A
fear of war has increased in South Ossetia in recent days. Practically
each night the capital of the breakaway republic, Tskhinvali, and other
areas come under Georgian fire. On 4 August the South Ossetian Interior
Ministry made an announcement saying that Georgia had placed D-30
howitzers and two artillery batteries in the conflict zone. Georgia‘s
Defense Ministry said it was going to introduce troops to the border
but we know perfectly well the cost of such announcements. In an
interview with ITAR-TASS news agency, Vladimir Ivanov, aide to the
Chief of the Mixed Peacekeeping Forces, was quoted as saying that
“currently the situation in the conflict zone remains tense and yet
there is no even a slightest sign of reconciliation”. Although the
night on August the 5th was relatively calm, of course this is an
illusion.
Probably, Georgia had nothing to do but make a pause in its
military campaign against South Ossetia after counting the victims
among the officers. Russia‘s Channel One broadcast an interview with
the South Ossetian Security Council Secretary Anatoly Barankevich, who
said that Georgia had lost 29 officers in skirmished. He confirmed the
authenticity of information but added that the official Tbilisi would
naturally deny everything.
According to some media, Georgia imposed an information
blockade on its mass media. The truth about the number of victims is
concealed, all the fact are distorted, although the issue is much
rumored in Tbilisi. Apart from this, Georgia did no dare to continue
its aggressive policy after it had been strongly criticized by Russia,
the breakaway republic of Abkhazia and the whole North Caucasus.
Besides, the Minister of State for Reintegration of Georgia, Temur
Yakobashvili, paid a visit to South Ossetia to launch talks with the
leaders of the unrecognized republic. Apparently, it was an attempt to
use methods of shuttle diplomacy to correct the mistakes of the
military campaign. Yet there can be some other explanations: Georgia
could have been thinking of improving its image abroad by putting
forward such ‘peace initiatives’. But Mr. Yakobashvili was not welcomed
by South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity and thus failed to bring
Mikheil Saakashvili‘s message home to the opponents. So, Georgian
aggression may now enter a new phase.
On the whole, Tbilisi has succeeded in sustainable
implementation of its plan. The Georgian army managed to occupy its
positions in the border area and place a battalion of long-range
artillery. Snipers seized control over the heights surrounding
Tskhinvali. Yet it is unclear whether the Georgian soldiers are ready
to die for this control. Saakashvili hopes for a blitzkrieg, otherwise
his initiative will hardly be popular among the people.
Everything which is currently going on in the conflict zone,
was initiated from abroad. Recently Georgia and U.S. have had joint
military exercises in Vaziani. The maneuvers, symbolically dubbed as
“Immediate Response”, gave a powerful impulse to Georgian aggression:
President Saakashvili (and Russia) were given to understand who and how
would help Georgia in case of a war in the Caucasus.
What else does the official Tbilisi do to implement this imposed plan?
Georgia tried hard to provoke Russia`s aggressive response, but all it was in vain. The
Russian peacekeepers, their positions in the region regularly attacked,
had to do nothing but to confirm unannounced military actions.
However, Tbilisi has enough reasons to change the format of
negotiations since Russia had increased the number of peacekeepers in
the conflict zone and its planes carried out flight above South Ossetia
(formally Georgian territory). Besides, the Mixed Peacekeeping Forces
failed to improve the situation without using force against an
aggressor. Now Georgia`s main goal is to persuade the international
community to press Russia over the issue and invite Ukrainian or the
Baltic peacekeepers to monitor the situation in the region.
Kiev has repeatedly announced its readiness to replace Russian
peacekeepers in South Ossetia. That is why Tbilisi insists on direct
talks with Russia. According to Temur Yakobashvili, the work of the
Mixed Control Commission (MCC) had already caused a tragedy as people
were dying in the conflict zone, their houses destroyed. “That is why,
if Ossetia insists on the same format of peacekeeping activity, it
would be immoral”, he said. If the MCC, comprising Russia, Georgia,
South Ossetia and the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, no longer takes
part in the negotiations, it would mean that Russia is deprived of any
rights to influence the situation. If Tbilisi manages to prove to
the EU and US that the work of the MCC is ineffective, it would be an
hour of triumph for the “hawk diplomats”.
But what is especially annoying about all this is that Georgia contributed greatly to a humanitarian catastrophe South Ossetia is about to face these days.
Wikipedia, the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the
Internet, describes a humanitarian catastrophe as a situation when a
society faces a threat of extinction due to starvation, violence,
epidemics, caused by a war, and also due to the loss of moral
orienteers. Unfortunately, the situation in Tskhinvali and the suburbs
matches the description in full. But there is an important remark-
South Ossetia is facing a humanitarian catastrophe because of a
purposed implementation of aggressive policy by the Georgian
authorities. So, the breakaway republic can resort to the so-called
‘humanitarian intervention’ against Georgia. A prominent lawyer K.
Greenwood characterized this kind of intervention as a “measure aimed
at preventing death of a nation”. It also means that South Ossetia can use diplomatic and economic means to press on Georgia.
Here are some facts to prove the reality of a humanitarian catastrophe in South Ossetia:
- Bombardment of the territories leading to casualties among the
civilians. On August, 4, Georgian armed groups attacked a funeral
procession in the village of Mugut in the Znaur district of South
Ossetia.
- Aimed sniper fire of a hospital in Tskhinvali
- Shortage of fresh water. Officials of the Mixed Peacekeeping
Forces and the OSCE, together with a group of Georgian and South
Ossetian ecologists, monitored the quality of water at the
Edis-Tskhinval water pipe and reported 61 cases of illegal water
siphoning. That is Tskhinvali is receiving 75% less water than needed.
- A mass exodus of women and children from the conflict zone to
North Ossetia and other republics of the North Caucasus. According to
the Federal Border Guard Service of Russia, over the past few days 1500
women and children crossed the border and entered the territory of
North Ossetia. It is worth mentioning that they are passengers of the
humanitarian trips organized by the Russian authorities. And we can
only guess how more people fled South Ossetia without any help…
This is a real catastrophe for such thinly populated republic
like South Ossetia. What is especially shocking about all this is a
cynical attitude Georgia demonstrates towards the people they call
their “countrymen”. The RBK news agency reported that Tbilisi treated
the information on the evacuation from South Ossetia as something
“unworthy of note”. Temur Yakobashvili even called this a part of an
information war. “Nothing serious. Children were just leaving for rest,
and now they call it evacuation”. So, Minister of State for
Reintegration of Georgia thinks the death of men, women and children in
South Ossetia can be caused by “an information war”.
For an unbiased person it won`t be difficult to see a parallel
between the current humanitarian catastrophe in South Ossetia and the
war crimes of the 20th century. Remember a long Serbian blockade of
Sarajevo during an armed conflict between Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet
there are two principal differences: 1) the situation in Sarajevo
resulted from genocide of the Serbian population in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, carried out by the regime of Alija Izetbegović. 2) the
“international community” stamped the army chiefs of the Republica
Srpska as war criminals (unlike their Bosnian rivals), although Serbs
suffered most as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe in the region.
Recently First President of Republica Srpska, Radovan Karadzic, became
another victim of the western political machine. Neither Izetbegovic
nor Franjo Tudjman were honored in such a way…
Like Serbs, the people of South Ossetia have no other patrons except Russia. And Moscow cannot ignore this. No matter how the situation develops further, the people of South Ossetia will still live in fear of genocide. So
Russia has all the rights to use force to save the minor nation from
extinction. Apart from this, Moscow can resort to more complicated
diplomatic means to influence the situation in the conflict zone. The United Nations Organisation is another institution able to change the situation for the better.
One of the prior tasks is to hold an urgent meeting of the UN
Security Council in order to decide on the measures to be taken to deal
with the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophe in South Ossetia.
It demands the UN Security Council to admit that the catastrophe was
caused by Georgia’s aggressive policy and to launch a humanitarian
intervention if Tbilisi denies the accusations.
The UN Security Council has to make a difficult and serious
decision. As the world news agencies reported on August, 5, the UN
officials yet were not going to place the issue on the agenda. Despite
all this, it is Russia`s debt to remember that each day the people of
South Ossetia are being forced to leave their historical lands.
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