BACKGROUND: Georgia’s French-born former Foreign minister Salome Zourabishvili, who was forced out recently, put it bluntly: “We cannot believe that this is the organization that can solve our problems”, she said after a series of incidents on South Ossetia’s “independence day” on September 20, referring to her year-long history of growing frustration with the OSCE. Zourabishvili several times traveled to the OSCE Permanent Council in order to plead for an increase in military observers in South Ossetia, and for the prolongation of the OSCE border observation mission on Georgia’s border with Chechnya, Ingushetia and Daghestan. But Russia only conceded to some three more observers and blocked the mission. The end of the border mission on January 1, 2005, angered Zourabishvili to the extent that she removed Georgia’s ambassador to the OSCE, Giorgi Burduli, who proved unable to gather enough support from western states. The OSCE’s incapacity to shed light on arms transfers to South Ossetia and to discipline the awkward joint Georgian-Ossetian peacekeeping effort under Russia’s guidance exasperated Tbilisi to such an extent that nothing but a complete remake of the peace framework in the separatist province seems acceptable for the government. “The role of the OSCE has been brought to the minimum in South Ossetia”, stated even Georgi Khaindrava, the dovish Minister for Conflict Resolution. In fact, the OSCE’s primary task in Georgia is to oversee the implementation of the Sochi Agreement from June 1992 between then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze. The Sochi agreement ended the short Georgian-Ossetian war – the latter party supported by the Russian military – and led to the installation of a Joint Control Commission (JCC) with representatives of Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia and the Russian Republic of North Ossetia. Facing a three to one majority in the JCC, Georgia always considered the OSCE as a counterbalance. For the same reason, the current Ossetian government dislikes the OSCE and wants its Head of office in Tskhinvali to be removed. The mission started with a fault: the OSCE’s original mandate was to monitor the entire territory of South Ossetia, up to the highly strategic Roki tunnel – Ossetia’s link to Russia. This mandate was never enforced – neither by the OSCE member-states in the Permanent Council, nor by the Georgia field mission. With its five observers on the ground, the OSCE claims it can report a fair picture of the military situation within the so called “area of responsibility”, a corridor of ten kilometers on each side of the administrative line between Georgia proper and South Ossetia, as well as the later added concept of “the conflict zone” – a perimeter of about 15 kilometers around the provincial capital, Tskhinvali. Georgia’s recent furor against the OSCE, however, came after the breakaway region;s self-proclaimed ‘independence day’ on September 20. Ossetians paraded heavy armor in Tskhinvali that – following JCC decisions – was not supposed to be in the town. Georgia asserted that these weapons appeared to be newly delivered by Russia. A still unexplained mortar attack on the day of the parade in Tskhinvali, which left ten people wounded, nevertheless put the Georgian government into an embarrassing position. Georgia’s parliament drafted a resolution that called for an end to joint peacekeeping and for the withdrawal of the Russian forces from South Ossetia if by February 10, 2006, Georgia’s government does not see any improvements on the security side. Tbilisi already started to boycott sessions of the JCC and calls for mediation through the EU and the United States instead of the OSCE. The same resolution set out an ultimatum for Russian troops in Abkhazia for July 2006.

IMPLICATIONS: The OSCE mission in Georgia lacks two main conditions for crisis management: a commitment to a peace agreement by all sides and the possibility to impose sanctions in case of violations of existing agreements. In fact, the OSCE mission in Georgia has failed to deliver what it was brought in for in the first place 13 years ago – i.e. to “facilitate the creation of a political framework, in which a lasting political conciliation can be achieved on the basis of CSCE principles and commitments”, as the November 1992 mandate reads. This failure appears even larger as diplomats were not able to use the opportunities of the political shake-up in the region that is taking place since Georgia’s Rose Revolution in November 2003. On the contrary, from the vantage point of the OSCE mission and its way of managing the conflict, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his young “reformers” have created more problems rather than opportunities for conflict management. To the OSCE as to most western countries, Georgia’s policy towards South Ossetia in the past eighteen months has appeared poorly coordinated and at times quite contradictory. For example, the OSCE did not learn about Saakashvili’s peace plan for South Ossetia and his offer for the “broadest possible autonomy” until after the Georgian President presented it to the Council of Europe in January 2005. Georgia first mounted tensions in South Ossetia in 2004 by filling up its peacekeeping battalion to the legal limit of 500 soldiers, but then subsequently dropped it to some 60 soldiers in a sign of disinterest in the Russian-led JPKF. There is evidence that U.S.-trained Georgian troops conducted reconnaissance beyond the “conflict zone” and close to the Roki tunnel in summer 2004. Tbilisi was rebuked by Washington for its demeanor in South Ossetia in Summer 2004, and the State Department called on Georgia to investigate the shelling of Tskhinvali on September 20. These moves cause doubt whether NATO and EU countries would move in and take on a greater role, or why Russia and its Ossetian proxy-regime would agree to any reform of peacekeeping that replaces a diminished but suitable OSCE. For the moment, Tbilisi and Tskhinvali seem to think about tactics, not answers. By escalating the conflict and further sidelining the OSCE, both sides may hope for gains: Eduard Kokoity, President of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, counts on Russia’s harsh reply to Georgia to move closer to his declared aim – a union of South Ossetia with North Ossetia. For his part, Saakashvili and his government want to demonstrate that the Ossetian conflict is “unfrozen” and therefore needs renewed western engagement. At the same time, Georgia’s Defense minister, Irakli Okruashvili – known as the most unsmiling man in Tbilisi – may indeed be considering a military reconquest.

CONCLUSIONS: A Fundamental change in the pace and format of the conflict management mechanism in South Ossetia seems long overdue. Unofficially at least, even OSCE diplomats acknowledge that peacekeeping according to the rules set forward by the 1992 Sochi Agreement is an absurd mechanism. Whether they will be allowed to speak out now is doubtful. The OSCE’s security role in South Ossetia is weakened, but the context now is the renewed conflict between Russia and the West within the organization. Georgia’s head-on-tactics could, at best, generate some new mutual understanding on crisis containment in the South Caucasus between Russia on the one side and the U.S. and the EU on the other. At worst, it will make Russia dig in further in South Ossetia.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Markus Bernath is foreign editor of the Austrian daily Der Standard in Vienna and reports on the Caucasus and Asian affairs.