Georgia’s ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, the man parachuted in to cleanse the country of Saakashvili and his gang, has recently described Poroshenko’s decision to appoint a wanted criminal as an advisor as “regrettable.” He might have added that there are also many other former Georgian government members “advising” Poroshenko. So many in fact that a disturbing pattern is emerging, reminiscent to that of the ex-Nazis who mysteriously appeared as advisors to US-aligned South American dictatorships after World War Two.
Amongst the wanted criminals in Ukraine is Zurab Adeishvili, the former Justice Minister, who has no official post in the Ukrainian government but is advising it informally, according to others now working there. Former Georgian healthcare minister Alexander Kvitashvili, a man with a long record of promoting and profiting from institutional corruption, now has the same job in Ukraine, having been granted instant citizenship.
Ex-deputy interior minister Eka Zguladze has also now transferred to the same job in Ukraine, despite having been elected by no one. Gia Getsadze, who was a member of Saakashvili’s administration till mid-2005, is now Ukraine’s Deputy Justice Minister, and three other former Georgian government members work in that ministry. Some members of these people’s families have documented CIA and NGO links, as reported in the international media, as in the case of Kvitashvili’s wife and her long-term CIA contacts.
Georgia is trying to get many of these people, Saakashvili included, extradited to face the courts, but Ukraine is refusing to play ball, regardless of the nature of the charges against them. It is beyond coincidence that these criminals are suddenly appearing in, and being protected by, the latest US project, just as they were in Georgia for so long, until they were routed by the electors and escaped the country.
Telling it like it is
Saakashvili still has influential friends in the U.S., like Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Of course he does, he knows what he did in Georgia and how many careers would be destroyed if he tells everyone else who told him to do it, and why.
Former head of the CIA David Petraeus was even a guest at his house in New York recently. However, according to a New York Times profile by the Observer’s Jason Horowitz, leaders of the Columbia Law School had concerns about the coconut water-sipping exile.
This is why Saakashvili is allowed to make public statements which state openly why he is advising the Poroshenko government. “I will coordinate the arms supply to Kiev” he has stated on the main Ukrainian TV channel. “This is the most important issue today and I will be working on this for the next few days,” he noted.
However, as usual his new assignment in Ukraine has to be dressed up for the international audience. Saakashvili was long presented as a pro-Western reformer, and therefore his crimes were regarded as either not existing, because reformers don’t do those sort of things, or necessary for the greater good. Therefore, despite his own insistence that his role is arms-related, Poroshenko maintains that Saakashvili “has great experience which will be used to implement reforms in Ukraine”, without saying what these are.
Ukraine is surrounded by pro-Western countries, ones that can give it plenty of advice, and are doubtless offering it. Of all the advisors it could have chosen, it chooses members of the criminal regime which even the US, which installed it, found too much of a liability long before its end.
The Saakashvili government does have a well-known connection with Ukraine. When the now twice-US-deposed Viktor Yanukovich was fighting a runoff election against one of Saakashvili’s many sexual conquests, Yulia Tymoshenko, it sent hundreds of “election observers” to the country to try and prevent him winning. It was later discovered that they were actually a combination of martial arts practitioners and street thugs, with no political experience. Such is the support Georgia offered friendly Ukraine at that time.
In Saakashvili’s defence it can be said that his work is already proving effective. The wanted criminals acting as advisers are not the only Georgians in Ukraine. Many are there as paid mercenaries, fighting alongside Kiev against its own citizens because increasing numbers of Ukrainians, whether military or civilian, are refusing to do so.
Some of these often ill-advised souls have already paid the ultimate price. One should not forget, of course, that we got to this point as a result of the Maidan Square snipers, many of whom were Georgian, the rest of whom were removed from the country on fake Georgian passports and all of whom were part of the CIA terrorist training programme still being run in Georgia’s infamous Pankisi Gorge.
The official story
Officially, despite his own statements, Saakashvili is the head of an International Advisory Council on Reforms. The Ukrainian President’s office says that this council will be made up of foreign experts and will work on “the reformation of Ukrainian legislation and increasing the level of international support to Ukraine.”
If Saakashvili had done either of these things when he was president of Georgia, or ever had the European values he said he had, his United National Movement would still be in power, as the Georgian people really do have such values and want such things. But Georgia and the US know very well what his credentials as a reformer are: he turned universal low-level corruption into murderous elite corruption, and terrorised and forcibly took over the businesses which were supposed to be the main beneficiaries of his policies.
Saakashvili’s new official job title is meant to once again underscore that he and Poroshenko are pro-Western forces, and therefore on the side of the people, because it is assumed everyone wants to be an American. The corollary of this is that everyone who disagrees with them must therefore be against the people, and liable to be overthrown at any time.
This bears no relation to the situation on the ground. But wars are primarily fought on TV, and by US-based English language stations who take the line of the US government. Getting rid of inconvenient people is so much easier when the whole world thinks they are against their own people, even if the propaganda only comes into its own after the event.
In reality America and Europe are on the horns of a dilemma in Ukraine, one which spoils, at least for now, the ultimate game of isolating and destabilising the Russian people. They have no trusted people there they can work with, as the new Ukrainian Government is more corrupt than the last one … and has a significant neo Nazi element to boot.
Georgians now despised by their own electors can still be trusted to do the US’s dirty work in another country, with no questions asked, because that is their only way of continuing to exert influence and retaining their fairweather international friends. It also keeps them quiet about what they know. If it can be pretended that the Georgian people long for their return because their replacements aren’t American enough, everything they do in Ukraine can be spun in a positive light.
So what’s next?
Based on Misha’s track record in Georgia, there are many future happenings we can predict with some confidence. He is not going to renege on his own legacy by trying to do things differently, particularly as there are well-founded fears that he is intending to blackmail his friends to return him to power in Georgia by any means necessary.
As he himself said on his party’s mouthpiece, Rustavi2 TV, “We will work in several directions, including economic and military areas. Of course, anticorruption reforms are also very important.” What he did not say is who will actually implement these reforms, day to day, and how. This is because Georgians already know, and he knows they know.
“Economic reforms” meant white collar thugs, not the civil servants they displaced, destroying businessmen by making illegal tax demands which could only be avoided by giving a successful business to as government minister, at which point its taxes were all declared paid. “Anticorruption reforms” meant abolishing corruption by legalising it for the elite and using the allegation of corruption as a tool to jail everyone else.
“Military reforms” meant huge spending on arms the country never saw and clogging up the ports with illegal arms shipments, usually to US proxy terrorists in the Middle East. In fact, even when Saakashvili was in office a great many of these arms were smuggled to Ukraine. The link man here was Irakli Bartiashvili, the former head of Georgian Intelligence who later became a political foe, and the smuggling was conducted, and still is, via Poti port.
Saakashvili developed an ever-increasing portfolio of criminal arms and drug deals (weapons for drug swaps) to pay the bills of the United National Movement. Even Saakashvili’s uncle, Temur Alasania, muscled in on the act, taking a bigger share of the blood money for his services.
Saakashvili can already point to one achievement in this direction. He has ensured that the tycoons of the black government have gained certain exemptions from tax investigations and criminal activities. These include Barvil, a freight forwarding and ship handling company based in West Georgia which has always been a front for the former political elite.
So now we can see exactly what Saakashvili’s “advisory post” is all about. The new Georgian government doesn’t want the country to be the regional arms and drugs trafficking hub. Ukraine is now set to take over the role, as its government needs US support, and this is what the US wants.
Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
