RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS
6. REBUILDING FAILED STATES: GEORGIA, UGANDA, TAJIKISTAN - RAS 13, JRL 6571
SOURCES. (A) Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, eds. Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), Chapters 16 and 17. (B) Shirin Akiner, Tajikistan: Disintegration or Reconciliation? (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001)
The weakness or outright collapse of the state is a problem that besets both Africa and the post-Soviet region. Two professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison -- Mark Beissinger, a post-Soviet area specialist, and Crawford Young, a specialist on Africa -- have collaborated with other authors (including from African and post-Soviet countries) to produce a large volume (source A) in which this problem is analyzed in cross-regional comparative perspective.
In their introduction, the editors acknowledge that Africa and the former USSR are very different in certain respects, such as cultural background and educational levels, but insist that the similarities are sufficiently important to justify a comparative approach. On the whole, the book confirms this claim. Of course, other cross-regional comparisons are also possible and have their own merits. In particular, Russian/Soviet specialists on Latin America have long striven to draw parallels between that region and the (ex-)USSR, especially with regard to problems of regime transition and economic development. But if one is looking at the problem of state breakdown then the comparison with Africa is more relevant.
Here I would like to focus on an aspect of the general problem of state crisis that has special practical significance. Is it possible to rebuild a state that has collapsed? That can be answered straight away: Yes, it has been done. But what are the conditions that make this difficult task feasible?
Two chapters of the book are devoted to case studies of modestly successful state reconstruction: Ghia Nodia of Tbilisi State University and the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy, and Development examines the case of post-Soviet Georgia, while Professor Young considers the parallel case of post-colonial Uganda. In both countries withdrawal from the imperial system brought to power capricious autocratic politicians (Milton Obote and later Idi Amin in Uganda, Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia) who polarized the polity, leading to civil war. And in both countries significant progress has been achieved in overcoming the legacies of the past.
Both Nodia and Young criticize the sharp dichotomy that some scholars make between effective or "normal" states , which fulfill all the functions ideally expected of a state, and other states that do not meet these standards and are therefore regarded not as "states in the full sense of the word" but merely as "quasi-states." They point out that many states are inefficient and pervaded by corruption and do not guarantee their citizens a high level of security, but nonetheless do meet certain basic criteria of statehood: a manageable state bureaucracy, rudimentary social order, a near-monopoly on the means of organized violence. Indeed, most states in both regions fall into this intermediate category. Thus instead of the dichotomy between "normal states" and "quasi-states" they use the threefold classification of strong states, weak states, and failed states.
One defect of the "normal/quasi-state" dichotomy is that it creates the impression that state collapse is irreversible, as direct transition from quasi-state to normal state is scarcely conceivable. The threefold classification allows us to focus on the crucial transition from failed to weak state.
Nodia and Young argue that a major factor in accomplishing this transition in Georgia and Uganda has been the skilled leadership of a single talented and charismatic figure. Eduard Shevardnadze, who returned to Georgia in early 1992, and Yoweri Museveni, who became president of Uganda in 1986, have been adept at making use of the "traditional technology of power." They have maneuvered carefully, building up public support to encompass different regional interest groups, forming and re-forming coalitions to isolate dangerous opponents -- above all the "warlords" who still command paramilitary forces independent of the state -- and destroy them one by one when the time is ripe. Thereby the state recovers its monopoly on the means of organized violence, while the citizenry gains a measure of physical security.
In Uganda Museveni has aimed to turn his National Resistance Movement (NRM) into an inclusive national political movement by widening its social, ethnic, and regional base. Political parties are allowed to exist but not to campaign publicly or contest elections. In Georgia a multiparty electoral system does operate, though Shevardnadze's Party of Citizens of Georgia lays claim to a role similar to that of the NRM in Uganda.
However, it is doubtful whether the state could have been rebuilt in either Georgia or Uganda without the political, economic, and military support of stronger outside powers. Both Shevardnadze and Museveni have been fortunate in this regard. At a crucial juncture in late 1993 and early 1994, Shevardnadze was able to rely on an intervention by Russian troops to suppress an uprising in western Georgia of Zviadistas (supporters of the former president Gamsakhurdia). In exchange he was prepared to sacrifice -- temporarily, he hoped -- part of the country's sovereignty. Uganda's own "big brother" neighbor, Tanzania, played a similar "tutelary role" for Museveni, intervening militarily to oust Idi Amin in 1979 and then "mediating the regional, ideological, and personal disputes that divided the fractious exiled opposition who returned with the Tanzanian army" (p. 456). In recent years both Georgia and Uganda have received large volumes of Western aid, which has helped them stabilize their currencies.
Is Tajikistan, the other clear case besides Georgia of a failed post-Soviet state, likewise on the way to reconstruction? The Chatham House Paper (source B) by Dr. Shirin Akiner, who lectures in Central Asian Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, gives some grounds for such a hope, although the situation remains ambiguous. Thus government control remains shaky in large areas of the country: the phenomenon of local warlords, which has its origins in the civil war, still exists, although some warlords have been disposed of. (1)
Nevertheless, the Tajik case provides an impressive example of the (albeit imperfect) fusion of formerly warring sides into a single power structure. In accordance with the terms of the 1997 peace agreement, the parties of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) were allocated a substantial share of government positions at all levels. (2) Thus the largest party of the UTO, the Islamic Revival Party (IRP), was handed control of local government in its stronghold of Karategin-Darvaz. UTO fighting units were incorporated into the national army.
But what makes a return to full-fledged civil war highly unlikely is the disintegration of the UTO and the weakening of its component parties:
-- The opposition coalition of Islamists and secular nationalists, an opportunistic alliance from the start, fell apart irretrievably after 1997.
-- The Democratic Party of Tajikistan has split into two hostile factions, one of which supports the ruling regime of President Imomali Rakhmonov's People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan (PDPT).
-- There are also deep divisions among the Islamists inside and outside the IRP, with some prominent Islamists (notably the former qasi Akbar Turajonzade) also now supporting the PDPT regime.
-- The IRP has lost much of its electoral base, as a result (in the author's view) of its disappointing performance in the areas where it acquired control of local government.
Attempts to form a new opposition coalition have failed. Currently the strongest opposition force is the Communist Party.
NOTES
(1) For instance, the criminal gang of Rizvon Sodirov was crushed, and he himself shot, in 1997.
(2) The share was set in the agreement at 30 percent. In practice UTO participation in government has not reached this level.
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