Re: [GZG] [Real World] Russian Mig 29 shoots down Georgian UAV

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Phillip Atcliffe
<atcliffe@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>  So Russia is acting in its usual role of "protector of the Slavs"?
Shades
> of a century ago... plus ca change, plus ca meme chose....

And how much would the United States be involved if the Mexicans had a
civil war in Chihuahua?

Ask Blackjack Pershing. . .

No state with pretensions to Great Power status can tolerate this sort
of chaos on their border.  The more their pretensions are pretense,
the more vital appearances become.

In actuality, the value of the roughly 83% of Abkhazia occupied by the
Russian-backed (armed, equipped, supplied, trained) separatist
movement is next to nil.  Their majority industry is tourism, and most
of the tourists come from Russia.  The Abkhazian population was,
before the conflict, predominately Georgian (239,000 out of 525,000
inhabitants in 1989, with Abkhazians making up a mere 93,000), and the
Georgians initially waltzed into the capital with very little armed
opposition.  The "independence" of Abkhazia was established once
Russia flooded the region with paramilitaries, both Russian and those
recruited from other groups in the area.  Included among these was a
force of Chechen gangsters and organized criminals led by one Shamil
Basayev--who ended up Deputy Defense Minister in Abkhazia. . .	The
decision to give him guns, training, and combat experience later bit
the Russian government in the butt, but that's a story for a different
day.  After their victory, the Russians, via their proxies, began a
program of ethnic cleansing to throw the estimated 250,000 Georgians
out of the province.

Georgia has offered a settlement plan which translates into nearly
complete independence, complete with a permenantly reserved
vice-presidential position with veto authority over Abkhazia-related
decisions.  This is more de facto independence than "Abkhazia" enjoys
as an arm of the Russian intelligence services (Russia has extended
Russian citizenship to nearly 80% of Abkhazia's population, issues
Russian passports to them, etc).  In fact, when Russia's handpicked
"Presidential" candidate (a former KGB general) lost the election, the
threat of violence from Russian-backed paramilitaries that make up
much of the military force in Abkhazia was so severe that they
nullified the elections and held another set of elections with only
one ticket--the KGB general accepted vice-presidential billing on it.

At any rate, unless someone can tie it into a SG or DS scenario, I
think we've pretty much exhausted this topic and delved far more into
modern-day politics than is the norm for this list.

John
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again. We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l