I'm not qualified to evaluate the accuracy of the author's statements. Any Caucasus watchers care to review and comment?
Chris Doss?
DRM
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from -
http://exile.ru/178/178010101.html
....
Georgia in the Crunch
By Mark Ames (editor at exile.ru)
TBILISI, GEORGIA - If you want to understand whats really going on beneath the current election crisis in the former Soviet republic of Georgia a struggle that threatens to push the country back into the kind of civil war which killed tens of thousands from 1989 through 1993 - then you need to pull the camera back. Way back, to the global level. Thats because Georgia is a battleground not just between local political factions vying for power, but also between the geostrategic interests of America and Russia, between competing Big Oil interests, and between the forces of globalization and the forces which defy globalization (chaos, tradition, isolation).
Georgia, in other words, is one of the worlds key battlegrounds on every level that matters, and that is why so much is at stake in the election crisis. Most tiny nations Georgia has a population of about 5 million would relish the thought of being so important; the opportunity to play off powers and up ones price would seem to be limitless. In Georgias case, its location and its importance have been its curse.
Bad luck not just because it means the Georgians are surrounded by venal, war-like Caucasus states or brutal, imperial Russia, but also because, thanks to the Caspian Sea oil, the Americans have been no less deeply involved in Georgiawith the usual destruction that comes with American aid and regime support in this part of the world. In Russia, American-backed aid and loans were a crucial factor in creating one of the most corrupt regimes on earth and its subsequent default.
In Georgia, the situation is even worse. America has given more aid per capita to Georgia over the past ten years than to any other country besides Israel. The corruption is correspondingly worse: Georgia ranks far below Russia on the Transparency International corruption rating, below all CIS countries, below even Papua-New Guinea, and ahead of only five other nations, including such illustrious examples as Haiti and Nigeria. You wont see a single result of all those hundreds of millions of dollars in aid grants everything was stolen, every last penny. So you have to assume that the aid served another purpose besides establishing democracy or helping the Georgian people and that purpose is the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, the Frontera oil company, and NATO and U.S. Special Forces access.
The result is that Georgia, which just 15 years ago was considered the Soviet Unions wealthiest republic, is today one of the poorest and most corrupt nations in the world, with huge chunks of its territory in the hands of separatists or local petty despots, hundreds of thousands of internally-displaced refugees, an infrastructure in such disrepair it makes Russia look like Switzerland, a ghost town when it comes to attracting foreign investment and capital. Its impoverished citizens, who are lucky to receive their wages or pensions, are also weighted down by a crippling external debt.
And yet somehow, in spite of this, Georgia is one of the most charming places on earth.
In order to untangle the web that connects Georgias election crisis to global politics, keep in mind four things: James Baker III, Ambassador Richard Miles, Caspian Sea oil, and Russia.
[...]
full at link
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