Security sector change between 1999 and 2003

The second phase runs between 1999 and 2003. The Western allies increased their assistance for the Georgian SSR, in a context where the specific SSR agendas for international assistance were being first developed. It was in this period that different security sector institutions showed different degrees of reform progress.

4.3.2.1 Increased external assistance for the defence and justice spheres

The pro-Western foreign policy of the Shevardnadze regime required the Georgian security sector system to be aligned with the Western standards. Consequently, external assistance from the NATO allies started to increase, particularly in the defence and justice sectors.

Among the NATO allies, the USA was the biggest assistance provider. The USA provided technical assistance to the Border Guards and the Custom Service to enhance their capacity to address border control. The Border Security and Law Enforcement (BSLW) Assistance Program was administrated by the US Custom Service in order to establish the government’s control on borders, providing equipment and training (Hoye and Davis, 2000, p. 8). As for developing export control regimes to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile material, the US Department of State and Defence assists the Georgian State Department of the State Border Guards under the Co-operative Threat Reduction Program. The US assistance became even bigger after the 9.11 attacks in the USA in 2001. The USA started providing bilateral military assistance to enhance anti-terrorist operation capacities and combat capacities of the Georgian security agencies. These programmes included the Georgia Border Security and Law Enforcement Assistance Program; Military/Ammunition Relocation Program; Foreign Military Financing Program; and International Military Education and Training Program. Among these programmes, the biggest programme was the Georgia Train-and- Equip Program (GTEP). The 64 million USD programme involved training of

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Georgian troops to enhance counter-terrorism capacities (Darchiashvili, 2004, p. 96).

Turkey, a then close NATO ally, also provided military assistance. For instance, Turkey provided Georgian officers with military training at Turkish military academies and the participation of Georgian servicemen in peacekeeping operations in which Turkey was involved. Turkey also signed an agreement to train a Georgian commando unit and provide Georgia with non-combat materials.39 _{With the affluent financial and technical support, Georgia managed} built its own national military and modernised the defence system in the latter half of the Shevardnadze times.

The most significant progress in the justice reform was the transfer of the penal system from the MIA to the Ministry of Justice. The penal system was transferred to the Ministry of Justice in 2000, after a number of years of pressure from the Council of Europe and within Georgia itself.40 _{This transfer of the judicial power} to the Ministry of Justice meant that the law enforcement body would no longer control the justice system, which was the case in the Soviet times. American and European donors actively supported the judicial reform. Training of judges and assistance in the court system was assisted by the European Commission, the United States Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. The transfer provided more constitutional independence of the law enforcement bodies with the justice system.

4.3.2.2 The Ministries of Internal Affairs and State Security

In comparison with the defence and justice spheres, the MIA and the MSS underwent few reform efforts. The biggest hindrance to SSR in Georgia was the weak domestic will or support for the reform process, especially from within the security forces and policing organisations, i.e. the MIA and the MSS. In the early period of the Shevardnadze administration, the government did not show much strong will to address problems in those organisations.

39 _{RFE/RL (1997): “Georgia, Turkey discuss Military Cooperation”, RFE/RL, 22 May 1997.}

40 _{The Ministry of Justice was headed by an emerging young politician, Saakashvili, appointed as the}

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The reform process in the MIA and the MSS makes a sharp contrast with the one in the defence and justice sectors. As discussed above, the Ministries of Defence and Justice saw a certain degree of westernisation with external assistance. On the other hand, the Internal Affairs and State Security ministries remained its Soviet style governance. The MIA, for instance, restored the Soviet style staffing. Instead of appointing a civilian as the Minister, the President appointed police professionals who were either a Police Major-General or Police-Lieutenant- General, throughout his times between 1995 and 2003.

As the criticism against the corruption increased in the general public, in November 2001, the Shevardnadze administration dismissed a number of Internal Affairs and State Security officials (Jones, 2015, p. 165). Besides this, hardly any institutional reform efforts were made in those internal security organs. External assistance towards the MIA and the MSS was quite limited, too.

4.3.2.3 Paramilitary groups

By the late 1990s, all the major paramilitary forces came to under the state structure, mainly the internal security agencies. Around this period, Georgia had a number of paramilitary forces the controls of the MIA, the MSS, the MoD and the State Department of the State Border Defence (SDBD) respectively.

As seen above, the biggest paramilitary forces, the National Guards, were already subordinated to the MoD in 1994 as a department. Those non-defence sector paramilitary forces also had troops and their manpower numbered in thousands. For instance, the MIA had several armed forces under its control, i.e., Interior Troops, Assault Brigade and OMON. The MIA and the Special Service of State Protection include 3,000 to 3,500 officers and soldiers. The SDBD consisted of 5,500 personnel. State Safeguard Service had approximately 6,000 personnel in the Service. The MSS also had armed units. However, the size and mandate of their paramilitary forces were unclear as such information was almost inaccessible form the MSS at that time.

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The mandates of some of the paramilitaries duplicated and/or sometimes conflicted. The Special Service of State Protection’s mandates mainly concerned of the protection of boarders and strategic state assets such as the President’s office and oil industry infrastructure. The MIA’s paramilitary forces had the tasks of maintaining law and order, fighting terrorism and other forms of organised crime, defending state installations, protecting special cargo transportation, and supporting the military in wartime. The SDBD were to defend the country’s long borders and had the task of apprehending smugglers, drug traffickers, poachers, and illegal immigrants amongst other things. The Coast Guard was in charge of coastal border control. State Safeguard Service had the role of protecting all key strategic state assets such as the President’s office, the Parliament and the component parts of the oil industry infrastructure. While to the paramilitary forces in the early 1990s were mostly serving for their individual leaders and networks, the paramilitaries in this period became mandated to protect state assets (Koyama, 2002, p. 7). As discussed in depth in chapter 8, reflecting the lack of reform at the Ministries of Internal Affairs and State Securities, the reform of the affiliated paramilitaries had unsolved issues, i.e., overlapping mandates and ambiguity over the concept of ‘public order’.

In sum, the SSR during in the late 1990s made a significant progress but left unsolved issues. The quasi-state paramilitaries were disbanded and their leaders were replaced with professional security personnel. The defence system had been created from scratch and opened to foreign assistance for institution building. The transfer of the justice system was a significant step to establish the justice sector’s independence of the police. On the other hand, few reform efforts succeeded in so-called ‘power ministries’, i.e., the Ministries of Internal Affairs and State Security. Although the paramilitary forces became under the state control, their mandates were left ambiguous and sometimes conflicting among themselves.

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Table 3 Major security agencies during the Shevardnadze period, 1992 -