Europeans Cautious on Georgian Border Security Assistance
After the OSCE failed to even discuss a training program for the Georgian border guards, because of, as officials in Tbilisi put it, the “unconstructive position” of Russia, the Georgian side requested that the EU to “consider all possible options to effectively handle this important issue in a timely fashion.”
The EU is cautious about sending a large-scale team of observers to Georgia to replace the OSCE Border Monitoring Operation (BMO) on the Russo-Georgian border, but instead agreed to dispatch two or three of its civilian experts, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana put it, to observe the situation in Georgia in various areas around the country, including near the Russian border.
“We are willing to go beyond that. I cannot tell you the size at the moment,” Reuters quoted Solana on March 18 after a meeting of EU Defense Ministers in Luxembourg. He added that the EU staff could help train Georgian guards to monitor the border themselves.
Following the termination of the OSCE Border Monitoring Operation (BMO) on the Chechen, Ingush and Daghestani sections of the Russo-Georgian border, the Georgian side was pushing for a new initiative to train Georgian border guards under the aegis of the OSCE. Tbilisi insisted that the training should take place on the spot, i.e. in the mountainous regions of Georgia near the Russia border, with the use of equipment which was available for the BMO mission. Russia was against both of these modalities of training.
“I have specially addressed [on March 10] the OSCE Permanent Council with a particular plan, which showed our position about this training program. But, unfortunately, neither on the ambassadorial [level], nor on the level of committees this issue was not seriously discussed. Moreover, this issue was not even put on the agenda of the OSCE Permanent Council after the Russian side blocked it,” Giorgi Gomiashvili, the Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister, told Civil Georgia on March 21.
He said that the Georgian delegation sent an appeal to the OSCE member states saying that Georgia has never questioned the effectiveness of the OSCE as an Organization but it’s a fact that after the termination of the BMO and due to Russia’s persistently unconstructive position, the OSCE has failed to fulfill even the minimum – the border guard training program – of what was requested by Georgia.
“We were ready for any kind of compromise: let it be two helicopters instead of four, let it be 8 million euros instead of 15 million [overall funding of the training program], but in vain,” Giorgi Gomiashvili said.
Russia has opposed the border training initiative on two grounds. First, it insisted that the training should take place outside of the border area, meaning that no foreign personnel should remain on the Russo-Georgian border. Secondly, Russian diplomats insisted that no “dual use” equipment should be transferred to the Georgian border guards from the former OSCE BMO stockpiles. This “dual use” euphemism, observers say, mainly referres to night-vision equipment.
“The OSCE is now closed for us in this regard [border guard training program] and we have appealed the EU for help,” Gomiashvili said, adding that it is now solely up to the EU, where Russia has no say, to decide on this training program.
“One of our requests has already been accepted by the EU. I can say that this is unprecedented. The EU has already decided to reinforce Heikki Talvitie’s [EU’s special representative for South Caucasus countries] office here with three representatives, who, from time to time, will be mandated to visit those spots which often become a case of controversy [between Russia and Georgia],” the Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister said.
He said that very active discussions are now underway regarding the EU’s involvement in a training program for the Georgian border guards “with the use of appropriate equipment and near the border, as requested by Georgia.”
Despite the Georgian official’s optimism, the is EU treading extremely carefully near the Russia’s borders. While this caution can be overcome, based on the interests of some newer EU member-states from Central and Eastern Europe, there are other institutional leaders which might prove harder to navigate. The EU has very little experience in the military/security field, and its resources are now tested in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU took over the missions there from the NATO.
Secondly, there is no uniform opinion regarding the nature of border monitoring within the EU states. In some countries, like France, a mission similar to Georgian monitoring request would likely be handled by the military. Countries like Germany, on the other hand, consider border monitoring a police/security action. As these two countries usually contribute the bulk of the EUs manpower and planning in the security field, even this institutional divergence can prove fatal in engineering the controversial monitoring of borders outside of Europe’s own.