The Oil Road

by James Marriott

  ‘We have a small plot’, Pikria says, ‘but we don’t know if we are still allowed to access it because it’s close to the pipeline.’ She explains that when the contractors were digging the trenches, they ruined the irrigation channel that brings water to the fields. ‘So now everything is very dry. The land is not much use without water. BP used to send the police force instead of coming to speak to us themselves.’

  We are joined by Pikria’s mother, Vardo. When she talks, Vardo’s fingers are more expressive than her words, moving in time with her argument and emphasising her statements. ‘In the beginning we wrote letters and made petitions, asking to be resettled somewhere else. They didn’t listen to us, so the people of the village made many protests. We went to Tbilisi and demonstrated outside government offices. We also blocked the highway leading to Rustavi. But the government wasn’t listening – they sent the spetznaz. It was a very bad situation; they even beat the children. The people tried to block the pipe-laying in the trench, and so the spetznaz attacked us again. It was so bad that it was on the international TV. Relatives in Greece and other countries were phoning to check up on us.’

  The sun beats down. The narrow line of shade covering our bench gets thinner and thinner. The Panganis insist that we come inside and drink something. An old episode of The Bold and the Beautiful is showing on TV, dubbed into Georgian. One wall is covered with an array of icons – images and newspaper cuttings of Jesus, St George and the Dragon, and Saint Nino.

  Vardo explains that differing compensation payments to the village’s 115 families caused division, tension and ‘great tragedy in relationships in the village’. She feels this partly explains why people in the village would not speak to us. ‘Some people in the village are afraid of others – that’s why they won’t speak. But I think Saakashvili is enough to be afraid of.’

  Vardo is not sure how long the village has been here, but it is a settlement made up entirely of refugees. Most of the other families are from the mountain region Svaneti, displaced by landslides, but the Panganis are from Abkhazia. ‘We came sixteen years ago, after my husband was killed during the war. First we lived in a cramped school in Tbilisi.’ Like Gusein, near Gori, they must have come to Krtsanisi when they knew that their return to their home would not be swift; they have remained here since. Perhaps Gusein, too, will still be living in his cube of a house in fifteen years’ time.

  A bowl of yellow apples from the garden is already on the table, alongside a plate of fig rolls broken into pieces. While her mother makes coffee, Pikria holds forth, balancing on the end of the sofa. ‘I think the pipelines bring a great threat to our village. Our home has become a very dangerous place. We are surrounded on three sides, by the pipeline and several military sites. There is much shooting – we live in a corridor of violence.’ She explains how both Georgian and US soldiers often train in the village, running down the paths between the houses. ‘Sometimes I walk out of my gate and find men in camouflage with guns crouching behind my fence – I’ve screamed several times. I don’t understand, why do they do this in our village? I think maybe it’s because the pipeline is so close. Many of us experienced the war in Abkhazia, so it’s easy to make people panic.’

  It seems this is how the US Special Forces teach their Georgian students ‘ground combat skills’ and ‘urban operations’. Nearby villages simulate Iraqi or Afghan communities, and the Pangani family have become unwitting bystanders in military training exercises.

  Pikria feels the village’s position is especially dangerous, given the new tension with Russia. She explains that, during the recent war of August 2008, they could hear distant bombs falling and were frightened. ‘The easiest way to impact the military base would be to bomb the pipeline; then the village would be gone.’ She says that during the pipeline construction the villagers forced BP into meetings over safety, but felt they received no answers. The issue even went to the local court: ‘I’m a lawyer, so I observed the court hearings over our disputes. But it was always delayed. In the end it came to nothing.’ We think of the craters near Akhali-Samgori, only a few kilometres to the east.

  While Pikria’s speaking, her husband turns the TV volume up to watch the news. It briefly shows an opposition rally and then we spot Saakashvili outside the Ministry of Interior. Seeing him, Pikria curses. ‘Satan. The war with Russia was his fault. Always emphasising how strong the Georgian Army is and trying to provoke. All he is good for is designing pretty and pointless fountains.’

  Pikria is smart: she knows who is responsible. Soon after we arrived, she had mentioned the name Ed Johnson. General Manager of BP Georgia until 2005, Johnson oversaw the company’s lobbying of Shevardnadze and the relationship-building with Saakashvili after the Rose Revolution; he was in post during the pipeline construction period, when the riot police battered the Krtsanisi villagers.6

  It is rare to hear people along the pipeline name names – usually it is just ‘the company’ or ‘BP’ or ‘BTC Co.’. One of Pikria’s first lines to Manana was: ‘How do we sue Ed Johnson? Can we do this in England or America?’ Here is someone who has identified an individual who she believes is responsible for her predicament, and wants to hold him judicially accountable. She knows it will be impossible to hold him to account in Georgia, but hopes that the British or American judicial system might be fairer. The sad reality is that getting Johnson into court would be challenging. Persuading a UK or US judge to hear cases on a company’s practices abroad is difficult – achieving a guilty verdict harder still. So, for the time being, the Texan Ed Johnson need not worry about being called before a jury, and can focus on his job expanding BP’s offshore platforms in Norwegian waters.

  This large living room, with its sofas covered in drapes, reminds us of the hours we spent in the house of Mehmen in Hacalli. How different the response in Azerbaijan is to the impacts of the pipeline from that in Georgia. Mansura Ibishova in Qarabork seemed powerless even though BTC and SCP effectively passed through her home. She placed faith in the idea of writing to President Aliyev. Mehmen and his neighbours were intimidated by the Executive Power in their village, who was effectively protecting BP’s assets. Here in Krtsanisi, as at Rustavi, residents had blockaded the construction sites, and thereby succeeded in bringing the issue to the attention of national and international media. Pikria knows perfectly well that President Saakashvili will not defend her from the actions of Ed Johnson’s company. It seems to us that the determination of these Georgian citizens to defend their rights has been greatly strengthened by the work of Manana, Keti and their colleagues, whose position is so much less beleaguered than that of Mayis.

  Eventually, Vardo announces that they need to tend their cattle; it is time for them to be taken to their pastures. Bidding farewell, we see the six family cows already gathered by the gate, waiting patiently to amble out to their grazing.

  12 IT IS ASH TO THE EYES

  ბორჯომი (BORJOMI), GEORGIA

  The Debate

  Onward crawls the mighty army,

  Like a cloud released;

  Dark, enveloping, alarming,

  Heading for the East.

  […]

  And the great Caucasian mountain,

  Gloomy and morose,

  Tried but could not finish counting

  The advancing rows.

  Mikhail Lermontov, 18411

  A Georgian myth tells that when God was dividing up the world between the different peoples, the Georgians missed their chance to choose a homeland because they were sleeping off a festive drinking spree. When they awoke, everything was gone, with the exception of that part of the world that the Almighty had been reserving for himself, which was heaven on earth. ‘Where can we go?’ pleaded the Georgians. ‘We were only late because we were toasting you and celebrating your glory!’ A flattered God responded, ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to give you a piece of paradise.’

  It is not hard to see why the Georgian creation legend describes these mountains as a paradise.
Steep hillsides are covered with a green blanket of oak, maple and beech. The forests on the slopes hide wolf packs, wild boar and the last remaining Caucasus leopards. In the company of Manana and Keti, with Ramazi at the wheel, we wind back and forth along a canyon. Below us the Mtkvari River forces its way through the mountains as it heads towards Tbilisi and Azerbaijan, changing its name to the Kura before it spills into the Caspian. The roar of the spring meltwater echoes across the gorge as it throws itself against the rocks. Wooden rope bridges, painted blue, span the wide torrent and sway in the cool breeze. Each walkway leads to a small village surrounded by yellow and red fences.

  The local springs, sulphurous and mineral-rich, are credited with relieving a host of ailments, from digestive disorders and menstrual irregularities to nervousness and incontinence. The viceroy of the Russian province of Transcaucasus, Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov, celebrated the area’s natural beauty and curative powers, banned excessive hunting and encouraged aristocrats to build luxurious country houses here. Borjomi was transformed into a resort, ‘the pearl of the Caucasus’, known for its Tsarist summer palaces and sanatoria, and later frequented by Soviet Communist Party apparatchiks. But this imperial development was part of an expansion that was not all so picturesque.

  In his poem ‘The Debate’, the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov imagined the Caucasus mountains Elbrus and Kazbegi in conversation, bearing witness to an unending Tsarist frontier war. Mount Kazbegi believes that nothing will change in the East in 1,000 years. The slow-flowing Egyptian Nile, the argila-smokers of Tehran and the sleepy Georgians are all as they were. Elbrus, the taller of the two, can see further to the north, where the thundering ranks of Russians are sweeping down, ‘battalions on the march, drummers flailing, cannons creaking forward, their wicks already lit’.2 Unlike Pushkin, who had romanticised the Caucasus wars, Lermontov denounced the brutal Russian anti-insurgency campaign, picturing the Tsarist Army’s actions as imperial occupation and enslavement.

  The southward expansion of the Orthodox Russian Empire involved the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Circassians or Cherkez. The Tsar’s defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War led Russia to identify many of its Muslim subjects as potential sympathisers with the Ottomans. Between 1860 and 1864, the populations of mountain villages were targeted for ‘resettlement’ into Ottoman lands, causing a traumatic exodus across the Black Sea and creating the proud Circassian diaspora in Jordan, Syria and Turkey’s Taurus mountains.3 The removal of peoples and cultures from the Caucasus would be echoed by Stalin’s deportations of Pontic Greeks, Meshkheti Turks and Chechens eighty years later.

  This conquest and expulsion laid the basis for a transformation of the Caucasus. While soldiers were emptying the mountains of their inhabitants, Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov was promoting the therapeutic benefits of Borjomi to his fellow aristocrats. This transformation of the mountains into a place of relaxation and recreation was the counterpoint to that of Baku and Batumi into places of resource-extraction and exportation.

  In the middle of the region of Borjomi lies the town of that name. We arrive at 8 a.m. on a chill weekday, but the place is crowded with visitors. They have not stopped for the themed playgrounds or the landscaped gardens. Instead, the passengers that spill out of the coaches hurry towards a glass pavilion, lining up to fill containers with the fresh mineral water that has an unusual taste: sour and salty, with a hint of sulphur. The mountain springs and the region itself, the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, are beloved by all Georgians.

  Bottled mineral water from these springs was famed across the Soviet Union, and remains popular throughout Russia. Indeed, with the collapse of Georgia’s industrial centres, such as Rustavi, Borjomi water had come to constitute as much as 10 per cent of Georgia’s export trade.4 So when it was announced that the BTC pipeline would skirt the edge of the national park and pass through the catchment area in which the springs were located, residents, businesspeople and environmentalists alike were up in arms.

  On a previous visit to the town, in 2003, we had met Jacques Fleury, CEO of the Georgian Glass and Mineral Water Co. This company had obtained the rights to bottle and sell the water at the time of the demise of the Georgian socialist economy. He had explained the problem posed by the plans for BTC. ‘If you are a consumer of, let’s say, Evian, and you learn that a major export pipeline is going to cross its water reserve, what will be your reaction? You will switch the brand. Even if no leak occurs, exports of Borjomi will dramatically fall.’5

  It was hardly surprising that Fleury and his colleagues, in alliance with the Worldwide Fund for Nature in Georgia and the UK, took their complaint to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in the City of London. Indeed the international coalition of NGOs that challenged BTC campaigned heavily on the threats to Borjomi.

  Manana travelled several times to Washington, DC, trying to raise these issues with the International Finance Corporation – an arm of the World Bank, and one of the group of institutions intending to provide a loan to BTC. Protests over Borjomi spread to many countries in Europe and the US, with demonstrations outside the offices of BP, pipeline construction companies such as AMEC, and government ministries such as the UK Department for International Develop-ment. The latter provides an executive director who formally represents the UK at the World Bank. At the time this was the minister, Hilary Benn MP, and he was vigorously lobbied. Friends of the Earth mobilised hundreds of people to build a cloth pipeline from the EBRD, down Bishopsgate, past RBS, to the headquarters of BP in Finsbury Circus: a pipeline to illustrate the flow of public money into a private corporation that was threatening Borjomi.

  In the midst of this we had been in Georgia, and Manana and Keti had arranged for us to meet Professor Mirian Gviritshvili and three other scientists at the offices of Green Alternative.

  Mirian, the principal scientist at the Tbilisi Botanic Gardens, had a profusion of bushy white hair. The District of Borjomi, and in particular the Tskhratskaro Pass through which BP planned to lay the pipeline, were of particular importance, he explained – one of the twenty-five most biodiverse places on Earth. ‘This is an ecological crime, not only in my opinion, but also in the opinion of the most famous Georgian hydrologist.’

  In its initial plans, BP had proposed three possible BTC routes through Georgia: the Eastern Corridor, the Central Corridor, and the Western Corridor. Only in 2002 had it become clear that the Central Corridor had been chosen, and consequently that Borjomi was under threat.

  The scientists had suggested modifications of the proposed route. They had made studies and drawn up plans for the line to run via Karakaja, further south. In October 2002, they had a meeting scheduled with BP, including the company’s Georgian head, Ed Johnson. They had been hopeful that the company would switch routes by announcing an addendum to the Environmental Impact Assessment scheduled for later that month. It seemed there was an opportunity for change, but the meeting was abruptly called off, and the addendum delivered nothing.

  The pressure built up through November 2002, with the Georgian environment minister, Nino Chkhobadze, refusing to sign off on the projected pipeline route. With the deadline for a final decision looming, she was subjected to intensive lobbying from BP and US officials, but on 30 November she announced on live TV that she would not allow the route that threatened Borjomi. Late that Sunday night she was escorted from her home to the president’s office. After intensive discussions with President Shevardnadze, she re-emerged bleary-eyed at 3 a.m., announcing that she had, after all, signed off on the route. Later, she explained: ‘The pressure came above all from the company, and it was pressure not only directed toward me, but also toward the president.’6

  BP said at the time that it would undertake work to meet the environment minister’s ‘conditions of permit’. But five months after that November night when we had our meeting with Mirian, according to the professor, BP had done nothing. ‘Yes, BP have talked of doing studie
s, just like they talked about the viability of alternative routes to avoid Borjomi. But I don’t believe them; it’s just for show. It’s all ash to the eyes.’

  BTC KP 643 – 830 KM – დგვარი (DGVARI), GEORGIA

  From the centre of Borjomi, Ramazi drives us up through the pines along a steep road that becomes a track. Our white car crawls through the dense forest towards the village of Dgvari, which lives under the threat of landslides from the mountains above. We are returning to the place of a vivid meeting in the spring of 2003.

  Then we had come to hear what villagers expected from BTC. A middle-aged man had invited us in, leading us through the main house, a garden and an orchard to a kind of private summer house. Several people were seated inside, among them a woman who was neatly smoothing out pastry with a thin rolling-pin and dropping parcels filled with meat into a cauldron, her daughter watching quietly. After a short while, the daughter fished out the khinkali dumplings with a ladle and brought them to the table. From a sound system in the main house came tracks by Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen and Queen.

  The man playing host plied us liberally with lethally strong homemade vodka, cha cha. The first shots came from a reused Borjomi Mineral Water bottle, later glasses from an old vodka container made in Glasgow. There was much laughter as we spluttered. Our eyes watered under alcoholic blows.

  Our host beamed as he told us his opinion of the pipeline. The others also chimed in – six men and five women, all gathered in this summer house. Everybody was smiling and laughing: we should stay longer, they said, and then they would take us into the forest.

  In the conversation that passed around it became clear that they believed the pipeline would increase the landslides and destroy the villagers’ homes. They declared they would not allow the pipeline to be built nearby – the residents of Dgvari would stand there and stop it being built if necessary. In four days’ time a man from the World Bank was apparently coming to see the problems of the village. If matters deteriorated, they declared they wanted the whole village resettled. The host joked, ‘Perhaps to Washington, where there’s less snow.’