Fire Burns All

Op-Ed

The fire is still burning in Georgia. The Borjomi gorge fire was not yet dampened before another erupted in the unique coniferous forest of Abastumani. The government moved the emergency headquarters tent from Tsagveri to Abastumani and continued “fighting” the fires from there. Turkish and Azerbaijani helicopters had left for their homeland just a few days prior, but were quickly sent back to Georgia, and the emergency headquarters announced that aviation from Ukraine and Iran was on its way. The world’s media didn’t fail to notice the issue of Iranian aviation, thus giving a geopolitical importance to the ongoing disaster in Georgia. Apparently, everything, from sports to disasters, is connected with politics and especially so in Georgia, where everything has political and party affiliations, even fighting fires.

As well as fighting forest fires, PM Kvirikashvili’s government is also fighting the opposition, accusing it of lying to society when it declared that Georgia had asked Russia for help in extinguishing the fires. A few days ago, Mr. Kvirikashvili publicly thanked Russia for showing its readiness to help extinguish the Borjomi fires. “Russia expressed readiness to help despite the very difficult relations between our countries and this offer was welcome,” he told journalists. This announcement left the impression that it was Russia that had expressed goodwill and offered its helping hand to its neighbor out of humane moral principles, to which it got a polite refusal in reply.

The seemingly harmless comment was followed by a TV interview with Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Maria Zakharova, aired on channel Dozhd, where she declared that the Georgian Prime Minister’s statement was an unhealthy illusion: “We immediately responded to the request from Tbilisi to help extinguish the fire in the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. We allocated an IL-76 for this purpose, but later the Georgian side thanked us and informed that the fire hubs were already localized and that they no longer needed our help”.

Zakharova’s inteview was soon followed by a statement from the Special Representative of the Prime Minister of Georgia for relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze, who confirmed the Russian diplomat’s words... and that’s when the scandal began.

Now, as the Prime Minister and the ruling party try to repel the blows from the opposition, it feels as if the forest fires have moved to the backstage. In reality, though, there seems no end to them: Ateni Valley, Tianeti, Kakheti... the fires are all across the country, which surely doesn’t look like a normal disaster resembling more that of sabotage.

The government and its supporting media began to accuse the opposition of starting the fires, pointing its finger at “Misha and the United National Movement.” “Only a very well-organized group could plan this, one that cares much more about its own fate than that of the country, one that has zero chance of returning to the government via elections, one which had and still has a schizophrenic, maniac bunch of harmful people,” wrote MP of the Georgian Dream and former Foreign Minister, Salome Zurabishvili on her Facebook wall. The statement was widely shared by the media. As I said, even fires are very political in Georgia, and the smoke from the recent fires had a stronger stink than most.

As early as the beginning of the summer, there was mention of fires when the South Ossetian Representative at the IPRM meetings, Murat Jioev, made an announcement about the continuance of borderization works. Afterwards, the Russian border guards started digging ground close to the so-called “borderline,” later explained as being the “anti-fire trenches”. Jioev’s prophecy came true and this summer really saw numerous fire hubs bloom across Georgia. Fire struck the forest on the occupied territory, too, following military trainings by the occupants, but was extinguished before it spread anywhere near the abovementioned trenches. Nevertheless, Jioev’s prophecy is still worth analyzing, as doubts are further enhanced by the fact that the Borjomi fire was very close to the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and the new fire hubs in the forests emerged right along that pipeline. The recent events not only in Borjomi Gorge and Tbilisi do bring up serious questions: the Special Services are responsible for looking into sabotage or terrorist attack, since petrol canisters were allegedly found in the woods, etc. But the versions “Misha started the fires against Georgian Dream” or “Georgian Dream started the fires to building Carrefour” – just don’t sound convincing. It is more likely that one very specific “factor” is at work in all cases, and it should be revealed as soon as possible.

Zaza Jgarkava