Bush regime brings Georgia to the brink of war

For many years, the U.S. propped up the regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in the Republic of Georgia. This has been a disaster for Georgians as the usual "reforns" were implemented to deindustrialise and deagriculturalise the country. The exception to this disaster has been the Autonomous Republic of Adjaria, which hosts a Russian military base. As part of the Russian sphere of influence, Adjaria has been an oasis of prosperity in the midst of the Georgian disaster. The Americans insist that the Russians withdraw protection for Adjaria and to allow the regime in Tblisi to take it over so it can be run into the ground as was the rest of Georgia. The people of Adjaria resist this as do the Russians. However, Eduard Shevardnadze was unwilling to push the situation and so an uneasy modus vivendi existed. Recently, however, the United States had decided that Shevardnadze had to retire. A new leadership was groomed by the false "civil society" organisations funded by American taxpayers and George Soros, a leadership that had previously served Shevardnadze. It became the "democratic opposition", thus changing the Georgian political equation from a bipolar to a tripolor situation.

Since the late 1990s, the two main forces were Shevardnadze and Adjarian President Aslan Abashidze's national Revival movement. Revival was the victim of a couple of Shevardnadze electoral frauds in this period, frauds supported by Western powers and the OSCE who saw Abashidze as the evil Russian stooge; Georgian politics was easy then; Shevardnadze knew he was branded as Good and Abashidze was Evil. Then the Americans decided that it was time for Shevardnadze to retire.

At this stage, Shevardnadze did not want to go so quickly. Knowing that the Western powers were backing the "reformers' coalesced around one Mikhail Saakashvili, he made nice with the Russians and with Abashidze. The November 2003 parliamentary election campaign featured accusations by the "democratic opposition" that he was a traitor who was cozying up to the Russians and to Abashidze. Without the Western fraud machinery behind him, Shevardnadze conducted the most honest election under his rule. Also because he did not have the Western fraud machinery behind him, those running that machinery accused him of fraud. The main demand of the "democratic opposition" was to invalidate all votes from Adjaria because these people voted for Revival, and Shevardnadze was accused of helping plot this to stay in power through an unholy alliance with these pro-Russian forces of darkness. All evil comes from Moscow, and the centre of evil in Georgia is in Batumi, the Democratic Opposition cried. All votes from Adjaria must be thrown out! The Western powers of course agreed with that demand. This was the issue used to carry out the coup, what they call the Rose Revolution. The issue of throwing away the votes of an entire Autonomous Republic, to disenfranchise the people of Adjaria, this was the issue that caused this "Democratic Revolution."

What was their argument that the Adjarians had stolen the vote? That Revival won 95% of the vote. That the number of votes was higher than they claimed it to be. The Adjarians argued that since Adjaria is prosperous while the rest of Georgia is a disaster, many Georgians moved to Adjaria while the emigration rate from that region was less than that of the rest of Georgia, from where over a million people had recently emigrated. As for the 95%, the Adjarians would want to protect their prosperity from the disaster of the rest of Georgia; Saakashvili was aggressively anti-Adjarian and Shevardnadze was no friend of theirs either. Who else could they vote for. However, the West said it was fraud and so the argument was taken up by the Western powers and this was used to carry out the coup.

Following the coup, Shevardnadze was forced to resign before the end of his term. A presidential election was held. Despite the fact that observers saw evidence that very few people voted, the electoral commission claimed that enough people voted to make the vote valid and that 96% voted for Saakashvili. The Western powers declared the election to be free and fair, seemingly oblivious to their recent argument to throw away the Adjarian vote; that the 95% for Revival could only have been obtained by fraud. At any rate, the resulting situation was a regime very hostile to Adjaria, militantly pro-American and one that successfully disenfranchised the people of Adjaria. So this frames the current crisis.

Many predicted open conflict between the new regime in Tblisi and Adjaria. This is happening right now. Saakashvili demands that Adjaria and Abashidze submit to his rule, despite his act of disenfranchising the entire population of that autonomous republic. He wants the Russians to leave. He wants to submerge that territory in the disaster that is Georgia. The Bush administration is backing him in this. Russia's Putin warns Saakashvili that he would be entirely responsible should war break out. The decision of the Western powers, led by the Bush administration, to put this regime into power has destabilised the situation in Georgia. Bush's administration has to bear much responsibility for what is going on there. All reasonable people must conclude that Adjaria and Russia are right and Saakashvili and Bush are wrong and ought to be made to pay should the situation deteriorate. Unfortunately, the media will not draw this conclusion and instead demonise Adjaria's leadership while fawning over the totalitarian-like Saakashvili, who made his party's flag the national flag while bringing back the knock on the door in the middle of the night, much like another Georgian leader from several decades past.