Trouble in Tbilisi.

• Author: Mason, Whit
• Position: Reporter-at-Large

ON THE eastern shore of the Black Sea, in the wine-soaked country where Jason and his Argonauts sought the Golden Fleece and Stalin felt his first dark impulses, a stark battle between the forces of good and evil has entered its second year. On one side, a charismatic young lawyer leads a government of idealistic young people committed to ending their country's age-old domination by an unholy alliance of criminals and corrupt officials. On the other side, a cabal, for whom their chosen ends justify any means, including violations of virtually every precept of the rule of law, controls all levers of power. It is a classically Manichean struggle in which both the United States and Europe have committed enormous resources to help the heroes prevail. But alas, there's an unhappy catch: In this drama the heroes and villains are the same people, and the forces of light and of darkness are two sides of the same crusade.

Mikheil Saakashvili was lifted to the presidency of Georgia in January 2004 on a tide of frustration with the status quo under Eduard Shevardnadze. Since the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, networks of crime and corruption permeating every level of society had kept most of the country's 5.4 million people unhappily toeing the brink of penury. Saakashvili announced that his administration would focus on two priorities: restoring Georgia's territorial integrity (by reasserting government control over three break-away regions) and establishing the rule of law.

Both the United States and the European Union have responded with millions of dollars in support of Georgia's reform process, particularly the rule-of-law effort, which both see as key not only to Georgia's stability but to the security of the wider region and the vital pipelines that run through it. The U.S. Agency for International Development invested $2.6 million in Saakashvili's campaign in 2004 to support rule-of-law efforts and will spend the same amount again this year. And for the first time in its history, the European Union has sent a mission devoted solely to supporting reform of the criminal justice system. Fourteen experts are now working alongside Georgian officials to devise a strategic plan for reforming everything from prisons to the education of lawyers to the management of judges. Yet despite the lofty rhetoric and strong Western support, many legal experts in Georgia, both local and foreign, say the level of justice in Georgia has seriously deteriorated since the Rose Revolution.

A Culture of Crime?

IT IS DIFFICULT to do justice, so to speak, to the role of crime and corruption in Georgian history. Ruled for more than 15 centuries by a succession of imperial overlords-Byzantine, Persian and Soviet--Georgians have traditionally viewed breaking the law as an almost patriotic duty. Experts on organized crime say the Georgian mafia is probably the best organized and most effective in the former Soviet bloc. This culture was carried over into government as well. Last October, Transparency International's corruption index ranked Georgia 139th out of 146 countries. Before the Rose Revolution, police officers considered it beneath their dignity to collect the pittance they received as a salary. Any self-respecting cop would support himself and his family exclusively from what he could make in bribes. In all spheres of state administration, lower-level officials passed a portion of bribe earnings to their superiors and on up the pyramid to the ministers themselves. Crime is not a parasite feeding off Georgian society; it is part of its social DNA.

Western rule-of-law programs emphasize reforming the machinery of justice: the police, lawyers, courts and prisons--the equivalent of boosting the body's immune system. Saakashvili has instead pursued the political equivalent of gene therapy, focusing on the criminals and corrupt officials themselves and the passive public support that allows them to thrive.

Last summer the Georgian government summarily dismissed all police patrolmen. For two weeks while a new force was being recruited, there were no police on the streets at all. The new force received just two weeks training and were equipped with 130 Volkswagen Passat patrol cars. All of them gathered in Tbilisi's Freedom Square, and the president declared them ready for service, grandly dispatching them to patrol the various districts of the capital. The...