This is Tbilisi Calling

Pride and Prejudice

2010-09-01T14:23:00.002+04:00

Some thoughts on the Gay Pride parade that never was (and never will be, if some politicians here in Tbilisi get their way)...

An event which was never even planned and would probably be impossible to stage has created a summertime scandal in Georgia – a row which has again highlighted the dubious ideologies of some politicians who claim to be democrats.

Rumours that that a Gay Pride march was due to take place this month started circulating on internet forums earlier in the year. A Georgian opposition leader then entered the debate, suggesting that the government was responsible for organising it, as part of what he described as its mission to destroy Georgian values: “The goal is to break this absolutely rock-solid part of the Georgian mentality and Georgian identity - Christian morality,” alleged the oppositionist, former minister Goga Khaindrava.

A few days ago, the highly influential Georgian Orthodox Church issued a statement calling on the authorities to prevent the acolytes of “Sodom and Gomorrah” from marching through the streets, in order to avoid social unrest. “Homosexual deviation is a great sin,” admonished the Georgian Patriarchate. It also warned that those who supported the legalisation of homosexuality would suffer “God’s wrath” and bring down divine punishment on the entire country.

Homosexuality has, of course, been legal in Georgia for several years, and the country is signed up to European anti-discrimination conventions. But the authorities have kept silent on the row so far, perhaps because they’re fearful of public disapproval in what remains an overwhelmingly socially conservative nation. Three years ago, an event dedicated to ‘tolerance’ was even cancelled after rumours spread that it was going to be a gay-rights promotion.

Some opposition radicals – including, ironically, a representative of the ‘Freedom’ party - have been using the mythical Pride march to try to make political capital at the expense of Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration. By doing so, they’ve shown that they have less concern for human rights than a government which they accuse of restricting civil liberties.

But Paata Subelashvili, a spokesman for Georgia’s only gay-rights organisation, the Inclusive Foundation, said he wasn’t worried by such displays of what he called “modern-day primitive thinking”. Subelashvili believes, somewhat optimistically, that the scandal has at least inspired a public debate about homosexuality. “There is progress because it’s no longer a taboo, it’s being discussed,” he explained. “Even such negative things can be positive in the long run.”

Stalin Returns to Ukraine

2010-05-18T07:08:00.004+04:00

The first new statue of Josef Stalin to be erected in Ukraine for decades has caused controversy in the country. Watch my report for Al Jazeera here... when I went to film it in the city of Zaporizhzhia in south-eastern Ukraine last week, it was an absolute coincidence that I met a fanatical Communist who was also called Stalin.

Unholy Row Over 'Sacrilegious' Book

2010-05-05T17:22:00.003+04:00

Scuffles between a small group of free-speech campaigners and hardline Orthodox Christians outside a university in the Georgian capital yesterday have generated passionate but widely differing reactions here.

Giorgi Lomsadze reports in a blog post on the EurasiaNet website that the row began after a promotional event at the university for a new book which apparently mocks the Church – the most respected institution in the country. According to Lomsadze: “The title of the book, Saidumlo Siroba, is a profane send-up of the Georgian term for the Last Supper. (It translates literally as ‘Secret Hogwash’, but is closer to ‘Holy Crap’.)”

A post on media.ge suggests that the Orthodox protesters accused their liberal opponents of being traitors, scum, promoters of homosexuality and enemies of Georgia, then started to physically assault them. One prominent opposition politician, Conservative Party leader Zviad Dzidziguri, who’s currently standing in elections for the position of Mayor of Tbilisi, is reportedly backing calls for the controversial book to be banned.

The row follows a fierce dispute last year about a series of video clips which mocked the head of the Church. Musing on yesterday’s clashes, Tbilisi blogger Isterika says that he believes that some kind of cultural “war” is now going on in Georgia.

EurasiaNet’s Giorgi Lomsadze doesn’t see it in such apocalyptic terms, however: “The scuffles are symptomatic of challenges faced by Georgia as it tries to reconcile its reverence for the Church, part and parcel of the country’s national identity, with the dose of cosmopolitan liberalism that democracy and international openness bring,” he writes.

The Killer Instinct

2010-05-05T12:11:00.006+04:00

Leaders of former Soviet states sometimes like to portray themselves as muscular 'action men'. Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has often been photographed, bare-chested with a knife at his belt, on hunting trips in the wilder reaches of his country (see comprehensive gallery here). The latest to do so is former Armenian president Robert Kocharyan (see photo above), whose wildlife-blasting African safari jaunt last year was recently highlighted by Armenian blogger Unzipped. There's more info about the source of the photos on the Global Voices site here.

Building for Victory

2010-04-29T12:09:00.003+04:00

In a month’s time, people in Tbilisi will be electing a new mayor, and in the run-up to the polls, parts of the Georgian capital are being refurbished at remarkable speed. Roads are being repaired, historic neighbourhoods renovated, and across the Mtkvari river which flows through the Georgian capital, a new pedestrian bridge is being built - a huge modernist slug of glass and metal called the Peace Bridge (see photo above). Critics say it’s an oversized monstrosity, but according to President Mikheil Saakashvili, its architecture is “a symbol of Georgia’s transition from the past to a better future”, demonstrating how this country is becoming part of contemporary European civilisation.

People here often like to give monuments satirical nicknames, like the Soviet-era concrete arches (now demolished) which used to be known as ‘Andropov’s Ears’, in tribute to the former Communist leader Yuri Andropov. Some people refer to the glass dome which sits atop Saakashvili’s Reichstag-style presidential palace as ‘Misha’s Egg’, while the Georgian nickname for the bizarre but magnificent former Transport Ministry building on the edge of the capital is too obscene to publish here. And the new Peace Bridge? Due to its shape, which somewhat resembles a giant sanitary towel, scurrilous jokers in Tbilisi are already calling it ‘Always Ultra’.

Sceptics have been complaining that funds are being invested in sprucing up the urban environment just before a crucial election, and at a time when many commercial construction projects have been put on hold due to the continuing effects of the global financial crisis and the post-war economic slump here. But the authorities are determined to give Tbilisi a make-over and reverse some of its post-Soviet decay, and - politics aside - there’s little doubt that some neglected districts of the city centre will look more attractive in the months to come. Whether the money is being well-spent, however, is up to the voters to decide.

Yogurt or Vodka?

2010-04-17T12:44:00.004+04:00

Claims were made earlier this year that the 'world's oldest woman' is alive and thriving in Georgia. The alleged 129-year-old, Antissa Khvichava, lives in a rural village and was shown playing backgammon and drinking vodka in television footage distributed to the international media by a Georgian broadcaster.

But considering how often claims about extraordinary longevity are made and later disproved, it comes as no surprise that some Georgian experts are now suggesting that it probably isn't true, according to an admirably sceptical report by Molly Corso on the Eurasianet website.

However, despite the official statistics on the average life expectancy in Georgia (75.3 years for women, 66.4 years for men), this region does have a reputation for human longevity - as illustrated by the advertisement above, which was filmed in 1977 for a yogurt company. Maybe a vodka manufacturer will now seek out Antissa Khvichava to make a follow-up advert promoting the virtues of a regular intake of strong alcohol...

Whistleblower Wins Again

2010-04-15T15:05:00.003+04:00

Good news stories aren’t so frequent here in the Caucasus region, so when they do come along, they’re worth celebrating. Last year, Armenian environmental activist Mariam Sukhudyan was facing a possible five-year prison sentence for slander after exposing alleged abuse at a children’s home. The charges were finally dropped a few weeks ago, and in another welcome development, Sukhudyan and her colleagues won first prize at the Social Innovation Camp event here in Tbilisi last weekend with their web project aimed at combatting ecological damage to forests.

Here's more on the scandal caused by the prosecution of Sukhudyan, from a piece I wrote for The Moscow Times recently:

A young activist working as a volunteer at a residential school for orphans and children with mental disabilities exposes allegations of physical and sexual abuse. A nationwide scandal follows, with calls for a full investigation. What happens next? No, the whistleblower isn’t praised, but charged with slander and threatened with five years in prison.

That was the situation in Armenia last year, when activist Mariam Sukhudyan took the allegations of child abuse to the national media. But this month, after a long campaign, justice finally triumphed, and Sukhudyan was vindicated. The charges were dropped and a prosecution was launched against a former teacher.

A few months ago, I visited the school – an old Soviet institution on a windswept hilltop outside the capital, Yerevan - to find out what had happened there. The staff, desperate to prove that no abuse took place, gave me a guided tour and insisted that Sukhudyan and other activists who also worked as volunteers were deluded. “Because they were so young and inexperienced, they didn’t understand that every child here has mental disabilities and very active imaginations,” argued one staff member. Disturbing video testimony from one of the children told a different story, however.

The scandal exposed the grim conditions in some of Armenia’s ageing juvenile institutions, which child welfare experts believe should be transformed or shut down. The government has been trying to reform, but not fast enough. Sukhudyan, who is also a committed environmental activist, told me that she felt she had to speak out on behalf of those who could not. This view was echoed by the United States ambassador to Yerevan, who recently presented her with the embassy’s 2010 ‘Woman of Courage’ award, and spoke of her “determination to act in order to right a wrong, in spite of the personal sacrifices it entailed”.

Sukhudyan hopes that the case against her has helped to open up a closed system to public scrutiny. “We can already see some changes,” she said. “Interest and attention towards children in special schools has considerably grown, people are more informed about the situation.” But although she no longer faces a jail sentence, it’s clear that those in power still need to do more to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

Showdown in Shukhuti

2010-04-12T11:28:00.007+04:00

It's just after 10am in Shukhuti, western Georgia, and an Orthodox priest is preparing to drink wine from an empty ball before the start of one of this region's most unusual sporting rituals. More from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

The huge scrum of bodies heaved its way through the village, smashing through fences, gardens and orchards, scaling walls and scrabbling across muddy ditches. Men screamed out in pain and passionate determination, grappling and grunting as they battled for control of the heavy leather ball which is the focus of the traditional Georgian ritual called Lelo Burti.

Lelo Burti is only played once a year, on Easter Sunday, and only in the village of Shukhuti. Men from the upper and lower halves of the village compete against each other in a spectacularly chaotic, no-holds-barred struggle to get the ball to a river on the other half’s side. Whichever side gets there first is the winner; there are no other rules.

It’s a carnival of barely-restrained aggression, fuelled by gallons of home-made wine. The morning before the game, players gathered to drink toasts from the empty ball, before it was packed tight with 16 kilogrammes of soil, then topped up with yet more wine.

The local Orthodox priest, who always blesses the ball before the match begins, told me that while Georgia was under Soviet rule, the authorities wanted to ban Lelo because of its links to the Church. “They wanted to destroy people’s traditions, and by doing that, they wanted to destroy their national identity. The Communists hated Jesus Christ and our Georgian traditions,” said the genial Father Saba, whose burly physique attests to his past as a Greco-Roman wrestler.

Lelo is still played in Shukhuti in exactly the same way as it has been for generations. It’s seen in Georgia as a predecessor to rugby, and injuries are borne proudly: “Of course I’m not afraid. There’s no fear in this game!” yelled one bruised and dirt-spattered player as he threw down his ripped shirt and charged back into the fray. “This is our tradition!” shouted his friend. “Long live Georgia!”

After the match ended, the ball was taken to the cemetery and placed as a tribute on the grave of a young man who died during the past year. Throughout the graveyard, mouldering balls from earlier contests lie next to headstones. A wooden table was then set up in the churchyard; food and wine were laid out, and villagers came together to celebrate, with Father Saba leading the festivities. After a day of ferocious brawling, one of the first toasts, as so often in Georgia, was for peace.

A New Era for the Old Town

2010-03-02T10:20:00.009+04:00

The drive to modernise historic districts of Tbilisi has caused deep concerns among preservationists. This article is from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

Dirt-encrusted, decrepit, and wasted by neglect, the exquisitely-stylised Art Nouveau buildings of the Georgian capital have long been desperate for some tender loving care. There are some remarkable examples of early twentieth century architecture in Tbilisi, built when the city was a thriving mercantile metropolis in the latter years of the Russian Tsarist empire, but left to rot during the Soviet period and the chaos which followed independence in the early 1990s.

The economic crisis which followed Georgia’s war with Russia in August 2008 halted a credit-fuelled property boom and left many construction sites idle. But despite this, the Georgian authorities are starting to restore some of the decorative elegance of the Art Nouveau quarter as part of their continuing attempts to transform dilapidated districts of the capital.

“This project means we will be proud to live in one of Europe’s most beautiful and special cities,” President Mikheil Saakashvili declared when launching the latest phase of the scheme. “This area most resembles Paris, and we will make it look like Paris.”

Georgia’s ever-enthusiastic leader has previously made ambitious pledges to turn the run-down port city of Poti into a Black Sea version of Dubai, and to create a “new Barcelona” in the tourist resort of Batumi. Accusations of hyperbole aside, not everyone has applauded his modernising zeal. Some architectural experts have been dismayed by the glass-fronted blocks which the authorities have allowed developers to construct amid the splendours of Tbilisi’s unique but decaying old town.

Preservationists also worry that restoration work could be rushed through, giving the city an instant but superficial makeover, while adding inauthentic additional levels to some buildings for the sake of profit. “Real restoration needs time, it is impossible to do it quickly, and because of this we have so much damage to architectural monuments in Georgia,” argues Nestan Tatarashvili, the head of the Art Nouveau Preservation Group – and she isn’t alone. A Facebook campaign group set up by Tatarashvili to preserve a particularly remarkable Art Nouveau cinema, the Apollo, has already attracted around 2,500 supporters. “The Apollo is a monument of national importance, so it must be restored perfectly,” Tatarashvili says.

Another expert, who asked to remain anonymous, accused the authorities of having “no taste, no style and no architectural feeling”, although she also admitted that a lot of the reconstruction work will have a positive impact. Meanwhile, Georgia’s self-assured president insists that he will continue to transform the landscape of his capital, whatever the critics say. As he warned his detractors recently: “We will not give anyone the opportunity to stop what we are doing.”

(Photo from the Save Art Nouveau in Tbilisi site.)

Hollywood Does Georgia - The Trailer

2010-02-16T12:28:00.004+04:00

As shown on TV here, this is the trailer for veteran Hollywood action movie director Renny Harlin's take on the Georgia-Russia war, starring Andy Garcia as Mikheil Saakashvili (with a rather peculiar accent). The film, which is due out later this year, has been described as an "anti-war" movie, but it was financed by Georgians and is intended to portray the Georgian view of the conflict in August 2008, as the propaganda war between Tbilisi and Moscow for moral supremacy in the international arena continues. According to its producers, who include a Georgian government minister, it's the most expensive film ever to be made in this impoverished former Soviet republic. They deny that any funding came from the state, although opposition critics claim that may not be entirely true.

Jailed Donkey Satirists Defiant

2009-11-16T10:59:00.004+04:00

Some people had been expecting that the harsh sentences handed down to two young online activists last week in Azerbaijan would cast a chill over pro-democracy internet campaigning in the energy-rich, politically intolerant former Soviet state. According to some bloggers there, however, the prosecution of Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade could possibly have the opposite effect, inspiring other young people to speak out more openly. Prominent Azeri blogger Ali Novruzov emailed me at the weekend to say this:

"This case was seen from the very beginning as an assault on online speech, that the small community of citizen journalists and activists who dare to speak their mind and criticise the government policies, thus it could be predicted that after Emin and Adnan receive harsh sentences despite huge international and internal pressures, they would shut up or lessen their tone. But it went as unpredictable as the trial itself was. From what I witness now, the youth activists and citizen journalists have become more politically conscious, outspoken and more organized."

Here's more on the story from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

"I'm ready to take any punishment for the ideals I believe in. It is an honour for me to be imprisoned for my ideals."

These were the defiant last words of a young Azeri internet activist, just before he and a fellow campaigner were taken from a courtroom last week in the capital, Baku, to start prison sentences for ‘hooliganism’. Emin Milli was jailed for two-and-a-half years and Adnan Hajizade for two years after they were convicted of starting a fight in a restaurant. But their friends insist they were prosecuted because they were using online media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to build support for pro-democracy youth movements in Azerbaijan.

"If there was a sentence, it means they were guilty," a ruling party spokesman declared. Supporters of the two young activists, however, claim that the evidence was fabricated and the verdict was intended as a warning: public criticism of the authorities can put you behind bars. "Our special thanks to the Azerbaijani government for they showed to whole world our ‘justice’ at work," wrote one Baku-based blogger. International rights groups and western diplomats have denounced the prosecution, but Azerbaijan’s massive energy resources have made its government increasingly impervious to external censure.

The case follows a series of clampdowns on traditional media and the imprisonment of several opposition journalists. Political satire is seen as particularly risky; Milli and Hajizade were arrested not long after distributing a comical video clip which featured a talking donkey lampooning official corruption. Local analysts have suggested that the authorities could also be concerned about the rise of new generation of internet-savvy, independent-minded youth in Azerbaijan. Television stations largely echo the government’s opinions, but the use of online media has been increasing significantly and is harder to control.

Friends of Milli and Hajizade have told me that they believe the case was an attempt to scare other Azeri internet activists into silence. But when I asked one of them if she thought this was likely to succeed, I got a surprising response: "People are not afraid any more, they are proud of Emin and Adnan and want to continue everything," she replied. "The current spirit among young people fighting for democracy and liberty now is: this is not the end, this is a great beginning."

Heretics Nabbed for 'Indecent' Video Satire

2009-11-02T12:07:00.003+04:00

The Georgian police are reported to have tracked down the thought criminals responsible for "indecent and insulting" satirical videos which targeted the head of the Orthodox Church and caused a nationwide scandal in this fervently religious country. A statement from the Interior Ministry identified the culprits as a school pupil and a student. It's not clear yet what action will be taken against them, if any, although the authorities seem to have been motivated to launch the investigation because of the public outcry against the crudely-produced video clips.

More on the latest religious rows in Georgia from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

Is Halloween anti-Christian and anti-Georgian? That’s what some people were asking here in Tbilisi last week after the Orthodox Patriarch, Ilia II – the single most respected figure in the country – called on people to forsake witches’ broomsticks and ghoulish make-up and renounce celebrations of the annual rite. “There are people in Georgia who are trying to bring foreign holidays and attitudes into our country, which may ruin our own traditions,” one of the Patriarch’s devotees told a local newspaper.

The Halloween debate followed a nationwide scandal over a series of animated videos which appeared to mock the elderly Patriarch. In a rare display of political unity, the authorities and opposition both condemned satirical clips which were digitally manipulated to show the Orthodox leader cussing out the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Tea Tutberidze, who works for a pro-government think-tank in Tbilisi, first posted the videos on her Facebook page, and became the target for the wrath of the faithful. “God will punish you, your fingers will shrivel up,” one online commentator testified; a remark followed by some distinctly un-Christian threats of violence and murder. The Patriarchate claimed that a “dirty campaign” was being waged against the Church – a view echoed by opposition politicians, who insinuated that President Saakashvili was actually behind it all.

Despite the unholy row, Tutberidze was unrepentant. She denounced the Patriarch for recent comments in which he seemed to accuse Saakashvili of failing to avert the war with Russia last year, alleged that the Kremlin maintained a “power base” within the religious hierarchy, and insisted that free speech should know no limits.

But in a country where the Patriarch has become an increasingly potent and unquestionable figure, criticism of the religious establishment is a fast track to pariah status. The Church has shown its political might on several occasions over the past couple of years, halting opposition hunger strikes at Easter last year, and forcing a “sinful” television series to suspend broadcasts.

Some urban liberals are worried about the state-backed Church’s influence on public life, especially in schools, but don’t want to express their views as forcefully as the heretical Tutberidze. Although more than 15 per cent of the population follows other faiths, most see Orthodox Christianity as an integral part of Georgian identity, and anyone who dares to cross them can expect a rough ride.

God on Wheels

2009-10-16T09:59:00.005+04:00

People in Georgia are deeply proud of their Orthodox Christian traditions - but this driver, seen on Georgia's main highway this week with a miniature church strapped to the roof of his car, obviously takes his religion more seriously than most...

Poland Invades Georgia (In a Friendly Way)

2009-09-26T19:53:00.007+04:00

The first festival of contemporary Polish culture in Georgia started last night in fine style in Tbilisi at Club 33a (an atmospheric ampitheatre in one of the city's best parks). Polish people are well-loved here in Georgia, partly because of their common sufferings at the hands of Moscow regimes. Also, every other taxi driver in Tbilisi seems to have a Polish grandma or great-grandfather, or has made a life-changing trip to Poland during his formative years - and generally asks something like: "Do you know Agnieszka from Warsaw? I haven't seen her for 30 years. No, I don't know her surname..."

The Polish festival climaxes next week with concerts of Polish-Georgian rock'n'roll/hip-hop/folk fusion and performances by the legendary Teatr Osmego Dnia (Eighth Day Theatre), who were part of the underground artistic resistance during the Communist years in Poland. They're going to rock the Rose Revolution Square with a performance called The Ark, with a genuine ark which they're bringing all the way from Poland..

'Thriller' in Azerbaijan

2009-09-17T18:55:00.004+04:00

"No one's going to save you from the beast about to strike..."

Michael Jackson, Baku-style. The ultimate wedding video?

"I'm a Hooligan Too!"

2009-09-17T18:35:00.006+04:00

Testimony started yesterday in the case of two satirical Azerbaijani internet activists accused of 'hooliganism' after they allegedly got into a fight in a restaurant - a prosecution which campaigners believe is intended to intimidate pro-democracy bloggers in Azerbaijan. Protesters outside the court in Baku chanted "Freedom!" and wore T-shirts stating: "I'm a Hooligan Too!" More details from EurasiaNet here, plus a strong denunciation of the case - "sham trial", etc - from Reporters Without Borders here. (Photo from the court protest courtesy of www.irfs.az)

Fall and Rise of the Soviet Space Apes

2009-09-08T20:56:00.002+04:00

More from my recent Abkhazia trip - a research institute which used to send monkeys into space for the Soviet Union but fell into disrepair during the chaotic war years is now seeking to revive its fortunes. EurasiaNet also published a more in-depth piece on the institute last year here.

'This is Vladimir': A Soundscape from Abkhazia

2009-09-06T11:15:00.016+04:00

I've uploaded a soundscape which I mixed using material recorded during a trip to the disputed Black Sea region of Abkhazia in August. It isn't exactly reportage, nor exactly musique concrete either. It features natural sounds from the Abkhaz coast, the voices of soldiers, a government official, and an Abkhaz mother who named her newborn son after Vladimir Putin. It's an attempt to convey some of the atmosphere of this beautiful, troubled territory at a specific moment in time, without any commentary or journalistic voiceover.

You can listen to it or download it here.

Thanks are due to my fellow blogger Guy Degen - the original audio was recorded on his camera - and to photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz, who also worked with me on the trip to Abkhazia. (The photo above shows a young Russian tourist posing as an Abkhaz warrior for a photo at a seaside resort; I'm sure the tourist lad had no idea of the irony...)

Azeri Bloggers to Stand Trial

2009-08-28T10:14:00.004+04:00

The trial of two young internet pro-democracy activists on charges of hooliganism is due to begin in Baku in early September. As reported by Global Voices Online, the two men, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, will now also face an additional charge of causing mild injury to an unspecified victim. They were originally detained after being accused of starting a fight in a restaurant, although they claim they were the victims of an unprovoked attack by unknown assailants. Their supporters believe they were targeted because of their campaigning activities, which include the online distribution of satirical videos poking fun at the government. Some suggest that the authorities in Azerbaijan are trying to cast a chill over the blogosphere, after a series of restrictive moves against independent and opposition media in the country. Updates from the campaign to free them are available here.

Vladimir Putin: Godfather of Abkhazia

2009-08-27T11:23:00.005+04:00

"This is Vladimir. He is my first son."

Indira Bartsits proudly gestures towards one of her infant twins, who were born just minutes before the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, unexpectedly visited her room at a maternity hospital in Sukhumi, the Abkhaz capital, during his trip to the disputed region earlier this month.

She said she only decided to name the child after the Russian premier on the spur of the moment, but agreed that she was grateful to Moscow for recognising Abkhazia as an independent state a year ago.

Doctors at the hospital suggested she should name the other twin after Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, but she preferred to call him after her brother-in-law, who was killed during Abkhazia’s battles for independence from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Read more from my recent trip to Abkhazia on the Al Jazeera website here - and more about Georgia seizing ships carrying fuel to Abkhazia (including the latest on the strange dispute about the opening of a Benetton shop in Sukhumi) here.

Rhyming for Freedom in Baku

2009-08-24T18:31:00.003+04:00

Azerbaijani rappers Shirband have released a powerful tune in support of two young pro-democracy internet activists who're in jail in Baku awaiting trial on charges of 'hooliganism'. It's a furiously orchestrated piece of protest hip hop, with lyrics which go something like this:

"1937 [the year of Stalin's purges] is still going on, even more strictly, more seriously, now with oil and gas, the youth are being arrested, we always feel these black jeeps following us..."

You can download it here, and read the latest on the case from the two men's supporters here.

No Freedom for Donkey Satirists

2009-07-21T09:27:00.006+04:00

Friends of two detained internet activists in Azerbaijan sang and wept in the street outside court yesterday after their appeal for release was dismissed. Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli were arrested for ‘hooliganism’ after allegedly being involved in a fight in a restaurant in the capital, Baku, but their friends believe they were targeted for their use of online media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to build support for pro-democracy youth groups in this oil-rich but politically intolerant country. This satirical video, featuring a talking donkey, is the most celebrated example. There’s more on their activities in the OL! Movement blog, while their case has become an international issue partly due to their own networking skills and the mainstream media's post-Iran obsession with online culture, but also thanks to the tireless work of other bloggers, like the team at Global Voices Online.

I'm in Baku to cover the case for Al Jazeera, and people working in what remains of the independent media here in Azerbaijan have been telling me they are increasingly nervous about who the authorities might target next. This is a country where critical journalists have often been jailed, assaulted and even killed, where international broadcasters have been forced off the airwaves, and where television is relentlessly pro-government. Now anti-government bloggers have received what some of them perceive to be a warning not to step out of line too often.

It's a bit of an embarrassment for any country to be seen to be jailing someone for dressing up in a donkey costume. But Azerbaijan’s interior ministry insists that this is just a case of “simple hooliganism” which should not be politicised, and has warned foreign embassies in Baku to stop complaining about the arrests. The two young activists could receive prison sentences if they're ultimately convicted; there’s an innovative online ‘video petition’ for their release here.

Pop Patriots Sing for Victory

2009-07-14T16:24:00.007+04:00

Can pop videos offer an insight into the political psychology of a nation? Here are some thoughts from my column in The Moscow Times:

On a cross-country train journey from Georgia’s Black Sea resort of Batumi last week, video monitors relayed a constant blare of Caucasian pop to distract passengers and their fractious infants from the humidity and tedium of the seven-hour trip to the capital, Tbilisi. But amid the videos’ chirpy choruses and dancing girls, there were also unsettling echoes of the conflicts which have consumed this nation.

Most Georgian music videos are resolutely low-budget affairs, as one would expect in a small, impoverished country. One particularly rudimentary clip screened on the train depicted three young lads prancing around clumsily in front of pink psychedelic curtains in what looked like their parents’ living room. Others inevitably featured a cast of scantily-clad disco-dollies and ludicrously-attired rappers; aspiring post-Soviet Eminems and 2Pacs comically imitating American hip-hop choreography.

But there were also patriotic clips with distinctly martial themes. One of them – made before last year’s war with Russia - showed a Georgian starlet in a tight-fitting uniform crooning for the troops at a military base, urging them onwards as army choppers swooped low over the stage. In another, corpses on a battlefield mouthed the lyrics as a rapper rhymed about winning back Abkhazia and South Ossetia while simultaneously offering the people of those disputed regions “love, friendship and unity”.

A video made in 2007 as part of an ill-fated Georgian campaign to peacefully oust the Moscow-backed South Ossetian leader, Eduard Kokoity, also appeared desperately naïve from a post-war perspective. The clip ends with footage of the South Ossetian strongman smiling and waving goodbye; tragically ironic in hindsight, because it was ethnic Georgians who were ultimately forced out of the enclave, while Kokoity consolidated his grip on power.

The most lavish Georgian productions of recent years have mostly been made for political purposes: President Mikheil Saakashvili’s election campaign video, ‘Misha is Cool’, or opposition hero Utsnobi’s clip depicting Saakashvili as a lascivious, brutal emperor. Neither of these was being shown on the Batumi-Tbilisi train; nor, unfortunately, was Anri Jokhadze’s ‘Happy Nation’, which hilariously lampoons some of the key players in Georgia’s current political stand-off between government and opposition. It may not be subtle, but in these uncertain, conflict-weary times, Jokhadze’s warped satire is an antidote to the delusional sermons of the pop propagandists.

Altered State - New Edition

2009-07-02T08:55:00.004+04:00

A new, updated edition of my first book, Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, is published today by Serpent's Tail. This is what the publishers' blurb says about it:

From its first publication in 1997, Altered State established itself as the definitive text on Ecstasy and dance culture. This new edition sees Matthew Collin cast a fresh eye on the heady events of the acid house ‘Summer of Love’ and the rave scene’s euphoric escalation into commercial excess as MDMA became a mass-market narcotic.

Altered State is the best-selling book on Ecstasy culture, using a cast of memorable characters to track the origins of the scene and its drug through psychedelic subcults, underground gay discos and the Balearic paradise of Ibiza, to the point where Tony Blair was using an Ecstasy anthem as an election campaign song.

Altered State critically examines the ideologies and myths of the scene, documenting the criminal underside to the blissed-out image, shedding new light on the social history of the most spectacular youth movement of the twentieth century.

Reviews:

‘Written with such wit, verve, empathy and profound intelligence. I can't recommend this marvellous piece of work enough’ Irvine Welsh

‘Altered State is not just timely; it was crying out to be written’ Independent

Roses in the Ruins

2009-06-29T12:55:00.004+04:00

In the frontline village of Ergneti, red and white roses bloom next to the smoke-blackened shells of what were once people's homes.

Nearby, at a fortified checkpoint, Georgian interior ministry forces stand almost face to face with their Russian and South Ossetian enemies.

The opposing sides' flags have been raised just metres from each other; a symbolic reminder of a political stand-off which remains highly volatile more than ten months after last year's war.

Apart from birdsong, the only sound comes from the engines of armoured vehicles and the bomb-shredded metal roofs of houses creaking gently in the summer breeze.

"At night it's terrible, because you can hear all the burnt metal rattling in the wind," says a Georgian farmer who was sitting next to the ruins of his home.

Like tens of thousands of others, Jemal Doijashvili and his family (pictured above) fled during the war, but later returned to live in the only undamaged room in their shell-scarred house.

They have no water, no electricity and no work, but Jemal offered green plums from his orchard as he took refuge from the midday heat beneath the shattered remnants of an ornate staircase.

Read the rest of my report for Al Jazeera on the fears raised by the impending departure of international monitoring missions from Georgia's conflict zones here.

'IKEA' Comes to Abkhazia

2009-06-16T08:36:00.003+04:00

After the row over the opening of a Benetton fashion store in the disputed region of Abkhazia, which caused Georgian Benetton outlets to go on strike in protest, an EUobserver.com blogger reports that improvised IKEA, Mango and Zara shops are trading in the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi. They aren't official outlets, but use pirated logos to give the impression that they might be (see Nicu Popescu's photo). Wily businessmen, it seems, are finding a way around the trade embargo to ensure that Abkhazia gets its share of affordable but hard-to-assemble shelving units.

Temperature Rises, Anger Boils Over

2009-06-15T19:01:00.006+04:00

There have been worrying signs in recent days that anti-government protests in Tbilisi - now in their third consecutive month - have the potential to descend into civil unrest. Protesters have been blocking several streets in the Georgian capital around the clock with imitation prison cells, which are intended to highlight the alleged authoritarianism of President Mikheil Saakashvili. Parliament has been under non-stop blockade, and when MPs held a session there on Friday for the first time since April, they were confronted and chased by protesters throwing eggs and stones.

Today there were further clashes; the first came when a group of men started demolishing the cells outside the state chancellory (see photo). The men said they were local residents frustrated with the constant obstruction, but the protesters claimed they were provocateurs working for the authorities.

The second clash, outside police headquarters, was more serious. Eyewitnesses said that policemen, some wearing black ski masks and others in plain clothes, charged a group of protesters and attacked them with batons. I saw one photo-journalist who had been seriously beaten; other reporters were also assaulted and their cameras seized, and almost 40 people were arrested. The interior ministry insisted that the officers simply wanted “to unblock the entrance to the police station and restore traffic movement”, although the deputy minister did apologise for the beating of the journalists.

The police HQ was also the scene of violence last month when a Georgian pop star who has become an opposition icon led a late-night march on the building, then tried to scale the gates to free some detained activists. Police responded by using batons and firing plastic projectiles at the demonstrators.

The authorities have offered concessions to resolve this lengthy political dispute, but the opposition leaders have rejected them. What they want is Saakashvili’s resignation. But the president has refused to step down or hold early elections, and so with numbers attending the protest rallies falling, frustration has started to set in and tempers have become strained in the summer heat. Up to now, the authorities have not cracked down hard on the protests, as they did in November 2007. They want to prove that Georgia is a democratic country where dissent is tolerated. But their resolve may be tested as daily demonstrations continue here in Tbilisi, with no end in sight.

Pop Star Lampoons 'Happy Nation' of Georgia

2009-06-01T22:56:00.005+04:00

“Is there a nation as happy as ours?”

Sometimes it takes a supreme pop satirist to sum up a twisted situation in a suitably surreal way. Now, the past two gruelling months of confrontation between opposition and government in Georgia have been encapsulated in a hilarious pop video by singer Anri Jokhadze.

Taking as its theme a phrase from nineteenth-century Georgian poet-hero Ilia Chavchavadze, the Happy Nation video lampoons President Mikheil Saakashvili, his opponents, and various other Georgian celebrities, as well as satirising well-known Georgian pop-propaganda videos.

Anyone who’s familiar with the drama that’s been playing itself out on the streets in Tbilisi in recent weeks should take time out to watch. The final frames – if you get the references – are truly tragic-comic.

The Rise and Rise of 'Saint Gia'

2009-06-01T09:25:00.005+04:00

Some notes on the controversial pop star who's become the hero of the Georgian opposition this year, from my column in The Moscow Times. Photograph from Civil Georgia.

More than seven weeks of non-stop opposition protests in Georgia may not have achieved their desired goal – the resignation of President Mikheil Saakashvili – but they have turned one man into a political phenomenon: pop star Giorgi Gachechiladze.

For many opposition supporters, Gachechiladze is a patriotic icon and a valiant crusader for justice. Since January, the star - best known by his stage name Utsnobi (‘The Unknown’) - has confined himself to a purpose-built ‘prison cell’ in a television studio, from which he broadcasts an anti-government reality-TV show. His example inspired the opposition to blockade streets outside parliament and the presidential palace in Tbilisi with hundreds of imitation ‘cells’.

Utsnobi’s arrival at a showpiece rally at the national football stadium last week invoked mass delirium and a display of devotion which no Georgian politician could hope to inspire right now (see photo). Tens of thousands of people rose to cheer as the singer, dressed in gleaming white, was borne aloft on a lap of honour around the arena. Tears flowed as he doffed his trademark urchin’s cap to his delirious admirers. The fiery speeches of the opposition leaders who followed him to the podium seemed tepid in comparison.

After the rally, one phone-in caller to his TV show was ecstatic: “You are not Gia, you are Saint Giorgi!” she gushed, insisting that the star had been sent by God to save the nation. Another prominent activist declared: “America had Martin Luther King, Georgia has Gia Gachechiladze.”

Utsnobi’s brother, opposition politician Levan Gachechiladze, ran against Mikheil Saakashvili in presidential elections last year. Both have a populist, streetwise style and a taste for intemperate rhetoric. When I interviewed Utsnobi in his ‘cell’ a few weeks ago, he compared Saakashvili to Adolf Hitler, undermining his grievances with hyperbole. Last month, he led an angry crowd on a late-night march to police headquarters in Tbilisi in an attempt to release three young activists who had been detained for allegedly assaulting journalists and were then allegedly assaulted in custody themselves.

The march ended in violence after the pop star scaled the gates to confront cops who were chanting “Misha! Misha!” - Saakashvili’s nickname - as they swung their batons. Critics condemned his behaviour as reckless, but for his followers, it was just another reason to sanctify him.

Georgia Wins Fashion Battle - Update

2009-05-30T07:24:00.004+04:00

"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

2009-05-29T15:44:00.001+04:00

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?

2009-05-19T13:21:00.007+04:00

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

2009-05-18T08:52:00.005+04:00

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

2009-05-11T11:16:00.002+04:00

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'

2009-05-04T07:46:00.006+04:00

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.

Tbilisi to Stage 'Alternative Eurovision'

2009-04-28T09:17:00.004+04:00

Georgia withdrew from this year's Eurovision song contest after being ordered by the organisers to change the 'political' lyrics of its entry. We Don't Wanna Put In, a kitschy disco tune from Stephane & 3G (pictured in photo), sounded like a thinly-disguised attack on Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. In response, an alternative pop festival called Tbilisi Open Air will be held here in the Georgian capital at around the same time as Eurovision (which will, of course, be held in the 'enemy' capital, Moscow). "Freed from politics and social clichés, this festival will be carrying the European cultural spirit," claims one local media report. Moscow-based channel Russia Today, on the other hand, describes the Tbilisi event as a "race for losers". Pop music: the continuation of war by other means?

Kazakh Net Activist Makes a Stand

2009-04-24T16:30:00.003+04:00

I've just watched a young Kazakh activist for Internet freedom make a spirited intervention during a session on blogging at today's Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty. Yevgenia Plakhina (pictured on the right of this photo) stood up in front of the conference organiser (who is also the president's daughter and a media magnate here in Kazakhstan) to say that six other activists had just been arrested for protesting against a proposed new law which they allege will place harsh restrictions on internet journalists and bloggers and allow the government to potentially block access to local and foreign websites on political grounds. They're appealing for international support for their campaign, For A Free Internet, although their leaflet doesn't offer a website address.

Free Speech (The Kazakh Version)

2009-04-23T10:35:00.003+04:00

More from Kazakhstan: as the annual Eurasian Media Forum opens today, with international journalists (including me) debating issues like the media coverage of last year’s Georgia-Russia war, the Eurasianet website reports on concerns about freedom of speech in Kazakhstan itself. Eurasianet says that concerns are being raised by Kazakh journalists about proposed new legislation which they fear will place tough restrictions on Internet media. Read the full story here.

'City of Cells' Seen From Afar

2009-04-22T18:31:00.008+04:00

I'm in Kazakhstan, briefly, for the Eurasian Media Forum, and the political stand-off between government and opposition back home in Georgia seems a long way away - about 1,600 miles away, to be more precise. “You live in Georgia? There’s a crisis there, right?” asked a horse-meat vendor at the Green Bazaar in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty. “There’s a crisis here, too,” she added, although judging by the amount of upmarket imported cars on the roads of the city centre (hardly a Russian Lada to be seen), middle-class Kazakhstan, at least, has been doing rather well for itself from this country’s huge energy resources in recent years. Even their little Eiffel Tower (pictured) is glowing.

Back in Tbilisi, the opposition has been trying to turn the Georgian capital into a ‘city of cells’ - erecting mock prison cells on the main street outside parliament, in central Freedom Square and outside President Saakashvili’s official residence. This has caused disruption to drivers, bus passengers and schools, but despite opposition leaders' insistence that they were now taking ‘radical’ measures, there have been no attempts to blockade the airport, power facilities, or any truly drastic measures to shut down the country’s economic life and force a serious showdown with the authorities.

However, the opposition is now bringing in supporters from the provinces in an attempt to spark what they call a ‘decisive moment’, which they hope will lead to Saakashvili’s resignation, despite his insistence that he will see out his term in office, which lasts until 2013. One regional source has reported that a 60-car convoy is en route to Tbilisi from rural Kakheti. But it still remains to be seen whether the opposition has enough active support to get serious numbers onto the streets and provoke more concessions from the government.

Bunny Business at the Presidential Palace

2009-04-20T10:03:00.007+04:00

Some more notes on the current opposition protests here in Tbilisi, from my regular column in The Moscow Times:

Easter in Georgia: a time for church and family, not radical politics. Most of the opposition protesters who’ve been blockading the main street of the capital outside parliament for several days went home for the weekend, although they left their barricades in place to indicate that they had only taken a brief holiday from their efforts to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili.

In the shadow of the egg-shaped glass dome which crowns Saakashvili’s ostentatious official residence, a few bedraggled activists took shelter from afternoon showers in mock prison cells which were set up to highlight their allegation that Georgia has become a ‘police state’. Nearby, security police in black ski masks prowled restlessly, on guard against any attempt to breach the gates. But in no genuine police state would protesters be permitted to hang posters insulting their country’s leader on the fence outside his office.

Graffiti spraypainted around the presidential residence describes Saakashvili as a “frightened rabbit”; in recent days, rebel satirists have also been throwing carrots, cabbages, and even an unfortunate bunny over the fence (see photo above). But the protest crowds have been shrinking, unable so far to capitalise on discontent about Georgia’s defeat in last year’s war with Russia and the alleged authoritarianism of the administration. Officials say they’ll allow peaceful rallies to continue as proof of the country’s democratic vitality, and to show that they’re not running scared.

Almost inevitably, however, there have been some unpleasant incidents. There was a late-night altercation between protesters and street cleaners after the trashing of computers at an opposition HQ and the mysterious disappearance of a Pampers nappy which had been attached to a big teddy bear supposed to represent Saakashvili. Civil-rights campaigners also claim that unidentified men in luxury vehicles have been intimidating and brutalising young demonstrators after dark; although the police insist they’ve been investigating every violation, however minor.

Then there was the arrest of a Russian activist from the pro-Kremlin ‘Nashi’ youth movement, who had been hoping to bring his comrades to Tbilisi to join the protests, despite the fact that no one here wanted their support. The deluded lad was shown on Georgian television confessing that the young Russians were to be accompanied by gunmen who would open fire when they reached Georgian territory. He later insisted he was forced to say this under duress, but he must surely have known that Putin fans aren’t exactly popular in Tbilisi, even among Saakashvili’s detractors, and the most they could ever have hoped for was a good kicking and a safe escort to the border.

No Crackdowns, Just Cabbages

2009-04-16T08:07:00.010+04:00

Under stony skies, a dirge-like ballad droned from the speakers outside the Georgian parliament: an appropriate soundtrack for the seventh day of opposition protests in Tbilisi. Various opposition leaders were punctuated by polite applause as they raged against Mikheil Saakashvili, the president who has refused to offer them his head on a pike. It started to drizzle; those who had umbrellas raised them. “All Georgia is here!” declared one optimist from the stage. It was not. There were just a few thousand demonstrators, and a good proportion of them were the opposition’s hardcore perennials; the people we’ve become accustomed to seeing time and again at protests here down the years – the unemployed, the pensioners, the dispossessed and the desperate, chewing on sunflower seeds, spitting the husks, and smoking.

Despite what the Moscow-backed channel Russia Today is saying today ("Sleepless nights for Mikheil Saakashvili"), the president has weathered the initial threat of political destabilisation, although – this being Georgia, where politics is often like theatre, played out on the street – there will undoubtedly be more to come in the future. (In a small country with big problems, the next crisis is always around the corner… )

Why has the opposition so far failed to rock the Saakashvili regime to its foundations, to send him running like the ‘scared rabbit’ they accused him of being as they lobbed carrots and cabbages over the gates of his presidential palace? Many analysts are marking this failure down to superior state strategy and cunning – the decision to let the demonstrators rally wherever they wanted, and not send in the riot police to crack heads, as Saakashvili did in November 2007, shattering his Western media image as democracy’s US-educated honour student.

The low-key policing massively reduced the chance of violent confrontation; a brief late-night altercation at the weekend showed how quickly tempers could flare. The president and his advisers seemed to be hoping that people would simply get bored and go home if there were no ‘provocations’ to stoke their ire and passion, and so far, that is exactly what seems to have happened.

Some correspondents have also suggested that a significant number of Georgians simply don’t trust the opposition - a fragile and sometimes fractious alliance of liberal democrats, belligerent nationalists, conservatives and street-corner populists - to do any better at running Georgia than Saakashvili. Some of the current opposition alliance are former regime insiders who’ve defected and now despise their former boss and all his works (which of course they once praised); others are the kind of veteran authority-baiters who would probably demonstrate against themselves if they ever came to power.

But that’s not the whole story; there is significant level of discontent here, as a Gallup opinion poll today suggests, but there’s also a sense of fatigue; weariness with the constant political turmoil of the past couple of years – street rallies, then elections; street rallies, then more elections; more street rallies, then the war with Russia, and now street rallies again… For some people, even if they have grievances with this regime, there has simply been too much politics recently.

Nevertheless, the opposition has showed the kind of imagination which it’s been lacking for years. There’s been the cell-block reality-television show, the impudent antics of youth activists, and the decision to create tent camps with prison-style 'cages' outside the president’s office and the state TV channel, not just to block Rustaveli Avenue and harangue the public for hours on end, as protest leaders have traditionally preferred to do in the past. (Although, as ever, there has been a lot of tedious speechifying on Rustaveli – more than enough to discourage most young people from attending for long.)

So far - from the vantage point of Day Seven, at least – all of it simply hasn’t been enough. Critical mass has not been reached, Saakashvili has not fallen, and indeed has so far showed no signs of cracking, despite all the venomous insults hurled at his political record, his personal and dietary habits, and his mother.

I spoke to one oppositionist yesterday, a liberal lawyer who was involved in Saakashvili’s Rose Revolution in 2003 but broke with him on a point of principle shortly afterwards. I asked her whether she thought the protests had any chance of gaining momentum. She simply shrugged, sighed, and looked down despondently. “But we’ll continue, as we must,” she said. Even if these protests ultimately fizzle out, as last year’s did before them, some things remain certain: Georgia's problems will take a long time to solve, and the opposition will be back on the streets.

Tbilisi Awaits Scheduled Showdown

2009-04-08T21:05:00.004+04:00

The Georgian capital is in a state of nervous tension, waiting and wondering what will happen tomorrow - April 9 - the day upon which the furious and embittered opposition has declared it will start the process of ousting President Mikheil Saakashvili through sheer force of numbers on the streets. Opposition supporters will start rallying outside parliament at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and their leaders say they won't leave until Saakashvili is gone too - however long it takes.

But today, the government has been insisting that there will be no attempt to stop them rallying, unless they cause violence. However many people take to the streets, wherever they rally and however long they stay there, they will not be dispersed by force, insisted deputy interior minister Eka Zguladze. The authorities have given "a clear order" to each and every policeman to show restraint, Zguladze said.

"We see ourselves as a European democracy, and we are going to behave like one," she declared. All police officers in Tbilisi are on alert, and 3,000 police including riot squads have been mobilised "in case there is a need to intervene", according to the deputy minister - although she said that wasn't likely to happen.

Georgian prime minister Nika Gilauri stressed at a separate press conference today that any political violence would damage the whole country, not just the government. "The only thing that will be brought by unrest is loss of confidence, loss of economic growth and loss of jobs," he said.

However, the opposition appears to have no intention of backing down; at least, not yet.

Countdown to Confrontation

2009-04-06T07:07:00.005+04:00

This is a brief online propaganda video produced by one of the radical youth activist groups who've been targeting Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in the run-up to opposition protests on April 9. The video condemns Saakashvili for leading the country into last year's war with Russia. Government ministers have accused opposition activists like these of effectively doing Moscow's work by trying to cause political unrest and oust the president at a time when Georgia is struggling to recover from the conflict and the economic crisis which followed it. More details from my column in The Moscow Times:

Dining out in downtown Tbilisi has become a somewhat uncomfortable experience recently, at least for President Mikheil Saakashvili. The Georgian leader has been rudely interrupted twice while eating at restaurants in the capital over the past few weeks. His persecutors, a mob of rowdy students, have been harrying him as the opposition pumps itself up for mass demonstrations which they hope will force Saakashvili to resign.

“We think the president shouldn’t be spending time in expensive restaurants while the country has so many problems,” one of the students told me. Their protest group, called ‘April 9’ after the date on which the opposition rallies will begin, is one of several dissident youth factions which have emerged recently. They blame Saakashvili for all Georgia’s problems – for the disastrous war with Russia, for the huge refugee problem it created, for the loss of Georgian territory and for the economic crash which followed. “If Saakashvili leaves and we get a more stable, responsible and diplomatic president, then things will change,” I was assured.

Another youth group has been busy pasting thousands of anti-Saakashvili posters all over Tbilisi. Many of them simply feature the name of the group – ‘Why?’ – over a huge question mark. Others show a picture of the Georgian leader with his arm around an American celebrity masseuse, or an unflattering photograph of Saakashvili surrounded by tragic images of last year’s fighting, attempting to satirise him as a playboy and a war-monger.

The humour might be vicious, but it recalls the impudent antics of the youth movement Kmara, which campaigned against President Eduard Shevardnadze during the run-up to the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003 which swept Saakashvili to power. Kmara, which had strong links to Saakashvili’s inner circle, used to harass Shevardnadze when he made public appearances, blowing whistles and shouting offensive slogans, and put up posters showing Shevardnadze and his allies being flushed down a toilet together.

The opposition, often criticised in the past for its monotonously unimaginative protest tactics, appears now to have picked up some tricks from the Rose Revolutionaries, who knew how to use the power of pop culture and political satire to enliven their rallies. The April 9 activists don’t like being compared to the pro-Saakashvili campaigners of 2003, but their confrontational strategies illustrate how merciless the political struggle has become again here, as opposition supporters seek to oust yet another Georgian president by force of numbers on the streets of Tbilisi.

Upstarts and Question Marks

2009-04-01T07:23:00.011+04:00

Thousands of slickly-designed opposition posters and stickers have been appearing on the streets of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, over the past couple of weeks, in the run-up to anti-government protests on April 9. Some of them blame President Mikheil Saakashvili for the disastrous war here last August; others (like this one, above) are simply intended to make him look like a fool.

The posters - all of which feature the one-word slogan, 'Ratom?' ('Why?') - have reportedly been produced by a new youth activist group, something similar to the Kmara ('Enough') youth movement which helped to organise the Rose Revolution which swept Saakashvili to power back in 2003. Like Kmara, the group doesn't seem to be lacking financial support for its antics. It also seems determined to insult Saakashvili as viciously as possible, just as Kmara did with its notorious posters showing former president Eduard Shevardnadze and his allies being flushed down the toilet. The Georgian opposition has long been criticised for its monotonously unimaginative tactics; now it seems that some activists are learning from the satirical, culturally-savvy tactics which the Rose Revolutionaries once used.

Surveillance Tapes and 'Secret Orders'

2009-03-27T07:19:00.009+04:00

The release of surveillance tapes by the Georgian interior ministry in recent days - ‘evidence’ which allegedly suggests that opposition activists were buying weapons and making ready to use them to stage a coup during mass protests in early April - has a very familiar feeling to many people here in Georgia. The authorities have repeatedly publicised secretly-recorded telephone conversations and surveillance videos to discredit opponents, most notably in November 2007, during the last major outbreak of civil unrest in Tbilisi, when tapes of journalists’ phonecalls were released alongside footage which incriminated now-dead opposition oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili. Contrary to public opinion - during those dark times back in 2007, many ordinary people wouldn’t even dare to speak ill of the government on the phone - the interior ministry assures us that phone-tapping is not widespread and is only ever used to amass evidence for potential criminal prosecutions. But the release of the secretly-recorded tapes has undoubtedly heightened the mood of trepidation which has gripped Tbilisi in the run-up to the demonstration on April 9.

As well as the forthcoming protests, more bad news for the authorities could be on its way, suggests Der Spiegel. The German news magazine reports that a European Union inquiry into last year’s war is investigating the possible existence of a ‘secret order’ which allegedly ‘proves’ that President Mikheil Saakashvili started the fighting to seize control over South Ossetia, rather than to parry an invasion of Russian aggressors, as official insist. A government minister has insisted that ‘Order No. 2’ was never given and in fact never existed, and that the German report is “part of a series of lies and misinformation” instigated by Moscow.

Broadcast Blues in Baku

2009-03-23T07:02:00.008+04:00

More observations about the referendum in Azerbaijan last week, in which more than 90 per cent of voters loyally called on their glorious leader to continue ruling them for as long as he wants. From my regular column in The Moscow Times:

A swarm of election officials descended upon us as soon as we arrived at the polling station in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku. These fidgety young men wore shiny suits and long, pointy shoes of the sort considered chic by junior apparatchiks in the former Soviet Union, and were closely trailed by a cloud of pungent aftershave.

Our presence - or more specifically, the presence of our camera - was obviously making them extremely uneasy. They hovered nervously around us as we tried to interview people who were casting their votes in last week’s referendum on whether to abolish Azerbaijan’s two-term presidential limit and consolidate the power of the country’s strongman leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Their conspicuous eavesdropping made it unlikely that anyone would speak to us honestly in a country where people already seem to be afraid of talking to television reporters. But actually, they needn’t have worried. Everyone we spoke to repeated the government line as if they had stayed up the night beforehand memorising it. Ilham Aliyev is our hope for the future, they declared; all we must do is trust in him and he’ll do the right thing for all of us - the sort of opinions that would cause any petty authoritarian to glow with satisfaction. I asked an Azeri colleague if it made her feel depressed to hear her compatriots expressing this kind of cringing obeisance. She simply sighed, nodded, and looked away despondently.

These are not good times for journalists in Azerbaijan. The referendum also approved new restrictions on the media, including an ominous-sounding ban on “showing disrespect” to “state symbols”. This is already a country where reporters have been jailed, Azeri-language broadcasts by companies like the BBC and Radio Liberty have been prohibited, and dissenting voices have been marginalised.

The headlines on many of Azerbaijan’s television news shows tell their own story. Day after day, they begin with a suitably respectful report on a presidential meeting, visit or statement - this, for instance, is a summary from Lider TV one evening during the week before the referendum:

Story 1: President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva have visited the national museum of Azerbaijani literature to familiarise themselves with repair works there.

Story 2: President Ilham Aliyev has visited the cultural centre of the National Security Ministry to familiarise himself with repair works there.

Story 3: President Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening ceremony of the late Azerbaijani leader Heydar Aliyev’s statue.

The referendum has ensured that people here in Azerbaijan can expect more of the same, for a long time to come.

War in South Ossetia - The Movie

2009-03-21T20:02:00.007+04:00

This is the trailer for Olympus Inferno, a propaganda action movie about last year's war in South Ossetia that's due to be shown on Russian television later this month. According to Reuters: "The fictional account tells of a U.S.-based entomologist and a female Russian journalist who unintentionally capture evidence that Georgia started the conflict using a special camera night lens as they attempt to film rare night butterflies. The two face obstacles as they try to get through the frontlines of advancing Georgian forces and back to South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali with proof of who started the war." Wired magazine has called the film an "awesomely bad made-for-TV movie". Readers of this blog may recall that the renowned Serbian director Emir Kusturica is also due to make a film about the conflict.

Azerbaijan Loyally Votes for Stability

2009-03-20T10:43:00.004+04:00

There were no surprises during the referendum in Azerbaijan this week on whether to abolish the limit on the number of times that the country's strongman leader is allowed stand for the presidency. More than 90 per cent of voters loyally decided that it would be a rather good thing for President Ilham Aliyev to have the opportunity to extend his rule long into the future. As one man told me in broken English at a polling station in the capital, Baku: "Our president - good!" There was an opposition boycott, but no street activism or anti-referendum posters, and certainly no public protests. More details from my report for Al Jazeera here.

Azeri Police 'Ban' Gay Novel

2009-03-13T07:33:00.005+04:00

A gay love story between an Azeri and an Armenian, set against the backdrop of the Nagorno-Karabakh war between the two nations in the 1990s, was always going to be controversial - not only because Azerbaijan and Armenia remain sworn enemies, but also because they are both distinctly homophobic societies. Now it's been reported that the recently-published Azeri-language novel, Artush and Zaur, is no longer available in the country's capital, Baku, after police raided the only bookshop which dared to sell it. More info from Reuters here.

Tense Times for Georgians in Abkhazia

2009-03-11T11:02:00.001+04:00

The fertile Gali district of Abkhazia, which lies on the de facto border with Georgia, used to generate considerable wealth from its tea plantations, citrus groves and hazelnut farms. Now, after years of conflict and enforced neglect, it's a virtual wasteland. Although the Abkhaz rule the area - they won control of it during their war with Georgian forces in the early 1990s - most of the people living there are actually ethnic Georgians. That means it's always been tense (and full of men with guns), but on a recent visit I found the mood to be more oppressive and paranoid than ever.

Now Abkhazia has been recognised as an independent state by neighbouring Russia, many local Georgians are afraid that they might have to leave the area soon because they are being 'encouraged' to take Abkhaz passports, which involves formally rejecting their Georgian citizenship. The planned construction of Russian military bases in the region has also frightened them, as well as the suggestions by the Abkhaz authorities that they intend to build a fortified border and seal the region off from Georgia completely. This is my television report for Al Jazeera, filmed by the inimitable Vladimir Lozinski (all soundbites are in Russian without voiceovers and captions, unfortunately).

Tbilisi Awaits 'Hot Spring'

2009-03-10T09:03:00.007+04:00

Georgia's fractious opposition isn't united, and probably never will be, but the various parties and factions seem to have come closer to a collective action plan to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili through street protests - in other words, they basically want another Georgian 'revolution'. Their strategies for what happens if Saakashvili goes, however, are much more vague and unconvincing, while the authorities seem determined to defend themselves against insurrectionary challenges, however forceful they might become. So the Georgian capital is now bracing itself for another series of angry demonstrations outside parliament, and as always, no one knows how long they will go on for, or what the outcome will be. More background from my column in The Moscow Times:

Forecasters in Georgia have been predicting a ‘hot spring’ as the date for this turbulent country’s latest political showdown approaches. On April 9, opposition supporters will return to the streets of Tbilisi, demanding the resignation of President Mikheil Saakashvili. They have called for his head before, of course, but he’s still in office, with a mandate to govern until 2013. This time, however, it’s a little different. Several high-profile former allies have deserted Saakashvili in the hope of winning the presidency themselves, and in recent weeks they’ve been making increasingly bitter accusations against their former leader.

The political mood has turned poisonous as the opposition seeks to capitalise on discontent caused by economic recession and the disastrous war with Russia. A former prime minister, Zurab Nogaideli, called Saakashvili a “traitor and a coward” and alleged that he had misused state funds. A former speaker of parliament, Nino Burjanadze, described his government as “criminal”. A former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, accused him of violating civil rights, curbing freedom of speech and recklessly leading the country into an unwinnable war. Such allegations, coming from former insiders, are an indication of how deeply charged with personal animosity Georgian politics has become, although critics have questioned why such principled democrats kept quiet about their strongly-held ethics while they were working for the administration.

One potential flashpoint could be the return from exile of Saakashvili’s former defence minister, Irakli Okruashvili, whose controversial allegations against his old friend helped to catalyse mass demonstrations which ended in a police crackdown in 2007. The hawkish Okruashvili fled to France and was sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption in his absence. However, he has insisted that he will soon come home to take on Saakashvili, despite the threat of arrest. Fears have been raised that such a confrontational move could seriously escalate tensions.

Saakashvili and his allies have hit back by suggesting that certain opposition leaders have been receiving money from Russia to finance their anti-government campaigns, as part of an alleged Kremlin plan to sow yet more chaos. In other words, the implication goes, the dissenters are doing the enemy’s work. Saakashvili has also pointed out that renewed street protests will do little to help rebuild Georgia’s shattered economy, and that what is needed now is stability rather than civil unrest. But as April 9 approaches, the opposition seems to be in no mood for compromise.

Ossetia's Post-War Freeze

2009-03-09T14:31:00.002+04:00

"Many people in Tskhinvali are shivering through the winter behind windows made of plastic sheeting. Piles of broken glass and trash - in one case, the charred turret of a Georgian tank - sit along central boulevards, as they did in August. Stray dogs, their owners long gone, nose around the streets for food."

An interesting insight into failed attempts at post-war reconstruction in South Ossetia, from the New York Times. Read it here.

"The Smell of Melancholy"

2009-03-07T09:11:00.004+04:00

After Georgia's choice of a Eurovision song contest entry which pokes fun at Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, now one of the country's most famous singers, Vakhtang Kikabidze - who's also popular in Russia - has recorded a tune expressing his sadness over last year's war. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Against a backdrop of Russian fighter planes bombing Georgian apartment buildings at the height of last August’s conflict, the legendary Georgian singer Vakhtang Kikabidze - 'Buba' to his fans -- speaks of betrayal and "the smell of melancholy" in his controversial new song, You Disappointed Me. A video of the tune, which has appeared on the Internet, shows Russians and Georgians in happier times, interspersed with footage of Georgians wounded in Russian attacks, piling their belongings into cars, or crying for help on rubble-strewn streets. Kikabidze, who performs the song in Russian, says in the chorus, "You haven't betrayed me, you've disappointed me." The song has provoked outrage among many Russians, who consider the Soviet-era crooner to be one of their own.

The video is online here.

Memorial for a Lost Son

2009-02-28T10:06:00.011+04:00

In a corner of Alla Hovannisian's living room in Yerevan is a small memorial to her son, with religious icons, flowers, and an old school photograph. 23-year-old Tigran died during civil unrest in the Armenian capital on March 1 last year, in violence which shocked and divided this small country.

His mother says that when she first heard that he had been killed, she refused to believe it. "I said it must be a mistake, it must be someone else's body in the morgue, and my husband went a second time to check," she recalls.

Pitched battles raged into the early hours of the morning after riot police moved in to end more than a week of round-the-clock demonstrations against the results of presidential elections which the opposition claimed were falsified.

The night sky was lit up with tracer bullet fire and flames rose from burning cars as police fired tear gas and fought with protesters who had set up barricades and armed themselves with petrol bombs and metal staves. Alla's son was one of several people who were shot during the clashes which left eight civilians and two policemen dead, causing the Armenian authorities to impose a state of emergency and send the army onto the streets.

"Tigran was killed with a special weapon, a tear gas gun which only the police have," claims his mother. "I blame the people who killed him, but most of all I blame the ones who gave the orders to shoot."

As she spoke, her husband sat nearby, quietly crying.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Al Jazeera website about the anniversary of the deadly clashes in Yerevan last year and this week's Human Rights Watch report, which claims that the Armenian authorities used excessive force to crush the protests, and are now conducting politically motivated prosecutions of opposition activists. Unfortunately, the TV version of the piece is not online.

Jailhouse Rocker

2009-02-27T11:14:00.005+04:00

Some notes on Georgia's infamous 'protest TV' show, 'Cell No. 5', from my column in The Moscow Times:

To some people, it’s a new kind of chat show which is challenging the establishment and fuelling righteous dissent. To others, it’s a crude piece of propaganda produced by degenerates. For the past month, the reality-TV programme Cell No. 5, which features a popular singer holding topical discussions and ranting against the government from a purpose-built ‘prison cell’, has been highlighting the political divisions within Georgian society.

The singer, Giorgi Gachechiladze - better known as Utsnobi, or ‘The Unknown’ - is the brother of opposition leader Levan Gachechiladze, who unsuccessfully challenged Mikheil Saakashvili for the Georgian presidency a year ago. A notorious video clip for one of his songs depicts Saakashvili as a deranged Nero, cavorting with scantily-clad women and dispensing brutal injustice until his people rise up against him.

Cell No. 5 opens with images of the disturbing Mickey Mouse-style riot masks worn by police when they dispersed opposition protests in 2007, and a map of Georgia shorn of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the regions which were effectively lost during the recent war with Russia. During the programme, the scruffy, unshaven Gachechiladze chats about political developments with his guests, usually opposition activists, civil-rights advocates or journalists.

It’s broadcast by a small independent channel which can only be seen in the capital, and while it may not be subtle, it has caused strong reactions. One senior government politician, Givi Targamadze, raged about “drug addicts” who were “preaching to society from a ‘cell’”, and insinuated that the singer and his opposition friends were Kremlin stooges. “They are so deep inside the Russians that only their legs can now be seen on the TV cameras,” Targamadze said.

President Saakashvili has also watched the show, and even mentioned it during a televised question-and-answer session with the public last month. Critics claim that Georgia’s main television channels are effectively government mouthpieces, and that media freedom has declined under Saakashvili. But the Georgian president said Cell No. 5 proved that wasn’t true: “When they say on TV that we haven’t got freedom of speech – and they say it while speaking live for three hours – it is ridiculous,” he declared.

Gachechiladze has vowed to remain in self-imposed incarceration in his studio jail until Saakashvili resigns, although the Georgian president still has four years of his term left to serve. But while the show may not provoke the kind of uprising seen in one of the singer’s videos, in terms of provoking controversy, it has already been a success.

You can watch 'Cell No. 5' (in Georgian) here.

New Russia-Georgia Conflict Predicted

2009-02-21T08:06:00.005+04:00

The Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, who predicted the war between Russia and Georgia last year, has suggested that a new war is "very likely" to break out this summer, partly because the current ceasefire is so fragile, and partly because Moscow hasn't yet fulfilled its strategic objectives in the South Caucasus region. This time, the analyst predicts, the Russians would take the Georgian capital and totally subjugate the country. "The only way you could avoid it," Felgenhauer says, "is if there's regime change in Tbilisi - or regime change in Moscow." Read more here and here.

Information Wars (Again)

2009-02-19T13:38:00.004+04:00

A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists is highly critical of the media freedom situation in both Georgia and Russia, accusing the governments of Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin of establishing control over television broadcast networks to ensure that their messages drown out alternative viewpoints. "As different as these leaders may be, both have demonstrated intolerance to criticism and a strong desire to control influential national television," the report alleges. "Using strikingly similar tactics, both leaders have helped fashion uncritical television media that are supportive of their governments. The results were on display during the South Ossetian conflict, when television in each country portrayed the fighting in one-sided, one-dimensional ways." While a lot of television reporting in Georgia is pro-government, it's clear that there is much more open criticism of the authorities on national television than is ever allowed in Russia, or in most other former Soviet states. But the idea of a genuinely free and independent media has been slow to take root here. Georgia's radical opposition, for example, seems to believe that free media simply means more airtime for their opinions (they recently demanded that an entire channel be handed over to them), rather than any kind of independent scrutiny of politicians on all sides. Meanwhile, investigative reporting has been marginalised. Two independent studios do produce documentaries examining official corruption and miscarriages of justice, but they are not shown on national TV.

Eurovision Protest Pop: Update 2

2009-02-19T09:07:00.004+04:00

The slyly anti-Russian song We Don't Wanna Put In has been chosen as Georgia's entry to the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow - if the event's organisers allow one of the entries to denigrate the host country's prime minister, of course. See previous posts for more details and a link to the song itself.

Eurovision Protest Pop: Update

2009-02-18T11:11:00.009+04:00

The potential Georgian entry for this year's Eurovision Song Contest, aimed at annoying Moscow, where the event will be held, is actually called We Don't Wanna Put In (not Put-In Disco, as was reported by Georgian TV yesterday). It's typical tacky Europop, sung by Stefane Mgebrishvili and Georgian girl group 3G (pictured in photo), and its chorus goes like this: "We Don’t Wanna Put In/The negative move/It’s killin’ the groove." What you actually hear ,of course, is "we don't wanna Putin" - but that's about the extent of its 'protest' element. You can hear it here. Georgia had previously considered boycotting the Moscow Eurovision because of the war with Russia last year; now it seems the Georgians might go to poke a little gentle fun instead.

Eurovision Protest Pop

2009-02-17T19:06:00.006+04:00

Georgians may use the Eurovision Song Contest to poke fun at neighbouring Russia after losing last year's war between the two countries if one potentially provocative song is chosen by the Georgian public as their entry for 2009. Eurovision, of course, will be held this year in Moscow, where the song Put-In Disco would probably not get much of an enthusiastic welcome. According to the Georgian pro-government television channel Rustavi-2, "the content of the song will be embarrassing for the Kremlin". But the TV station believes it will not breach the contest's rules because "the lyrics do not include insulting phrases".

'Greatest Georgians' Cause Religious Row

2009-01-27T12:24:00.005+04:00

From my regular column in The Moscow Times:

A seemingly harmless television contest to choose the greatest Georgians of all time has set off an unholy row over religious values and censorship between the Orthodox Church and media-freedom advocates. The dispute has again demonstrated the power and influence of the Church in Georgia, after complaints from the Patriarch caused the country’s public broadcaster to suspend screenings of the TV show to appease pious sentiments.

The concept of using a public vote to create a hit-parade of historical heroes was developed by the BBC in Britain, where Winston Churchill was the rather predictable winner. The successful format has since been emulated in many other countries; last year, Russians chose medieval leader Alexander Nevsky as their all-time favourite, with dictator Josef Stalin coming in third.

But the programme ran into controversy here in Georgia because saints were included in the list of potential choices, alongside kings like David the Builder and artists like Niko Pirosmani (pictured above). The Church demanded that the saints be removed from the list, arguing that spiritual figures shouldn’t be competing on a superficial television show. “It’s a great sin to use the names of the saints disrespectfully,” explained a Georgian religious scholar.

A group of journalism students demonstrated outside the First Channel’s studios, urging the public broadcaster to maintain its legally-enshrined independence rather than cowering before the Patriarchate – a rare moment of secular dissent in a country where the Church is by far the most respected institution and any criticism of its spiritual leader is widely seen as unacceptable.

In the same way as Georgian opposition parties obeyed the Patriarch’s call for an end to their hunger-strike protest last year, the First Channel also felt it had to compromise. The public broadcaster’s governing board suspended broadcasts of the programme and offered to change its format so that the final list of ‘greatest Georgians’ would not, after all, be ranked in order of popularity, removing some of the competitive element. One member of the board was unapologetic: “The opinion of the Patriarch is more important for me than the law,” he declared.

But the compromise hasn’t defused the controversy. Last week, religious hard-liners were collecting signatures at churches in Tbilisi for a petition to “protect our saints” by removing them from the TV show entirely. A friend who refused to sign the petition, arguing that media freedom should be upheld, was verbally abused by the campaigning Christians. It was yet another reminder that in Georgia, crossing the Church is a short-cut to trouble.

A Catalogue of Brutality

2009-01-26T09:02:00.004+04:00

The powerful new report from Human Rights Watch accuses Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian forces of committing war crimes during the conflict here in August last year. According to this highly-detailed independent investigation based on hundreds of interviews, all sides were guilty of serious violations against innocent civilians. The allegations against Georgia (indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilian areas in South Ossetia), Russia (indiscriminate strikes on civilian areas in Georgia) and South Ossetia (ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages) are by now well-known, and have, of course, already been denied by the respective governments. But what is truly disturbing about the HRW report is the almost obscene detail of the intimate brutality of soldiers and militiamen during this short but devastating war. Uneasy reading, but essential nonetheless.

Nice and Cheesy

2008-12-29T21:25:00.006+04:00

My former colleague at the BBC, James Rodgers, has filed a brief culinary report from Moscow which sheds light on Russians' current attitudes to their Georgian neighbours in the aftermath of the recent war:

"My local supermarket has just started selling fresh khachapuri, a kind of hot bread with cheese and other fillings. It's a traditional dish from the Caucasus, a staple of Georgian restaurants. But while the delicatessen sells a variety of different kinds from different regions of the Caucasus, it manages to advertise them without mentioning the word Georgian. Perhaps, given the current state of relations, the shop feels it might leave too bitter a taste in their customers' mouths."

A Time to Remember

2008-12-27T11:17:00.003+04:00

As this turbulent year ends, the Eurasianet website has published a retrospective tribute to my friend and occasional colleague, the photographer Alexander Klimchuk, who was shot dead in South Ossetia alongside another Georgian journalist during the war in August. Elizabeth Owen, the author of the tribute, sums up the feelings of many of Sasha's former comrades here in Tbilisi when she says: "You are missed."

The Spoils of War

2008-12-20T10:11:00.003+04:00

"After four months of continuous pillaging, you'd think there would be nothing left to take - but astonishingly, we found looters coming back for more." The Al Jazeera report on the destruction of ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia is online here.

Grim Reckonings

2008-12-19T08:37:00.004+04:00

The Georgian parliamentary commission investigating the war in August has published its report, blaming Russia for provoking the hostilities. That’s hardly surprising, considering the body’s official title - the ‘Temporary Commission on Military Aggression and Acts of Russia against the Territorial Integrity of Georgia’. But the commission did criticise the military and civilian leadership for failing to predict Russia’s response and for an inept military campaign. The report came not long after a leaked Pentagon assessment of the Georgian army also concluded that the country’s fighting force was deeply flawed.

The human impact of the war is again highlighted by this report from Al Jazeera, whose correspondent managed to get rare access to one of the villages in South Ossetia where the Georgian population has been driven out and houses have been burned and looted by militias. She also managed to interview and photograph looters (see picture above). However, severe restrictions still apply to journalists seeking to travel to South Ossetia - if they're even allowed in at all by the authorities - and the full picture of what happened there during this brief but tragic conflict has yet to emerge.

Information War: Update

2008-12-15T19:07:00.004+04:00

A report from the Associated Press details the Georgian government's release of surveillance recordings aimed at discrediting a South Ossetian activist by exposing her alleged links with the Ossetian KGB (as it's still called there). The activist, Lira Tskhovrebova, is currently visiting the United States to promote the Ossetian case against Georgia amid the continuing 'who started the war?' furore, but she strongly denies working for the security services. The AP story highlights Tskhovrebova's use of an expensive American public-relations firm. The PR company helps Tskhovrebova with her two websites, Truth for Ossetia and Help Ossetia Now, which regularly post comments to blogs covering the Ossetia issue, including this one.

In the Twilight Zone

2008-12-08T09:15:00.003+04:00

More on the impact of unexploded cluster munitions, like this potentially lethal 'bomblet' (pictured left), which were scattered across villages in the conflict zone by the Russian and Georgian armies during the war in August. From my column in The Moscow Times:

Robert Nikolishvili was pointing out the spot where a bomb dropped in the courtyard of his village home during the Georgia-Russia war when there was a loud explosion in the field behind him. Although he was injured by a shell during the conflict in August, Nikolishvili didn’t seem worried by the sudden blast, but simply chuckled ironically and carried on talking. He already knew it was caused by a de-mining crew which was busy destroying unexploded cluster munitions left behind when the Georgian and Russian armies exchanged rocket fire across the nearby orchards.

More than 100 nations signed up to an international convention rejecting the use of cluster bombs last week. But Georgia and Russia, the most recent countries to deploy these weapons, weren’t among them. Some states continue to insist that cluster bombs have ‘legitimate’ military uses. But when they detonate, they scatter little ‘bomblets’ which sometimes remain undiscovered, primed to kill or maim civilians, long after politicians have agreed peace deals and soldiers have returned to their barracks.

The Georgia-Russia war only lasted a few days, but experts estimate that it could have left thousands of unexploded munitions which will take months to clear. For farmers like Nikolishvili in the Georgian village of Brotsleti, a few kilometres from South Ossetia, the bomblets caused them to lose most of their crops - their only source of income - because it was too dangerous to bring in the harvest. “We’re afraid to go into the fields because some of the bombs are hidden,” he explained.

Despite substantial evidence, Russia completely denies using cluster munitions during the war. Georgia says it didn’t use them in civilian areas, only against the Russian military. Campaign groups accuse both sides of not telling the truth and showing a callous disregard for civilian lives. Russian munitions killed more people, alleges Human Rights Watch, but Georgian bomblets have also been found in several villages. “Even if they both deny it, the evidence is on the ground,” insists Joseph Huber of Norwegian People’s Aid, which is involved in the clean-up operation.

Four months after the war, parents in Brotsleti are still nervous about letting their children play outside alone in case they’re attracted to the toy-like bomblets. Robert Nikolishvili said his neighbours were also worried that fighting could start again in what remains a highly volatile area - a place described by Amnesty International as a “twilight zone”. As if to illustrate Nikolishvili’s point, as he spoke, distant rounds of automatic gunfire echoed through the village from the direction of South Ossetia. “This is how we are living,” he sighed.

Georgia's War on Drugs

2008-12-06T10:39:00.006+04:00

Georgia has responded to its growing drug-addiction problem by instituting a harshly punitive system of on-the-spot testing and substantial fines for users. Rehabilitation services are extremely limited in this impoverished country, however, and some Georgian drugs experts have alleged that the authorities are more interested in generating revenue than helping addicts to get treatment. But a leading Georgian MP is unapologetic: “If drug users are able to fund their habit, why should we not force them to contribute to the state budget as well?” More details from my report in the global drugs policy magazine Druglink International here.

Kusturica for Ossetia?

2008-12-05T08:41:00.007+04:00

I've often thought that Emir Kusturica, the Serbian director of surreal comedies like Black Cat, White Cat (pictured), has a sufficiently twisted sense of humour to make a film about the Caucasus region, where the chaos of everyday life sometimes mirrors the Balkans. Now it seems that Kusturica is about to do just that - but it will be a documentary, and looks set to be extremely controversial. The Serbian media is reporting that the director has been engaged to make a film about the Russia-Georgia war from the South Ossetian point of view. Georgian film directors are already questioning whether the proposed movie will be 'honest' (if it's ever made, of course) - particularly because a campaigning Ossetian historian is involved in the project, which will reportedly be made with Moscow money. This won't be the first Russian-backed film about the recent conflict, however: the distinctly partisan War 08.08.08 The Art of Betrayal is already online, as the post-war media battle for moral supremacy continues.

Banning the Bombs

2008-12-04T08:26:00.005+04:00

More than 100 countries this week signed up to a landmark international convention rejecting the use of cluster bombs - particularly unpleasant weapons which can remain unexploded and kill or cripple civilians for years after a war has ended. They were used by both sides during the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia - neither of whom signed the convention. The United States and other major arms-producing nations didn't sign either, although Britain, which used cluster munitions in Iraq, did join the call for a worldwide ban - a sign that things can change. This is my report for Al Jazeera from villages on the edge of South Ossetia where de-miners are clearing up Russian and Georgian cluster munitions. There's more on the campaign to ban these weapons here.

A Boy Called Map

2008-12-03T18:49:00.005+04:00

Georgia is the only place in the world where I've seen spraypainted graffiti in a subway depicting the NATO logo, and the Western military alliance's decision this week not to give this country a 'Membership Action Plan', which would allow it to progress to the next stage towards NATO membership, has come as a major disappointment to many people here (although it was wholly predictable in the wake of the disastrous war with Russia and the long-running conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia).

Two-thirds of Georgians who voted in a plebiscite in January said they wanted to join the alliance. Their enthusiasm for membership is, at least in part, related to article five of the NATO treaty - the bit which says that NATO countries will take action to assist any fellow member which comes under attack. When your neighbour is Russia, that's a powerful inducement.

"We are a small country, and it’s important to have a lot of strong countries behind us," said one woman responding to a vox-pop survey in a Georgian newspaper today. Another was more direct: "It's important, because NATO could defend us from enemies."

How much do some Georgians want to get the 'Map' (as it's referred to here) - the Membership Action Plan which would take them one step closer to NATO? A lot, if this line in a recent report from the news agency AFP bears any relation to the truth: "Georgian Prime Minister Grigol Mgaloblishvili said Monday that he had met a man in the mountains of his country who had named his newborn son Map."

'Peace Enforcement': Update

2008-11-24T08:55:00.005+04:00

Some more detail to add to my previous post on computer games which have echoed - and in one case, virtually predicted - the Georgia-Russia war. Follow this link to my column in The Moscow Times.

The Media Battleground

2008-11-23T09:34:00.002+04:00

Georgia has launched a campaign to counter an increasing number of media reports which allege that President Mikheil Saakashvili was responsible for starting the war with Russia in August. According to one Georgian minister, an 'information war' is now under way for international public opinion. But who's on the frontline, what kind of weapons are they using, and who's winning? More from my recent report for Al Jazeera here.

War Games

2008-11-22T20:23:00.009+04:00

Reuters has reported that a new Russian computer game simulates a war between Russia and Georgia, in which Poland supports a Georgian effort to seize back the rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The title of the game, Confrontation - Peace Enforcement, is a reference to the phrase used by the Kremlin when it sent its tanks into Georgia in August - an operation to force the Georgian government to make peace.

This isn’t the first computer game linked to the Russia-Georgia war, however. Earlier this year, some sharp commentators noticed that the conflict bore a striking resemblance to the scenario used in the 2001 game Ghost Recon, which was created by thriller writer Tom Clancy. Ghost Recon envisages a Russian leadership which wants to restore the old Soviet empire, and its first step towards that is an invasion of Georgia. The game is set in the future - in 2008, to be exact.

Opposition Promises a Winter of Discontent

2008-11-10T08:37:00.003+04:00

Georgia's opposition parties - well, some of them - were back on the streets last Friday for the first anti-government demonstration outside parliament since the war in August. They've promised (in the leaflet shown in this picture) that they'll hold regular protests throughout the winter with the aim of forcing early elections in 2009. However, the modest turn-out at Friday's rally (estimated at around 10,000 people, far fewer than at opposition protests earlier this year) suggests that they've still got some way to go before convincing Georgian citizens that a "new wave of civil resistance", as they've described it, is what the country needs right now. More from my column in The Moscow Times here. (The title of the piece, by the way, isn't mine.)

The PR War for South Ossetia

2008-11-05T21:06:00.002+04:00

My former colleague at the BBC, James Rodgers, has produced a fascinating account of the media battle for moral and political advantage between Georgia and Russia during the war in August, and the resources both sides employed to spin the conflict through the use of Western public-relations agencies. It's well worth listening to his report online here.

Ossetian Round Table

2008-11-03T19:09:00.004+04:00

A couple of years ago, in the village of Java in South Ossetia, I was informed by my garrulous host at an alcohol-sodden lunch-party that King Arthur (the warrior hero of English legend) was actually an Ossetian. At the time, I ascribed his theory to the volume of high-octane spirits he had been ingesting over the course of the meal. But recently, a BBC reporter has been hearing the same tale - read it here.

McCain for Georgia

2008-10-31T11:31:00.003+04:00

Outside the US, public opinion surveys suggest that most people would prefer a Barack Obama victory in the American presidential election. But Georgia is different - and it's not just because of John McCain's remarkable display of traditional dancing skills and wine-bibbing prowess when he visited this country a couple of years ago. Find out why here. The photo (by Ana Iaseshvili) shows Georgia's new Minister for Refugees making his preferences clear.

Twisted Firestarters

2008-10-19T12:12:00.007+04:00

The slogan is somewhat ironic considering that this box of matches was bought in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, a couple of weeks after the war.

Beyond the Checkpoints

2008-10-14T07:36:00.003+04:00

A brief snapshot of post-war life in the troubled Gali region of Abkhazia, where ethnic Georgians are becoming increasingly isolated after Russia's recognition of Abkhazia's claims to independence from Georgia. From my column in The Moscow Times.

Torrents of rain hammered down as our rusty Volga saloon bumped and splashed its way along the potholed highway towards the Russian checkpoint on the approach to Gali, the frontier town on the edge of Abkhazia. Not far out of Gali, lines of Russian armoured personnel carriers stood menacingly in a field by the roadside, while Russian military installations appeared to have been reinforced significantly since my last visit, just before the war in August.

In Gali’s waterlogged market, Georgian army uniforms were on offer at a couple of kiosks, hanging alongside black T-shirts bearing the Russian words for ‘Peacekeeping Forces’. One kiosk owner denied that the desert camouflage fatigues which he was selling were second-hand bounty pilfered from Georgian military bases when they were occupied and stripped by Russian troops during the war. But the uniforms looked distinctly authentic.

On a nearby street corner, new propaganda billboards had been erected, depicting the Abkhaz and South Ossetian leaders walking down a red carpet in front of ranks of militiamen, and young people jubilantly waving Abkhaz, Ossetian and Russian flags.

Although it’s under Abkhaz control, the Gali region is mainly populated by an estimated 40,000 ethnic Georgians. It has long been a tense and uneasy place, both impoverished and war-scarred, but since Moscow recognised Abkhazia as an independent state, the future for its inhabitants has become even more uncertain.

It is now more difficult for them to cross over into Georgian-controlled territory, as the Abkhaz authorities firm up their ‘border’. The dilapidated United Nations bus service which used to take people across the frontier bridge to trade or visit relatives has been suspended, and the only transport across the divide is a horse-drawn cart.

Some of Gali’s Georgians have other ways of getting across, but although their economic lifeline hasn’t been cut completely, it has certainly been damaged. They are also under pressure to give up their Georgian citizenship and take Abkhaz passports - something which many see as unacceptable.

Nevertheless, one Georgian woman told me that the situation in the area hadn’t changed much since the war. “It was hard then, and it’s hard now,” she said. “One thing is different though: the Abkhaz are happy because Russia has recognised them.” However, she said she was now thinking of finally abandoning her hometown for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, for the sake of her eldest child who is approaching university age. “I don’t want him to study in Abkhazia,” she explained. “Who knows what kind of things they might teach him at their university?”

"We Have Lived Without Them, We Can Live Without Them"

2008-10-10T08:00:00.003+04:00

From an early age, children in Abkhazia are instilled with patriotic fervour for their "independent republic".

In a classroom at School Number Two in the capital, Suhkumi, there is a memorial to those who died fighting during the war, as there is in most schools there.

"They defended our homeland and we should remember them," an 11-year-old schoolgirl said, pointing to black-and-white portraits of the fighters who she described as heroes. "They gave their lives for us and for peace in our country."

More from my piece on youth in Abkhazia for the Al Jazeera website here - including an audience with Abkhazia's number one rapper.

Sukhumi Drive-By

2008-10-09T19:45:00.007+04:00

The authorities in Abkhazia flexed their military muscles at the recent, Soviet-style 'independence day' parade in Sukhumi. Their tanks were accompanied by planes, helicopters and various other pieces of military hardware, in what seemed to be a direct post-war message to the Georgian government. The mood was almost ecstatic in the city that afternoon (and rather intoxicated later on in the evening). People were partying extra hard after Abkhazia's recent recognition by Russia - although the only other country to follow Moscow's lead so far has been Nicaragua, and this place still looks set to remain somewhat isolated.

The southern Gali region of Abkhazia seemed to be packed with Russian armoured vehicles which had apparently been pulled back from Georgian-controlled territory after the war. Russian checkpoints also seemed to have been significantly fortified. Some of the ethnic Georgians who live in Gali told us they were worried about rumours suggesting that thousands of Russians could be resettled in abandoned houses there, which would inevitably increase tensions.

Unknown Soldiers

2008-10-01T23:27:00.005+04:00

Some notes from the aftermath of the war here - from my column in The Moscow Times.

On a remote country road, a short drive into the hills above the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is a scrubby patch of land where bodies wait to be claimed. Dug into the rocky, yellowish soil are around 40 small black markers, each bearing a different number but the same two words: ‘Utsnobi Jariskatsi’ - ‘Unknown Soldier’.

Next to the graves, a single, small Georgian flag hangs limply, while wilting flowers from the mass burial ceremony (pictured in photo) lie discarded on the ground. Just opposite, an abandoned blue Lada lies on its side by a half-derelict building. There is no sound in the Mukhatgverdi cemetery apart from the agonised wailing of an elderly woman; a mother grieving for her son who went to fight for his country and never came home again.

This desolate roadside may not be the last resting place for the unknown soldiers of last month’s war. The numbers on the temporary headstones refer to DNA samples which will, hopefully, allow the fallen to be matched with their families and buried in a more dignified manner later.

But it is still unclear exactly how many Georgians died during the five-day war with Russia. Government sources currently put the number at around 300 - 115 of them soldiers. It’s also unclear how many remain people missing; one official has suggested that more than 1,000 are yet to be found. The government has set up a commission to co-ordinate the search for the dead and missing, but the uncertainty about casualty figures has made some people uneasy.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of internal refugees have yet to return to their homes in the conflict zone. Indeed, many of them will never be able to go back, because their houses in South Ossetia have been razed to the ground. The huge tent camp in the town of Gori, close to South Ossetia, remains full to capacity. Heavy rains in recent days gave another warning that winter is bearing down fast, and the authorities are under pressure to rehouse people before the weather turns for the worse.

On the highway from Tbilisi to Gori, where the Russian army maintained its checkpoints just a few weeks ago, construction workers are now labouring intensively to build new mini-villages from scratch. Red roofs can now be seen where, less than a week earlier, there was only bare earth and grass. These little hamlets will provide much-needed shelter for those who have lost everything. But, like the war graves, they will also be an enduring reminder of how much has been lost, and why.

"Don't Tell Me It's Not Worth Fighting For"

2008-09-20T10:08:00.003+04:00

Surreal scenes in post-war Tbilisi last night, as Canadian soft-rocker Bryan Adams played an open-air concert entitled 'Peace, Freedom and Democracy for Georgia'. Even more surreal was the discovery that the gig was reportedly sponsored by a Russian-owned mining company. Whatever the cause or its financier, however, respect has to be due to Adams for coming to a city where most international stars would - at this time at least - fear to visit. Adams is also reported to be donating money to build a school in the town of Gori, which was damaged by Russian bombing raids last month.

Ready - Or Not?

2008-09-18T07:56:00.002+04:00

"The main thing is that the scope of the threat was underestimated, while our own combat capabilities were overestimated." A Georgian defence ministry source quoted in a sobering analysis of the Georgian military's preparations for last month's war, as published on the Eurasianet site. Read the full article here.

Two Wars Later...

2008-09-17T07:36:00.002+04:00

From my column in The Moscow Times:

There was a jovial atmosphere last Saturday night in the Stop Russia bar in Tbilisi, after Russian troops started to pull back from their checkpoints deep in Georgian territory. The Stop Russia bar used to be known as USSR, and is still decorated with busts of Stalin and Soviet memorabilia, but was hastily re-branded after last month’s war. “It’s against Russian aggression,” a dark-eyed, pencil-thin barmaid declared urgently. “We want them out of our country!”

The ominous mood which had gripped the city seems to have lightened in recent days, particularly since the huge Stop Russia demonstrations a couple of weeks ago, which according to official estimates brought more than a million people onto the streets. Afterwards, youths partied late into the night in Tbilisi, letting off some steam after enduring some of the darkest times in recent Georgian history.

But reminders of the war are hard to ignore - particularly the thousands of internal refugees who fled the fighting and took refuge in empty state buildings and hastily-constructed tent camps. Ironically, some of them have occupied a dilapidated block which used to be the Russian military command centre for the Caucasus. Once this building housed some of Moscow’s spooks; now its population is dining on emergency aid packages supplied by Washington.

This is a tragedy which has only compounded the last one: Georgia is still struggling to deal with tens of thousands more people who were displaced by the civil wars here in the early 1990s. Many of them still live in suspended animation in temporary accommodation, sustained by dreams of eventually going home. For 15 years, they’ve been a visible symbol of Georgia’s lost territories, and a physical embodiment of the desire to win them back. But now those breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are effectively Russian military protectorates, their chances of returning seem bleaker than ever.

In a tatty high-rise building on a rubbish-strewn hill, high above the capital, I met Mzia, a former teacher who escaped from the war in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in 1993, along with all the other families which live in this wind-lashed block. Since then, she’s shared a cramped one-room apartment with her grown-up son.

Mzia offered coffee and chocolates, while I asked her if - since Russia won last month’s war - she still thought she would someday go home. She smiled, then frowned, then suddenly seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Before, sometimes we lost hope, but hope always returned,” she replied calmly. “But now, we have doubts...”

Military Misadventure

2008-08-21T11:52:00.003+04:00

"In light of the combination of fundamental tactical shortcomings and serious strategic blunders in the Georgian campaign to retake South Ossetia, it seems clear that the flaws in Georgian military planning were based on two key factors: an over-confident assumption of its own combat readiness and capabilities, as well as by a serious under-estimation of the scale and scope of the Russian response."

This intriguing piece by military analyst Richard Giragosian examines how and why Georgian forces were comprehensively defeated by the Russians. Read the full article here.

Did Russia Plan its War in Georgia?

2008-08-17T12:26:00.007+04:00

"A decision was made for the war to start in August. The war would have happened regardless of what the Georgians did. Whether they responded to the provocations or not, there would have been an invasion of Georgia.

"The goal was to destroy Georgia’s central government, defeat the Georgian army, and prevent Georgia from joining NATO."

From a speculative article published on the Eurasianet website. Read the full piece here. The other question is, of course, how well did the Georgian leadership plan its operation to take back South Ossetia, and how thoroughly did it assess the possible consequences?

Fear and Loathing in Tbilisi

2008-08-14T11:47:00.002+04:00

As I locked the door of my apartment in Tbilisi at around midnight and got in a car to head for the border, I felt like a traitor. I was leaving Georgia when my adopted home, and my friends there, felt more threatened than they had been in many years. I had my own reasons – the impending birth of my first child – but I still felt I was deserting them.

From a piece I wrote for The Guardian newspaper - more here.

No Comment (2)

2008-08-14T00:48:00.002+04:00

ROAD TO TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Fifty battered Russian army trucks and armored personnel carriers roared without warning down the highway toward the country's capital, making it clear that a day-old cease-fire will not keep Russia from moving freely through Georgia.

"Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!" one of the soldiers bellowed at a photographer in a sleeveless shirt along the road. Other troops grinned and brandished their weapons, and one hung his bare feet out the back of a truck. Another, a machine gunner riding atop an armored vehicle, wore a bandanna and a black T-shirt with the word "Russia" emblazoned in the red, blue and white colors of the national flag.

Asked from the side of the road, the soldiers shouted that their destination was Tbilisi - "With no detours," one said. But then they veered abruptly into a field about an hour's drive from the capital and camped conspicuously within sight of the road before the sun went down.

The message was hard to miss: The Russian military is still the landlord in swaths of Georgia, and its forces remain in easy striking distance of the country's capital.

Meanwhile, 10 kilometers (6 miles) down the road and well inside Georgia, a small contingent of subdued and edgy Georgian troops gathered and began preparing a defense line - an acknowledgment that swaths of their country are still under Russian control. Two vintage cannons were wheeled into position facing in the direction of the Russians. Nearby, crack troops equipped with pistols, Kalashnikovs and anti-tank rockets, waited by their olive-drab pickup trucks. One of them played with a puppy.

Other Georgian units were visible along the road closer to the capital. But nearly the only people traveling toward Tbilisi were refugees, a steady, dejected trickle of Georgians fleeing the front line area in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons. In one Soviet-era car were eight people, including a dejected mother holding a baby in the front seat. The back door of a small blue van swung open to reveal at least a dozen people crowded inside.

One army surplus truck ran out of gas behind the Georgian lines, and its dejected passengers waited alongside the road. One woman who identified herself only as Nina, 57, said she fled her village, Karaleti, when it was assaulted and torched by the Russians earlier in the day. Her account could not be independently confirmed.

She had spent the days of fighting hiding in a basement, she said, and did not know where her two daughters were, though she believed they had escaped.
"I'm proud that I am Georgian, and they hate us because we are Georgian," she said.

Before the surprise arrival of the Russian convoy, Georgians were debating whether Russian tanks were indeed in the center of the town of Gori, as some reports suggested - a violation of the cease-fire brokered Tuesday that demands a full withdrawal to pre-fighting lines. Gori, which has largely been abandoned, is a Georgian town that borders the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.

The tanks were indeed in the town, but the debate was rendered irrelevant when the first armored vehicle rolled down from the direction of Gori, pushing beyond the town and farther into Georgia.

The vehicle was followed by trucks carrying equipment, military ambulances, troop transports and two truck-mounted cannon. The soldiers clearly feared no resistance, and many grinned and waved as they drove by.

Some of the troops had made a halfhearted attempt at camouflage, decking their vehicles with foliage. But the convoy was hardly an invasion force, made up mainly of support vehicles and carrying perhaps 100 combat troops and an equal number of medics, drivers and other rear-echelon personnel.

At the end of the convoy drove a beat-up van flying a Russian flag and carrying five militiamen in ragtag uniforms and armed with Kalashnikovs - South Ossetian irregulars who had attached themselves to the Russian troops. One of them wore a black mask. Earlier in the day, a BBC reporter in Gori reported that the South Ossetian militiamen were looting houses in the town.

When the Russians turned left onto a dirt trail and headed for their encampment, the South Ossetians spent a few minutes posing with their rifles before boarding their van and heading jubilantly back in the direction of Gori.

No Comment

2008-08-14T00:01:00.001+04:00

Old Town Blues

2008-07-29T09:42:00.003+04:00

"There is no basic understanding of heritage in this country." As the Georgian authorities strive to turn the country into an investor-friendly 'new Singapore', architectural experts despair that historic buildings in the capital are being stealthily destroyed by profit-seeking developers - while ordinary people in the crumbling Old Town district just want somewhere decent to live. More on the ongoing dispute over the future of Tbilisi here, from The Washington Post.

Radovan the 'Healer'

2008-07-25T17:29:00.004+04:00

How would you react if you found out that the 'therapist' who'd been giving your wife and children massages was actually the fugitive war-crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic? That's what happened to my Serbian friend, Nikola Medic. Unsurprisingly, he wasn't too happy about it. There's an account of his story here.

'Our Guys' Lose the Plot

2008-07-21T21:30:00.005+04:00

The peculiar Putin-loving youth movement 'Nashi', set up by the Kremlin to stop the pernicious 'Orange Revolution' virus spreading from Ukraine to Russia, is now apparently in decline after Putin's presidency ended in Russia, according to this report from the organisation's annual summer camp, as published in The Moscow Times.

Friendly Neighbourhood Gunmen

2008-07-21T09:05:00.005+04:00

"You need Spetznaz." A slightly-torn propaganda poster from the streets of Sukhumi, capital of Abkhazia, encourages people to appreciate their special forces troops. Read more strange and unpleasant tales from my recent trip to the Black Sea breakaway region here.

Defrosting the 'Frozen Conflict'

2008-07-21T07:13:00.002+04:00

More on the Dmitry Sanakoyev phenomenon (and why the South Ossetian separatists think he's a "scoundrel and a traitor") from a piece I wrote for Russia Profile magazine here.

Crossing the Line

2008-07-07T21:47:00.005+04:00

South Ossetia is an impoverished rural backwater in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains with a population of 70,000 or fewer, but its leaders say they want to break away from Georgia and become an independent state. After an outbreak of violence in the region last week, it seemed like a good time to look at the tale of Dmitry Sanakoyev - a South Ossetian native who's been described as a 'traitor' by his enemies in his home town, but is celebrated as a hero by the Georgian government. From my column in The Moscow Times:

At the launch of Dmitry Sanakoyev’s autobiography, his beefy minders were taking no chances, despite the genteel surroundings. Sanakoyev, a leading figure in the separatist regime in South Ossetia who sensationally defected to the Georgian side, was surrounded at all times by a bull-necked cordon of solid Caucasian muscle. The reason for the heavy security became only too clear a few days later, when a roadside bomb reportedly exploded as his convoy passed by, in what he says was an assassination attempt.

Sanakoyev is the head of the Georgian-backed administration in South Ossetia, which was set up a year ago to undermine the Russian-backed separatists’ claims to be the region’s legitimate bosses. But he actually fought against Georgia during the war in the early 1990s which left most of the minuscule territory under separatist control. One of the photographs in his autobiography shows him in camouflage fatigues, toting an automatic rifle. It’s juxtaposed with pictures of burning buildings.

I once asked him if he had killed any Georgians while he was fighting for the separatist cause. His response was suitably diplomatic: “I fired, but thank God, I did not kill.”

Although he once served as the separatist prime minister and describes himself, in his book, as an “Ossetian patriot”, there weren’t many warm words for Sanakoyev when I last visited the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. “Sanakoyev will not live for long,” one elderly man snarled when I mentioned him. “He will provoke that himself, and we will support it.” Then again, one doesn’t tend to hear many dissenting voices in the kind of town where the security forces are the main employer.

South Ossetian officials have labelled him a “traitor” and a “Georgian puppet”. They claim that he only defected because the Georgians paid off his gambling debts, although no concrete evidence has been produced to support the allegation. Both the separatists and their friends at the Russian Foreign Ministry also claim that last week’s roadside bomb attack was staged.

Sanakoyev says he realised that South Ossetia could only find peace and prosperity if it remained part of Georgia. In his autobiography, he argues that the separatists have been selling people unrealistic dreams of gaining independence and someday joining the Russian Federation - “lying to their nation and manipulating people’s fate”, as he puts it.

Since he crossed over to the Georgian side, the authorities have spent millions of dollars on the ‘Sanakoyev project’, in the hope of convincing Ossetians that life would be rosier under government control. They’re still waiting to see if their investment will pay off.

A New Facade

2008-07-02T10:04:00.003+04:00

The city of Tbilisi is changing, as grand old buildings and charming traditional yards fall deeper into ruin after years of post-Soviet economic chaos, corruption and neglect, while all around them, modern office blocks, elite hotels and upscale apartment complexes are rising from the rubble. The investors and property developers are bringing in money, but will the idiosyncratic character of the Georgian capital survive the push towards modernisation? Read more about it here.

The Daily Aliyev

2008-06-25T08:18:00.003+04:00

"Every morning, Azerbaijan's two state newspapers - one in Azerbaijani, one in Russian - land on my desk in AFP's Caucasus bureau in Baku. Scintillating reading they are not. At least two-thirds of their front pages are filled with photos of President Ilham Aliyev shaking hands with visiting dignitaries, heading cabinet meetings or making speeches. The rest is dry reports of his meetings, verbatim copies of his speeches or texts of presidential decrees."

In the wake of the Che Guevara party raid in Baku, AFP's Caucasus bureau chief Mike Mainville examines what's going on with freedom of speech in Azerbaijan here.