. The administration, which has allowed the protests to continue to prove that Georgia is democratic, can’t now remove the cells without appearing oppressive. With the situation in stalemate, each side awaits the other’s next move.