Georgia: Foreign interference in CIS

All roads lead to Washington.or Soros.or both

What happened in Georgia this weekend was no spontaneous popular uprising by a disaffected, furious populace rebelling against a tyrant but rather, a campaign orchestrated from abroad to place a pro-west, pro-NATO sycophant on the throne in Tblissi.

The accusations

Ex-President Eduard Shevardnadze suspected both Washington and Soros of working against him before the so-called coup, led by the opposition and their foreign backers, which forced him to resign last Saturday to prevent bloodshed.

Shevardnadze now accuses the USA of letting him fall and of orchestrating the campaign against him. At a press conference in Tblissi earlier this week, he declared that "I was one of the biggest supporters of the United States' policy. When they needed my support on Iraq, I gave it. What happened here, this I cannot explain".

In recent months, Shevardnadze has many times complained that the financier George Soros was actively working against him.

The players

Investigation shows that Shevardnadze was not wrong. All roads lead to Washington.or Soros.or both. First, the man on the inside, Georgian Giga Bokeria, who was sent by Soros to Serbia to liaise with the Otpor activists who had toppled Milosevic. A group of these activists then came to Georgia to instruct the opposition on how to launch a non-violent "revolution".  The Serbia link has been admitted by Laura Sibler, senior policy advisor of Soros' Open Society, who declared to the press that experiences shared between Georgia and Serbia were "very translatable" adding that the Society had indeed sponsored the trips.

The Brokeria connection does not end here. His Liberty Institute is financed both by George Soros' Open Society and the US-government-backed Eurasia Institute.

As for Soros himself, his implication in the events in Georgia are undeniable. Apart from financing the Liberty Institute, he financed the movement Kmara! which in Georgian means "Enough!", donating 500 000 USD which was used in last weekend's uprising, he financed the Rustavi-2 TV station which openly criticized Shevardnadze and he financed the opposition newspaper 24 Hours.

Both Soros and the US government sponsor the 35-year-old leader of the opposition, Mikhail Saakashvili, a lawyer educated in New York and with a declared programme to bring Georgia closer to the west by joining NATO and possibly, the European Union. The move towards Saakashvili and away from Shevardnadze came at a critical time for the United States of America.

The motive

The construction of the oil pipeline between the Caspian and Black Seas in 2005 and the fact that Shevardnadze had assigned energy deals to Russian companies, and not ones based in the USA, forced Washington's hand.

The greater plan

The greater plan for Washington starts to become ever clearer as one examines the geo-political map of the last few years.

In the east, Afghanistan has a Washington-friendly regime which will allow US companies to construct the gas pipeline to bring gas from Turkmenistan through to US-friendly Pakistan, something the Taleban refused to allow and for which they paid a high price.

In the centre, Iraq, now with a US administrator and later, according to the plan, a Washington-friendly government which will re-adjudicate the contracts. On the western flank, Chechnya and Georgia, where US military advisors play a sinister role which is not yet totally clear.

A clear case of Washington interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations and now, worse, interfering in the internal affairs of Commonwealth of Independent States countries. How much lower can Washington stoop?