Power outage
Electricity and autonomy are still in short supply in one former Soviet republic
TBILISI, Georgia - The winter darkness swings in like a sucker punch. Men in leather jackets curse under their breath as the street lights go out. Women whip out penlights and mince cautiously through the minefield of puddles along Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi's Broadway. Casino workers and cafe managers hustle to fire up giant red diesel Honda generators.
It's a familiar scene here in the cultural capital of the Caucasus, where a decadelong energy crunch has caused regular power outages and constant heating shortages. Power is not so easy to come by in this 1,600-year-old mountain city where Byzantine corruption runs rife - unless, of course, you have the right connections.
By all accounts, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania was tackling that tradition of corruption before he was asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from a space heater at a friend's apartment on Feb. 3. A favorite of Washington's political elites, Zhvania received the Washington-based National Democratic Institute's prestigious Democracy Award in December 2004. Zhvania, 41, was known as an energetic reformer, often credited with bridging the divide between Georgia and its two breakaway republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Zhvania achieved wider fame in the fall of 2003, when he helped lead the popularly supported Rose Revolution that ousted Georgia's former president, Eduard Shevardnadze. In the chaotic weeks after Shevardnadze's ouster, Zhvania, a former Green Party politician, was tapped to take the country's second-highest political post. But more than a year after the democratic uprising swept away the last remnants of Soviet-era power, regular electricity and political stability still haven't come to Georgia. And now Zhvania's bizarre death has set off a host of conspiracy theories, leaving many to wonder whether democracy will ever fully bloom in the former Soviet republic.
Meanwhile, lack of power - political, electric and otherwise - remains a perennial problem. The Russian Information Agency reports that 45 Georgians have died of carbon monoxide poisoning from makeshift heating systems in the last three years. Georgia's lack of central heating makes for some rough winters. Georgia imports about 80 percent of its energy, most of it from Russia.
Conspiracy theories aside, there is a certain sad logic to the Zhvania's death. But logic rarely prevails in a country whose borders have been written and rewritten by endless invasions and intrigues. The political uncertainty left in the wake of Zhvania's death won't make it any easier to overcome the biggest threat to Georgia's transition to democratic reform - conflict with Russia.
Russia seems determined to block Georgia's bid for NATO membership. NATO's courtship of Georgia is largely motivated by the United States' strategic interest in creating a new east-west energy corridor for Caspian Sea oil and gas.
The sorry state of Georgia's army may prove a bigger obstacle to NATO membership than Russia, however.
The bureaucratic bulwark of military Georgia is housed in two ramshackle concrete buildings at the far end of Vake, Tbilisi's central district. Like other buildings in the city, the concrete balconies of the Soviet-era Ministry of Defense buildings are draped with laundry. The only difference is the jungle mesh backdrop.
One day last November, soldiers - some Russian, some Georgian - chatted idly in the parking lot as the last hour of the business day unwound. The unease between the two armies is palpable. The estimated 5,000 Russian troops stationed in Georgia are one of many signs of the ex-superpower's reluctance to release control of its former republic. The future of the two military bases in Georgia where the troops are housed is a source of constant tension between the two countries. Georgia's new government wants the Russian troops out within three years. Russia says it will take 11 years to decommission the bases, despite offers from the United States to pay for part of the Russian pullout.
Georgian soldier Zura Mari lounged on a chewed-up armchair propped up against a broken-down Lada sedan in the parking lot. Mari, 22, had been in the Georgian army for a year and said he hates it. He originally signed up because he thought the army eventually would switch to a contract pay and benefits system. He was soon disappointed to find out that probably won't happen any time soon.
"The pay is very bad," Mari says. "I'd rather be doing anything but this."
A former rock musician, Mari supports his wife and infant daughter on roughly $40 a month. He has decided to quit the army if things don't get better within the next year. He warily eyes a cluster of Russian soldiers examining the barrel of an AK-47 and sighs: "I probably wouldn't even be here if it weren't for them."
Tensions between the armies increased last fall when Russia sealed off its southern border with Georgia for several weeks after Chechen rebels held some 1,200 people hostage at a school in Beslan, Russia. Russia claims that Georgia is harboring Chechen terrorists in Georgia's remote Pankisi Gorge region. The dispute over the region and Russian-backed rebel activity in South Ossetia has led to occasional saber-rattling on the part of Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia's 37-year-old, Columbia University-educated leader. Vladimir Putin, Russia's cool-eyed KGB-agent-turned-president, has responded in kind.
Russia knows just where to tighten the screws. Despite Georgia's relative proximity to the Caspian Sea's energy resources and U.S.-backed plans to transform the country into an oil and gas transit hub, Russia holds the upper hand in Georgia's energy crisis. In July 2003, Russia's electric monopoly, Unified Energy Systems, purchased 75 percent of Tbilisi's recently privatized electrical grid. An American company had bowed out when Georgians refused en masse to pay their electric bills and jury-rigged their own pirated supply.
When a main power line to Tbilisi was damaged by saboteurs last summer, some members of Georgia's Parliament accused Russia of hatching an elaborate plot to destroy the country's economy. And now dubious Georgian media reports hold the same Kremlin plotters responsible for Zhvania's "mysterious" death.
The Kremlin aside, Georgia has internal challenges to contend with before its power crisis is resolved. The country's annual gross domestic product per capita is $744, while unemployment hovers at 12.3 percent, according to the U.S. State Department.
Meanwhile, the legacy of Soviet corruption continues to plague Georgia. According to Transparency International, an international public corruption watchdog group, Georgia's kickback culture makes it among the most corrupt nations in the world. Saakashvili has made a big to-do about eradicating corruption since he was elected in January 2004, calling it the "scourge" of Georgia. Some of Saakashvili's reforms, including the firing of some 15,000 traffic police last spring and the adoption of a new tax code, have drawn praise inside and outside the country.
Still, it will likely take years for Georgia to rid itself of the post-Soviet ennui induced by widespread corruption.
Three months before Zhvania's death, a crowd of antigovernment demonstrators marched down Rustaveli Avenue with pre-Rose Revolution flags of maroon, white and black waving in the gusty November wind. The flags were a somber reminder that not everyone was happy to see Shevardnadze's regime come to an end.
About 200 people, most of them aging pensioners receiving less than $10 in monthly government payments, chanted for a return to "Old Georgia" as they circled the newly renovated Parliament building on the city's main avenue. Protester Nino Galashvili said she lost her post as a physician at a local hospital shortly after the Rose Revolution swept Zhvania into office.
"This government is not legitimate," Galashvili said as some of the protesters paused to confront a small group of young, proreform hecklers. "Saakashvili and Zurab Zhvania have taken power illegally. They are all dictators and thieves."
Galashvili complained that the new government has done little to restore Georgia's broken economy. "Gamsakhurdia was a true leader," she said, referencing Georgia's first democratically elected president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, whose dictatorial regime fell during the country's tumultuous break from the Soviet Union in 1991.
But down the street, another pensioner laughed derisively at the notion that Georgia should turn back the clock. Medea Zenashvili, 67, agreed that surviving on her tiny monthly pension is close to impossible. She said she's disappointed the government hasn't yet delivered on its promise to increase pensions. Still, she's confident Saakashvili will provide a better future for Georgia.
"Saakashvili is very strong," she said. "There's nothing he can't do if he's given enough time."