At home the Georgian president is both adored and reviled, as Quentin Peelexplains
IN THE Kremlin they are determined to demonise Mikheil Saakashvili, describing him as a "lunatic" and a "pariah", and accusing him of genocide.
Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's twin tsars, want him tried as a war criminal like Slobodan Milosevic. They flatly refuse to talk to him and leave no doubt they want him overthrown.
In Georgia, Saakashvili is both adored and reviled. He inspires huge devotion from his supporters, who see him as a charismatic - and democratic - national hero who has stood up to the Russian bully. His detractors call him autocratic and impetuous, and accuse him of precipitating last week's onslaught by Russian tanks.
Saakashvili - known universally as Misha to friends and foes alike - was swept to power in 2004 on the heels of the Rose Revolution that ousted Eduard Shevardnadze, his predecessor, after a blatantly rigged election.
He became, at 36, the youngest head of state in Europe, a passionately pro-American polyglot who toured the world selling the story of Georgia's revival.
He was the darling of neo-cons in Washington, but also managed to infuriate Putin in Moscow, by failing to treat the Russian president with the respect he felt he deserved. (He is credited with inventing the nickname "Lilliputin", an allusion to Putin's diminutive stature, in contrast to his own towering presence.)
Born in Tbilisi in 1967, where his father Nikoloz still practises as a doctor, and his mother Giuli Alasania is a history professor at the university, he took a degree in international relations at Kiev university.
"It was less Soviet than Moscow," he says. He then pursued post-graduate studies in international law at Columbia university in New York, and at George Washington University.
It was an experience that made him a profound admirer of the American system (he has since surrounded himself with US consultants and PR advisers) and laid the foundations for a whirlwind career in Georgian politics.
He was elected to the Georgian parliament in 1995, and became justice minister under Shevardnadze, before he resigned in protest at the all-pervasive corruption in government. Elected mayor of Tbilisi, he founded his own party.
In 2003, he led a mass revolt against the election result that had declared Shevardnadze the winner, forcing him to resign, and clearing the way for his own landslide victory with 95 per cent support.
In less than five years, he has presided over an extraordinary economic transformation of his tiny nation on the shores of the Black Sea. From being a failed state in the 1990s, it became a magnet for foreign investors, and a liberalising darling of the international financial institutions.
Yet he has failed in his second goal - to reunite Georgia. And he alienated some of his original allies. "He is really quite complex," says a former European ambassador in Tbilisi. "He is very intelligent, very thoughtful, and sometimes trips upon his own complex thought processes. He laughs at inappropriate moments. On the one hand, he is very open, an outward-looking modernising reformer, very much on our wavelength. He wants the system to be democratic. But personally his instinct is strongly autocratic. He has been leading a revolution. He is so committed to what he is trying to do, he went into extra overdrive to launch his reforms."
In the process, he has lost support among the Georgian population, including many from the older generation, roughly thrust aside by the westernised young bankers and consultants who came home to help the transformation. Saakashvili wanted to do it all at once - revolutionise the economy, and reintegrate the country. It was not to be done.
"He is an impatient man. He wants to move quickly," says the ambassador.
"The first signs of trouble came early on, when he was getting a lot of support and sympathy (from the West). They were saying to him: 'Don't rile the Russians. Take it calmly. Don't use force' and Saakashvili was having to grind his teeth, caught between his intense desire for rapid progress and the need for restraint."
Saakashvili's name shows his family originally came from South Ossetia. He grew up a strong nationalist with a vision to revive Georgia.
One of his great heroes is King David the Builder, who ruled the country in the 11th century, and drove out the Seljuk Turks. Saakashvili took his oath of office at King David's tomb in 2004.
But he does not sound like the fanatic that the Kremlin seeks to portray. He is certainly not a "lunatic".
On the other hand, he has always sounded somewhat ambiguous when talking about Georgia's territorial integrity. He has made repeated proposals for political solutions - offering both Abkhazia and South Ossetia wide autonomy within a Georgian state - but has not seemed enthusiastic about meeting the separatists themselves, whom he regards as Russian stooges.
His mother has been a big influence, according to close friends. She sees the secession issue as manufactured by Moscow. "This problem is artificial," she says. "It was invented. We never had a problem with Abkhazia and South Ossetia before."
She rejects the charge that her son is impulsive. "He thinks very fast. This is his temper. But he always knows what he is doing."
He can be charming and overwhelming - he never stops talking - although it is sometimes like a stream of consciousness, punctuated by digressions on Georgian history and culture, or his latest pet project. In government he conducts business at a furious rate. "It is government by mobile phone," says one foreign observer.
"Decisions are taken with a small group of insiders, working late at night. Then the rest are simply informed."
Former allies, such as Salome Zurabishvili, his former foreign minister, left in disgust. "We are living in a de facto one-party system," she says.
"He has an obsessive desire to win," says the former ambassador. "That means really hammering people with different points of view - intellectually, and there is some evidence of intimidation. He has no time for a particular type of investigative journalist or a critical politician."
Sitting at lunch last year, overlooking Tbilisi, he bolts his food, shoots quickfire answers to all questions, and rushes off to take a helicopter to the border.
The skyline is littered with cranes. "Once all these new buildings are built, once it looks like Hong Kong did 10 years ago, attacking such a country does not look good," he said. Perhaps that was why he was in such a hurry: his revolution came too late.
- (Financial Times service)