School Row Ignites Moldova Tensions

Monday, 21 February, 2005

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Marian Chiriac

As the boat chugs up the Dniester River, water birds dabble in the current. The powerful river cuts between rolling green hills and towering trees, which shelter this picturesque but remote landscape.

The riverbank villages of Molovata, in the separatist enclave of Transdniester, a mainly Russian-speaking region in the east of Moldova, appear as isolated from modern urban civilisation as they must have been a century ago.

For all its beauty, the land here yields little food. There is just enough to keep the local peasant farmers in their tiny cottages from the door of starvation.

“I work just to buy enough food to make sandwiches for my two young children to take to school,” said one local woman, whose chiselled cheekbones suggest a degree of malnutrition. “My husband and oldest son work in Russia and from time to time send us money to get by.”

“In the summer holiday, I send my children to a recreational children’s camp in Molovata, just to save money,” she added.

The woman does not complain too vigorously, however. Most people in Transdniester - as in Moldova proper - share a similar fate. Average monthly incomes in this, Europe’s poorest state, are worth less than 30 US dollars and new jobs are few.

Yet worse may be ahead. Early this month, the pro-Russian authorities in Transdniester cut supplies of electricity and water to Moldovan towns and villages on the left bank of the Dniester. The Molovata recreation camp, though it lies inside Transdniester, lost its power through the same action.

The incident followed an earlier decision of the authorities in Tiraspol, capital of the breakaway republic, to close six schools that were teaching in Moldovan, saying they had not registered with the Transdniester education ministry.

Moldovan is almost identical to Romanian. The only historic difference was that during several decades of Soviet rule in Moldova, people were forced to use the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, as opposed to the Latin script.

Now, Moldova has restored Latin letters, but Cyrillic remains in use as the official script for Moldovan in the largely Russian-speaking Transdniester region, except in a few rebel schools, mainly sited in ethnic Moldovan areas, where parents expect their children to go on to study in Moldova, or Romania.

The attacks on the schools sparked outrage in Moldova, infuriating even the communist-led government, which is usually careful not to upset Moscow.

Speaking late last week, President Vladimir Voronin said the separatists had “all the characteristics of a fascist criminal group”.

The normally diplomatic Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, spoke out almost as strongly. Its spokesperson in Moldova charged the Transdniester authorities with breaching human rights. The Council of Europe and Amnesty International also condemned the move.

Both governments promptly began a round of tit-for-tat measures. Moldova withdrew from talks on a lasting political settlement and imposed economic sanctions, while Transdniester blocked a railway line, stopping several trains from travelling to Moldova.

After days of tension, an agreement on breaking the deadlock was reached between Moldova’s prime minister, Vasile Tarlev, and the Transdniester leader, Igor Smirnov, thanks to telephone mediation by Ukraine’s president, Leonid Kuchma,

Late last week, after days of tussle with the Moldovan government, Tiraspol announced a compromise and registered one Moldovan-language school for one year, signalling a temporary end to the conflict and relieving fears of a return to the events of 1992, when violence between the two sides claimed 300 lives.

After Transdniester broke away from Moldova in 1990, Moldova signed a peace agreement with the Transdniester rebels at the end of 1992, involving mediators from Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia - the self-appointed protector of Transdniester’s mainly Russian-speaking population and the real force behind its leaders’ separatist aspirations.

Some 1,500 Russian troops and thousands of tons of military equipment remain deployed in the region – a muscular reminder to Moldova that Transdniester does not lack a powerful friend.

A lasting solution to the dispute has yet to be found. Europe’s attitude is nuanced. While it is wary of Moldova’s poverty and corruption, it worries also that Transdniester could become a more serious source of regional instability.

There are concerns that the unrecognised border between Moldova and its breakaway eastern region is acting as a magnet to smugglers and traffickers.

“The porous borders of this self-proclaimed republic are a gate to Europe for traffickers in people, drugs and armament,” a Moldovan political analyst, Nicu Popescu, told IWPR.

“The smuggling, money laundering and organised crime that find a safe haven in Transdniester are a regional problem, affecting Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and soon, the enlarged European Union.”

Hostile criticism of Transdniester as a criminal haven is, perhaps, to be expected from a Moldovan source. But international bodies are also alarmed by some of the business activities going on in Transdniester.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group, ICG, said it believed five or six arms factories were operating in Transdniester, making small arms, mortars and missile launchers for sale to various trouble spots.

“Moldova and Ukraine have to develop effective anti-corruption programmes for the customs, border guards and tax services, in order to crack down on smuggling to, from and through Transndiester,” the ICG report said.

For most people in Moldova, the latest conflict with Transdniester has come as a gloomy reminder that lasting peace, as well as eventual progress towards western-style prosperity, remains a distant goal.

But as Moldova cannot hope to solve its conflict with Transdniester alone, and as Russia’s sympathies lie with the rebels, its hopes are pinned on increasing western involvement in the brewing crisis.

Whether this involvement will materialise, while Moldova remains under its current, communist, generally pro-Russian, leadership, is another matter.

The Moldovans hope that it will, however. “The role of the EU and the US in resolving the Transdniestrian dispute should be to show Russia that its support for totalitarian regimes cannot continue without affecting the overall climate of relations between Moscow and the western democracies,” said Nicu Popescu.

“It should be clearly stated that Russia’s cooperation with NATO, the EU and the US in security matters cannot advance if Russia goes against the declared principles of Russia’s strategic partnership with the West. Transdniester would be a good test for that.”

Marian Chiriac is a regular IWPR contributor.