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COMMENTARY
November 26, 2003
Georgian interlude
"We're supportive of what the Georgian opposition party did to restore the integrity of Georgian democracy in terms of using peaceful demonstrations to overturn a fraudulent parliamentary election said Clare Buchan, White House deputy press secretary, with all the eloquence of which the bureaucracy is capable. She clarified that, as President Bush said in London last week, the U.S. is better and better disposed towards democratic revolutions. As if they were on top of things for a change, the U.S. State Department was first to recognize Nino Burjanadze, the acting president after that wily grey fox" Eduard Shevardnadze resigned . New elections have already been called for Jan. 4th to replace those of Nov. 2nd which were fairly flagrantly rigged. Georgia is a basket-case: its bureaucracy and society paralysed by corruption taxes uncollectable the foreign debt defaulted upon and three ethnic regions have effectively seceded (with Russian help). The prestige of Mr. Shevardnadze whom we remember as the foreign minister who helped negotiate the collapse of the Soviet Union was lost; his claim to be the only leader who could stand up to the Russians belied by his repeated surrenders to their demands. A people tired of the Eastern way of doing things wanted to try something Western for a change; and whether as commissar or president Mr. Shevardnadze had now ruled or misruled for three decades. The problems ahead appear insuperable; but from what we can discern at this distance morale is now revived. It was an interesting revolution organized almost publicly using all the communications technology now available by a handful of young U.S.-educated intellectuals of the kind which in our awkward political shorthand are called "neo-conservatives". Well over 100 000 people were mobilized to take the streets in the capital of Tbilisi and it appears the interior and defence forces were already briefed unit by unit to stand aside. So far it has been miraculous; for rather than the complete chaos that one might have expected basic order was maintained and there has been no serious violence. An elegant practitioner of the art of surrender Mr. Shevardnadze knew when he was beaten and is now available for media interviews as opposed to dead. The future need not be grim. The economic prospects for a country that offers the only possible transit to the high seas for oil from the Caspian basin which does not pass through Iran or Russia are potentially very good. (It is largely from fear of this potential competition that the Russians have fished so assiduously in Georgia's troubled waters.) It is an experiment that alas cannot be repeated easily in any Muslim country of the Middle East (Georgia was an ancient Christian kingdom one of the few Christian polities to survive the Islamic conquests). And yet it is a very significant event for the region especially for Iran where a huge student movement continues to lead opposition to the tyranny of the ayatollahs and where the young are also increasingly inspired by "the American way" of doing things. For Georgia has just created a shining example of what the fall of the Berlin Wall might look like transposed and translated into the Middle Eastern vernacular. Mr. Shevardnadze's highly personal way of ruling was in the regional mould and even his Communist background was suggestive of the ideological formations that underlie many of the region's most powerful statesmen. The tinder has been struck. While the situation in Georgia is necessarily desperate (freedom invariably begins in chaos) and the Russians may well do everything they can to undermine the new Georgian government that emerges the flame is lit. Christian Georgia has given the Muslim Middle East an example of "how it is done" even without the help of the U.S. Army. It is close enough to home to be noticed. And the power of example in a moral vacuum should never be underestimated. People will try things they didn't think were possible when they see others try them. Afghanistan Iraq and now Georgia have given the region's peoples and especially the better-educated young a remarkable hint that their future could be better than their past that it might take a direction entirely different from the path that has been beaten by mad mullahs and sheikhs. For political Islamism has flourished in the same vacuum -- that "freedom deficit" that has been identified by many of the best contemporary Egyptian and Arab thinkers. Here at last is an example of another way forward. Meanwhile the U.S. has in the last several days persuaded the Europeans to put more external pressure on Iran's ayatollahs to force their compliance with the demands of the IAEA to identify and open secret facilities to nuclear weapons inspectors. And threats of direct action from Israel and possibly the U.S. (delivered secretly) seem to have touched off some sort of debate within the Iranian regime about whether proceeding with their nuclear programme is in their own best interests. The very wobbling is there for the regime's domestic opponents to exploit. (Once again the Russians are clouding the issue in this case by persisting in the very remunerative business of selling the ayatollahs advanced reactor technology in defiance of U.S. outrage.) Chaos or freedom or both are in the works. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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