BACKGROUND: Abashidze has until recently prohibited the activities of opposition political parties, journalists and civil society activists; brazenly manipulated electoral processes; and refused to share customs and taxes with the federal government or even to visit Tbilisi. Since his election as Georgia’s president in January, Mikhail Saakashvili has consistently applied ever greater degrees of pressure against Abashidze and has obtained significant concessions. Presently, Georgian media, opposition parties, and civil society leaders operate freely in Ajaria and are not harassed in their activities. The March parliamentary elections were monitored fully in Ajaria by domestic and international observers who detected only a minimal degree of fraud. Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, who monitored the conduct of elections in Ajaria and has been a key negotiator with Abashidze said that the “March 28 elections in Adjara were a great success.” However, the most significant concession that Abashidze has made is to share customs revenues with federal authorities. The first such payment was received in March and the Georgian president has appointed a representative to oversee customs collection at the Batumi port who has started to carry out his duties. These concessions are significant steps toward regulating relations between central and republican authorities. If present trends persist and political parties are permitted to operate openly and freely, they will have the opportunity to remove Abashidze through the normal functioning of the electoral process in little more than a year. In the March 28 parliamentary elections, which were regarded as free and fair by international observers, Abashidze’s Revival Party obtained a small majority in Adjara (51% to 55% by different counts). In the coming months, as the mystique of the rose revolution wanes, Abashidze’s slim majority may grow. Hence federal authorities are disinclined to wait for elections and continually raise new demands and accusations suggesting that nothing short of Abashidze’s immediate removal will satisfy them. At present, the federal government demands that Abashidze disband and disarm the Ajarian Interior Ministry. Thrice in two months the Ajar leader has been presented with an ultimatum and a deadline for disarmament. A new element has been added recently, accusing Abashidze of drug smuggling. While Abashidze has demonstrated a willingness to make concessions, there is no reason to suppose that he will resign. If Georgia’s former president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned after the defection of his force structures to the opposition, Abashidze does not find himself in a similar predicament. On the contrary, according to eye witnesses, when tensions heated up in mid-March, Russian tanks manned by Ajar crews took up positions around Batumi and volunteers gathered at the administrative border. In the first days of May the sides were poised on the brink of war as Georgian federal troops held massive exercises on the Adjar administrative border and in response Abashidze’s force blew up two bridges. Rumors spread quickly that a Russian general Yury Netkachev came from Moscow to oversee the demolition of the bridges.

IMPLICATIONS: After his visit to Moscow in February, Saakashvili stated that terrorism and Wahhabism are the most serious threats to Georgian security and promised that Georgian force structures would cooperate fully with Russia. Subsequently, two Chechens from Georgia were handed over to Russian border guards, without normal extradition procedures. They disappeared from Tbilisi and reappeared at the border in the custody of Russian border guards. Five more Chechens disappeared from Georgia in recent weeks. The second major change, one that Shevardnadze steadfastly refused to grant for four years, is the introduction of joint Russian-Georgian patrols at the Ingush and Chechen segments of the Russian-Georgian border. As refugee camps are being forcibly closed in Ingushetia one of the possible escape routes, to Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, has in effect been closed. Chechens in Georgia view these changes with alarm and fears are mounting that the next stage will be Russian patrols going into the Pankisi Gorge to conduct “cleansings” and kidnappings as they do in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Analysts in Tbilisi suppose that in return for these concessions, Saakashvili has been given assurances by Putin of Russian non-interference in Ajaria. Of course, over the last ten years, Russia has failed to keep any of the promises it has made to Georgia, the removal of the three remaining Russian military bases on Georgian territory which was promised in 1999 being the most obvious such case. However, Saakashvili has earned an enormous reservoir of public trust by obtaining through force of will, oratory, strong organizational capacity, and peaceful protest the resignation of former President Shevardnadze. Saakashvili’s campaign slogan was “a united Georgia,” and his constituents hope that he can restore federal authority first to Ajaria and then to Abkhazia. Georgians who are frustrated by ten years of fruitless negotiations with separatists republics want to believe that Saakashvili knows something that the rest of society can not see, that the new popular young leader can make another miracle. The segment of Georgian society that is least likely to believe in miracles and most concerned about the escalation in tensions with Ajaria are the ethnic Georgian refugees from Abkhazia. From their vantage point, Saakashvili is proving to the separatists in Abkhazia that the federal center can not be trusted to respect the right of Autonomous Republics to self government. “With each day, as the confrontation with Abashidze deepens, my prospects for ever returning to Sukhumi become more and more remote,” says a woman from Abkhazia.

CONCLUSIONS: Post-revolutionary Georgia is risking to turn into a less pluralist society than it was under Shevardnadze. The restraints on the popular and ambitious, but somewhat emotional and inexperienced new president have to come from outside the country. Georgia derives a substantial portion of its budget, by some counts up to 40%, from the United States and Saakashvili worked closely with American advisors during his election campaign and continues to rely on them as president. However, the standoff with Ajaria plays into Russian strategic goals and ambitions. Russia can now use its leverage over Abashidze to bargain for advantageous terms with respect to the presence of Russian military bases, Georgia’s aspiration for NATO membership, and other issues of crucial significance for Georgia’s future security and development. In the current predicament, Georgia may pay too high a price for any attempt to remove Abashidze. It is also worth noting, that Abashidze is not the only anti-democratic governor of a region in Georgia --perhaps such figures can be tolerated in the short term as long as they pay taxes, recognize federal authority, and refrain from violence and repression.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Nino Tetelashvili, a freelance journalist in Tbilisi.