Dan O'Huiginn

In one of those ‘far more comprehensive than you’d ever want’ posts, here is a little background to the current dispute between Russia and Georgia. Things haven’t been quite this heated before, but all the elements have been there for a while. There’s the political grandstanding by both Putin and Saakashvili, partly animated by personal dislike but mostly a strategy to enhance their domestic popularity. Then there are the plausible underlying causes: the Russian soldiers who are in Georgia and helping separatists, and the overall story of Georgia’s attempt to get out from under Russia’s thumb.

A war of words

How much of this is just about looking good on TV? A pretty huge amount, I’d say. Saakashvili’s persona is based on being unremittingly pro-Western – look at how he has [presented](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/2/d9286bf3-6e9a-4f29-98e3-cb44e734c286.html) defiance of Russia as his personal contribution to politics:

“…we’re no longer the country we were two or three years ago. We’re not afraid of anything and we won’t let anything upset us”

Saakashvili loves political grandstanding against Russia. He has loudly accused Russia of [arming separatists](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/12/saakashvili.shtml), [sabotaging gas pipelines](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/1/207cd3c0-56a4-4b43-bc0b-9f929ca75c79.html) to leave Georgia without winter fuel, even [involvement in kidnapping a Georgian child](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/8/59c9a015-0ba7-43a1-95c5-99111c8a18f7.html). In the UN, he has [hinted](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/19/saakashvili.shtml) about Russian aims of annexing Georgia.
There’s a kernel of truth in a lot of this rhetoric, but Saakashvili is saying it all so publicly for his own political interests.
There’s been almost as much verbal nastiness on the Russian side. Some of it is personal tension between Putin and Saakashvili. Putin has, for instance, [blamed](http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060131/43264624.html) a previous crisis on “the ability of individual political figures in Georgia to respond adequately to the situation in the relations“. Then there’s the time a Russian Foreign Ministry official seemingly [encouraged assassination of Saakashvili](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/21/killsaakashvili.shtml)
I’d count Russia’s [ban of Georgian wine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Russian_ban_of_Moldovan_and_Georgian_wines) and mineral water, and their occasional [refusals to issue visas to Georgians](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/2/d9286bf3-6e9a-4f29-98e3-cb44e734c286.html), in this category of ‘political grandstanding’. They aren’t insignificant (wine and water are two of Georgia’s main exports, and the million or so Georgian workers in Russia need their visas), but the measures were obviously driven by politics rather than necessity.

The unwanted soldiers

Then we get onto the underlying issues – and yes, it’s military and it’s ethnic. It’s about the Georgian separatist republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, an about the unwanted Russian troops still stationed in Georgia. Some of the troops are (not exactly neutral) ‘peacekeepers’ in the separatist regions. Others are loitering on old Soviet bases: everybody agrees they have to go at some point, but Russia is dragging its feet and trying to keep them in Georgia for another few years.
Saakashvili certainly isn’t the only Georgian to be angry about all this, but he has gone particularly far in trying to change it. There are fairly frequent military skirmishes, particularly significant ones being in South Ossetia in August 2004 (causing a row with Russia), and this summer the [Kodori gorge](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5221436.stm) of Abkhazia (causing – you guessed it – a row with Russia)
Georgia has also tried arresting the Russian soldiers before. I imagine this is partly to nudge Russia towards withdrawing them, partly for domestic political reasons, maybe even because they were breaking the law. I can’t find any for spying until recently, though – mostly they’ve been about [smuggling](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/30/peacekeepersheld.shtml) and [visa irregularities](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/01/peacekeepers.shtml). Georgian police even had a [punch-up](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/01/peacekeepers.shtml) with Russian soldiers after a road accident.

High politics and international relations

But, in the end, it all comes down to wider disputes. Saakashvili wants Georgia to be all but a part of Europe, Russia wants to keep it as a client state.
Georgia has always been among the most Westward-looking of the former Soviet states. Then in 2003 came the Rose Revolution, bringing in the Kremlin-baiting, West-loving [Mikheil Saakashvili](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheil_Saakashvili), and the course was fixed. As with the separatist republics, Saakashvili has only been doing what most Georgian politicians also want – but he’s been pushing it a lot harder than they would dare.
His first foreign minister was not just (in what is perhaps a diplomatic first) the former French ambassador to Georgia, she was also Georgia’s first non-Russian-speaking foreign minister. Then there’s the new [oil pipeline](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4508633.stm) running through Georgia on its way from Azerbaijan to Turkey, cutting Russia out of the supply route. Or the [WTO membership](http://www.wto.org/English/news_e/pres00_e/pr182_e.htm) (something Russia hasn’t yet managed), the understandable [desperation to join NATO](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.georgiafornato.ge%2FMain%2520Page.htm&ei=6UgrRf24EZao-gKZvaTxBA&sig=___ncS1NG5qd4wjMwej-10ORFLalE=&sig2=fCcyNdGnLaCLH8zbQBtdRw).
All this unnerves Russia, which needs Georgia as a client state. It’s not that Georgia is intrinsically all that valuable to Russia – but if this one gets away, it undermines Russia’s ability to browbeat the rest of the post-Soviet states. Putin is seeing his ‘near abroad’ crumble as hte ‘colour revolutions’ remove pro-Russian elites, and as the CIS (a loose political union of the former Soviet states) is replaced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia, and [GUAM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUAM) further West.
So there you have it, from spheres of influence down to looking good on TV.
[incidentally, a lot of the articles I link above have been pulled out of a [useful del.icio.us collection](http://del.icio.us/nathanhamm/georgia%2Brussia?page=1) by Nathan Hamm of [Registan](http://www.registan.net). Even if Georgia isn’t his main focus, and he hasn’t blogged on the latest crisis, he still has a decent eye on what’s happening there. Go Nathan!]

Another quick note on the persecution of Georgians in Russia.
One thing making it easy for the authorities to go after ethnic Georgians is that, like everbody else in Russia, most of them break the law in one way or another. It seems that almost everything is slightly illegal there – not illegal enough that you expect to get arrested for it, but enough that the police can go after you if they want to. So for example, they can inspect Georgian restaurants and find they all fail to meet some health requirement. Or they can audit the taxes of prominent Georgians, and find that they’re bending the rules. Because that’s what everybody does.
It’s just another spin on the old truth that the more laws you pass, the more corruption you get.

Even the Guardian has devoted several articles to the spat between Russia and Georgia. Georgia arrests four ‘Russian spies’, Russia cuts off all links with Georgia. Georgian businesses in Moscow start getting raided (there’s nothing Russian police enjoy more than going after anybody from the Caucasus). No word on what is happening to ethnic Russians in Georgia, who make up some 6% of the population.
All this sabre-rattling seems very good for helping Saakashvili and Putin get their parties re-elected, but not much use for anybody else. Grr!

Another day, another country. Kyrgyzstan feels particularly fascinating today, for some reason.

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First roundup since Tuesday, but at least I’m gradually making my way through the region. Today, the news from Kazakhstan, international, domestic, and fluffy.

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Another roundup of news over the past month or two, this time devoted to Georgia, and marginally more successful than my attempts with Azerbaijan.

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This began with me wanting to have a look at China’s foreign policy, but that’s far too huge a topic to take in one bite. All that you get under the cut is a bit about Xinjiang, Tibet, and oil politics. If you want the rest (or something better-informed), go watch the BBC documentary on China that’s showing right now.

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This post almost nails something about Russia:
> “The fetishization of actual freedom [pop culture]…has allowed for the restriction of formal [political] freedom”
Almost, but not quite. There has never been either actual/economic/pop-culture freedom or political freedom in Russia, during or after the USSR. The difference is what gets fetishized or dreamt about most.
In the Bad Old Days ™ there was relative prosperity (everything is relative), no political freedom, but an idolization political freedom. Now there is relative political freedom, economic collapse, and dreams of consumer culture.
[all this brought to you by the talking-out-of-my-ass department: obviously I don’t have any real knowledge here]

Given how much I’m reading about Central Asia these days, it seems perverse not to write anything about it
UNDP has [released](http://neweurasia.net/?p=317) a “[Central Asia Human Development Report](http://europeandcis.undp.org/?wspc=CAHDR2005%20)” (which, typically, I’m going to link to instead of reading). Both [registan](http://www.registan.net/?p=6328#more-6328) and [New Eurasia](http://neweurasia.net/?p=317) report from the launch party. Despite a couple of references to the “new silk road” and the “new great game”, it sounds like an interesting day. One academic talked about the lack of interest in Central Asia from everyone except China. China is naturally enough after Central Asia’s oil, but I’m surprised nobody else is. He also commented:
> Trade between Central Asian countries…is not and will not be a significant engine of development
I’m not saying he’s wrong, but I’d be interested to see the basis for that reasoning. Martha Brill Olcett responded with:
> Central Asia certainly needs the great markets more than the great markets need Central Asia as a transit route
Finally, one speaker talked about the emergence of:
> a transnational democratic mobilization connected by technology
And it _is_ exciting to hear about groups like this, because we can empathise, and because it justifies the time we spend behind computers rather than mobilizing on the streets or manning soup kitchens. Again, I’d like to know the figures behind this mobilization before I jump up and down squealing.
Time to read the report now, I guess.

Next stop, South Korea. An easier one this, because there’s so much going on in the country, and in many ways they’re way ahead of us.
Famously, there is [OhmyNews](http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp), which got the attention of the net pundits a couple of years ago and sparked the craze for ‘Citizen Journalism’.
Then there’s gaming – the world of Korean MMORPGs is so far ahead of ours that it’s embarassing. A top player like [Lee Yunyeol](http://rossignol.cream.org/?p=284) can earn $200,000 a year, and is on television daily. Gaming/Internet cafes called “[PC Bangs](http://www.driftreality.com/seoul/pcbang.html)” are gradually being replaced by playing at home over a broadband connection, and so the national addiction continues to grow.
South Korean pop culture is taking over East Asia, in a trend given the moniker ‘[Hallyu](http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=37127)’, or ‘Korean Wave’. The anti-Hallyu backlash in Taiwan and Japan has made governments there consider restricting Korean-origin broadcasts on national television, and some have even demanded that Korean television broadcast programs from other countries. Currently trendy Korean exports include the film [Oldboy](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050324/REVIEWS/50310001/1023) and the singer [Rain](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/27/news/rain.php?rss) ([Ji-Hoon Jung](http://www.asiafinest.com/korean/rain-bi.htm). But I wonder if the whole ‘Korean Wave’ is a storm in a teacup; in 2004 the revenues from foreign sales of Korean TV were only [$71.5m](http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200504/kt2005042117374410440.htm)
[Global Voices](http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/east-asia/south-korea/) doesn’t cover Korea as well as I’d expected, but it does at least point to [Asian pages](http://asiapages.typepad.com/), the diary of a foreign worker in South Korea.
Unlike with Mongolia, this has been all pop-culture and no politics. Korea is important enough that we get to hear about the bigger political stories anyway. Recently, the news has been how the [Prime minister forced to resign](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4804018.stm) because he was playing golf rather than dealing with a rail strike. He’s been replaced by [South Korea’s first female Prime Minister](http://en.ce.cn/World/Asia-Pacific/200603/24/t20060324_6483052.shtml). And we all heard about the [cloning scandal](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4824486.st), because that had sex and science and scandal, all rolled up together.
So, that’s enough of Korea. On to the next country…somewhere East European this time, I think.

Let’s start with one of those proverbially obscure, remote countries: Mongolia.
Did you notice the [political crisis](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4616050.stm) there earlier this month? No, neither did I. The BBC’s narrative is: Prime Minister starts anti-corruption drive. The main party, the MPRP, pulls out of his government. There are protests in favour of the Prime Minister and his party. By the time the dust settles, we’ve all lost interest.
For general political commentary, Nathan at Registan has been [churning out Mongolia posts](http://www.registan.net/index.php?cat=15), and his [del.icio.us linklist](http://del.icio.us/nathanhamm/mongolia) points to some of the more interesting news coverage of Mongolia. [East Asia Watch](http://www.eastasiawatch.com/category/mongolia/) has some posts about Mongolia, and [Shards of Mongolia](http://shardsofmongolia.blogspot.com/) has a lot more.
At NewEurasia, a [Mongolia blog](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/) got going in the past few days, and it’s going through the initial posting-splurge of any new blog. The author has the advantage of living in Mongolia, and he’s coming up with some interesting things.
Mongolia’s only non-government news TV station, Eagle TV, is [expanding broadcasting to 16 hours a day](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=24). The man behind Eagle TV, Tom Terry, has his own [blog](http://terrycom.net/blog/). From that site, it looks like Eagle TV has a strong Christian slant, as Terry tries to bring to Mongolia “Faith and Freedom”. In his [book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597817260/qid=1133994992/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-1959482-3403105?s=books%26v=glance%26n=283155) of the same title he argues, according to one Amazon reviewer, that “(Christian) faith and human freedom are so inextricably connected that no culture can for long have one without the other”. Well, I’d rather have missionary TV than no non-government media, and at least there are rumours of a second news station starting up in competition. Multiple news stations in a country with a population [under 3 million](http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mg.html) isn’t bad!
On more cultural topics, he talks about [attempts to reintroduce the traditional Mongolian script](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=22), and about the [preservation of Buddhist artfacts](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=20).
The [Mongolian Matters](http://www.mongolianmatters.com/) blog has a series of posts on th idolisation of Genghis Khan: a Japanese film, Ulan Bator’s airport being renamed Chinggis Khaan. [Plans are even afoot](http://www.mongolianmatters.com/2006/02/mongolias-genghis-khan-craze-1153.html) to create a 40-metre statue of Genghis Khan on horseback, with a golden whip.
Places to look for more: [global voices](http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/central-asia-caucasus/mongolia/) links to the blogs, (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/mongolia) collects pretty pictures. There is a [Mongolian State News Agency](http://www.montsame.mn/). Most of the [other](http://www.mongolianews.com/) [Mongolian](http://mongolianews.net/) [news websites](http://www.insidemongolia.com/) just reprint stories from the international press. [The UB Post](http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/) seems has substantially more original content.