fugitive peace

I met Badri Patarkatsishvili, who mysteriously died today in Surrey, in 2002. He had decided to grant me and a journalist from the Financial Times his first interview in a year and a half. We went to his house in Tbilisi, an enormous palace on a hill, where were shown into the garden—or rather gardens; there were several of them lumped together, each in a different style (Japanese, tropical, English country, and so on). I think we picked a spot under a gazebo, and sat waiting for Patarkatsishvili, who duly arrived in a golf buggy which he manoeuvred gingerly in between the bushes.

He talked a lot about the need to mend relations with Russia (this was before the Rose Revolution, when Eduard Shevardnadze was still in power, but things had already deteriorated badly), and how to promote Georgian economic development, hinting that he was the ideal person for foreign investors to deal with if they wanted to do business in Georgia.

I’ve posted the (unedited) interview notes here, but unfortunately they don’t give many clues as to why he was killed, if indeed he was killed. He was a close ally of Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who fled the country after a showdown with Vladimir Putin. When we met him he had already decided Russia was too hot for him too and had moved to Georgia. But in Georgia he stood against Mikheil Saakashvili for president, was under investigation for plotting to overthrow the government, and reportedly left in November to spend time at his homes in Israel and England. One of the people who worked for him was Andrei Lugovoy, the man Britain accuses of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB man who was poisoned with polonium-210 in London. Lugovoy, however, would now appear to be under the protection of the Kremlin, which accuses Berezovsky of having Litvinenko killed to besmirch Putin.

Confused? What it adds up to is that, like a lot of people who have suddenly disappeared from the Russian scene, Patarkatsishvili had no shortage of enemies, and so his death will probably remain a mystery. Sergei Dorenko, a former TV journalist who worked for Berezovsky’s television channel, ORT, before it was shut down, has posted some recollections of him (Russian). He also says that a friend of his spoke to Patarkatsishvili yesterday at 7pm London time, and he was full of beans. By 11pm he was dead.

I feel sorry for the poor Winograd commission that investigated the second Lebanon war. They’re nice, serious, committed people who tried to give Israel the definitive, all-encompassing recipe for how to make sure it doesn’t screw up a war ever again. It took them:

• 16 months
• Over 270 witnesses and interviewees
  
• 629 pages, including appendices
• 21 pages for the table of contents alone
• 223 instances of the word “fail”, “failure”, “failed” etc
• 286 instances of the word “flaw” or “flawed”
• 14 key recommendations for reform of the army and executive branch

But the press and public are calling the report a sell-out. Why? Because the only thing they want to know is: whose fault was it that so many soldiers died in Lebanon for nothing? Or more specifically, will the person whose fault everyone believes it was, Ehud Olmert, now at last quit? And since he has no intention of doing so, it’s Winograd’s fault for not giving him the push.

There is a Russian saying: kto vinovat i shto dyelat’? — “Who is to blame and what is to be done?” Israelis, being impatient people, only want to know who’s to blame; to hell with what’s to be done, because in a few months time the government will change again and nobody will do it anyway. Which is why, as I wrote in this week’s piece on it, the Winograd report will probably sink into obscurity like all its worthy predecessors.