Whilst the US has stolen a march on Europe by deciding to send aid with the US military, this will be palliative and humanitarian, rather than deal with the longer-term reconstruction requirements.
The EU has similarly released funds for humanitarian programmes – which will be needed to help and house the estimated 100.000 refugees. But for the longer-term, what’s needed is joint UN/World Bank Assesment Mission to survey the reconstruction requirements
Such a mission should then be followed up by a donor’s conference hosted by an EU state. There the US and EU can pledge aid and coordinate their contributions.
France, which has led mediation efforts and recently hosted similar events for the Palestinians and Afghanistan, are ideally prepared to lead the effort.
If the EU wants to play a larger role on the civilian side – given its likely subsidiary peacekeeping role – it would be logical to appoint an EU Special Envoy to lead a joint EU Council/Commission Reconstruction Mission with third-party participation ie the US (like ICO in Kosovo). Preferably UN-mandated but not strictly necessary as it could be by Tblisi’s invitation.
Adam Kobieracki, the Polish former NATO Assistant Secretary-General would be an ideal candidate unless the mandate of the current EUSR Peter Semneby is to be refocused from the South Caucasus (inc Armenia).
In most post-conflict scenarios, the host government is very weak and coordination therefore a task for the international community . This is patently not the case in Georgia and the sooner the Georgian president appoints someone to lead the reconstruction effort – or take the role himself – the better.
Two tricky questions, however, remain.
First, given the damage done to the Georgian security forces, it will be necessary to survey their state and propose an Security Sector Reform plan to rebuild these. Putting a plan together will require an assessment and a seperate donor conversation.
– although this will obviously be contentious with Russia. To start off, the US, Canada and the UK should field a joint mission which can report back to other donors.
Second, what to do about South Ossetia and Abkhazia? The fighting has clearly wrought considerable damage in the break-away republics and if the refugees are ever going to return, many of their houses will need to be rebuilt and the economy re-started.
But to what extent should this be Russia’s task as opposed to the EU’s? And if the EU gets involved – funding a large reconstruction programme – should this work be part of a quid pro quo over other issues, for example the role and independence of its peacekeepers? Any Assesment UN/World Bank mission should clearly spend time in the two break-away republics but the analyses should be seperate from the assesment of Georgia proper, not automatically be part of the donor’s conference and deal directly with the criminalised political economy of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
