Divorce with Moldova should be formalized, says PMR Speaker

PMR's red and green flag has been flying over the unrecognized country for 17 years. Moldovan sovereignty does not apply

RYBNITSA (Tiraspol Times) - A young pro-democracy politician in Pridnestrovie wants to formally settle the 17 year old "de facto" divorce of his homeland from Moldova.

Yevgeny Shevchuk, 39, is Speaker of Parliament and leader of its largest party, Obnovlenie ("Renewal").

" - For seventeen years, we have been living apart from Moldova. Now it is time to face the fact that the two sides don't want to live under the same roof anymore and make the divorce formal," he said visiting his home town of Rybnitsa during Parliamentary summer recess.

The native born politician is an ethnic Ukrainian from Rybnitsa, in northern Pridnestrovie (also known as Transnistria or Transdniester, among other names).
Looking to history, he points out that for hundreds of years, Pridnestrovie was part of Ukraine. It was joined to Moldova only in 1940 in a forced marriage that lasted less than fifty years. Arranged by Stalin under a secret protocol to the illegal Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler in World War II, the incorporation of Moldova into the Soviet Union was denounced as "null and void" by Moldova itself when it later declared independence. Prior to the union, Pridnestrovie was already an autonomous republic inside the Soviet Union, with Tiraspol as its capital.

On the two sides, few of the inhabitants are interested in joining back together after seventeen years of living apart.

Local-born opposition politician Yevgeny Shevchuk, 39, says that he seeks international recognition of his homeland's 17 year old "de facto" independence.

Moldova launched a war in 1992 which, directly or indirectly, affected nearly all of Pridnestrovie's 550,000 inhabitants. Later, 97 per cent of them voted in a referendum for independence.

In Moldova itself, few people care anymore. There is no strong drive to unite Pridnestrovie and Moldova, and no one has any appetite to attack the region militarily again.

RFE/RL recently cited a poll by the Institute for Public Policy in which only 3.7 percent of Moldovans rated "solving the Transdniester conflict" (Pridnestrovie) as most important among a list of priorities.

" - For the younger generations, it was already so long ago that they don't think about it," says Yanina Cozari-Rozhkova, a professor at the Chisinau School of Advanced Journalism.

" - They don't remember how we once lived together. If this conflict isn't solved in a few years and no one really cares, it won't be a problem to keep us divided," she told ISN Security Watch, a Swiss publication.

Separate throughout history

Moldova and Pridnestrovie have been divided by the Dniester river for most of the past 2,000 years. At no time in history was Pridnestrovie's territory ever part of an independent Moldovan state. The only time that the two were together in a "state-like entity" was with the creation of the Moldavian SSR by Stalin in 1940. The MSSR was never a separate country, however, but merely a submissive Soviet republic with the Soviet Union. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it was created as a mechanism for Stalin to annex a piece of Romania, which Moldova had been part of - but whose easternmost border was almost the Dniester river throughout history.

Upon the fall of the Soviet Union, both Moldova and Pridnestrovie declared independence. But while Moldova's independence was recognized by the international community, Pridnestrovie's wasn't and that led to friction between the two neighbors. Moldova claimed sovereignty over the traditionally non-Moldovan territory. On the same day that Moldova was accepted as a member of the United Nations, in 1992, it immediately sent in troops to the enforce this claim. A brief but bloody war followed, which has divided the two sides ever since.

Powerful geo-political interests are now preventing international recognition as a sovereign and independent state. On one hand, the West - led by the United States - does not like a new, independent state that does not support NATO's expansion into the Black Sea area. On the other hand, Russia - which traditionally has viewed Pridnestrovie with more positive eyes - is trying to increase its influence over Moldova. Some say that the price to pay for this means less support for Pridnestrovie. Russian subsidies ended in 2006, and since January 2007 the unrecognized country has not received any more cash from Moscow.

One western official says that, for Moscow, the debate comes down to whether it is worth swapping 90-100 per cent influence over Tiraspol for a smaller say in a reunited country, Financial Times Deutschland reported.

Previously, Pridnestrovie was a point of conflict between Russia and the West. Now, Russia is attempting to shift that role to all of Moldova.

Marian Lupu, speaker of the Moldovan parliament, says: "The general atmosphere is very bad, so I don't see a big chance of a settlement."

EU says no arms smuggling takes place

Moldova accuses powerful business groups of being involved in smuggling arms, but the launch of an EU border mission in 2005 has proved that there is no evidence to support these claims. Now, with reinforced customs controls, the frontiers are monitored by forces from four sides - Moldova, Ukraine, Pridnestrovie and the European Union.

Having been in place for nearly two years, the European border monitoring operation, EUBAM, now confirms that Pridnestrovie does not smuggle weapons or drugs.

The deputy head of the EU monitoring team on the Pridnestrovian border with Ukraine, Antti Hartikainen, told US-funded RFE/RL last year that EUBAM only detected minor violations.

" - We have detected only a couple of drugs seizures until now, and what we have been informed about by local counterparts is not large-scale. Regarding weapons, we have got information from local counterparts about some very, very minor cases - actually some cartridges or small weapons - but nothing significant," Hartikainen said in an interview.

RFE/RL also asked about drugs seizures, which Hartikainen confirmed were "quite minor" as well.

" - Quite minor, as [of] now I can recall two or three cases, something like 10 kilos of marijuana. It's not a very big case," the EU official confirm. As in other countries, smuggling is carried out by individual criminals. There are no signs of any sort of state involvement of any kind, and Pridnestrovie cooperates with border services from neighboring states. In fact, to date, Pridnestrovie's own customs officers have uncovered more smuggling attempts than EUBAM, Ukraine or Moldova together, its press service reports.

Reforms and democratization

As the European Union confirms that Pridnestrovie is not involved in smuggling arms and drugs, the new and emerging country is preparing for the day when its independence will be internationally recognized. Having spent almost two decades outside Moldovan rule, life in Pridnestrovie has moved on. What began on the ruins of the Soviet Union as an authoritarian state with a feared security service has been modernized and reformed. The previous Soviet-like Constitution was replaced with a democratic, European-style Constitution in 1995. Privatizations began in 2001, and in the past few years the number of new political parties has grown.

Civil society is vibrant in the region, says a study financed by the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The study - which was unveiled in February 2007 - concluded that a vibrant, active civil society now exists in Pridnestrovie in a new climate of political freedom.

" - The past five years has seen a strong growth in civil society and the private non-profit sector," said Iuliana Abramova, director of the study. Most of the non-governmental organizations have been registered in the period between 2001 and 2006, “a fact which confirms the tendency of rapid development of this sector in the last few years.”

In Tiraspol, the capital of Pridnestrovie, political leaders now seek a status settlement outcome which matches the will of the voters.

" - And to be against independence is political suicide," Yevgeny Shevchuk said in 2006.

Fearful of going against their voters, political leaders will reject any deal that do not take the pro-independence position of the electorate into account.

On 28 February 2006, Moldova unilaterally walked away from the multilateral settlement talks after claiming that they were unsuccessful. Later that same week, it initiated a customs blockade of Pridnestrovie's borders which prevented exports from leaving the unrecognized country unless they had first been cleared by officials in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.

Moldova - Europe's poorest country - is also one of the most corrupt states in the world, and a rising source of political instability and organized crime. For the past two years in a row, Washington-based Foreign Policy has classified it as a failed state. More than a quarter of all Moldovans have already left the country, and those who remain are mostly elderly or children. It is estimated that approximately half of all able-bodied, working-age citizens now live and work outside the borders of Moldova. Earlier this year, neighboring Romania made it known that between 800,000 and 900,000 Moldovans would apply for Romanian citizenship.

As Moldovans are eager to leave their own country, those next door in Pridnestrovie is not exactly eager to join it.
" - It was a blip in history that we were ever together with Moldova. Now, we have been on our own for the past seventeen years. For the sake of stability and future prosperity, let it stay that way," says Stepan Concescu, a member of Yevgeny Shevchuk's pro-reform Renewal party.

See also:
» Is Pridnestrovie a state?
» For Moldova and Transdniester civilized divorce best solution
» Moving past a "frozen conflict", voters in Pridnestrovie look to the future

On the web:
» Pridnestrovie.net (conflict information)