It is winter in Georgia and large numbers of people are without power. Yet, everything is coming up roses for a gregarious and outspoken politician who is bent on turning his country around. Of course, the Georgia in question is not to our south but is carved around the Caucasus mountains and Black Sea halfway around the world.
Yesterday, more than 1.7 million people voted in the Republic of Georgia. The charismatic Mikhail Saakashvili won an estimated 87 percent and will sweep into power less than two months after having led the ?Rose Revolution.?
What happened? Former Soviet foreign minister, and more recently the President of Georgia for a dozen years, Eduard Shevardnadze resigned last month and fled the presidential palace in response to days of protests. Thousands of protesters wielded roses in the face of armored personnel carriers and tactically deployed special forces on the streets of capital city Tblisi. Saakashvili ? a frustrated former member of Shevardnadze?s cabinet ? led the popular uprising. Upon storming the palace that had only just been vacated, 36-year-old Saakashvili mocked the old guard by drinking Shevardnadze?s still-hot green tea to the delight of the international press corp. Georgians demanded new elections after hardball tactics in November resulted in the most unfree elections since Georgia?s independence from a tottering Soviet Union and short-lived but tragic civil war in the early 1990s. In all of the Rose Revolution, not a shot was fired.
Who is involved? In 1972 as interior minister, Shevardnadze exposed rampant corruption in Georgia to Soviet Premier Brezhnev. He returned to his homeland as Moscow?s viceroy and as an autocrat. Later, he served as foreign minister to Gorbachev as perestroika brought the end ? not Gorby?s intended reform ? of communism. Shevardnadze, known as the White Fox, went on to establish a free press and elections in his first term and welcomed international aid and suggestions on how to foster the resurgence of a business/middle class in his native land. However, this cold warrior who counted the likes of Reagan, Kohl and Thatcher as his friends either would not, or simply could not, rein in systemic corruption. It was corruption as much as the street protests in November 2003 that led to his ouster.
Why does this matter? Georgia has nearly 5 million people and a landmass similar in size to South Carolina. It is on an ancient and once- again valuable trade route. A stable Georgia is necessary for the success of a new pipeline set to open next year that will carry Azeri and Kazakh oil to the West. It is also on the frontlines, if not the front pages, of the worldwide war against terrorism. Chechan separatists ? including some with ties to al-Qa?eda ? use the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia as a refuge in their battle to separate from Putin?s Russia. During some of the noisier diplomacy of the Rose Revolution, on December 5 Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that American forces might be stationed in Georgia. Already, Green Berets have been training with Georgian forces since 2001.
What now? Saakashvili has allowed the White Fox to remain in Georgia with a state-sponsored security detail. As the troops disbanded and the protesters left the streets, most people thought that he had flown the coop ? literally, the rumor was that he sought refuge by flying to Germany. (Pardon the pun ? he was actually fleeing a coup.) American diplomats will work with a new, Western educated (in France and at Columbia Law School and George Washington University) leader who swept to power on a wave of populism. It remains to be seen if freedom is putting down roots in this impoverished corner of the world or if Georgia will once again take its place on a grand geopolitical chessboard as a pawn between Western America and Eastern Russia. I?m looking for evidence of the latter and hoping for the former.
