Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

First Tunisia and now Egypt .  Demonstrators forced a change of government in Tunis and now President Mubarak’s regime is being challenged in Cairo, prompting hopes that a democratic revolution could sweep North Africa and the Middle East. The usual parallels are being drawn: the fall of communism in 1989 and the so-called ‘colour revolutions’ in parts of the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.  The media has already dubbed the Tunisian uprising the ‘Jasmine Revolution’. The British government, in the guise of Foreign Secretary William Hague, threw its lot in with the demonstrators in Egypt yesterday.   On the FCO website he urges the authorities in Cairo to “listen to the concerns of those demonstrating” and respect freedom of speech. It's difficult to give out a substantially different message, but the overall tone is suitably cautious. Hague is careful to urge restraint from both sides. Cairo is not Tunis.  Egypt is the largest Arab state and has often a...

The Foreign Policy Centre has published a pamphlet entitled ‘Spotlight on Georgia’ , timed to coincide with Vice President Biden’s visit to Tbilisi, this week. It is a substantial document and I have yet to plough through all of it. What is clear from my reading so far is that the influential British think tank’s investigations have charted a decline in standards of democracy and human rights under President Saakashvili, despite Western support which is often ‘almost reflexive’. From the 2003 Rose Revolution, and promising beginnings, degeneration in standards has been discerned in recent years, particularly since 2007. Saakashvili’s autocratic style has precipitated a pool of disgruntled politicians prepared to challenge his regime. Opposition has been suppressed, often by violent methods and press freedoms have been curtailed. In its ‘Nations in Transition’ report Freedom House adjudged Georgia to be ‘less democratic’ today than it has been at any point in the last ten years. Th...

Barack Obama is in Russia today. Thus a proliferation of articles and editorials urging the US President not to trust perfidious, semi-Asiatic barbarians adorn the newspapers. Predictably. In contrast, few media outlets chose to cover an assassination attempt last month on reforming Ingushetia president, Yunusbek Yevkurov, which constitutes part of a reinvigorated Islamist campaign in the Russian Caucasus. Encouraged by Dmitri Medvedev, Yevkurov has implemented a regime built on principles of glasnost in Russia’s most dangerous region. The terrorist attack was targeted very deliberately at a force for normalisation and transparency, which Wahhabi militants wish to undermine. Fewer reporters still have highlighted the ongoing struggle for democracy in Georgia and the government’s repressive tactics against the country’s opposition. But with Obama in Moscow to meet his Kremlin counterpart, all the clichés about a totalitarian Russian regime, intent on snuffing out democracy al...

MT ponderds the disparity between western countries’ reactions to political suppression in Iran and Georgia, two countries with records of human rights abuses and rigged elections. Simultaneous to the demonstrations in Iran, “masked police beat dozens of demonstrators in Georgia after they held a protest outside Tbilisi’s main police station demanding the release of six opposition activists who have been held since last Friday”. “We are told that the values of democracy and human rights are universal. The British government spends a great deal of money promoting these values abroad and lecturing other governments about the need for accountability and transparency in the electoral process. We regularly summon ambassadors from African and South Asian dictatorships to lecture them about their treatment of ethnic or religious minorities, the need for fair elections and the importance of a free press. But time and time again we have shown that we are prepared to turn a blind eye whe...

When David Miliband chose to deliver a broadside, denying any legitimate Russian interest in the conduct of its neighbours, in Kiev, I cited with approval an article which pointed out the gross insensitivity of his preferred location. Ukraine’s history is one of division between east and west and its politics still divides roughly along those lines. In central Ukraine and its eastern areas, a majority are drawn linguistically, culturally and politically toward Russia, whilst in the western part of the country historical influences have fostered a more European outlook. Of course these tendencies are generalisations and Ukraine as a whole is a crucible of divergent influences. The finely balanced nature of these influences makes the country politically volatile and a new government crisis reflects the shifting allegiances which characterise its governance. Miliband’s comments were prompted by the war in Georgia and that war has also precipitated the latest political spat in Ukrain...

Kommersant, Russia’s business daily, carries an article examining the manner in which Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, plays Russian and western interests in his country off, one against the other, in order to strengthen his own position and copper-fasten the independence of the state. Translation renders the piece into somewhat idiosyncratic English, but it is worth persevering, because this is an interesting departure from perceived wisdom that Lukashenko, the vanity of a tyrant not withstanding, is effectively in the Kremlin’s pocket. Fedor Lukyanov argues that Lukashenko has used Belarus’ strategic position, as the last bulwark separating Russia from NATO, to extract economic concessions from Russia, with the minimum secession of sovereignty and influence to the Kremlin. In tandem, Belarus’ proximity to both Russia and Poland allows Lukashenko to court the EU, without political pluralism ever seriously entering discussions. Maintaining this delicate balance allows Lu...