As for Georgian tourism to Abkhazia, I live in Holland and we have quite a lot of German tourists here. After Germany has lost WW II in 1945 we had a short dip but after that tourism took up again. People are quite practical in these kinds of things.

Wim

1) You keep suggesting that the Russians are disillusioned in international peacekeeping because of their awful experience in Kosovo. Well… no. Russia /never/ trusted international peacekeepers with the disputed territories. That’s why there never have been any there.

Russia didn’t trust peacekeepers in Kosovo, either. Remember the Russian troops from Bosnia rushing there in 1999?

They eventually accepted UNMIK, under the fig leaf of UNSCR 1244 — but they didn’t “believe” in them then, and never have since. Yeltsin’s administration grudgingly accepted UNMIK because 1) Yeltsin didn’t want a confrontation with the West, and 2) Yeltsin’s Russia was stone broke.

So, trying to say that poor Russia has been dreadfully disappointed by what happened in Kosovo is just weirdly wrong.

2) You say that refugee return is unlikely. In fact, it’s impossible. In Abkhazia in particular, most of the current ruling elite got rich by taking over the abandoned properties of ethnic Georgians. So, even before the current unpleasantness, there was pretty much zero chance of refugees coming back.

And although it hasn’t gotten much press attention, the recent violence produced two more waves of refugee. A few thousand Georgians were living in a border area of Abkhazia; they’re gone now. A few thousand more were living in villages dotted across South Ossetia, including some within a few kilometers of Tsikhinvali; they’re gone too, dead or fled.

So, no, no refugee return.

3) “They will like to have tourists from Georgia too”?

Um… no. Really, no. The Abkhaz have spent the last sixteen years whipping themselves into hating and fearing the Georgians. It’s pretty much institutionalized at this point. They want nothing to do with Georgia.

Abkhazia’s economic potential is an interesting question. It does have some, but much of the tourism is playing on Soviet-era nostalgia. If you’re starting in Moscow, there are a lot of places that are warmer, cheaper, and easier to reach than Abkhazia.

4) South Ossetia has zero economic potential for anything beyond agriculture and a bit of herding and timber. It’s not even a particularly beautiful or interesting part of the Caucasus. It would be poor and backwards whether it was part of Russia or Georgia; either way it would be landlocked, isolated, underpopulated, run by people with little interest in developing it, and completely devoid of natural resources.

5) ‘When write about “gangster states” is not exactly clear for me what you mean’

Well, in the case of South Ossetia I mean a state run by gangsters”. Try google for “South Ossetia counterfeiting”, “South Ossetia smuggling”, “South Ossetia criminal” or — I kid you not — “South Ossetia uranium”.

Eduard Kokoity is a gangster, plain and simple. He was involved in a variety of unsavory biznis in 1990s Moscow, then came back to Ossetia to be the public face of one of the major local clan-militia-political faction-gangs there. He turned on them in 2003, leading to pitched gun battles in the center of Tsikhinvali; he won, killed or drove out all his rivals, and has been ruling the place without opposition ever since.

In Transnistria the leadership is less dramatic but just as criminal. Pretty much everything worth owning in Transnistria belongs to one of three groups. They are President Smirnov’s immediate family (Tranistrians joke that the Russian acronym for Transnistria, PMR, stands for “Papa i Moi Republika”, Daddy’s and My Republic), the Sherriff Group of biznismen, and brutal thug-oligarch Alisher Ulmanov, a Friend Of Putin, who holds the balance between the other two. Most of Transnistria’s formal leadership, including President Smirnov, three members of his cabinet, and the head of the security services, is either under investigation or being actively sought by Interpol: they can’t travel to Europe because they’d be arrested as soon as they got off the plane.

And — as noted in the article — Russia is fine with this. In fact, the only one of the three border regions that has given them trouble is Abkhazia… and that’s because the Abkhaz, despite being heavily gangsterized at every level of governmen and society, nevertheless insisted on having actual elections, which the wrong candidate won. But that ended up being settled more or less to Moscow’s satisfaction, so all was well.

So, yah: gangster states. Run by and for a criminal elite, without free elections, a free press, or any chance for enterprise that’s not either owned by the guys in power or massively paying them off, and with the overt or implicit threat of violence backing the continued tenure of the current government.

Doug M.

I found the EurasiaNet article rather superficial and I don’t think they get close to the real picture:
- since Kosovo Russia doesn’t believe in “international peacekeepers” anymore. And they might well be right in the sense that a US-led international administration in South Ossetia and Abkhazia would work towards re-assimilation into Georgia the same way they worked towards independence in Kosovo.
- refugee return is a difficult issue in both regions. Abkhazia has the problem that the ruling Abkhazians become a minority when all Georgians return - so there will need to be some political agreement first. In the case of South Ossetia the largest number of refugees are the Ossetians who have fled from Georgia proper. South Ossetians are unlikely to accept refugee returns until they see their own folk return in large numbers to Georgia proper. So I think that the chance for real refugee returns is even smaller than in Kosovo.

As for the economy, I think Abkhazia has quite some potential for tourism from Russia. Given that they will like to have tourists from Georgia too I think they will feel some urgency to find a compromise with Georgia. South Ossetia is isolated, but with only 100,000 inhabitants it isn’t very expensive for Russia.

When write about “gangster states” is not exactly clear for me what you mean, Doug. Are you thinking about dictatorships or about countries living from serving the world’s underworld? In the last class you can also count Liechtenstein, the Bahama’s, the Caymans and to a certain extend Switzerland. Or are you simply talking about those regions about which it is politically correct to talk in a denigrating way.

Wim

This article suggests it is not very prosperous. Though that does not preclude it from being more prosperous than the rest of the sick joke that is Russia, of course.

And I bet Kaliningrad is a good deal poorer than the EU average.

And we’re going by the assumption that the Kremlin will always house autocrats. Meh, I don’t like assuming anything.

I think it will house autocrats for the forseeable future, i.e. the next 10-15 years.

And we’re going by the assumption that the Kremlin will always house autocrats. Meh, I don’t like assuming anything.

For the moment. Borders in Europe are not exactly static, are they? It would make sense for Europe and the US to encourage Kaliningrad separatism, because:

1. it would mean a better future for the people of Kaliningrad.

2. it would move the border between the Soviet Union Russian Federation and the free world eastwards.

3. it would make Putin look weak and ineffectual.

4. it would encourage Russian-speaking minorities in other places (Baltic states, Ukraine, Transnistria, etc) to look towards Europe instead of Russia.

Cabalamat (first comment) mentioned Kaliningrad.

Modern Russia isn’t the USSR, but there’s a very high degree of continuity in terms of personnel, institutional culture, and unofficial ideology. The Soviet Union was not a detour.

Doug M.