Georgia on my mind

It's pretty amazing stuff
that's going on in Georgia right now. President Eduard Shevardnadze has
been accused of rigging elections, and for the past two weeks the
opposition party has been getting people more and more riled up.
Yesterday a mob literally broke down the doors to Parliament and rushed
the session while Shevardnadze was giving a speech. If you've seen the video
then you know how fast those politicians took off when their
constituency came flooding onto the floor.
As of now, the whole country is teetering on the edge. The Opposition
leader has proclaimed herself acting president and has called for new
elections in 45 days. Meanwhile, Shevardnadze has threatened force:

He said the army would take over if the newly-elected
parliament was not allowed to meet to ratify the emergency decree
within 48 hours, as required by the Georgian constitution.

Not that I'm a world-reknowned authority on former Soviet bloc
countries, but I'm willing to bet that the odds of the army actually
defending this clown are pretty slim for three reasons. First of all,
they're paid minimal salaries, and nobody's going to stand in front of
an angry mob for minimum wage. Secondly, popular support seems to be
overwhelmingly against the President. Third, and most importantly,
Georgia weathered a brutal civil war 10 years ago and is probably quite
hesitant to go in for a repeat so soon.
Now this is all well and good, but as always there's more at play here
than just a simple rigged election and some hooray-for-democracy
footage. Most articles have completely glossed over this angle, but one
AP report mentions it briefly:

Protesters said they were determined to topple the
president, who has long claimed that his leadership is key to
maintaining stability in the Caucasus region, located on vital oil routes.

This is a major detail. Along with a huge amount of oil, one-eighth of
the world's natural gas lies beneath the Caspian sea. As you can see,
an oil pipeline is currently being built directly across Georgia to
transport oil from the landlocked Caspian sea to the Black sea.
In
addition to the planned pipeline, there are also two other pipelines
running through the country which will be transporting a combined total
of almost 2 million barrels of oil per day. By way of comparison,
Iraq's pre-war oil production was 2.8 million bbl/d. Granted, it's not
like Georgia's got the second biggest oil reserves on the planet or
anything, but you better believe there are quite a few people in very
expensive suits wringing their hands right now over who's going to wind
up running the country. Let's just hope we don't have to start another war to "liberate the Georgian people" anytime soon.

Posted by flow Frazao on November 23, 2003 at 12:03 AM | Permalink