ABKHAZIA FLIRTS WITH MOSCOW...
With a host of issues fueling tensions between Georgia and Russia in the Caucasus, Moscow appears determined to up the stakes by deepening cooperation with one of Georgia’s two separatist enclaves. In exchange, leaders from Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s ethnically distinct autonomous regions bordering Russia, have invited the Russian armed forces to put the territory “under military control,” requesting “a guarantee of security.” Sergey Shamba, the breakaway territory’s unofficial foreign minister, assured Russia’s Izvestia newspaper that Abkhazia would not seek integration with Russia “yet,” but the assurance is unlikely to dampen anxiety in Georgia and abroad about the volatile standoff. (Moscow Kommersant, May 6, 2008)
...WHILE GEORGIA DISCOVERS ITS OWN ADMIRER
In Georgia’s ongoing and escalating diplomatic standoff with Russia, it has been offered help from an unlikely – and potentially unwelcome – source. Movladi Udogov, a Chechen rebel “envoy,” has effectively offered the services of his Caucasus Emirate, a North Caucasian insurgent group at odds with Moscow since 1999, to Tbilisi in the event of “real Russian aggression.” The Caucasus Emirate, according to Udogov, is monitoring the “movements of [Russian] troops and equipment” and running “agents” in Georgia’s two Russian-backed autonomous provinces. Despite their shared antipathy for Russia, it is unclear how closely the interests of Chechen insurgents jibe with those of Georgia: in his appeal, Udogov expressed a vision in which land “from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea is under Mujadeen control.”(Jamestown Foundation Chechnya Weekly, May 9, 2008)
IRAN, HEZBOLLAH TEACH NEW TRICKS...
American interrogators have presented new evidence to the Iraqi government that Hezbollah has been training Iraqi militias at a camp near Tehran. Hezbollah, working in tandem with Iran’s elite Quds Force, is said to be teaching “classes” of Iraqi militants “how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has responded to the charges by promising a government investigation into the “intervention.” (International Herald Tribune, May 5, 2008)
[Editor’s Note: A growing mountain of evidence of Iranian meddling in Iraq is beginning to strain relations between Baghdad and Tehran. Criticism within Iraq of Tehran’s “interference” – long been present among Iraqi army commanders and border-security guards – now is increasingly being heard among senior political figures. Initially hesitant to criticize their overpowering neighbor, even senior Shi’ite politicians once dependent on Iran have begun voicing their dissatisfaction with, and apprehension over, the Islamic Republic.]
...AND OPEN OLD WOUNDS
Hezbollah’s expanding operations are by no means restricted to training Iraqi militias, however. In a bold move, the Shi’ite militia for the first time has turned its guns inward in what some in Lebanon have termed a mini-coup. When Beirut’s Western-backed ruling political coalition led by Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora passed a pair of laws designed to reign in the militia’s activities, Hezbollah responded with a violent rampage, seizing and burning government buildings, blocking off the international airport, and facing off against government supporters from the Sunni, Christian and Druze sects. A political arrangement reached in Qatar through Arab mediation has since managed to put a lid on the escalating violence and unclog a broader political logjam that had left the government paralyzed for months. The final arrangement, favorable to the Iranian-backed militia, saw consensus candidate Michael Suleiman elected president and Hezbollah accorded veto power in the new cabinet.
Hezbollah’s political “victory” has not been cost free, however. An unintended side effect of the violence has been a revival of the sectarian divisions that fueled the country’s civil war from 1975 to 1990. Lebanon’s Sunnis, the core of the pro-government movement, have taken particular offense to Hezbollah’s recent attacks. And there are signs the deepening sectarian divide may be spreading beyond Lebanon’s borders; a powerful group of twenty-two Saudi clerics recently unleashed an unprecedented attack on the Shi’ite militia, claiming Sunnis have been “fooled” by Hezbollah’s anti-Israeli rhetoric. Hezbollah supporters “have not realized the reality of the infidel bases of their faith” and are “destabilizing Muslim countries,” the clerics said in a statement. (Reuters, May 12 and June 1, 2008; International Herald Tribune, May 22, 2008)