Georgia: The Risks of Winter - Crisis Group Reports

Original: Georgia: The Risks of Winter - Crisis Group Reports

The situation in and around Georgia’s conflict areas remains unstable. Violent incidents are continuing. Shots were fired near a convoy carrying the Georgian and Polish presidents on 23 November. European Union (EU) monitors are being denied access to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Unambitious multi-party negotiations focusing on security and internally displaced person (IDP) return have gotten off to a slow start in Geneva. For the moment, however, domestic politics are the capital’s main preoccupation. President Mikheil Saakashvili’s position is at least temporarily secure, but his administration is likely to be severely tested politically and economically in the winter and spring months ahead. The August 2008 war with Russia and the global financial crisis have seriously undermined Georgia’s economy and the foreign investment climate. S esident and his administration, beginning to pose pointed questions about whether the war could have been avoided and in some cases calling for Saakashvili’s resignation.

The one-year commemoration of the 7 November 2007 protest broken up violently by the police brought relatively few into the streets, but a worsening economy could rapidly increase frustration over the lost war. Who might mobilise the dissatisfaction and turn it into a politically significant movement remains unclear, however, since the opposition is still badly divided by ideology and personality.

Whether the government and opposition groups can cooperate in the national interest to lessen tensions is likewise uncertain. Much depends on whether the government implements urgently needed reforms, many of which Crisis Group recommended a year ago but on which there was virtually no movement before the August crisis and there has been only partial and tentative progress since. These include l promised at the 22 October dono