What About the Ossetians?

If Russia exited Georgia — as it should — and the Bush administration dropped its wish to expand NATO to Russia’s border — as it should — there would still be an issue to be dealt with: the secessionist ambitions of the majority in South Ossetia — the Georgian military response to which was the immediate cause of the current war. They are the forgotten party in the current conflict. When President Bush says the “territorial integrity of Georgia” must be respected and GOP presidential candidate John McCain declares, “Today we’re all Georgians,” they are putting politics above justice.

One need not side with Russian Prime Minister Putin, a cynical opportunist if ever there was one, to understand that the Ossetians south of the Russian border are an aggrieved party. Defenders of liberty will sympathize with the Georgian victims of Russian brutality, but they should also champion the cause of the brutalized Ossetians, who (like the Abkhazians) demand independence from Georgia.

The rest of this week's op-ed, "What About the Ossetians?," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

No Clean Hands

Against their will, Georgian men in their 40s and 50s hauled debris Saturday from the streets of separatist South Ossetia's bombed-out capital.

In a sign that Georgians are being abused in the Russian-controlled province, a Russian officer and armed Ossetians escorted forced laborers through the city, the nucleus of fighting that has pit two former Soviet neighbors against each other and worried the world.

--Associated Press

Tamaz Barbikadze tip-toed out of South Ossetia's Interior Ministry Sunday flanked by three armed guards. A frail man of 69 years, he was given five minutes to describe to two reporters how he and more than 100 other civilians had been rounded up 10 days ago and thrown into prison. As he spoke, one of his Ossetian captors casually shifted his Kalashnikov from knee to knee.

Mr. Barbikadze's crime: He is Georgian. In South Ossetia, Georgians are regarded with visceral hatred after Georgian tanks rolled into this tiny pro-Russian separatist republic fewer than two weeks ago.

Mr. Barbikadze said that he and about 150 other ethnic Georgians had been locked up in the squat Interior Ministry building since Aug. 8, the day the tanks entered the city. Appearing terrified, he said he didn't understand why he had become a "hostage."

--Wall Street Journal ($)

As Russian troops pounded through Georgia last week, the Kremlin and its allies repeatedly pointed to one justification above all others: The Georgian military had destroyed the city of Tskhinvali.

Russian politicians and their partners in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region South Ossetia, said that when Georgian forces tried to seize control of the city and the surrounding area, the physical damage was comparable to Stalingrad and the killings similar to the Holocaust.

But a trip to the city on Sunday, without official escorts, revealed a very different picture. While it was clear there had been heavy fighting — missiles knocked holes in walls, and bombs tore away rooftops — almost all of the buildings seen in an afternoon driving around Tskhinvali were still standing.

Russian-backed leaders in South Ossetia have said that 2,100 people died in fighting in Tskhinvali and nearby villages. But a doctor at the city's main hospital, the only one open during the battles that began late on Aug. 7, said the facility recorded just 40 deaths.

--McClatchy

But:

Here in Tskhinvali [South Ossetia], there was no doubt that Georgia started the war with Russia and much bitterness about the rain of artillery and rockets that the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili used in its efforts to capture the city. The Georgian government said much of the destruction of Tskhinvali was caused by a Russian counteroffensive, but that argument carries no weight with residents here, some of them clearly traumatised.

People insist that a terrible barrage struck the city late on August 7th and continued into the morning - accounts supported by western monitors who were also forced into their cellars. Indeed, buildings used by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were damaged, one severely. . . .

The scale of the destruction is undeniable; some streets summon iconic images of Stalingrad during the second World War or Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, which was levelled in two wars between Russian and Chechen separatists.

But the number of dead remains in dispute. Mikhail Minsayev, until yesterday the minister of interior in the separatist South Ossetian government, told reporters on Saturday that as many as 2,100 people had been killed.

When challenged on that figure by reporters, who cited statements by medical workers and human rights groups that there was no evidence of such a high death toll, he said people quickly buried the dead in their yards or took the bodies to North Ossetia in Russia for burial.

In conversations here, everyone interviewed said they had lost either no family members or one person. But those were interviews with people whose cellars had held. Many clearly had not.

--Irish Times

Who the Hell Is That?

"These regions are a part of Georgia,” Bush said of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, "and the international community has repeatedly made clear that they will remain so. There's no room for debate on this matter."

What could be more arrogant? Who the hell is this "international community" and why should it have any say in who governs the Ossetians and Abkhazians?

When will people stop putting up with this crap from "their" misleaders and public self-servants?

(Worth reading: Michael Dobbs's "'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.")

Condemn All Governments

Just to make it clear, civilized people should condemn all governments involved in the Georgia-Russia-South Ossetia conflict, and that includes the U.S. government. Innocent people have been victimized by barbarism on all sides. Without these governments, the people themselves are likely to work things out peacefully to mutual advantage. The state apparatus permits decision-makers to socialize the costs of violence through taxation and conscription. So we get more of it.

My latest piece on the conflict is here.

This Is Priceless

One need not defend the Russian violence in Georgia to understand the situation. No government's hands are clean in this matter (or any other, actually). But isn't the American news media overlooking the Ossetians and what Georgian President Saakashvili's forces have done there? Aren't the Georgian and Ossetian people both victims of government atrocities?

Regarding Russia, Georgia, and the U.S.

The Russian invasion of Georgia (like the U.S. invasion of Iraq) is inexcusable. The intractable dispute between the government of Georgia and the Russian-backed separatists in South Ossetia in no way warranted Russia’s air and ground attacks against innocent Georgians. Once again, “mere” people suffer for what governments do.

That said, we would be telling only part of the story if we ignored the role played by the U.S. government and its neo-imperial foreign policy. The Bush administration’s loud sponsorship of Georgia (and other former Soviet republics and satellites) for membership in NATO, and its training and equipping of the Georgian military, could have no other effect than to provoke traditional Russian fears of encirclement by the West. As the old saying goes, just because someone is “paranoid” it doesn’t mean no one is after him. The Bush plan to bring NATO -- which was established as an anti-Soviet alliance after World War II -- to the Russian doorstep is reckless and provocative. It surely emboldened Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s recent military violence against the separatists in South Ossetia, which the Russians then exploited opportunistically and ruthlessly. (Brendan O'Neill's analsysis here is worth reading. Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger. Also see Juan Cole's take on the Bush-Putin Doctrine here.)

If it is from such recklessness, provocation, and opportunism that wars are born -- yet another demonstration that the Bush foreign policy is the biggest threat to peace in the world today.