WASHINGTON–With just eight months to go until the 2014 Winter Olympics, Russia is hurrying to ready the western town of Sochi for its role as host—stockpiling snow in case the seaside resort runs low, getting rid of pesky street animals (though it later rethought that plan), and straightening out its final construction plans.
But for all of these preparations, experts are wary about what will happen when one of the world’s biggest events comes to one of the world’s most dangerous regions: the Caucasus.
“Security and the Caucasus do not go together,” said Carnegie Endowment for International Peace researcher Thomas de Waal at a speech in Tbilisi, Georgia, last month.
“The world is heading to the North Caucasus,” he said. “And the countries of the world are going to be asking questions about the security of their teams there.”
The already fragile Caucasus is a questionable place for a high-profile event like the Olympics. Aside from the security risks inherent to major world gatherings like the Olympics and the World Cup (corruption, rampant drug and human trafficking, to start), 2014’s winter games will be complicated further by regional politics and conflicts dating back decades.
Analyst Paul Goble, who runs the blog Window on Eurasia and has been following developments in Sochi since the International Olympic Committee awarded Russia the 2014 games in 2007—a decision that raised eyebrows even then—told a crowd at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute last month that he thinks that Sochi is a “disaster.”
He said that although Russia is undoubtedly in a better position to host the games than it was 15 years ago, “in recent months it has become increasingly clear that Sochi is very much the wrong place for holding a winter Olympic games.”
Sochi in 2014 is both the wrong place and the wrong time—in numerous ways—for the secure and successful Olympics Russian president Vladimir Putin has envisioned, Goble said.
Tensions between Russia and Georgia are still high over Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 and over the disputed territory of Abkhazia, a region just a few miles south of Sochi that the Russians view as an autonomous entity and that Georgians believe belongs to them. The Georgian Olympic team was expected to boycott the games entirely. And though the Georgian Olympic Committee voted earlier this month to participate, the new Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili told media last week that he still has not received an invitation to the games.
The region’s indigenous Circassians also have made headlines since Sochi won its Olympic bid. Goble said the Western Caucasus “is likely to become vastly more explosive” because of anger over the decision to host the games in the historic home of the minority ethnic group, who say Russia cleansed the city of their ancestors 150 years ago. The highly political Circassians have already been mobilizing against the upcoming Olympics, holding demonstrations in Sochi and across the world.
Circassians, Georgians and Abkhazians are just some of a number of ethnic groups in the North Caucasus who are “interested in using the Sochi games to promote their agendas,” Goble said. But the Olympic charter bans demonstrations of political propaganda and there is a strong disincentive (in the form of Russian retaliation) against any attacks.
However, Islamist groups in Dagestan and the Muslim region of Chechnya could take advantage of cracks in security to stage terror attacks, not only in Sochi, but also across Russia while security forces have their attention on the Olympics.
Goble noted that Russia has put extra scrutiny on security at the site of the games (particularly following the attacks in Boston), including putting in about 3400 security cameras and a “massive number” of passport checkpoints, even months before the games have even begun.
Sochi is by no means the only Olympic city with security worries—recent hosts London and Beijing come to mind, as does the tragedy in Munich in 1980—but given the greater environment surrounding the games, the event will have much farther-reaching consequences than past Olympics.
Come February, the Caucasus will be thrust into the international spotlight and all eyes will be on the unstable region. But the Olympics, rather than serving as a push toward regional cooperation, Goble said, will “become the excuse for not acting, rather than the basis for action.”
