Although I originally intended this blog to be a source of straight news and a space to promote my journalistic endeavors, I have been recently writing more of my personal thoughts and side comments on Georgia that don’t make it into print.

And so, in keeping with that I began looking through some of the old emails I sent back home to the folks narrating my initial exposure to Georgian craziness, and figured if all of you out there are interested enough in what I think about Freedom House, then you might find my first, crazy hours in Tbilisi humorous and entertaining as well.

So, without further ado, I present to you my first letter home:

By the time I arrived in Tbilisi it was about 8 or 9 a.m. in Kansas and having only slept for occasional 45-minute periods over the previous 30 hours I was basically a zombie. I nearly fell asleep several times while sitting waiting for my luggage to appear at the (slowest) baggage claim (in Europe). But once it did appear and I was able to fight through a tight crowd of Georgians welcoming their kin, I was finally shaken to consciousness by a strange – but very Eastern European — turn of events.

I first sat down to send out my “hey everybody, I’m alive” email as there was free wi-fi in the airport but I only had a couple of minutes of battery power left on my laptop. Almost as soon as I sat down a friendly-looking guy came up and said to me in Russian “hey man, you need a taxi?” I said I did, but there were a few things I needed to take care of before leaving the airport – namely trying to get my old Russian phone charged and working or at least skyping some of the people I knew in the city to figure out where I would be sleeping. While I prepared to do all that Yura, the cab driver, told me about himself. He was ethnically Armenian, but had lived in Georgia his whole life and had been driving a cab since he was a teenager. He was more or less a one-man cab company, what we in Russia called a “chasnik” (how Dad, Debra and I made it to Tsarskoe Selo in St. Petersburg). He seemed to be in a bit of a hurry and I told him I still needed to get my phone working and at least exchange some money if I was going to be able to pay him. “No problem, we’ll take care of all that along the way.”

And so we were off, he led me to a beat up 1970’s Fiat that was his pride and joy next to a beggar woman that had been camped out there, and who jumped up and went to work as we approached. “I already gave you money twice today! Enough! Leave my client alone!” he yelled as he loaded my bags. And when that didn’t work, “he doesn’t even speak Russian!” But the woman responded, “I heard you guys talking earlier, I know he understands.” Finally we got everything loaded, including ourselves and we lurched off with the woman pounding on my passenger-side window and Yura cursing back all manner of derogatory Roma slurs.

As we drove down the airport highway, officially christened “George W. Bush Highway” by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Yura explained to me that apparently as part of Saakashvili’s attempts to make Georgia look like a Western nation he was trying to get rid of all the chasniki around the airports and only allowed a single Turkish taxi firm operate there. Highway patrol constantly drove up and down the highway pulling over anything looking like an independent cab, fining the driver and calling a licensed taxi for the passenger. Although we saw patrol pull over a couple of cars, we made it through just fine. Meanwhile he told me about how last year during the war he was constantly driving Western journalists around, crossing the battle lines where normal taxis wouldn’t go, making good money, but getting shot at by both sides.

On the Russians he said, “for years we lived with the Russians, we love the Russians, but their politics are awful. Just look at Eastern Europe versus Western Europe – and Cuba. It sucks there. For centuries Georgians and Russians lived, drank and made love together and now the Americans come with money and a new political system and the Russians, like an angry ex aren’t happy about it. But America is a country far, far away. We know nothing about its people, and maybe never will, but we’re still better off. We love the Russians, but we can’t live with them anymore.”

Eventually we made it to a currency exchange. Yura said the exchange in the airport was too expensive and they charged a bunch of fees. In my experience, this was indeed the case. But this exchange basically consisted of a guy on a couch with a moneybox and a glock behind bulletproof glass. Nonetheless, everything went smoothly. Yura stood outside on the sidewalk within view to have a smoke, give encouragement and show that he wasn’t going to drive off with all of my worldly possessions. The next problem was the phone. I still had a cheap Russian phone from St. Petersburg, but it hadn’t been charged or turned on for over a year and hadn’t responded to being plugged in – meaning either the battery was dead or the phone was dead. Even with a working phone, I probably no longer had any credit on my old SIM card, and the Russian phone service, Beeline, had very limited coverage in the city.

“No problem.” Apparently Yura had multiple SIM cards for Mag T, one of the main Georgian cell phone companies, and he was willing to sell me one for about three bucks (which is what I had been told they cost in the store). I didn’t ask why he had more than one, but it wasn’t totally unusual. With each SIM card comes a unique phone number. My friend, Misha, from back in St. Petersburg had several, but he seemed to use them mostly to avoid and confuse the various girls he was dating.

Either way, I had taken care of the most important tasks before going to meet with my potentially future roommate and take a look at the apartment. Apparently because of recent building renovations (for us St. Petersburg residents, the dreaded word – remont), the addresses got a little screwy right around where this apartment was and we passed it on the first run-through. Georgian traffic is quite interesting. On most streets there are no lane indicators or crosswalks – pedestrians and drivers alike just try to force their way through to wherever they want to go.

Finally we arrived. For the whole trip and the SIM card, Yura charged about $15. The apartment was a bit more third world than advertised, but none of it was particularly shocking. The one interesting thing was that the bathroom, while it was reserved for only tenants of this apartment, was actually a separate room not connected to the apartment near the stairwell. There was a toilet in what was once a kitchen pantry it seems, but all other bathroom needs including showering required a trip down the hall. Nonetheless, this place was still the best deal for its price and location. The roomie, Amila, seemed remarkably sane. She’s about my age, Canadian, and moved here because her boyfriend, a U.S. Marine, is now stationed at the garrison of the U.S. embassy here. Meanwhile she has been trying to get work as a freelance photographer and has been shooting for Georgia Today, one of the English-language dailies here. On the day I arrived she had just shot a bunch of portraits of Ja Rule, an American rapper, who had just arrived to perform in the Georgian capital.

We talked out the specifics of rent, chores and groceries, and it turned out we were both hoping this was going to work out from the get-go. And so I dragged my bags from the doorway to my new bedroom and had officially moved in. Then, to introduce myself, and inquire about why the internet wasn’t working we went to see the de facto land lady. She didn’t speak any English, but so far Amila had worked everything out through her daughter who spoke some English and could interpret – and was about 10-years-old. And so after the introduction and a few minutes into the awkward technical conversation about why the internet wasn’t working and when it would be back up again, I asked the land lady if she spoke Russian (in Russian) because so far everyone I had encountered in the country did, and the response was a resounding “Yes! Oh thank god you speak Russian.” We then talked over the internet problem, and the issue of paying for utilities, as there were a few points on that subject that had been lost in translation with Amila over the previous few weeks. Then just as we were about to get up and go, her husband camein, his belly sticking out of his unbuttoned shirt and a huge golden cross around his neck. His wife introduced me as the new tenant who speaks Russian! And after a quick introduction he immediately asked me “so what are you drinking?” As I stammered that now probably wasn’t the time, that I was really tired, he interrupted – “cognac?”

I looked over to Amila, who was incredibly confused at this point after three to four minutes of conversation in the room exclusively in Russian, and asked “well, would you like a cognac?” She also seemed to not be in the mood to drink her lights out, and to boot didn’t really like cognac. So I tried to politely explain to him that we both had things we needed to take care of that evening and that I had just been traveling for two days with very little sleep. “Okay, okay,” he said, “you can just come over sometime later and we’ll get to know each other better.”

With that taken care of I really wanted to get my phone working and/or find a place to connect to wi-fi so I could give everyone extended news on my arrival and possibly call an old friend of mine who was expecting me to check in with him at some point and let him know I was alive and in the city. Amila gave me directions to the cell phone place she knew of that was closest, which happened to be near the MacDonald’s which had wi-fi near the metro stop. And so off I went, not realizing what time it was. Apparently it was sometime after 9 p.m. in Tbilisi (noon in Kansas), so when I got to the cell phone place it was closed, and soon after I began back-tracking it started pouring down rain.

And so I have several good excuses for the sacrilege I then committed. I was starving, needed an internet connection and was in the process of being soaked a dozen blocks away from the apartment. So, sigh, the first meal I ate in Georgia was at McDonald’s. There, the menu was entirely in Georgian, so I just guessed certain items were universal and ordered a Big Mac, medium fries and medium coke in Russian. The teenage girl behind the counter responded in English “would you like ketchup or mayonnaise with that?” “Ketchup.”

I was very disappointed to find that the wi-fi in MacDonald’s was also down. I nonetheless begrudgingly chomped down my globalized processed American salty lipids and was at least happy my computer bag and I weren’t getting drenched in the street. Once the rain died down some I came back to the apartment wet and empty handed and met Gary, the marine boyfriend. After exchanging some small talk in which I discovered I probably at some point met his friend Jerome while he was working garrison duty at the St. Petersburg U.S. consulate, the power went out and a voice said in the dark “oh, and this happens sometimes.” I took it as my cue to get some much-needed sleep.

More to come!

Nick

Not really.

But I’m avoiding all other manner of professional activity at the moment, so I can at least justify that to myself if I produce a witty blog post in lieu of work. So here goes nothing.

I'm not lazy, I'm Svanetian.

As usual, Georgia has continued to be a source of plenty of good head-slapping news developments, many of which I’m way behind in commenting on.

First, the Georgian Ministry of Defense had to distance itself from a documentary it produced over a year ago that aimed to help recruit reservists to the Georgian Army by quoting Hitler: “It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn prayers, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms.’ Adolf Hitler, 1932.”

Although the most controversial part of this discovery in Georgia was merely the fact that they Hitler was quoted in a government video, to me, the content of the quote was far more distressing. The fact that the MoD is comparing the retrieval of its lost territories, Abkahzia and South Ossetia, to Hitler’s goal of unifying Germanic peoples and establishing the “Third Reich” is an even more boneheaded PR move.

Although the quote appeared in a video that was intended only for a young Georgian audience, I can’t imagine who it would impress. Certainly not Georgia’s Western benefactors, nearly all of which fought nazism 70 years go. But I don’t want to spend too much time on a small MoD screw-up. More governmental stupidity to come.

Next came the well-documented (except in Georgia) “election observers” scandal in Ukraine. Which, first of all, before we get into the details of the case, why did anyone think it a good idea to send election observers from Georgia, a country that has never had a democratic transfer of power in its history anyway? Surely if Georgia says the elections were legit, then we should believe them. They know democracy.

But back to the scandal, which involved Ukraine’s expulsion of over 2,000 Georgian election observers sent to monitor the first round of the Ukrainian presidential elections. All other nations of the world only sent collectively around 3,000 monitors to the crucial election and the situation looked even more fishy when taped phone conversations between Georgian officials and Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Timoshenko revealed that both sides were actively trying to get this unusually large number of non-registered observers in there.

Timoshenko is facing off against Viktor Yanukovich who has expressed his willingness to reestablish a close relationship with Russia, Georgia’s current archenemy. Yanukovich is leading by 10 points going into the run-off vote, and nearly half of Georgia’s observers were sent to  the Yanukovich stronghold of Donetsk.

All that would look bad enough assuming that the Georgian “observers” were election observers at all. But it was later revealed that they did not from Georgia’s Election Commission but rather from “various ministries” — mostly the Ministry of the Interior, which known mostly for breaking up protests and imprisoning Georgian dissidents.

Criminal charges are now being brought against some of the observers who apparently had fake IDs to boot — many of which are still hiding out in Donetsk.

“To date, between 400 and 500 Georgians have remained in the town, according to migration services. They chose a new tactic: they are trying to stay at private apartments and are most likely waiting for the second round. I have sent a letter to Georgian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Grigol Katamadze, expressing my concern over this fact and asked not to allow any Georgian observers, not registered in this capacity with the Central Election Commission, to enter Ukraine,” the Donetsk mayor said.

In other news, the observers are roundly being denounced by the Yanukovich campaign, praised by the Timoshenko campaign and Saakashvili has offered to send more for the runoff. Clearly they’ve been a huge help in Ukraine so far.

The other big news item that caught my eye was Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s new educational reform. Paying teachers living wages? Nope.

As a part of his reformation of the army including adding 3,000 “well-trained” reservists in four years (apparently inspired by Hitler) he also wants “every house to be a fortress to resist the enemy.”

“100,000; 200,000; 300,000 and if needed half a million people should stand with arms in their hands. We have enough automatic rifles for that and we have ammunition more than enough,” he added. “Each person and each family, which can fight for Georgia, should be ready to struggle and defend their country. Without it nobody will serve us on a tray either long-term guarantees of freedom or economic development and success.”

Yes, Misha, that’s exactly what has been holding up foreign investment in your country. International countries and firms have been waiting for some crazy pronouncement like that you want one eighth of your country running around with kalashnikovs fighting enemies before they would take you seriously as a good stable place to do business.

Luckily, Misha is a forward-thinking man. With all those automatic weapons and Soviet bullets flying around, some good people are likely to get hurt. Therefore, he’s decided to limit the collateral damage by teaching kids a few warfare lessons in class.

The aforementioned reforms involve the establishment of a cadet school where kids will begin playing with AK’s at the age of 14 and will also have a compulsory “patriotism” class in their public schools where they will undergo some sort of military training with a side of indoctrination. Georgia sounds more and more like a Western country every day, doesn’t it?

None of my Georgian high-school age students have any idea yet what will be included in this patriotism class, but they all think it’s stupid. While I have lots of things to say about this most recent absurdity, my colleague, Paul Rimple, who is currently contemplating raising his daughter in the Georgian educational system already hit the subject with greater eloquence, humor and despair than I think I can pull together here on Three Kings. Read with pleasure:

Isn’t this a bit over the top? Here we are ten years into the 21st century and some people are still living in the 13th. Queen Tamara died 800 years ago and Georgia hasn’t been able to defend itself since – not from foreign invaders or from itself. War destroyed the nation in the 1990s and two summers ago the Georgian army lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia for good in 5 days. They would have lost Tbilisi and the rest of the country too if not for the generosity of Russia.

I think it’s safe to say Georgia hasn’t had much luck with guns and stuff. Children cultivated in the evils of warfare are not going to save the country from the next Russian invasion. Might be time to nurture a new strategy, like preventive war.

Let children play army and kill invisible Russians all they want after school, but don’t force my daughter to learn about all the weapons Georgia has bought from the US, Israel, etcetera, etcetera, when the tools she is really going to need for the future are those that help her read, write and avoid pissing off a teacher that gets paid less than a garbage man.

I’ve now been back in Sakartvelo (the Republic of Georgia for the uninitiated) for a week, so I’ve been getting updated on the happenings of this cooky place.

While reading up, the front page of one English-language Tbilisi paper caught my eye. The Weekly Georgian Journal was apparently quite proud of the fact that Georgia is “up” and Russia is “down” in Freedom House’s newly released report on “freedom in the world.” As I mentioned in my previous posting I’m not a huge fan of Freedom House’s oversimplified system of quantifying such an nuanced concept as freedom in countries around the world by a single scale of measure. Perhaps its just that the Bush administration forever ruined the word “freedom” for me by misusing it in every conceivable way for eight years until it was rendered meaningless.

Semantics aside, this cover is a more than a bit silly. It should first be noted that Freedom House has not actually released its full findings yet. They have only issued a press release outlining the changes in terms of where every country in the world falls in its brilliantly complex three-category freedom barometer: free, partly free and not free. In terms of those qualifications, both countries are in the same place they were last year; Russia is still “not free” and Georgia is still “partly free.” Whatever that means.

However, if you look closer at the ratings of the two countries since FH began compiling them in 2002 (conveniently just before the Rose Revolution), you see that Georgia can’t pat themselves on the back much more than the Russia can.

Beyond the organization’s blanket freedom label, FH also gives each country a score based on political rights and civil liberties of citizens in each country. In 2002, with Shevarnadze in power in Georgia and Putin in his first term in Russia, Georgia and Russia had nearly identical ratings. Both were “party free” at the time (with the first sentence of the 2002 report justifying Russia’s “partly free” status by their willingness to contribute to America’s “global war on terror” and) with Georgia scoring better than Russia on political rights and civil liberties by one point each.

What’s changed since 2002 you ask? Well, Russia lost its “partly free” status in 2005 (a time that coincided with Putin’s public falling out with Dubya) and the county has since been totally devoid of that precious freedom stuff, although its ratings have barely changed. It scored one point lower on political rights in 2009 than in 2002, and was also adorned with a “downward trend” status. Not a huge surprise as Putin has gradually entrenched himself as the leader of a one-party Russian government.

Much has changed in Georgia since 2002 though, right? In 2003, Western-educated and Soros-funded Mikheil Saakashvili took the nation by storm with speeches demanding openness and democracy. A bloodless revolution took place, and a flourishing pro-Western government was born. So what are Georgia’s ratings now six years later?

The exact same as in the last year of Shevarnadze regime, which was notorious for corruption, election fraud, and brutal repression of dissent. The more things change the more they stay the same. Not only is Georgia still only “partly free,” its ratings on political rights and civil liberties are the exact same and it has also earned a “downward trend” status.

Nonetheless, great point Weekly Georgian Journal! Like with most of Georgia’s problems, it’s so much harder to have a serious discussion about moving forward than to simply point out that Russia is worse. Freedom House doesn’t really give out effort points anyway.

Although the exacts are hazy, between the times of 10:50 a.m. Jan., 18 East Coast time and 6:35 p.m. Jan. 19 GMT +4 I was on my way back to the wilds of what Freedom House considers the “partly free” section of the world according to it’s scale of measure so simplistic that makes Tom Ridge’s look nuanced and complex.

Overall, the trip was a bit more eventful than I would have liked. While I managed to actually sleep soundly on planes and in airports for the first time in my life — due to some hard partying during my visit to Washington, DC — I also very nearly missed a flight, spent way too much on overpriced airport food and drink and ran the very real risk of never seeing most of my possessions again.

I arrived with time to spare at (my least favorite) Washington Dulles Airport, after an accidental detour through Fairfax county, Va. made by my well-meaning friend/chaffeur, Jacques, and was totally unsurprised that Dulles, one of the nation’s largest airports, was funneling all passengers through a single security lane. Afterall, who’s in a hurry at an airport?

Either way, I had no problem getting to the gate on time, only to fly up to New York and find that my next connecting flight to Istanbul had been delayed four hours giving me a grand total of eight hours to be spent dawdling and spending money at JFK. I was given a $10 meal voucher, but the only meal in the terminal that would buy would be a frank at the (curiously present) hot dog cart next to one of the gates.

I burned through the first couple hours by making pestering phone calls to a few American friends and finally by napping, only to be awoken by some guy asking if he could borrow a pen. Bewildered, I sat up and looked around at the hundreds of other waiting passengers he hadn’t woken up who probably had writing utensils on them. I lent him a pen and went back to sleep. He woke up me up a half an hour later to give it back.

I then parked myself at the nearest bar/restaurant and choked down a pig sandwich and had a few beverages as I sent out a flurry of emails preempting my return to Tbilisi. Eventually the call came, and I was herded onto the lovely Turkish Airlines Boeing 777 and continued the same recipe for time-killing I had used going the other direction: NPR podcasts and Tetris on the in-seat video consoles, punctuated by meals and naps thanks to little complimentary bottles of red wine at every turn.

We landed in snowy Istanbul about 45 minutes late adding to the previous New York delay giving me about a half an hour to deplane, talk my way through Turkish security’s game of 20 questions, tear out my laptop, belt, shoes and other randomly placed metallic objects, and sprint to all points in between — all while looking unsuspicious and unthreatening.

As I bolted out of the plane and made my first 200 meter dash to security, a small but official-looking Turk in a suit chirped out to me “Tiflis? Tiflis?” My first thought was that was he was looking to quarantine Americans from spreading some obscure venereal disease through the airport, and I was pretty sure I was negative so I ran on. But, as I passed him I remembered that Tiflis was the old Russian name for Tbilisi, which hadn’t been used since the turn of the century, but it was logical that the Turks might have been slow to change. So I jogged back to him, and, flustered by the situation, I affirmed that I was going to Tbilisi in English, Russian and Georgian “Yes! Da! Kho! Sorry, I don’t know any Turkish.”

He gathered me and two or three other passengers — all of whom seemed to be Georgian — and waved us through security so that we wouldn’t have to explain that no one had put anything harmful in our luggage, and if they had we wouldn’t tell them. Once on the other side I still had to run the gauntlet of beautiful, inviting duty free shops and Turkish goods boutiques that had lassoed me into spending lots of money on additional souvenirs and Christmas gifts for folks back home going the other direction.

I then had to go through the actual security routine, removing all metal from my body and then getting felt up by an awkward foreigner or two. Then off I was again.

I’ve always found it awkward to sprint towards any stranger — especially an official-looking one — shoeless while holding up my pants and a passport, but the gate agent was my last gatekeeper on the way to Tbilisi. After she checked my passport, I hobbled over to an automatic sliding door that stood between me and a bus that ostensibly was idling there to take me and the other stragglers to the plane on a tarmac somewhere. Rather than pad out into the snow in my socks I took the opportunity to stand in front of the door (which was not automatically opening for some reason) and get myself back together. When I was almost done, a voice behind me yelled in English “Show your hands!”

“Now what?” I shot an alarmed glance behind me to smiling Turkish Airlines employee who was motioning me to wave in order to active the sensor on the door. Ahhh, okay. Thanks. About a dozen other passengers including some sort of Turkish sports team and a couple of guys who looked like mad scientists loudly hopped on the bus after me.

Once on the plane, I noticed someone familiar in the first row of business class — Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze. As a later discovered, he was returning from a visit to Tehran, in which he reportedly stated that his country “would never act against Iran, no matter in which alliance or organization it is participating.” Good luck maintaining that promise if you get your wish and join NATO.

My seat was back in coach between one of Vashadze’s bodyguards and a similarly burly Georgian who took all the arm rests and did nothing but order whisky and stare at the seats in front of him. I, on the other hand, got one last 30-minute nap and finished the epilogue of Thomas Goltz’s “Georgia Diary,” in which he described handing the torch to a new generation of crazy freelancers arriving in a rapidly changing Tbilisi.

That flight’s arrival was also delayed about an hour due to snow in both the city of departure and arrival, and my checked luggage had not been as quick as I getting to the Tbilisi flight, and would arrive at an undisclosed time sometime soon.

So I sauntered out of the airport and talked to a couple of cab drivers until I found one who would take me to Vaja Pshavela for 20 lari ($13). I neglected to mention that my apartment was all the way at the end of Vaja, and I knew for a fact that cabs no longer take anything less than 25 lari to go between the airport and the city. So, as expected, he whined to me upon arrival that it was really far to go for 20, and afterall he was but a poor villager doing this taxi gig to feed his family.

I gave in and tossed in 5 lari more, but needed all the rest of the lari I had left to buy myself a toothbrush, toothpaste and a razor, because I had little trust I would be seeing my bag in the following 24 hours.

Once I got home, I set my Mac back to the Moscow time zone (I had lost all sense of what time it was at this point) and went to sleep. I woke up at 4 a.m. and got some stuff done before leaving to teach my first journalism course of the year at the University of Georgia. As usual, I timed myself to get there about 15 minutes early at 8:45, but as I walked into the office to pick up my roll sheet, the girl behind the desk who normally smiles at the goofy American professor looked stunned to see me.

“Your students already left,” she said.

“What?” I consulted my watch. “They’re normally not even here by now.”

“No, your class was supposed to begin at 9, it is 9:45.”

Oops, that’s right, Georgia doesn’t follow daylight saving’s time unlike every other country in this time zone. Great. Luckily the Georgian education system is very professor-friendly when it comes to accountability, and faculty often don’t show for their own classes only to reschedule them later.

Instead I decided to hunt down my luggage. The third number I tried at the airport got a response and it appeared they had indeed gotten my bag. So I took the metro to the train station and hopped on a bus there that would supposedly take me to the airport. Unfortunately the bus fare was 40 tetri ($0.25) in exact change, and all I had was an old-style 50 tetri piece that I knew wouldn’t work in the machine, but I dropped it in anyway for good measure, and after if fell through a few times, I took it and kept it in my hand. If I was bothered by transit police I figured I’d just tell them I didn’t have change, although I wanted to pay. “Just take this 50 tetri and we’ll call it even.”

I ended up riding both ways to and from the airport for free. Come to think of it I’ve never paid for a city bus in Tbilisi.

Once I had recuperated my luggage I ran a few more errands including buying groceries and replacing a few chargers and power converters I deftly forgot in the States and went back to sleep.

My Tbilisi life is about 10 percent sorted out again. Maybe less. But hey, it’s never really 100 percent anyway.

Chechen refugees in the town of Duisi, Georgia.

Although the South Caucasus has calmed down to relatively normal levels since the August 2008 war, the North Caucasus exploded over this last year.

Just after the Kremlin announced progress, a sharp rise in violence in the North Caucasus and the first terror attacks against Russians outside the region in five years put an end to regional and international confidence in Moscow’s strategy.

The troubling part is that no one I talked to — not even the Chechens themselves — see any prospect for stability on the horizon.

All the difficulties the United States now faces in Afghanistan — hyperlocalized tribal identities, lack of legitimate government, lack of a history of effective central authority, and a culture of revenge and retribution — are all at play in Chechya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. Luckily for the United States, Afghanistan isn’t within our borders. We can just walk away if we feel like it.

Russia doesn’t have that going for them, and they’ve already tried the “walk away” plan too. See years 1996-1999. I’l give you a preview: it didn’t go so well.

Now Moscow is seeing it’s Plan C (or D or E) go terribly awry. The idea was to empower local leaders with enough money and support to take the fight to the insurgents and hopefully do some rebuilding themselves. It was clear that he heavy-handed Russian occupation wasn’t pleasing anyone and was provoking uncontainable violence against Russian civilians across the Federation.

So, Moscow figured, as long as the local authorities could do all the killing and dying and limit the violence to the region, that was about as close to success as they were going to find. So much for that plan.

In my recent piece in the Washington Diplomat I discuss the year’s regression, and how it has even stoked diplomatic flames with Russia’s southern neighbor, Georgia.

This April, Russia proudly announced that its 15-year conflict in Chechnya was over and that all further counter-insurgency operations by federal troops would cease.

Russia had struggled to control Chechnya, an autonomous republic in the south of the country, even after two wars and several handpicked local regimes. Finally, after empowering Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to fight the insurgency with whatever means necessary, violence in the region slowly abated.

“It would be difficult to describe Chechnya as peaceful. But Kadyrov has achieved ‘stability’ in the Russian and Chechen definition of the word,” Sergei Markedonov, of Moscow’s Institute for Political and Military Analysis, wrote in the Moscow Times in April.

But within months of the announcement of the conflict’s conclusion, violence in Chechnya and its two neighboring regions, Ingushetia and Dagestan, had rebounded to the highest levels seen in years as assassinations of local officials and devastating suicide attacks pierced the relative calm.
More recently, after a Chechen insurgent group claimed responsibility for a train bombing near St. Petersburg that killed 26 and wounded some 100 people on Nov. 27, it became clear the situation was no longer under control.

Maria Lipman, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the gradual deterioration of the security situation across Russia is a direct result of the Kremlin’s North Caucasus strategy.

“This is a policy basically of neglect. The Kremlin does not deal with local problems, entrusting them with those rulers who are fully loyal to the Kremlin and who ensure the desired election results. Each time there is an election — whether local or federal — these leaders can be relied on that [the pro-Kremlin United Russia party] not just wins the election, but wins usually in those territories something like an 80 to 90 percent majority,” she said.

To read more, click here.