The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia President Saakashvili
By F. William Engdahl, 12 August, 2008
The
controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South
Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the
controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An
examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless
and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO
establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence
establishment. The famous ‘Rose Revolution of November 2003
that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the
then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and
financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and
agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence
community.
Mihkail
Saakashvili was deliberately placed in power in one of the most
sophisticated US regime change operations, using ostensibly private
NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) to create an atmosphere of
popular protest against the existing regime of former Soviet Foreign
Minister Edouard Shevardnadze, who was no longer useful to Washington
when he began to make a deal with Moscow over energy pipelines and
privatizations.
Saakashvili was brought to power in a
US-engineered coup run on the ground by US-funded NGO’s, in an
application of a new method of US destabilization of regimes it
considered hostile to its foreign policy agenda. The November 24 2003
Wall
Street Journal
explicitly credited the toppling of Shevardnadze's regime to the
operations of "a raft of non-governmental organizations . . .
supported by American and other Western foundations." These
NGOs, said the Journal, had "spawned a class of young,
English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms"
who were instrumental laying the groundwork for a bloodless coup.
Coup
by NGO
But
there is more. The NGOs were coordinated by the US Ambassador to
Georgia, Richard Miles, who had just arrived in Tbilisi fresh from
success in orchestrating the CIA-backed toppling of Slobodan
Milosevic in Belgrade, using the same NGOs. Miles, who is believed to
be an undercover intelligence specialist, supervised the Saakashvili
coup.
It
involved US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Georgia
Foundation. It involved the Washington-based Freedom House whose
chairman was former CIA chief James Woolsey. It involved generous
financing from the US Congress-financed National Endowment for
Democracy, an agency created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s to
“do privately what the CIA used to do,” namely coups
against regimes the US Government finds unfriendly.
George
Soros’ foundations have been forced to leave numerous eastern
European countries including Russia as well as China after the 1989
student Tiananmen Square uprising. Soros is also the financier
together with the US State Department of the Human Rights Watch, a
US-based and run propaganda arm of the entire NGO apparatus of regime
coups such as Georgia and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.
Some analysts believe Soros is a high-level operative of the US State
Department or intelligence services using his private foundations as
cover.
The US State Department funded the Georgia Liberty
Institute headed by Saakashvili, US approved candidate to succeed the
no-longer cooperative Shevardnadze. The Liberty Institute in turn
created “Kmara!” which translates “Enough!”
According to a BBC report at the time, Kmara! Was organized in spring
of 2003 when Saakashvili along with hand-picked Georgia student
activists were paid by the Soros Foundation to go to Belgrade to
learn from the US-financed Otpor activists that toppled Milosevic.
They were trained in Gene Sharp’s “non-violence as a
method of warfare” by the Belgrade Center for Nonviolent
Resistance.
Saakashvili
as mafioso President
Once
he was in place in January 2004 as Georgia’s new President,
Saakashvili proceeded to pack the regime with his cronies and
kinsmen. The death of Zurab Zhvania, his prime minister in February,
2005, remains a mystery. The official version—poisoning by
faulty gas heater—was adopted by American FBI investigators
within two weeks of the killing. That has never seemed credible to
those familiar with Georgia’s gangland slayings, crime, and
other manifestations of social decay. Zhvania’s death was
followed closely by a functionary of the Premier’s apparat,
Georgi Khelashvili, who allegedly shot himself the day after his
chief’s demise. The head of Zhvania’s research staff was
later found dead as well.
Figures allied with Saakashvili
reportedly had a hand in the premier’s death. Russian
journalist Marina Perevozkina quoted Gia Khurashvili, a Georgian
economist. Prior to the fatal incident, Mr. Khurashvili had published
an article in Resonans
newspaper opposing the privatization and sale of Georgia’s main
gas pipeline. Ten days before the prime minister’s body was
found, Khurashvili was attacked and his editor-in-chief—citing
pressure from ‘security service’ figures he refused to
name—issued him a warning.
The
late premier’s position on the pipeline issue was believed the
direct reason for the murder of Zhvania. Zhvania’s brother,
Georgi, also told Perevozkina that not long before Zhvania’s
death he received a warning that someone was preparing to kill his
brother. Saakashvili was reportedly livid when the US State
Department invited Zhvania to Washington to win a Freedom Medal from
the US Government’s National Democratic Institute. Saakashvili
tolerates no rivals for power it seems.
Saakashvili,
who cleverly marketed himself as “anti-corruption,”
appointed several of his family members to lucrative posts in
government, giving one of his brothers a position as chief adviser on
domestic issues to the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline project, backed by
British Petroleum and other oil multinationals.
Since coming
to power in 2004 with US aid, Saakashvili has led a policy of
mass-scale arrests, imprisonment, torture and deepened corruption.
Saakashvili has presided over the creation of a de facto one-party
state, with a dummy opposition occupying a tiny portion of seats in
the parliament, and this public servant is building a Ceaucescu-style
palace for himself on the outskirts of Tbilisi. According to the
magazine, Civil
Georgia
(Mar. 22, 2004) until 2005, the salaries of Saakashvili and many of
his ministers were reportedly paid by the NGO network of New
York-based currency speculator Soros—along with the United
Nations Development Program.
Israel
US military train Georgian military
The
current military assault on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in violation
of Saakashvili’s pledge to seek a diplomatic not military
solution to the territorial disputes, is backed by US and Israeli
military “advisers.” Israel’s Haaretz
newspaper reported that on August 10, Georgian Minister of
Reintegration, Temur Yakobshvili, “praised the Israel Defense
Forces for its role in training Georgian troops and said Israel
should be proud of its military might, in an interview with Army
Radio. ‘Israel should be proud of its military which trained
Georgian soldiers,’ Yakobashvili told Army Radio in Hebrew,
referring to a private Israeli group Georgia had hired.”
One
of the targets of Russian bombs near Tbilisi was, according to
IsraelNN.com, “a Georgian military plant in which Israeli
experts are upgrading jet fighters for the Georgian military…
Russian fighter jets bombed runways inside the plant, located near
Tbilisi, where Israeli security firm Elbit is in charge of upgrading
Georgian SU-25 jets.”
Israeli
Foreign Minister and candidate to succeed ousted Israeli Prime
Minister, Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, proclaimed on August
10 that “Israel recognizes Georgia’s territorial
integrity,” code for saying it backs Georgia’s attempt to
take South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The
reported 1,000 Israeli military advisers in Georgia were not alone.
On July 15, the Reuters news wire carried the following report:
“VAZIANI, Georgia - One thousand U.S. troops began a military
training exercise called “Immediate Response 2008,” in
Georgia on Tuesday against a backdrop of growing friction between
Georgia and neighboring Russia. The two-week exercise was taking
place at the Vaziani military base near the capital Tbilisi, which
was a Russian air force base until Russian forces withdrew at the
start of this decade under a European arms reduction agreement...
Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led
coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to
the Georgian military. The United States is an ally of Georgia and
has irritated Russia by backing Tbilisi’s bid to join the NATO
military alliance... “The main purpose of these exercises is to
increase the cooperation and partnership between U.S. and Georgian
forces,” Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S.
military’s Southern European Task Force, told reporters.”
With
Russia openly backing and training the indigenous military in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia to maintain Russian presence in the region,
especially since the US-backed pro-NATO Saakashvili regime took power
in 2004, the Caucasus is rapidly coming to resemble Spain in the
Civil War from 1936-1939 where the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and
others poured money and weapons and volunteers into Spain in a
devastating war that was a precursor to the Second World War.
In
a curious footnote to the actual launch of military fighting on the
opening day of the Olympics when Putin, George W. Bush and many world
leaders were in Beijing far away, is a report in IsraelNN.com by Gl
Ronen, stating that “The Georgian move against South Ossetia
was motivated by political considerations having to do with Israel
and Iran, according to Nfc.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided to assert control over
the breakaway region in order to force Israel to reconsider its
decision to cut back its support for Georgia's military.”
Ronen
added, “Russian and Georgian media reported several days ago
that Israel decided to stop its support for Georgia after Moscow made
it clear to Jerusalem and Washington that Russia would respond to
continued aid for Georgia by selling advanced anti-aircraft systems
to Syria and Iran.” Israel plans to get oil and gas from the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian.
Although
as of this writing Russian President Medvedev has announced Russia is
halting its military response against Georgian targets, the situation
is anything but stable. The insistence of Washington in bringing
Georgia into its geopolitical sphere and backing an unstable regime
around Mikhail Saakashvili may well have been the straw which broke
the Russian camel’s patience if not his back.
Whether
oil pipeline disputes or Russian challenges to Israel are the
proximate trigger for Saakashvili’s dangerous game, it is clear
that the volatile Georgian and his puppet masters may have entered a
game where no one will be able to control the outcome.