Strange monitoring and double standards
The difficult situation in Ukraine for almost a year has attracted the attention of not only all the media in the world, but also international and regional security organizations, which, according to their legal documents, must necessarily respond to military-political crises and armed conflicts. Such organizations include the OSCE - the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
OSCE IN UKRAINE: THE “DUAL STANDARDS” POLICY
The objectives of the OSCE are officially announced: ensuring peace and security in Europe; maintaining defusing international tensions; ensuring respect for human rights; compliance with the principles of international law in relations between countries. The OSCE constantly declares its “commitment to safeguarding the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act”.
Therefore, it is not surprising that when the situation in Ukraine after the change of power in March 2014 began to worsen, the OSCE Permanent Council decided on the deployment of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine No. 1117 of March 1 of March 2014. It was stated that the purpose of this mission is to assist on the territory of Ukraine “to reduce tensions and ensure peace, stability and security, as well as monitor and support the implementation of all OSCE principles and commitments”.
The tasks of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), acting in accordance with the principles of impartiality and transparency, include:
- collect information and report on the security situation in the area of operation;
- establish and report facts in response to specific incidents and incident reports, including those related to alleged violations of basic principles and commitments made within the OSCE;
- monitor the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the rights of persons belonging to national minorities, and support their observance;
- in order to fulfill its tasks, establish contacts with local, regional and central authorities, civil society, ethnic and religious groups, as well as with local residents;
- promote dialogue on the ground in order to reduce tensions and help normalize the situation;
- report any restrictions on the freedom of movement of the monitoring mission or other circumstances that impede the fulfillment of its mandate;
- Coordinate with the OSCE executive structures, including the High Commissioner on National Minorities, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the OSCE Representative on Media, and support them in their work, with full respect for their mandates, and cooperate with the Organization United Nations, the Council of Europe and other actors of the international community.
After the negotiations on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, held on 11 – 12 February 2015 in Minsk, with the participation of the “Norman Quartet” composed of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, President of France Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel , an agreement was reached, in particular, on a cease-fire with the 00.00 15 February clock and the withdrawal of all heavy weapons from the contact line by the parties to the conflict, the task of monitoring and controlling the implementation of these measures assumed OSCE SMM.
This raises the question of how impartial the members of this mission will be in carrying out these tasks and how objective and transparent their monitoring, control and subsequent reports will be.
Previous examples of the behavior of both representatives of the OSCE SMM and the organization itself regarding the events in Ukraine cast doubt on this. OSCE observers have repeatedly recorded barbaric shelling of the cities of Donbass by Ukrainian security forces, and have not made any statements on this matter. When persecution of journalists, mainly representing the Russian media, and then deliberate murder, began in Ukraine, the OSCE, which declares that it advocates “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” did not condemn these actions. The same applies to recent events, when the Ukrainian authorities, without any rational explanation, began to catch and expel Russian journalists (and at their own expense!) Without the right to enter the country for five years. Why is European fighters for democracy, human rights and freedom of speech keeping silent? Is this not a policy of double standards?
In Minsk, it was possible to agree that the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine will be stopped, but Russia's confidence in European partners has been significantly undermined. For the time being, this is not an abyss, but only a small crack. But so that it does not grow catastrophically, long-term teamwork is needed, including to prevent joint mistakes and develop new guarantees and the concept of trust. Is it possible to return relations between Russia and Europe in a constructive way? Time, desire and the will of politicians will show it. In the meantime, there is still the possibility of stopping further aggravation of the situation.
OSCE IN SOUTH OSSETIA AND ABKHAZIA: WHAT TO TEACH HISTORICAL AN EXPERIENCE?
Is this a double standard policy for the OSCE? To answer this question, let's turn to another conflict - between Abkhazia and Georgia, which began at the beginning of the seemingly distant 1990-s. After all, history is a subject that should never be forgotten and that teaches a lot, at least to someone who wants to learn.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, being the most representative and authoritative regional organization on the European continent, designed to help prevent and resolve disputes and conflicts between and within states in its area of responsibility, naturally, could not stay away from the peace process to resolve and resolution of complex ethno-political conflicts that flared up on the territory of Georgia.
The OSCE Mission to Georgia was deployed in December 1992, with a broad mandate, which declared that the main objective of the mission was to find a peaceful solution to the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. According to foreign observers, the rapid deployment of the mission was an example of an extremely efficient resolution of organizational issues in the OSCE system. The mission was instructed to assist in organizing and conducting negotiations between all interested parties on the peaceful political settlement of conflicts in the breakaway regions of Georgia, primarily in South Ossetia, and a little later in Abkhazia.
The main field of activity of the mission covered primarily the area of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. Its role in the process of resolving the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict was much lower compared to South Ossetia. The OSCE acted in Abkhazia not independently, but in cooperation with the UN, taking part in the work of the Human Rights Office in Sukhum in the framework of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, as well as in the assessment mission in the Gali district created in November 2000 of the year. In addition, the OSCE mission conducted trainings for young people and employees of organizations working with people with disabilities, funded an online club for non-governmental organizations.
During the first two years of its activities in Georgia, the size of the OSCE mission was rather limited. Only at the 14 meeting of the OSCE Standing Committee, held on March 29 of 1994, was it decided to further expand the composition, tasks and strengthen the mission. Due to the fact that two ethnopolitical conflicts took place simultaneously on the territory of Georgia, the mission’s mandate was a multi-purpose one.
For both conflicts, the main tasks of the mission were as follows:
- promoting the peaceful resolution of conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia;
- monitoring the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Georgia, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia;
- promoting the development of civil society and democratic institutions;
- provision of advisory services on the development of a new constitution, the application of legislation on citizenship and the creation of independent justice bodies;
- monitoring the conduct of elections;
- observation of safety-related events in the economic and environmental field (from the middle of 2002, when the mission was responsible for this sector of activity);
- Since 2000, the mission was charged with monitoring and reporting on movements across the border between Georgia and the Chechen Republic, which is part of the Russian Federation, and since the beginning of 2002, also about movements across the Ingush section of the Georgia-Russia border.
In the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, the tasks of the OSCE mission were to establish close contacts and liaise with the UN mission and representatives of the Secretary-General of the United Nations when holding UN events in Abkhazia. In particular, assisting in the participation of the representative of the current chairman in the negotiations held under the auspices of the UN. The competence of the OSCE mission was also to assist the UN Human Rights Office operating in Sukhum. However, the activities of this bureau faced serious difficulties in carrying out the tasks assigned to it.
The initial size of the OSCE mission was very modest - only eight staff members. After some time, its size increased to 19 people. By November 1999, the mission’s staff had dropped again - to 15 regional officials. 22 On April 1997, the OSCE field office was opened with two staff members in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval. In Abkhazia, such an independent office was never created.
GERMAN VIOLENCE
It is interesting that during the six years from the moment of its establishment (from December 1992 to January 1999), the OSCE mission in Georgia was headed exclusively by German diplomats - Xansjorg Aiff, Dieter Boden and Michael Libal. Among the military personnel who participated in the mission, there were also many Bundeswehr officers. Only at the beginning of 1999, the leadership of the mission was transferred to a professional French diplomat J.-M. Lacombe
OSCE observers significantly more peacekeeping efforts were undertaken in the zone of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, rather than in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. At the same time, they concluded that in South Ossetia some progress was made in resolving the conflict.
As for the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, in the Istanbul Declaration of the Heads of State of the OSCE at the Istanbul Summit in November 1999, the “deadlock” in the area was pointed out with a high degree of pessimism. At the same time, the “importance of overcoming it” was “emphasized with a view to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict”.
In order to resolve the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, the OSCE mission, along with other activities and actions, participated in meetings of the Sochi quadrilateral commission established in accordance with the agreement between Georgia and Abkhazia on April 9, 4 on return of refugees, as well as meetings created in May 1994, Coordination Commission for Post-conflict Reconstruction in Abkhazia.
As noted above, the OSCE mission in Abkhazia was originally intended to work closely with the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) deployed there. However, this cooperation was not devoid of certain friction, and at times serious problems and fundamental contradictions. The main source of this state of affairs lay in the different approaches of these two security organizations to assessing the political situation in the conflict zone. The UN took a more objective and restrained position in assessing the “right and the guilty” in the conflict, as well as the demands they put forward. The collective peacekeeping forces (CPKF) in their peacekeeping activities worked closely with UNOMIG, its Chief Military Observer and with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Georgia Heidi Tagliavini, with whom the CPF command periodically discussed the effectiveness of its activities.
The OSCE, on the contrary, from the very beginning of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict has definitely taken the side of Georgia, repeatedly emphasizing this in its official documents. For example, in the CSCE / OSCE three acts were passed condemning the position of Abkhazia (in Budapest 6 December 1994 of the year; in Lisbon 3 December 1996 of the year and in Istanbul 17 – 18 of November 1999 of the year). And in one of its resolutions, the European Parliament categorically and without proof called the Abkhaz government a “gangster-terrorist movement”.
At the Lisbon Summit of the OSCE member states 1996, the following declaration was made regarding the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict: “We reaffirm our strongest support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders. We condemn the “ethnic cleansing”, which resulted in mass destruction and the forcible expulsion of the predominantly Georgian population in Abkhazia. Separatist destructive actions, including obstructing the return of refugees and displaced persons, and the decision to hold elections in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region / South Ossetia, undermine the positive efforts being made to resolve these conflicts. We are convinced that the international community, in particular the United Nations and the OSCE, with the participation of the Russian Federation as a facilitator, must continue to make an active contribution to the search for a peaceful settlement. ”
It is significant that in the previous paragraph of the official OSCE document we cited at this meeting, we spoke about the situation in Kosovo, in many respects similar to the situation in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone. However, in the case of Kosovo, the OSCE members were not so categorical and one-sided in their judgments and conclusions, urging the conflicting parties to “develop a meaningful dialogue between the federal authorities (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. - N.Sh.) and representatives of the Albanian population of Kosovo to resolve all remaining problems there. " But do not these diametrically opposite approaches to similar crisis-conflict situations indicate a policy of double standards?
MISSIONERS-SCIENTISTS
According to some Abkhaz researchers, the “peacekeeping” activities of the OSCE often went far beyond humanitarian, social, consultative and financial assistance. Taking advantage of their status, the observers of the OSCE Mission in the interests of Georgia organized active reconnaissance activities in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict and worked in close contact with the Georgian special services. The OSCE observers did not pay any attention to the active activities of the Georgian side in preparing military aggression against Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moreover, a few hours before the attack of Georgian troops on Tskhinval in August 2008, including Russian peacekeepers, the OSCE observers left their posts, which raises legitimate questions about their awareness of the aggressive plans of the Georgian leadership.
“At the initial stage of the conflict, there are complaints about the OSCE. They were notified by the Georgian side that there would be an invasion, but the Russian peacekeepers were not warned, ”Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, then deputy head of the General Staff, told 21 on August 2008 at a briefing in Moscow. As the deputy chief of the General Staff stressed, “this circumstance makes us think.”
OSCE denied the statement of the Russian General Staff. Officials said that "the OSCE field mission in Tskhinval continued to function until the staff could be evacuated, which only happened on Friday, August 8."
However, there is information that the OSCE military observers still acted as “freelance” intelligence officers who acted in favor of Georgia. It was the data of their “observations” and photographs that formed the basis for a detailed report on the locations of the armed forces of South Ossetia and the posts of the Russian peacekeepers. In the future, this information was used to plan the operation to invade Georgia into South Ossetia. According to the documents, information about the positions of the Russian peacekeeping forces was collected for a long time and thoroughly. On the detailed map, drawn up allegedly by "observers" from the OSCE, the locations of military equipment and roadblocks were plotted. Such a map could be made only by those who had the right of access to all areas. The locations of the Russian peacekeeping contingent were singled out separately and painted more carefully.
One of the officers of the OSCE mission in Georgia - the captain of the British Army Ryan Grist - said in early November 2008, in an interview with BBC, that "OSCE observers working in the region saw Tbilisi’s military preparations, but did nothing." He claimed that he had repeatedly warned his leadership of the impending aggression, but his reports were ignored. He literally stated the following: “For the OSCE, this was a complete failure. Our mission worked in South Ossetia for years, and the people who included it, of course, had information about Georgia’s increased military activity. However, at the highest diplomatic level, the OSCE clearly did not follow the situation, although it was clear that something was brewing around Ossetia. ”
The former OSCE military observer particularly criticized the head of the OSCE observation mission in Georgia - employee of the Finnish diplomatic corps Terhi Hakala. He accused her of completely unwillingness to recognize and properly respond to Georgia’s apparent military preparations for invading South Ossetia, as well as regular shelling of South Ossetian regions by Georgian snipers a few weeks before the armed conflict.
The staff of the OSCE and the command of the Armed Forces of New Russia sincerely try to find a common language. Photo RIA News
Don't these facts talk about double standards?
The OSCE has also repeatedly made unfounded accusations against Abkhazia and its leadership. In particular, the OSCE summit already mentioned by us above in Lisbon in December 1996, at the initiative of Georgia, adopted a resolution recognizing the fact of the genocide of Georgians in Abkhazia. In this matter, the OSCE did not follow the conclusion made by the UN Secretary-General’s mission to establish the facts of genocide and mass violations of human rights in Abkhazia in October 1993, which did not confirm the facts of genocide.
It is therefore not at all surprising that these significant differences in the positions of the two such influential international organizations often created serious obstacles to cooperation in the peace process and prevented close interaction in the field. For example, for these reasons, the OSCE mission did not fulfill the provision of the declaration of the Istanbul Summit 1999 of the year, obliging it to send a fact-finding mission to the Gali district of Abkhazia.
The same factors influenced the different attitudes of the political leadership of the conflicting parties to the UN and OSCE missions. Tbilisi leaders wanted to strengthen the role of the OSCE in the region, while the Abkhaz leadership had high hopes for the UN. The United Nations seemed to Sukhum to be more preferable as a more democratic and broad organization, representing practically the entire international community than the OSCE, on the political course, whose strategy and priorities in the late 20th century - early 21st century, the United States increasingly began to exert its influence. They use OSCE institutions to express “their wishes” with respect to certain countries. They also use the OSCE as a platform for expression and, in some cases, as a tool for taking appropriate measures and actions regarding a number of unresolved or new conflicts in the post-Soviet space.
FAILURE HOPES
At the end of 1990-X and the beginning of 2000-s, Georgian experts and politicians hoped that the involvement of the OSCE in the process of comprehensive settlement of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict would not only continue, but also expand. Commenting on the outcome of the OSCE 1999 Istanbul Summit on the settlement of the conflict in Abkhazia, Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze said that in the future, as decided at the summit, after the OSCE creates its own peacekeeping and police forces, they can be used in Abkhazia .
One of the important activities of the OSCE mission in support of the efforts of the UN mission in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone was to facilitate the process of the return of refugees and temporarily displaced persons to their former places of residence. A particularly difficult situation with this was observed in the Gali district. Therefore, in connection with the serious fears about the situation of refugees returning to the region, the heads of state and government of the OSCE member countries recommended that at the beginning of 2000 a special fact-finding mission should be sent to the Gali district with the participation of representatives of the OSCE and the UN "to assess, among other things, reports of ongoing ethnic cleansing. ” However, such a mission was never created, because, as experience has shown, the OSCE mission could more or less effectively operate in the conflict zone only jointly and with the support of the UN. And the OSCE and the UN had different views on the issue of "ethnic cleansing" of Georgians in the territory of Abkhazia.
As for the interaction of the OSCE mission with the peacekeeping forces in the conflict zone, in contrast to UNOMIG, such cooperation could not be established. The reason was the reluctance of the OSCE to cooperate with the CPKF. Yes, however, nothing was said about this in the mandate of the OSCE mission. There were only occasional facts of attempts to establish at least minimal cooperation with representatives of the CIS and Russia in the military field. So, on June 15 of 2002, at the invitation of the Russian military authorities, a group of four OSCE military experts without prior notice paid a visit to a military base in Gudauta, Abkhazia. This visit was seen as part of the preparation for a future inspection of the peacekeeping forces in the future. However, the development of relations and cooperation in this area did not happen. Again, because of the reluctance of the OSCE.
The OSCE mission was most active in the field of democratization (protection of human rights and freedoms, rule of law, freedom of the media, etc.), and also partly in the economic and environmental spheres. The mission launched several projects in Abkhazia related to humanitarian issues. Most of these projects were related to the creation of non-governmental organizations in Abkhazia, information in the field of human rights, the creation of conditions for the development of children, the assessment of the degree of freedom and independence of local media, the exchange of information. The mission contributed to the opening of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Sukhumi and the creation of one of the NGOs in Sukhum - the Center for Humanitarian Programs. In addition, the mission implemented several small projects to provide educational grants on a competitive basis, mainly for school-age children. It is obvious that even the OSCE’s humanitarian assistance program from the OSCE’s side was very modest.
Repeated study visits of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities to Abkhazia for several years have enabled the OSCE to examine the situation in the field of education and support numerous humanitarian projects proposed by the Abkhaz side, in particular, taking into account the publication of textbooks in Georgian. However, the office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities for all these years has not supported or implemented a single project proposed by the Abkhaz side, citing limited funds and other reasons.
Thus, in the period from 1993 to 2009, the OSCE maintained its presence in the region, carrying out various functions to resolve the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, mainly in the political and humanitarian spheres. It should be noted that in 2006 – 2011 the investigation of incidents related to security in Abkhazia was also dealt with by the special representative of the European Union for the South Caucasus, whose mandate involved facilitating a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
In 2003 and 2009, sociological surveys were conducted among residents of Abkhazia. In 2003, 50% of respondents positively assessed the activities of international organizations, primarily because, according to respondents, they provided assistance to low-income citizens, 35% was ambiguous, 15% was extremely negative. At the same time, 57% of survey participants perceived real benefits only from the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2009, the number of the latter increased to 68%. 27% of Abkhazians, who believed that they did not see any benefit from its functioning in Abkhazia, spoke out extremely negatively about the activities of the OSCE. In addition, the opinion was spread about the uselessness of the observers of the OSCE mission, whom some residents openly called intelligence agents of NATO member countries who were pursuing their goals in the region.
The OSCE Mission completed its work on 1 on January 2009 of the year due to the expiration of the mandate. In December 2008, Russia vetoed the extension of the OSCE mission’s mandate, since the conditions under which it was accepted by Western countries did not take into account Russia's recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that is, it was in complete contradiction with reality. Moscow’s proposals to change the mandate of the mission to the OSCE were completely ignored.
The OSCE did not want to reckon with the reality and with the will of the citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
COMMITTEE REPORT HEIDI TALJAVINI: HOPES FOR IMPARTIALITY?
A year after the end of the “five-day war”, the EU International Commission to Investigate the Causes of the Armed Conflict in South Ossetia published a report on the tragic events in the Caucasus.
30 European military and civilian experts in the field of history and jurisprudence participated in the preparation of the document under the leadership of the Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Georgia. At the same time, everyone dealt exclusively with his part of the work, and the whole investigation was conducted in an atmosphere of heightened secrecy - the experts were forbidden to communicate with the press, until recently they did not know what the final conclusions would be.
If earlier Russia was often attributed to the inadequacy and disproportionality of the use of force on “pacification and repression” of Georgia, the report of the commission, which was called the “mission of truth”, largely turned this opinion. One of the conclusions of the report was the unequivocal conclusion that it was Georgia that started the war on the night of 7 on 8 in August of 2008.
Of course, in addition to this conclusion, the report stated that “Tbilisi reacted after a long period of intensifying provocations, aggravated during the summer, by Russia”. At the same time, according to experts, the Commission’s report was “weighted on a pharmacy scale”, as a result of which even radical-minded representatives of both parties to the conflict did not make claims to it.
One can only hope that Heidi Tagliavini, who is now the special representative of the OSCE chairman in Ukraine, and the head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine - Turkish diplomat Ertugul Apakan - will show the same impartiality in the conflict in Ukraine.
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