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The Georgian Invasion of South Ossetia and the Anti-Russian Blame Game
"We killed as many of them as we could. But where are our friends?"
- Georgian soldier retreating from S. Ossetia,
International Herald Tribune, August 12, 2008
"This conflict is very much about proving who is the bad guy."
- Anonymous Western diplomat in Tbilisi, Georgia,
to Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times,
August 19, 2008
The attack and invasion of South Ossetia by Georgian forces on August 7 resulted in a Russian counter-offensive, which certainly must have been expected by the Georgian leadership. The resulting conflict created the ironic situation in which Georgia was compelled to withdraw its military force of 2,000 men from occupied-Iraq in order to be able to defend its own nation.
The conflict in South Ossetia and Georgia developed while I was
traveling in Germany. From reading the newspapers, it was clear that
the long-simmering conflict over disputed territories in the Caucasus
was getting very serious when it was reported that Georgia had shelled
residential districts of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia,
during the first two days of August. The Georgian shelling reportedly
led to numerous deaths among civilians, with six South Ossetians killed
and 15 wounded.
One week later, on August 7-8, when the Georgian military launched, once
again, a massive attack on the capital of South Ossetia, I concluded
that the Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili must be mad. Why else would
the leadership of any small nation, presumably interested in self
preservation, attack Russian citizens in a disputed territory on the
border with Russia?
Only a lunatic would attack a disputed autonomous region which Russia
has openly and repeatedly pledged to defend. My Estonian wife, who
has travelled extensively throughout the Soviet Union, visited Georgia,
Ossetia, and Abkhazia in the 1980s and has very fond memories of the people
and the region. She thought the American-schooled Saakashvili was
simply following orders.
Bollyn at the Wannsee (Berlin)
station shortly after the Georgian assault
on South Ossetia was rebuffed by Russian forces.
"KRIEG!" (War!) screamed the one-word banner headline of Germany's Bild
newspaper on August 9, the day after the opening of the Olympics in
China. I watched the television news coverage on CNN and BBC World as
the "Crisis in Georgia" developed and realized that Saakashvili was
either completely delusional, insane, or under the control of outside
forces.
Saakashvili's offensive caused a humanitarian catastrophe as thousands
of South Ossetians and Georgian civilians were displaced by the
fighting. Stephen Sackur, the host of BBC's "Hard Talk" program
challenged the Georgian government's propaganda and repeatedly asked a
member of the Georgian government if he would admit that Saakashvili
had miscalculated and committed a tremendous blunder in attacking South
Ossetia. Although the Georgian official avoided answering the
question, this clearly remains the question that needs to be answered.
Why did Saakashvili attack South Ossetia and who is really behind the
criminal aggression?
"Georgia is in tatters and the buck stops with its president, Mikhail
Saakashvili, a man who has proved himself both one of the West's
staunchest allies, and its greatest liability," Owen Matthews wrote in
the Daily Mail (U.K.) of August 13, 2008.
A Georgian cries over the body of his relative in Gorion August 9, 2008
"NO MATTER HOW IT STARTED"
Opinion pieces in U.S. newspapers, on the other hand, tend to obscure
the facts about who is responsible for starting the fighting. "No
matter how it started, the Russian response is outsized and redolent of
the brutal approach toward dissenting states that Moscow took during
the Cold War," Edward P. Joseph opined on August 12 in the
International Herald Tribune, a newspaper which is wholly owned by the
New York Times.
Mr. Joseph is clearly an anti-Russian partisan. The
question of who started the conflict should be foremost in the mind of
an unbiased analyst. The evidence indicates that Georgia started this
war with its aggression of South Ossetia.
"Exactly what happened in South Ossetia last week is unclear," Ronald
D. Asmus and Richard Holbrooke wrote in the Washington Post of August
11, 2008, adding, "But we know, without doubt, that Georgia was
responding to repeated provocative attacks by South Ossetian
separatists controlled and funded by Moscow."
How can Holbrooke and Asmus say they know "without doubt" that Georgia
was responding to "provocative attacks" while they admit being
"unclear" about the events leading up to the war? Holbrooke, it should
be noted, was a major player in the "Balkanization" or dismemberment of
the former Yugoslavia.
"Whatever mistakes Tbilisi has made," Holbrooke wrote, "they cannot
justify Russia's actions. Moscow has invaded a neighbor, an illegal act
of aggression that violates the U.N. Charter and fundamental principles
of cooperation and security in Europe."
But what about the Georgian invasion and aggression against the people
of South Ossetia? The Ossetians are an ancient Aryan nation that was
divided by Josef Stalin, a Georgian from Gori. South Ossetia was made
part of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Rupublic, but Ossetians clearly
do not want to be part of Georgia. Russia has issued the residents of
the disputed territory Russian passports. They had no other choice; they do not want to be Georgians.
In the Soviet Union, South Ossetia was an autonomous area within the
Georgian SSR. Georgia's first post-Soviet president, Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, abolished S. Ossetia's autonomy in 1991. The South
Ossetians rejected the decision to annex their territory and put up an
armed resistance to the Georgians.
In January 1991, warfare broke out between Georgia and South Ossetia
with heavy casualties on both sides. After the war, Georgia lost
control of the territory and peacekeeping forces were brought into
the disputed region in 1992.
RUSSIA SOUGHT PEACEFUL RESOLUTION
"Russia had not appeared poised for an invasion last week," C.J.
Chivers wrote in the International Herald Tribune of August 12. As
late as Wednesday [August 6], American and Georgian officials said that
Russian diplomats had been pressing for negotiations between Georgia
and South Ossetia, Chivers reported.
"It doesn't look like this was premeditated, with a massive staging of
equipment," a senior American official said. "Until the night before
the fighting, Russia seemed to be playing a constructive role."
Following the Georgian attacks of August 1-2, Russia's foreign ministry
had contacted the Bush administration and had urged Washington to put
pressure on Tbilisi to ease tensions, the Agence France Press (AFP)
reported on August 4:
"Russia has already urged Tbilisi to take a responsible position and
also counts on Washington's constructive influence," it said in a
statement, released after a telephone conversation between Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and US Assistant Secretary of
State Daniel Fried.
Russia has expressed its deep concern over the new level of tensions
surrounding South Ossetia, Georgia's illegal steps to increase its
armed forces in the region and the uncontrolled construction of
fortifications.
Daniel Fried of the U.S. State Dept.
Is Fried the weak link in the Georgian crisis?
The controlled media in the United States, however, unfairly blames
Russia for the conflict. While the Neo-Cons of the Bush administration
continue to wage the Cold War from the comfort of their offices in the
United States, it seems unwise and imprudent for the leaders of
former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations on the Russian border to parrot their
absurd anti-Russian rhetoric.
Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, reportedly likened the
Russian prime minister to Adolf Hitler. Officials from the three
Baltic republics have made statements criticizing Russia for its
actions in defense of South
Ossetia while their nations have occupation forces in Kosovo, Iraq, and
Afghanistan.
It is the height of hypocrisy to deny self determination to the
people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia while supporting "independence"
for the NATO-controlled "statelet" of Kosovo.
"WHEN IS NATO COMING?"
The most damning evidence of Georgian war crimes came from the mouths
of Georgian soldiers retreating from South Ossetia, as reported from
Gori, Georgia in the International Herald Tribune on August 12:
As a column of soldiers passed through Gori, a black-robed priest came
out of his church and made the sign of the cross again and again.
One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov, "We
killed as many of them as we could," he said. "But where are our
friends?"
It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two
fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry.
When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where
is the United States? When is NATO coming?
Ossetians who fled to the Alagir camp in North Ossetia told "a very
different story to those who view the events of the last week as
Georgia's plucky struggle against a heavy-handed and imperialist
Russia," Catherine Belton reported in the Financial Times on August
16.
"Many of their accounts are muddled, but the prevailing view in this
camp on the Russian side of the Caucasus mountains is that Georgia's
pro-western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to wipe out their
breakaway enclave," Belton reported:
This camp houses 344 refugees, is the nearest to the North Ossetian
capital of Vladikavkaz and is the one most well-known to western
journalists. The refugees' tales hand Russia potent fuel in a
propaganda war and are certain to be used to accuse Mr Saakashvili of
war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
"The Georgian government just went mad," said Leyla Bessateva, who fled
snipers and rockets to escape from the village of Dominis, 12km away
from Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. "The Georgians came in and
killed everyone. Who is guilty? It is Saakashvili. They burned all the
houses, and they even set fire to the school and the hospital. Nothing
remains. It all happened in one instant.
"They wanted to destroy South Ossetia in one night. All these villages, they encircled and took them…"
Other refugees spoke of the Georgian troops who had rampaged through
their village and sent them into hiding along with other women and
children in a cellar for two days. They eventually emerged and fled
into the surrounding forest, only to be fired on by snipers.
Anna Neistat, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said yesterday
[August 15] that evidence was mounting that most of the destruction of
Tskhinvali was caused by Georgians.
The Russians, on the other hand, appear to have been very careful not
to hit civilians during their counter-offensive. Borzou Daragahi of
the Los Angeles Times reported on August 19 after taking a
daylong tour led by Georgian government officials which revealed "few
signs" of Russian destruction:
At least in western Georgia, the Russians appear to have used force
minimally. Communications function, and electricity is uninterrupted.
Civilian fatalities in Georgia proper have climbed at least into the
double digits, but the Russians appear to have avoided any inadvertent
high-profile attacks on civilian targets. The Georgian Health Ministry
reported two days ago that 67 civilians had been killed and about 157
hurt in the conflict.
The Russians appear to have carefully calibrated their intervention to
cause minimum damage while exerting maximum political pressure…
Despite claims that Russia is destroying Georgia's civilian
infrastructure, much of it remains intact in the country's west.
Residents said shops were full. In the resort city of Batumi, residents
could be seen swimming off the pebbly beaches of the Black Sea.
U.S. PROVOCATIONS CONTINUE
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for NATO to reaffirm
support for Georgia's bid for membership, warning that Russia had a
"strategic objective" of preventing the Western alliance's expansion,
AFP reported.
"Rice will continue on to Warsaw to sign a deal on deploying part of a
missile defence shield on Polish territory, a plan that Russia
describes as hostile," the AFP report continued.
Enlarging NATO, an anti-Russian alliance, to include Georgia and
Ukraine is clearly a threat to Russia as is the U.S. missile system
planned to be deployed in Poland. When the Soviet Union tried to
deploy missiles in Cuba during the Kennedy administration it nearly
caused a nuclear war. Of course Russia has a "strategic objective" in
preventing itself from being surrounded by a hostile alliance. These
U.S. actions are extremely provocative and reckless.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Vladikavkaz, near the border
with South Ossetia, on 18 August. "We do not want a deterioration of
international relations; we want to be respected. We want our people,
our values to be respected," he said. "We have always been a
peace-loving state. There is practically not a single occasion in the
history of the Russian or Soviet state where we initiated military
actions," Medvedev said.
As NATO held a high-level meeting to discuss the Georgian crisis,
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, said he hoped the
"decisions by NATO will be balanced and that responsible forces in the
West will give up the total cynicism that has been so evident [and
which] is pushing us back to the Cold War era," AP reported.
Sources:
An American who witnessed shelling of S. Ossetia speaks to Russia Today, August 10, 2008
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28788/video
"Georgian rebel region evacuates children after deadly clashes" Agence France Press (AFP), August 4, 2008
"Georgians look bitterly to the West" by Andrew E. Kramer and Ellen Barry, International Herald Tribune, August 12, 2008
"So what price will he pay?" Commentary on Mikhail Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia by Owen Matthews, Daily Mail, August 13, 2008
"In west Georgia, few signs of damage by Russia" by Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2008
"Black Sea Watershed" by Ronald D. Asmus and Richard Holbrooke, Washington Post, August 11, 2008
"A violent clash years in the making" by C.J. Chivers, International Herald Tribune, August 12, 2008
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