War between Russia and Georgia?

Jolie Rouge

The Ethnic Toll in Georgia
By ANDREW PURVIS / TBILISI AND JOHN WENDLE / TSKHINVALI
Wed Aug 20, 10:05 AM ET

Both Russia and Georgia have hurled charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing at each other in the aftermath of the five-day war in the Caucasus. While no substantial evidence of such atrocities has yet emerged, the toll of the fighting and the ensuing lawlessness has exacerbated ethnic animosities; once neighborly Ossets and Georgians are now implacable enemies even as they cope with life as refugees.

At the emergency hospital in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, every room was filled with a wounded man or old person from Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. They told stories of bombs and artillery turning their houses and courtyards into fiery traps, of perilous rescues, of the fear that they have nothing left to return to. Most have expressed confusion about why Georgia would attack and felt that they could never live with Georgians again. Those who continued to feel that their Georgian relatives, neighbors and friends were good people nevertheless believed that the Georgian leadership were stooges of America, which was bloodthirsty and corrupt. They have nicknamed the ideology of President Mikheil Saakahsvili, leader of Georgia, "Saako-fascism."

The stories are reversed in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, where lurid posters portray Moscow's leaders Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Medvedev as Hitler and Mussolini and show a gluttonous Russia devouring Georgia and asking "Who's Next?" Givi Tadiashvili fled from a village near Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, where he said looters showed up after the bombing ended, demanding water and wine to drink. They made his neighbor drink it first, to make sure it was not poisoned. Three villages were burned in the area of his home. "They do it to show their aggression. It's their revenge not to let us go back," he says. Another man, taking shelter at an old school in Tbilisi, says that he left his sick mother behind in her home in his native village and is now worried she is going to be burned alive. He says he has heard reports since he left that the whole village has been torched: "if they burn the house she will die inside," says Tamaz Zangaladze, 55, who says he saw five friends killed in the conflict.

A South Ossetia government official speaking on condition of anonymity admitted that Ossetians had started murdering the old people who had remained to protect houses, possessions and livestock. TIME has not been able to verify that claim.The Russian military, which invaded after Georgia tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia, has not allowed Western journalists to leave the buses that have been allowed through the destroyed areas. But Russian journalists have been given free access all over the area and allege that ethnic Georgian property has been targeted. Explains Dmitry Steshin, a reporter for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian daily newspaper: "[The military doesn't] want you to see that all the Georgian homes have been burned down. It's as simple as that." Says Ludmilla Alexandrova, 50, a resident of Tskhinvali, "I don't think the Georgians will ever return." She will not miss them. Alexandrova has organized a water distribution point for her neighborhood - an area, like the rest of the capital without water, gas or electricity. The Georgians, she says, "caused all of our problems. They turned off our water and gas in the past."

The situation has been made worse by a second wave of violence after the Russian intervention, carried out not by soldiers but by looters, including some local Ossetian militias as well as Chechen and Cossack gangs from Russia. It has laid further waste to the region, say refugees and human rights workers. "This conflict has been a disaster for civilians," Rachel Denber, Europe and Central Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Monday. She said there was an urgent need for fact finding missions to establish the facts of the conflict and "urge authorities to account for any crimes." She added: "Russia should prevent any further militia attacks and allow humanitarian aid to reach the hundreds of vulnerable civilians still in the area, including many elderly."

Some local Ossetian officials with the breakaway government have said that the looting is justified as retribution for the Georgian attacks on Ossetian positions that provoked Russian military intervention. The breakaway territory's nominal president Eduard Kokoity, a former wrestler, when asked whether ethnic Georgians who had been living in South Ossetia would be allowed to return, told the Russian daily Kommersant that "we have no intention of letting them in there."

Several Russian officials, confronted by aid officials with the evidence of widespread looting in the occupied Georgian city of Gori, said the area is not their responsibility because it is legally Georgian territory. But human rights monitors reject that argument. "This area [now occupied by Russian troops] is effectively under Russian control. The Georgian military is not there, so Russia has a responsibility to protect civilians there," says Giorgi Gogia, a researcher for HRW in Georgia. In Tskhinvali, however, locals say that the Russian presence has helped re-establish security. "When the Russian Army came, says Misha Masurashvili, a gangly 17-year old, "the bandits ran off."

The death toll from the war and its aftermath has yet to be determined - making allegations of genocide impossible to investigate. No mass graves, for example, have yet to be discovered. Russia has said that Georgian government troops and militia had begun ethnic cleansing when they tried to retake the breakaway region; and the South Ossetian Interior minister Mikhail Minzayev has estimated 2,100 dead. (Western journalists in the area have come up with rough estimates of 500 to 600 dead.) Gogia said that the South Ossetian and Russian claims of more than one thousand dead are "inflated, exaggerated. There is no way to say a genocide take place. If there were 2,000 dead we would have 6,000 wounded and we have seen nothing like that." Meanwhile, Minzayev denied there had been acts of ethnic cleansing against Georgian villages, saying "there has not been one example this activity in South Ossetia."

Minzayev said that the army is still finding bodies in basements - sometimes just bones because of fires. An estimated 95% of the buildings in Tskhinvali have suffered fire damage as a result of war and looting. The only houses that hadn't been burned were the ones that were still under construction and didn't contain anything valuable to steal. "People are burying their dead in the courtyard of their homes and in their clan cemeteries in the mountains." Priests at the Mary Mother of God church, a South Ossetian congregation, in Tskhinvali said that they had carried out more than 100 funerals in a three day span. "But we have carried out many more than that outside of the church, in people's courtyards," one said. "When the body begins to smell, they are not allowed to have a service in the church itself." He added, "I've lost count of how many we've buried."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2008082...gS.z3e tNYhAF

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Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Ossetian crisis: Who started it?
By Jenny Norton
BBC News

The fighting may well be over in South Ossetia, but the war of words between Russia and Georgia shows no sign of dying down.

Both sides blame each other for starting the violence and, as the recriminations get louder, the truth about what really happened seems in danger of being drowned out.

The succession of international leaders who have visited Georgia over the past week to offer the country support in its continuing stand-off with Russia seem reluctant to be drawn into the debate about the causes of the conflict.

"This is not the time for allocating blame," said a spokesman for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Tbilisi on Sunday.

But human rights groups and conflict resolution specialists argue that a full investigation into the circumstances and events of the fighting in South Ossetia are an urgent priority.

In a region where ancient feuds shape current events, half-truths from one conflict all too quickly become the myths that fuel the next cycle of violence.

So why did Russia and Georgia end up going to war?

The immediate causes of the fighting centre on the events of 7 August. After days of heavy exchanges of fire with South Ossetian separatist fighters, and several fruitless attempts to arrange peace talks, the Georgian side had called a unilateral ceasefire.

"We do not want to return fire," said President Mikhail Saakashvili in an early evening address on national television. "Please do not test the Georgian state's patience. Let's give peace and dialogue a chance."

But five and a half hours later, Georgia's patience snapped.

The defence ministry in Tbilisi announced that it had sent troops into South Ossetia "to restore constitutional order in the entire region".

Fierce fighting erupted around the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, and Georgian war planes were reported to be in action bombing the town and surrounding areas.

The Georgians said they had been forced to retaliate after coming under continuing and sustained attack from the South Ossetian side.

Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze, speaking on the morning of 8 August, said there had also been reports of an incursion of "so-called volunteer fighters" from North Ossetia coming through the Roki tunnel, which links South Ossetia to Russia.

In a news conference six days later, the prime minister amplified this, referring to "a massive column of 150 units" crossing through the Roki tunnel during the night. It was this, he said, that had triggered the decision to send in the troops.

So far there have been no independent reports about this alleged incursion, although there were reports of Russian military exercises in the area around the Roki tunnel in the days leading up to the fighting. It is just one of many questions about this war which have yet to be answered.

Within hours Russia had launched its own "peace enforcement" operation in support, it said, of Russian peacekeepers and civilians in the region.

The first air strikes on the Georgian town of Gori were reported on the morning of 8 August, and over the following days convoys of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles were rolling through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia and on into other parts of Georgia.

Whether or not either side was deliberately planning to go to war or just over-reacting to circumstances, it is clear that both Russia and Georgia were prepared for a sudden escalation in the violence.

Both Georgia's assault on Tskhinvali, and Russia's response to it, were swift and brutal.

Neither side seems to have given much thought to the thousands of unfortunate civilians - both Georgians and South Ossetians - who found themselves caught up in the middle of the fighting.

Human rights groups have used the word "disproportionate" to describe the actions of both sides.

Rising tensions

Many key questions about Georgia and Russia's sudden, summer war remain unanswered.

It is still not clear how many civilians died in the bombardment of Tskhinvali or who exactly was responsible for torching dozens of Georgian homes in the conflict zone.

Nor is it clear exactly what has been going on in and around the Georgian town of Gori, where there have been reports of looting and violence by South Ossetian paramilitaries for days.

But what is clear is the failure of both diplomacy and common sense on all sides in the months leading up to fighting in South Ossetia.

This summer's violence followed months of well-documented rising tensions between Georgia and Russia.

Moscow was furious at the recognition of Kosovo in February and the promise from Nato in March that Georgia would one day become a member. The Russians hit back by upping their support for the two breakaway regions.

Russian paratroopers were sent to reinforce the peacekeepers in Abkhazia. A unit of Russian railway troops arrived to carry out repairs in the region. Throughout the spring and early summer the two sides played a seemingly endless game of provocation and retaliation.

Sporadic violence often breaks out in the summer time in Georgia's conflict zones. It is the result, local people say, of a combination of hot weather, frayed nerves and quite simply too many guns facing each other over fragile ceasefire lines.

It is a tragedy for the people of the Caucasus that this summer - despite international attempts at mediation and calls for calm - neither side seemed ready or willing to pull back from the brink.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7571096.stm

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Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

I survived the Georgian war.
Here's what I saw...
By Lira Tskhovrebova
Wed Oct 8, 4:00 AM ET

Tskhinvali, South Ossetia - In a speech before the United Nations last month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili implored world leaders to set up an international investigation to find out the truth about the war in South Ossetia.

I couldn't agree more. But I think the results of an honest investigation would reveal a very different "truth" than what President Saakashvili claims.

I know this because I was in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Aug. 7 when Georgian troops marched into the city and killed my friends and neighbors. I huddled with my family in terror for three nights while Saakashvili's tanks and rockets destroyed hundreds of our homes, desecrated cemeteries, gutted schools and hospitals.

I also have good reason not to trust what Saakashvili says. For three days before the attack I had been getting calls from many Georgian friends warning me to get out. They said Saakashvili was planning an attack. Most of the Georgians living in South Ossetia left because they knew what was coming.

On the night of Aug. 7, Saakashvili went on television and assured the frightened civilian population of South Ossetia that he would not attack us. This was long after the time Saakashvili now claims Russians had begun "invading" Georgia.

Ossetians went to bed relieved and thankful for a peaceful night.

Less than two hours later, according to credible international accounts, his artillery, bombers, and three brigades of ground troops unleashed what I can only describe as a fierce hell on our city. In the moment, we knew only our fear as we hid. Afterward I spoke with hundreds of Ossetians to find out what was done to us.

My friend's elderly father tried to douse the flames set by Georgian fire on the home he had built with his hands. His leg was severed by shrapnel from Georgian weapons. He bled to death while his disabled wife crawled from their burning home.

Ossetians saw Georgian tanks firing into basements where women and children hid for safety They saw fleeing families shot down by Georgian snipers. We learned that the Georgian military had used Grad rocket systems and cluster bombs against Tskhinvali.

Yes, I would very much like to see an international commission investigate the truth of what happened.

When I came out from hiding, thanking God that the Russians had saved our lives, I was dismayed by the reaction of the international media to what had happened. There was nothing about Ossetian deaths and the unprovoked horrors inflicted by Saakashvili's military. It made my heart sick.

The truth has been crushed by Georgia's powerful public relations machine as mercilessly as Georgian tanks rolled over the defenseless civilians of Tskhinvali.

I know that Americans are a generous and fair people. But Americans haven't been told the truth about what happened to us. Americans don't understand that Ossetians are an independent, Christian Orthodox people with a deep history in our land. The world talks only about Georgian freedom. What of freedom for my people? Does our suffering, do our voices, mean nothing?

I don't blame the Georgian people for what happened to us. The vast number of Ossetians and Georgians want to live in peace. I blame Georgia's leaders.

Saakashvili has persuaded the world that he is a "beacon" of democracy and openness. But he won't even tell his own people the truth. My Georgian friends weren't allowed to see any Russian news sites during the conflict because all of those sites were blocked by Saakashvili's government.

I know we are a small people, and I make no claim to understanding the experts in geopolitics with their theories and pronouncements about the great powers. But I have fought for women's rights in Ossetia for 12 years and I believe in the truth.

In a recent article, Saakashvili cynically dismissed Ossetian suffering and deaths because, he said, Russia had "lied" about how many of my people were killed by the Georgian military.

It breaks my heart to even engage in this discussion. No one – including Saakashvili – knows how many Ossetians were killed by his Army. I have friends who buried loved ones in their backyards because there were no alternatives. Many people are still missing.

Does Saakashvili believe his vicious attack on a civilian city was justified if he only killed a few hundred rather than a few thousand? Do Americans realize that a military trained and equipped by the US government attacked a civilian population as they slept in their beds? Can they justify sending another billion dollars to Georgia and nothing for those Georgia attacked?

I have made an urgent appeal to the world for humanitarian relief for our people at the website helpossetianow.org. I beg the United States and the world to find out the truth. Please hear our voices.

• Lira Tskhovrebova is the founder of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights and has worked for more than a decade to improve relations between people of Georgian and Ossetian descent in the Caucasus.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081008...lO3Hj4NNKs0NUE

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

atprm

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