Chaos swirls around Abkhazia, breakaway republic in once-Soviet
Georgia. The grenade-thrower who targeted President Bush in May,
$80,000 on his head, has been captured in a raid which may or may
not have involved the FBI. Last month, Russia agreed to pull its
forces from all Georgian territory — through Abkhazia, where the
agreement has no force and the Kremlin keeps hundreds of
peacekeepers. And in 2003, Georgian Minister of State Security
Valeri Khaburdzania warned anyone reading the National
Interest that “Wahhabi organizations have sprung up on the
territory of Abkhazia, and where Wahhabis are, terrorists are not
far behind.” Abkhazia had by then already been “turned into a
transit point for the smuggling of narcotics and radioactive
materials,” but not until June 15 of this year did Sir Brian Fall,
Britain’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus, meet with
the Abkhaz leadership, ranking diplomats in tow. It was the
adjacent Pankisi gorge that Khaburdzania declared to be the source
of Ricin-producing components two years ago, and where, in February
2002, the United States sent some 200 Special Ops forces on a
counter-terror mission.
Abkhazia — midway between Britain and Pakistan — is the Middle
East’s perfect low-profile destination for terrorists, drug
smugglers, and international fugitives who demand the protection of
a rugged quasi-state plus the convenience of what was once known as
the “Soviet Riviera.” Its Black Sea beaches are the closest one can
get to London and other European cities without living under the
control of a recognized government — and in style. The
cosmopolitan fellow with the money to pay for private luxury in the
pursuit of crime is not surprised to see caravans of black
Escalades winding their way through the streets of Sukhumi,
Abkhazia’s capital. If a weekend of solitude is on the agenda, our
traveler need only turn on his heel and climb into the abutting
Caucasus. He shouldn’t worry about losing his papers, if he’s even
got any. Since Russia set up its de facto blockade in 1994,
visa-based entry into Abkhazia has run on a system of winks and
bribes. And Georgia itself has now waived the requirement of any
visa at all for all citizens of the European Union. The fraudulent
and virtually undetected entry of powerful itinerants with illegal
agendas is met in Abkhazia with a welcome mat.
Abkhazia is not the only quasi-sovereign trap door or hole in
the attic that gives would-be mass murderers a staging point
between Europe and the Arab world, but it also strikes the most
dangerous balance between reliability and disorder.
Nagorno-Karabakh, still in limbo between Armenia and Azerbaijan, is
destitute, landlocked, and outside the protection of a major power;
the unrecognized Transdnistr Moldovan Republic, headquartered in
Tiraspol, is in turn the headquarters of the Russian 14th Army.
Other regions where one can flee or break the law are either
hardship regions — like the Horn of Africa or the “tri-border”
region of South America — or places too distant to directly
threaten the West, like Thailand and Cambodia. Even in an age of
globalism, proximity is important, and the world’s rogues would be
hard pressed to get closer to the West on their own terms than
through Abkhazia.
This alarming consideration has already been well pondered by
some academics and policy thinkers. But Charles King, Associate
Professor of Foreign Service and Government at Georgetown
University and author of The Black Sea: A History,
considers that knowledge, in the case at hand, to have translated
poorly into power. The seemingly breakthrough Russia-Georgia
agreement didn’t improve the security situation in Abkhazia because
“there is no Russian base in Abkhazia; the base was officially
closed down by Russia several years ago — or, more properly,
transformed from a base into a convalescence station for the CIS
[Commonwealth of Independent States] peacekeepers in Abkhazia.” And
the counterterrorism base that should be located in Abkhazia will
go to the other end of Georgia, in Batumi, instead. The status quo
— ideal for exploitation by our foremost enemies — remains.
According to King, people are at last “beginning to give Abkhazia
more attention in Washington, which is a good thing, but so far
there has been rather little creative thought about what a solution
would look like.”
The time for that creativity has arrived. Abkhazia’s combination
of prime regional real estate and its extralegal status makes it
just dangerous enough to dissuade weak powers from enforcing rules
and just orderly enough to attract those looking to break those
rules. The frontiers of Europe are congruent today with the
frontiers of the rule of law. Rolling those borders outward should
be a central objective of American foreign policy in Eurasia and
the Middle East, from Minsk to Baku to Beirut. The object is not
instant democracy; rather, the goal should be the elimination of
“enterprise zones” of extralegal opportunity — either by
establishing them as sovereign or by folding their security
responsibilities into those of a larger, more accountable, and more
effective government. There are many places to focus, but Abkhazia
is, perhaps, the best place to begin. Time, in the meanwhile, is
wasting.
