Early last month, as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili prepared for his ill-fated invasion of South Ossetia, his security forces proceeded to a series of arrests in Ajaria, an enclave at the opposite end of the country.
According to sources inside Georgia, most of the arrests took pace in Batumi, Ajaria's capital, and several towns, especially Khulo, close to the Meskhet mountain range with a history of rebellion against Georgian rule. An unknown number of people were also picked up in Agara, Zungada and Akho.
At the time, the crackdown came as a bolt out of the blue. Ajaria has been relatively calm after its status as an autonomous republic within Georgia was revised in 2004 and its "strongman" leader Aslan Abashidze forced out of office.
Thanks to a massive increase in tonnage handled through Batumi, Georgia's largest port, the enclave of 176 square-miles has been doing rather well economically. Prospects looked even more promising as plans to build new oil and gas pipeline to connect the reserves of the Caspian Basin to the Black Sea via Batumi began to take shape.
So, why did Saakashvili, who has built his political persona as a champion of democracy and human rights, decide to order a crackdown that recalls the bad old days of the Soviet Union?
The reason, not apparent at the time, soon became clear. Saakashvili wanted to be sure that the Ajars would not seize the opportunity provided by his war in South Ossetia to organise an anti-Georgian uprising of their own. The sad truth is that Saakashvili has done little to address Ajar grievances, including their demand for meaningful autonomy.
The new constitution imposed on them in 2004 represents a step backwards as far as the Ajars' desire for running their own affairs is concerned. Today, even the smallest decisions have to be referred to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
"The government in Tbilisi simply does not trust us," says an Ajar personality who had initially welcomed the so-called "Revolution of the Roses" that brought Sakaashvili to power. "The new rulers in Tbilisi believe that freedom and democracy is good only for ethnic Georgians, not for ethnic minorities such as the Ajars."
Ajaria, which is located at the southwestern tip of Georgia on the Black Sea and next to Turkey, has an estimated population of 500,000 of whom at least 60 per cent are ethnic Ajar Muslims. Successive Georgian governments have tried to alter the enclave's demographic and ethnic profile by bringing in non-Ajar settlers.
As a result, today some 20 per cent of the population is ethnic Georgian while a further 20 per cent consists of Lezgins, Armenians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Russians, and Abkhazians. Despite a massive campaign of conversion to Christianity, encouraged by the present government, some 70 per cent of the population consists of Sunni Muslim.
Ruled by its own emirs, Ajaria was a tribute-paying protectorate of Persia until 1614, when it was taken by the Ottomans who stayed for over 250 years. The Persians had allowed the Ajars to continue practising their ancestral rites or convert to Christianity.
The Ottomans, however, launched a massive campaign of conversion to Islam that succeeded beyond their dreams. By the end of the Ottoman rule, more than 90 per cent of Ajars had become Muslims.
Forced to seize
In 1878, the Ottomans were forced to seize Ajaria, along with Abkhazia to Tsarist Russia, which had already captured Georgia, and what is now Azerbaijan.
Recognising Ajaria's geo-strategic importance, the Tsars soon extended the Baku-Tbilisi railway, built in 1833, to the Black Sea, developing Batumi as a major naval base.
With the disintegration of the Tsarist Empire in 1918, the Ottomans moved in to annex Ajaria. However, in 1920, with the tide of war turning against the Turks, they were forced to evacuate Ajaria.
In 1921, the new Turkish Republic signed the Treaty of Kars, ceding Ajaria to Georgia that had just proclaimed its own independence from Russia.
A few months later, however, Georgia itself was absorbed into the newly created Soviet Union with Ajaria designated as an autonomous region.
In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Empire enabled Georgia to declare its own independence. Ajaria, along with the other two ethnic enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, tried to imitate Georgia and declared its independence.
This attracted a brutal crackdown by the post-Soviet Georgian "strongman" Zviad Gamsakhurdia who projected himself as a hero of Georgian nationalism and dreamed of converting the Muslims, known in Georgia as Meskhets, to Georgia's brand of Christianity.
Nevertheless, the group of former Ajar Communists led by Abashidze managed to hold their own until Gamsakhurdia was murdered in mysterious circumstances. The group created a Mafia-style system in which political power and organised crime acted in tandem.
For a while, Saakashvili's emergence as a champion of democracy in Georgia inspired many hopes in Ajaria. In the past two to three years, however, those hopes have been all but dashed as Saakashvili has pursued a Georgian chauvinistic policy towards ethnic and religious minorities, including the Ajars.
Saakashvili's attempt at supposedly solving the South Ossetian problem by force, gave the Russians with the pretext they had been waiting for to invade Georgia, break its army and annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The Western powers, notably the United States, have turned a blind eye to Saakashvili's reckless policy towards ethnic and religious minorities. All they are interested in is Saakashvili's anti-Russian stance and his quest for the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union.
Anxious to avoid both Russia and Iran as routes for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Basin, the US and its European allies have focused on Georgia and Turkey as alternatives.
Ajaria is the vital link between those pipelines and the Western energy markets. This is, perhaps, why no one in the West wished to notice last August's crackdown in Ajaria.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
Send us your comments
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Gulf News may edit comments for length and clarity but will not change the tone of the message. Comments will only be accepted if all fields (including name) are filled correctly and the message isn't abusive, defamatory or offensive. The Gulf News website will only print your first name along with your comment. Please state in the message if you wish to remain anonymous. All comments sent may be forwarded for use in the Gulf News newspaper.
