Many Killed in Russia Bomb Attack

At least 20 people have been killed by a bomb at a police station in Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia.

The suspected suicide attack in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city, injured more than 60 people, including children.

The republic borders Chechnya and has seen a spate of shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government.

The Ingush leader blamed militants, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sacked Ingushetia's interior minister, saying the attack had been preventable.

"The police must protect the people and the police must also be able to defend themselves," Mr Medvedev said.

Escalating clashes

Monday's bomb attack was described as the deadliest strike in months in Ingushetia.

The explosion gutted the building as police lined up for a shift change.

ANALYSIS
Sarah Rainsford, BBC News This attack is part of a recent surge in violence in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia. The large-scale separatist conflict that ravaged Chechnya has now ended after 15 years. In April, the Russian president declared Chechnya to be stable enough to ease security restrictions, and lower the number of Russian troops.

But the insurgency in the Caucasus has gradually changed form into an Islamist uprising, and spread beyond Chechnya's borders. Militants have targeted government officials and the security forces in particular, with a combination of deadly gun battles and suicide attacks.

President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was appointed by the Kremlin to head the autonomous republic of Ingushetia - and arrived vowing to end the violence and combat serious corruption. He's still recovering from an attempt on his life.

Images from Nazran showed scenes of devastation within the compound, with nearby homes also badly damaged and burned-out cars strewn nearby.

The bomber was reported to have rammed his vehicle into the gates of the police compound as officers were reporting for inspection, government spokesman Kaloi Akhilgov said.

"Practically all the cars and buildings in the yard of the police headquarters were completely destroyed," Reuters quoted him as saying.

The bomber was assumed to be among the dead, although this could not be confirmed.

Mr Akghilov told the AFP news agency that all of the dead were police, but 11 children were among those injured. Many of those hurt were living in residential buildings adjacent to the police station, he said.

Many of the injured were said to be in a serious condition. They were taken to hospitals in Nazran, but Mr Akghilov said the authorities were struggling to cope with the casualties.

"We have not had such an attack for a long time," he said, adding that hospitals did not have enough blood to treat the injured.

Much of the violence in Ingushetia has echoed the continuing unrest in Chechnya, with escalating clashes in the past year between pro-Russian security forces and armed militants.

Human rights activists and opposition politicians in Ingushetia told the BBC last year that the republic was now in a situation of "civil war".

In the most high-profile recent attack, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was severely wounded when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade in June. He has not yet returned to work but is said to be recovering.

In a statement, he blamed Monday's attack on militants angered by recent security operations along the border with Chechnya.

"It was an attempt to destabilise the situation and sow panic," he said.

Less than a week ago, Ingushetia's construction minister was shot dead by masked gunmen.

That followed the shooting dead of three employees of Russia's emergencies ministry.

In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.

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Published: 2009/08/17

Ingush Minister Shot Dead at Work

Two masked gunmen have shot dead the construction minister of the volatile Russian republic of Ingushetia, local officials say.

Ruslan Amerkhanov was killed in his office in the town of Magas on Wednesday. The gunmen then fled by car.

Attacks on government officials have become more common in the troubled, mainly Muslim North Caucasus republic.

In June, Ingushetia's President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.

The Ingush interior ministry said the gunmen shot and killed Mr Amerkhanov at point-blank range in his office.

His assistant, Magomed Amerkhanov, was wounded in the attack.

Ingushetia has seen escalating clashes between security forces and armed militants in the past year, similar to the violence that continues in neighbouring Chechnya.

Ingush security officials quoted by Itar-Tass news agency said Wednesday's killing might be linked to a recent review of construction projects in the republic. Ingushetia is plagued by corruption, including in the construction sector.

Three employees of Russia's emergencies ministry were shot dead in Ingushetia ten days ago.

In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.

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Published: 2009/08/12

Gang Kills Seven in Russian Sauna

Russian police are hunting gunmen who killed seven women at a sauna and four policemen at a checkpoint in the troubled southern region of Dagestan.

The attack happened on Thursday in the town of Buynaksk, 41km (25 miles) from the regional capital Makhachkala.

Police say they know the identities of some of the gunmen, who fled into a forest after the attack.

Separately, four policemen and two militants were killed in a clash near Grozny, in neighbouring Chechnya.

Moscow has been keen to portray Chechnya and the region as an area returning to normal after years of unrest.

But these latest attacks form part of a wider pattern: a growing anti-Kremlin, Islamist insurgency that appears to be spreading across the North Caucasus, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports.

On Friday police shot and killed three militants near a village in Dagestan's Derbent district, officials say.

In Thursday's attack in Dagestan, at least 15 gunmen opened fire on a traffic police checkpoint on the edge of Buynaksk, Russian media quoted local police as saying.

The gunmen are reported to have hijacked a minibus, which they later abandoned.

They went on to attack a sauna at a nearby health complex, killing seven women workers there.

Dagestan has been plagued by violence in recent years, much of it linked to the conflict between security forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim Russian republic.

Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist rebels in Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.

Clashes with militants are also common in Ingushetia, which borders on Chechnya to the west.

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Published: 2009/08/14

Refugees From Russia-Georgia Conflict Might Never Go Home

By Sarah Marcus
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

TSEROVANI, Georgia -- Just off the highway between the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and the city of Gori, epicenter of last year's war with Russia, lies this settlement of single-story, boxlike houses stretching toward the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

As Georgia marked the anniversary of the war this weekend with ceremonies and speeches, the internal refugees living here continued their daily struggle with the fallout of the fighting -- gathering in clusters to wait for humanitarian aid, searching in vain for jobs and managing the bittersweet memories of their lives before the conflict.

"I never expected this would happen," said Marina Dzhokhadze, 50, sitting in her basic, sparsely furnished home and describing how she had been forced to leave the South Ossetian village of Kemerti a year ago. "I am afraid that it will happen all over again. I pray that God will preserve us from another war."

Dzhokhadze is one of an estimated 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Georgians, who have been unable to return to their homes in the breakaway region of South Ossetia and the nearby area of Akhalgori, which was under Georgian control before the war but is now occupied by Russian forces.

Like many others, Dzhokhadze and her family, though not wealthy, enjoyed a comfortable existence in South Ossetia as farmers on fertile land. Now they struggle to make ends meet.

In an address to the country Friday night, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili paid tribute to internal refugees like Dzhokhadze and vowed to reunite the nation not by war but by "peacefully strengthening our democratic institutions, by constantly developing our economy."

A neatly lined collection of bright green and whitewashed houses, Tserovani is the largest of 36 settlements established by the Georgian government. The authorities won praise last year for quickly building the settlements before the onset of winter.

But today, the limits of the settlements are obvious. Almost all are located far from jobs that might be found in urban areas, while the houses sit on small plots that are all but useless for commercial farming.

As difficult as life is for residents in Tserovani, they at least live in structures that don't leak and are equipped with indoor toilets and running water. In other settlements, the houses are damp and as many as eight families share a tap.

"The living conditions are really bad here," said Neli Peruashvili, 53, a Georgian woman who fled her bomb-damaged house in the Ossetian village of Eredvi and now lives in a nearby settlement named Shavshebi. "We have no money. The water in the taps is too dirty to drink so the men have to bring clean water from the next village by hand."

In a nation suffering the effects both of war and the global financial crisis, most displaced by the fighting survive on humanitarian aid and monthly government subsidies of $16 per person because there are few jobs available. They joined a previous wave of more than 200,000 internal refugees from South Ossetia and the Black Sea region of Abkhazia who fled during the separatist wars fought in the 1990s after Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union.

The Georgians who fled South Ossetia are coming to grips with the reality that they may never be able to return to homes and farmlands that they struggled for years to accumulate. The ethnic Ossetians, many of whom are married to Georgians, wonder when they will be able to see the relatives they left behind.

The South Ossetian authorities have made clear that Georgians who left are not welcome to return. But many of the estimated 6,800 people who fled homes in the Akhalgori region have been allowed to go back. Most, however, have been too frightened to stay for long.

"There is little security there. There are tanks in the streets, and if you speak Georgian, the Ossetians and Russians there dislike you," said Irma Basilashvili, 24, who fled the region in the days after the war as Ossetian militias looted homes and rumors of rape and other violence against Georgians circulated.

Though Russia signed a cease-fire pledging to withdraw troops to prewar positions and strengths, it has boosted its military presence in South Ossetia and refused to surrender Akhalgori. Russia says it is no longer bound by those promises because it has recognized South Ossetia as an independent state and Akhalgori as part of South Ossetia.

Addressing troops at a base not far from the Georgian border, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that Moscow would never withdraw its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"Some of our partners have an illusion that it's a temporary thing, some kind of maneuvering," he said. "Such decisions are made once and for all, and there is no way back."

Over the past week, Georgia and South Ossetia have traded accusations of mortar fire and shootings. Since the end of the war, nine civilians and 11 police officers have been killed in Georgian border areas, according to the Georgian government.

Some residents said they felt caught in a never-ending cycle of conflict.

Khatuna Kasradze, 39, first fled Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, for the village of Ergneti during fighting between Ossetian and Georgian forces in the early 1990s. But then her new home was burned down by Ossetian militia in last year's war.

"Just as life was starting to improve a little bit, everything began again," she said, sitting in a small cottage she built with United Nations and European Union aid next to the ruined shell of her former house. "I don't think the situation will ever normalize."

Chechnya Is Gripped by Political Kidnappings

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

GROZNY, Russia — Oleg D. Masayev nervously fingered a cellphone as if working a string of prayer beads, his large blue eyes darting back and forth. He wanted to talk, he said, about his brother, who had disappeared without a trace or explanation, as if simply carried away by one of the dust devils that twirl along Chechnya’s roads.

“He was our youngest brother,” Mr. Masayev said. “He was the one we loved the most.”

The vanished brother had lived in Moscow and had little opportunity to become entangled in the separatist violence in Chechnya; he had, however, offered a chilling firsthand account as a victim of official abuse.

The wars that have ravaged Chechnya since the collapse of the Soviet Union have officially ended. Grozny, the capital, has been mostly rebuilt, and stores and cafes are open.

Yet the republic is in the throes of an epidemic of kidnappings. The abduction and killing last week of Natalia Estemirova, a celebrated human rights worker, came in the context of an escalating trend of unexplained disappearances. Dragged off the sidewalks, pulled out of beds at night or grabbed from their cars, scores of people have simply vanished.

In the first six months of this year, the Russian human rights organization Memorial, where Ms. Estemirova worked, documented 74 kidnappings in Chechnya, compared with 42 for all of 2008.

Human rights groups have blamed Chechnya’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, and his security forces for the bulk of the disappearances, and the killing of Ms. Estemirova.

Abductions have evolved from a largely successful, if brutal, counterinsurgency tactic to a form of political repression by Mr. Kadyrov’s government, said Yekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, a researcher at Memorial. Mr. Kadyrov, she said, has been governing and settling personal vendettas using the same free hand Moscow granted him to fight the war.

“Everybody calls him a small Stalin,” she said. “He is getting rid of political rivals and independent voices.”

Both Mr. Kadyrov and Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, have denied that Mr. Kadyrov had a role in the killing of Ms. Estemirova. Memorial’s director, Oleg P. Orlov, has directly accused Mr. Kadyrov of the killing, reflecting the group’s broader analysis of the causes of the abduction epidemic in Chechnya. Mr. Kadyrov said Friday he would sue Mr. Orlov for slander.

The rise in abductions in Chechnya comes even as most reported insurgent activity in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus has moved outside of Chechnya, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In 2008, for example, the small region of Ingushetia surpassed Chechnya in the number of reported acts of insurgency-related violence, with 350 episodes compared with 210 in Chechnya, according to the center. In Dagestan, another republic, ethnic strife and police corruption are fueling a low-grade insurgency.

Over all, the center reported, the number of violent acts in 2008 in the North Caucasus, with a combined population of 6.1 million, was about four times larger than in Colombia, with a population of 42 million.

Mr. Kadyrov, who was installed as president just after his 30th birthday, has never lost his rough edges as he has evolved from a field commander to a political leader. Stocky and bearded, he once showed up in a track suit for an audience at the Kremlin, and enjoyed careering around Grozny, assault rifles strewn in the back seat. He keeps a private zoo, stocked with fighting dogs and ostriches.

As he consolidated power, political opponents and critics were either forced out of the region or died.

Alu D. Alkhanov, an interim president who preceded Mr. Kadyrov, was compelled to leave Chechnya in 2007. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist for the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta who covered Chechnya, was shot in the entryway of her Moscow apartment building. Two brothers from a rival, Moscow-backed Chechen family were killed, one in his car in Moscow last year and the other in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in April. In January, a former Chechen government insider who had publicly accused Mr. Kadyrov of torture was shot to death in Vienna.

Mr. Kadyrov has denied any role in these killings.

“All enemies of Kadyrov are mysteriously disappearing,” Ms. Sokiryanskaya, the Memorial researcher, said.

Ms. Estemirova’s death closed off a source of detailed criticism of Mr. Kadyrov for journalists and human rights groups. On Saturday, Aleksandr Cherkasov, a director of Memorial, said the group’s Grozny office would be temporarily closed because “what we have been doing involves mortal danger,” the Interfax news agency reported.

Mr. Masayev, whose brother disappeared last August, agreed to speak only about the grief his brother’s disappearance had caused the family. Memorial, the rights group, had documented the particulars of the case.

The vanished brother, Mukhamadsalakh D. Masayev, lived in Moscow through Chechnya’s two wars in the 1990s. A religious Muslim, he returned to Chechnya in 2006 hoping to work as an imam but was detained and held for four months in a parked bus on a Chechen military base. After his release, he granted an interview to Novaya Gazeta directly implicating Mr. Kadyrov in his abuse.

“One day, they took us out to the woods and cocked their assault rifles,” as if threatening them with execution, Mr. Masayev said in the interview. “Laughing, they brought us back. One day, a man with the nickname Jihad, the commander of some sort of battalion, beat me and yelled debasing words. Another day, the guards took us at night to a meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov put a foot forward, as if for us to lick it and ask for forgiveness.”

He said he was released after being invited to drink tea with Mr. Kadyrov.

After the publication, Mukhamadsalakh Masayev returned to Chechnya to attend a funeral against the advice of his older brother. He disappeared soon after he arrived in Chechnya. His seven children live in Moscow with relatives. “The children ask me, ‘When will Papa come home?’ ” Oleg Masayev said of his meetings with his nieces and nephews now. “And I don’t know what to say. I say, ‘He is traveling on the path of God.’ ”

Caucasus Reporting Service No. 500

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

BAKU’S WARMING TIES TO ISRAEL ANGER IRAN

Tehran’s attempt to scupper Israeli president’s visit gets nowhere, as Baku decides ties to Israel take priority over Islamic solidarity.

By Kenan Guluzade in Baku

The first visit by a president of Israel to independent Azerbaijan has caused a diplomatic rupture between Baku and Tehran, as well as highlighting warming ties between the Central Asian republic and the Jewish state.

President Shimon Peres made his official visit to Azerbaijan on June 28-29. The countries signed two agreements, on cooperation in the fields of science, education and culture and on information and communication technologies.

Israel has maintained an embassy in Baku since the early Nineties, shortly after Azerbaijan declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Baku has not yet reciprocated by opening an embassy in Israel. Nor have Israeli officials been invited to visit the overwhelmingly Muslim country until recently.

Boyukaga Agayev, head of South Caucasus Research Centre, said the Israeli visit had been symbolically significant as well as posing dilemmas for a state like Azerbaijan, which was Muslim but secular – and keen to have feet in several camps.

“Azerbaijan is a secular state but most of the population is Muslim and overfriendly relations with Israel might be misinterpreted by allies in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference as a breach of Muslim unity,” Agayev said.

“This organisation supports Baku in opposition to Yerevan,” he added, referring to Azerbaijan’s rancorous dispute with its neighbour Armenia over the territory of Nagorny Karabakh.

A separate problem was Iran – a regional partner of Azerbaijan in the OIC but a bitter foe of Israel. “Tehran actively objects to us opening an embassy in Israel as well as to the visit of officials from that country to Baku,” Agayev continued.

One day before Perez’s visit, Iran reminded Azerbaijan of its feelings on the issue, urging Baku to close the Israeli embassy and describing the visit of the Israeli head of state as an insult to the Islamic world.

Azerbaijan’s foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, replied that Baku would do no such thing while Iran remained friendly to archenemy Armenia.

“Iran’s declaration about the need to close the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan is surprising,” he said, noting that Iran continued to “receive officials from Armenia at the highest level”.

After Iran’s protest failed to have any effect, Tehran recalled its ambassador to Baku, Muhammad Bagir Bahrami, “for consultations” while Perez was in the country.

Baku’s cool response to Tehran’s blustering reflects the fact that ties between Azerbaijan and Israel have become increasingly important for both countries.

The value of trade between the countries has risen to 3.6 billion US dollars annually, based on figures for 2008, substantially as a result of Azerbaijani oil exported to Israel through the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Political scientist Rasim Musabayov says Tehran has little leverage over Baku, as a result of the growing mutual interests between Azerbaijan and Israel over trade and energy.

“Israel is interested in a relationship with a secular Muslim country, which is at the same time an energy supplier,” Musabayov noted.

“Israel is also the third buyer of Azerbaijan’s oil in terms of volume.

“Meanwhile Israel wishes to export agricultural products and technology to Azerbaijan and, as it emerged during Perez’s visit, military equipment as well.”

The Jewish community in – and from – Azerbaijan is another link between the two states.

More than 30,000 Jews still live in Azerbaijan. During the Soviet era, that number exceeded 100,000. Those who have migrated to Israel are seen as lobbyists for the interests of Azerbaijan in Israel – a fact to which Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, referred during Perez’s visit.

“The Jewish lobby gives great support to Azerbaijan in international organisations and US,” Boyukaga Agayev said.

“The economic and political relationship [between the two states] makes the partnership of Azerbaijan and Israel inevitable – in spite of the possibly negative reaction of the OIC and Iran above all.”

Not everyone in Azerbaijan appreciates the burgeoning alliance between their country and Israel, however.

Some politicians and public figures strongly objected to Perez’s visit, especially those with religious sensibilities.

“Perez’s visit is appreciated very negatively from the point of view of Muslim unity, and as a Muslim I don’t want to host a person responsible for the recent Holocaust in the Gaza Strip,” said Haji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, head of the Centre for Protection of Freedom Conscience and Religion.

The theologian was referring to Israel’s controversial military action against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

“It is especially bad to do this at a time when Baku is claiming it is centre of Islamic culture,” Ibrahimoglu noted.

“That doesn’t mean I support Iran… I also oppose the fraternisation between Tehran and Yerevan and [Armenian president] Serj Sargsyan’s visits to Muslim countries. I am just against people and countries that act aggressively to, and terrorise, Muslims.”

The theologian insisted he was not motivated by any feelings of anti-semitism.

“Jews are my brothers and sisters; they are very wise and talented,” he said. “I don’t associate the whole of Israel with terror and Zionism just as I don’t associate all Muslims with Taleban and al-Qaeda.”

Opposition on the part of active Muslims to Perez’s visit to Baku did not develop into mass protests.

Even Nardaran, a religiously conservative Muslim suburb of Baku, where the population is very supportive of Iran – and where they frequently demonstrate this by burning US and Israeli flags – saw no disturbances.

Political scientist Rasim Musabayov said the lack of a response on the streets to the Israeli visit was not surprising.

“The support base within Azerbaijan for Iran’s position is very weak,” he said. “In any case, Azerbaijan is a secular country.”

As for the simultaneous arrival in Baku of Russian president Dmitriy Medvedev while Perez was also there, this was another warning signal to Iran to back away.

Concerning plans to open an Azerbaijan embassy in Israel, Rasim Musabayov is sure of one thing, “It will be opened even sooner if Iran continues with its negative campaign.”

Kenan Guluzade is a Baku-based journalist.


UN WITHDRAWAL LEAVES BORDER GEORGIANS FEARFUL

Georgian minority in Abkhazia feels especially exposed now international monitor are packing their bags.

By Irakli Lagvilava in Zugdidi and Anaid Gogorian in Sukhum

United Nations observers are pulling out of Georgia, leaving many people who live in the conflict zone that they have been monitoring afraid for their security and prompting predictions of an escalation of tension.

The withdrawal process started on June 30 and is to be completed by the end of July.

The UN Observer Mission in Georgia, UNOMIG, was established in 1993. The mandate of its roughly 130 observers was extended for what we now know was the last time in February 2009.

On June 15, however, Russia torpedoed the mission, vetoing a UN Security Council draft resolution that sought a technical extension of the mandate.

Russia voted against the resolution because the mission’s title continued to describe it as a “mission in Georgia”. Moscow insists that breakaway Abkazia and South Ossetia are now independent states.

Earlier, the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe failed to reach an agreement on an extension to OSCE monitoring operations in breakaway South Ossetia. The OSCE mission had been operating there since 1992.

The authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, controversially recognised by Russia as independent states after a brief war last August, said they were willing to accept international observers remaining on their soil.

But they set a high price. They said they would do so only after the international community endorsed their declarations of independence – declarations that Tbilisi maintains are illegal.

The statements prompted an angry response from Georgia, from which the two lands effectively broke away in the 1990s.

Fears have been voiced in Tbilisi that without the presence of international observers, jitters in Georgia’s conflict zones with Abkhazia and South Ossetia may increase. They say foreign observers helped avert worse trouble.

Shota Malashkhia, who chairs the Georgian parliament’s temporary commission for the restoration of territorial integrity of the country, said there was a danger that Russia and its allies were deliberately upping tensions in the region.

“With the observers withdrawing, provocations in the region should not be ruled out,” he said.

“After last year’s war and in the light of the global economic turbulence, Russia cannot afford to embark on fresh large-scale aggression against Georgia.

“But it does want to see the situation here becoming strained.”

Malashkhia said the only way to prevent this tension in the conflict zone from continuing to grow was to deploy new international observers – preferably from the European Union.

“EU observers should be allowed to take the place of UNOMIG,” he said, referring to the UN mission’s acronym. “Russia has no right to hamper them from carrying out monitoring activities in Abkhazia.”

The opposition political movement, the Alliance for Georgia, for once agreeing with the government’s analysis of the situation, described UNOMIG’s withdrawal as a “tragedy”.

“Shutting up the UN Observer Mission in Georgia poses a great threat to the security of the country,” one of the leaders of the alliance, Victor Dolidze, said.

A Georgian expert, Gia Nodia, described Russia’s move to veto any extension of the UNOMIG mandate as part of its strategy aimed at forcing Georgia to accept the loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia was following a “consistent policy aimed at changing all the existing formats of negotiations to adjust them to the much-talked-about ‘new realities’, which means ensuring that Abkhazia and South Ossetia participate in negotiations as independent states”, Nodia said.

Whether this strategy gets anywhere remains to be seen, the same analyst continued. “Russia wants the West to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia but the West won’t do so, [so] I don’t think anything is going to change anywhere in the near future.”

Meanwhile, officials in the breakaway statelets have eyed the departure of the UN with mixed feelings. Some officials in Sukhum, capital of Abkhazia, said they did not wish to see the observers go, viewing them as a valuable conduit linking these isolated countries to the world stage.

“We were interested in the mission continuing its work,” the Abkhaz foreign minister, Sergei Shamba, said.

“[The mission] opened contacts for us, making it possible for us to participate in the international [diplomatic] process; our problem would be discussed at UN Security Council meetings.

“But we couldn’t have agreed to a new mandate if it contained even a slightest mention of Abkhazia as part of Georgia. We were ready to preserve the mission, but not at any price.”

Irakli Khintba, a lecturer at the Abkhaz State University, agreed.
“It was through the reports of the UN Secretary General that the world received quite balanced information about whatever processes were taking place in Abkhazia,” he said.

“That is why the mission’s withdrawal will probably spell for Abkhazia a loss of an important means of accessing public opinion in the West and the entire world.

“In the long run, it may make it still more difficult for Abkhazia to achieve international recognition.”

Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the observers has left the population in the conflict zone on both sides of the de facto border feeling nervous.

The Georgian minority living on the Abkhaz side is especially concerned for its future.

People in the mainly Georgian Gali district of Abkhazia say that the UN mission has up to now been the main source of their sense of safety.

There are still more than 200 EU observers in Georgia but they are not allowed to enter Abkhazia. The EU observers may only patrol the Georgian-controlled part of the conflict zone and have no access to the Gali district.

“The UN cars used to patrol our village, and we would feel more secure,” Natela, 72, who lives in the village of Nabakevi, in Gali, said. “The end of the mission to me means the end of the hope for peace.”

“Of course, the UN mission had no police functions, and they did not investigate incidents, but they did prevent violence against civilians,” agreed Natela’s fellow villager, Zurab, 45. “I’m afraid life will become less safe here now they’re leaving.”

People who often cross the administrative border hope some new form of observer force can be set up and vested with greater powers.

“The international organisations, together with the conflicting parties, should try to create a monitoring group endowed with police powers,” said a member of the exiled pro-Tbilisi administration in Gali.

“But neither the Russians, nor the Georgians and Abkhaz are ready to take the step yet. And, as a result, ordinary people, who have been living perpetually in fear for 16 years now, continue to suffer.”

There seems scant chance of such a breakthrough now, however. The Abkhaz leader, Sergei Bagapsh, has declared that after the UN mission withdraws from Abkhazia, “no other international [monitoring] organisation will have a presence in the republic”.

Irakli Lagvilava and Anaid Gogorian are IWPR contributors.


ARMENIA: DEPARTING PHONE GIANT CLAIMS UNFAIR COMPETITION

Russian firm’s pull-out reignites debate on extent of illegal imports.

By Armenak Chatinian in Yerevan

Unfair competition is being blamed by Russia’s largest mobile handset retailer for its decision to quit the Armenian market.

Euroset, which emerged in Armenia in 2006, cornered a stake of between 10 and 20 per cent of the mobile phone market in the country.

Alexander Malis, president of Euroset, told IWPR that he had closed all 12 Armenian branches after concluding the playing field was far from even.

As a major dealer, Euroset had been able to set low prices for its appliances, Malis said.

“In spite of that, we still couldn’t compete with the local players in price terms because only a few of them imported the goods legally,” he added.

“Our company policy is to obey the laws of the country in which we are working. Unfortunately, not all other market players take this seriously.”

Malis insisted the company would re-enter the Armenian market only if its rivals obeyed the law so that everyone operated in a fair, open environment, Malis said.

The company’s withdrawal from Armenia comes as the country is being especially hard hit by recession.

Between January and May 2009, gross domestic product, GDP, fell by 15.7 per cent compared to the same period last year.

Budgets have been revised downwards as tax revenues for the first quarter of 2009 tumbled by 16 per cent compared to this time last year.

Like many other companies, Euroset was finding its operations in Armenia increasingly unprofitable.

But the state revenue committee rejected the company’s claims of unfair competition. It said a total of 44 firms imported mobile phones into Armenia and “each..pays the taxes prescribed by law”.

However, Euroset is not alone in complaining about the alleged inequity of the Armenian mobile phone market.

One local representative of a small business said illegal imports of cell phones were common.

A popular way to import phones without paying import taxes on them, he said, was to have the new devices registered by airport customs as “accessories” to existing phones.

The dealer said he sometimes used this method himself in order not to pay duties and taxes on his imports. In this way, he felt able to compete with larger companies operating in the market.

Other companies have reportedly tried to escape duties by concealing imported phones. The only risk with this strategy was losing the phones to vigilant customs officials.

“There is a big risk in importing mobile phones illegally because customs officials can detect the goods at any time and confiscate them,” the dealer said.

Armenia’s customs service does periodically clamp down on such illegal imports.

In February 2009, for example, officials mounting an on-the-spot inspection of passengers on a flight from Dubai uncovered 54 phones on one passenger.

But another businessman working in the same field said the mobile phone market in Armenia was so competitive that small businessmen stood no chance of competing if they paid customs on imported handsets.

“If small-scale importers don’t use illegal methods, they just can’t compete in the local price field,” he said.

Few outside experts or international watchdogs doubt that corruption in general remains a major problem in the Armenian economy – as it does throughout the Caucasus.

The Global Corruption Barometer for 2009 published by the watchdog Transparency International also revealed growing public distrust of business throughout the region.

“Businessmen use bribes to influence social policy, laws and rules, in other words they are invading the state,” the survey said.

Transparency International said 38 per cent of respondents to a survey conducted throughout the region viewed their governments’ efforts to fight corruption as ineffective.

Armenak Chatinian is a reporter with Capital daily in Yerevan.

Russia's Maneuvers in Caucasus Highlight Volatility of Region

By Sarah Marcus
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 2009

TBILISI, Georgia -- Military helicopters circled once again over Georgia's mountainous terrain. Amid the crackle of gunfire, soldiers ran across battlefields carrying comrades on stretchers. But this was no repeat of last summer's brief war with Russia. It was a training exercise -- and this time, NATO sent help.

The month-long exercises, which concluded June 3 and involved more than 1,000 soldiers from 14 countries, took place near Georgia's border with the breakaway territory of South Ossetia and were condemned by the Russian government as a "provocation."

Now the Kremlin is preparing to stage its own military maneuvers in the Caucasus region. Russia's top commander, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, has said the "large-scale exercises" will involve "all the brigades of the North Caucasus Military District, the Black Sea Fleet and Caspian Flotilla marine brigades."

Makarov will personally oversee the operation, dubbed Kavkaz-2009, according to Russian state media. The exercises are set to begin Monday and end July 6, just as President Obama is scheduled to arrive in Moscow on his first state visit.

The two sets of war games are a reminder of the volatility of the region more than 10 months after Russian troops routed the Georgian army in a five-day war. The Russian exercises will go forward as two international monitoring missions are withdrawing from the area and as Russian forces continue to occupy territory that a year ago was uncontested Georgian soil.

A team of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is scheduled to leave Georgia at the end of the month at Russia's insistence, and Moscow used its veto in the U.N. Security Council last week to terminate the U.N. mission in the other breakaway Georgian territory, Abkhazia.

A third group of monitors from the European Union remains in Georgia but has been denied access to the two territories, which Russia recognized as independent countries after last year's war.

Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow-based military analyst who writes for the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, warned that Russia may be preparing for another war, in part to establish a corridor through Georgia to an important Russian base in Armenia.

He noted that similar Russian exercises in the North Caucasus preceded last year's war. "Such exercises are traditionally used as a cover under which to prepare troops for war," he said. "They could easily lead to deployment of troops."

The Georgian government's response to the Russian exercises has been muted. But Defense Minister Vasil Sikharulidze traveled to Washington this month to urge the Obama administration to strengthen military cooperation with Georgia. Speaking to the Associated Press, he warned that Russian troops were "better prepared for war than they were last year."

In a recent interview, Sikharulidze added that Georgia was working with the United States to upgrade its armed forces. "If you compare Russian and Georgian military organization, there is a huge disbalance," he said. "But the Georgian army is trained, and being trained, to deter and delay Russian aggression."

Sikharulidze said the army began a new training cycle, focused on defense, in January. But he said the United States has not supplied antitank and antiaircraft weapons that Georgia has sought.

Russian officials, meanwhile, insist that Georgia is already better armed than it was before the war. They have accused E.U. monitors of ignoring the buildup and Georgia of preparing to seize the territories by force.

About 8,500 troops will participate in the upcoming exercises, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, though statements by Makarov and others suggest much larger maneuvers. Officials have said the exercises will incorporate lessons from the Georgian war but focus on counterterrorism operations.

NATO officials said the alliance's peacekeeping and crisis-response exercises in Georgia were scheduled long before last year's war and were not targeted at Russia. But the decision to proceed despite Russian objections was seen as an achievement by the Georgian government.

"It was very important to have a message that the principle of sovereignty is an important thing for NATO and [that] no country can just veto a decision from outside," said Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria.

NATO support appears more important than ever to this former Soviet republic, yet Georgia's prospects for joining the alliance have faded amid U.S. efforts to improve relations with Russia and lingering concerns about the judgment of President Mikheil Saakashvili, whom some blame for provoking last year's war.

NATO has pledged to bring Georgia into the alliance, but it rejected Georgia's request for a clear timetable for membership and instead set up an annual process for reviewing the country's progress toward alliance requirements.

The decision, and the departure of the Bush administration, have heightened anxiety in Georgia about whether Washington will continue to back it against its powerful neighbor.

The U.S. assistant secretary of state for the region, Philip H. Gordon, traveled to Tbilisi this month and reaffirmed a partnership agreement signed by the Bush administration. And in April, Obama stood firm on Georgia in a London meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, referring to the war as "the Russian invasion of Georgia" in a news conference.

Saakashvili, a favorite of the Bush administration, said Obama's use of the phrase amounted to an endorsement of Georgia's view of the war.

Russia maintains that it invaded Georgia only after Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia, killing Russian peacekeepers and civilians. Saakashvili says he ordered the assault in response to shelling by South Ossetian rebels and an imminent Russian invasion.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, said U.S. policy toward Georgia has shifted, official statements of support notwithstanding.

While the Pentagon is continuing to work with the Georgian army, he said, the emphasis now is on "assistance and training limited to a defense nature only."

Lincoln Mitchell, a scholar at Columbia University who studies Georgia, said the Obama administration may be reluctant to provide arms to Georgia because of Saakashvili's domestic policies. A fractured opposition has portrayed him as an autocrat and staged weeks of protests demanding he resign.

But Bokeria, the deputy foreign minister, defended Georgia's democratic credentials, calling them "an important factor" in U.S. support for the country. "This factor is not hampering the assistance," he said.