Arab News: “Georgia committed to democratisation despite its war with Russia“

Georgia has successfully maintained its progressive reforms and Euro-Atlantic aspirations despite the ongoing Russian occupation of two of its regions, says a new opinion piece on Arab News website.

Ten years on from the six-day war between Russian invading forces and Georgian troops, the "frozen conflict” poses major implications but has not impeded the country’s march toward democracy, writes Luke Coffey.

His contributing feature explains how the invasion force used the Roki Tunnel in August 2008 to enter the Georgian territory and how, a decade on, Russia has still not honoured the ceasefire agreement by maintaining its troops in the occupied Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) and Abkhazia regions.

Russia still does not allow humanitarian aid to enter the occupied regions and Russian troops have not returned to their pre-war locations — two important points of the cease-fire agreement that ended the fighting”, Coffey says.

The author of the piece also notes how, by maintaining the occupation, the Russian government effectively vetoes Georgia’s goal of NATO accession.

In addition, the article shows, the occupying power uses a process of "borderization” to continually split communities and areas near the administrative boundary line separating the occupied territories from Georgian-controlled ones.

In extreme cases, Russia has taken even more territory by moving fences a few meters at a time. This is Russia’s ‘creeping annexation’ of Georgia, which continues a decade after the war”, the piece outlines.

Despite these complications, Georgia has maintained a clear view on reforms and aspirations on joining the European Union and NATO, Coffey tells readers.

Today, Georgia represents the idea in Europe that each country has the sovereign ability to determine its own path and to decide with whom it has relations and how and by whom it is governed”, the opinion piece reads.

Read the full story here: arabnews.com