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Battle of feints explodes into heavy fighting
Russia has played off ethnic groups against one another in the Caucasus. The three-sided conflict between South Ossetia, Georgia and Russia harks back to old imperial policy.
- By Charles Clover, Financial Times
- Published: 00:02 August 10, 2008
Hostility between Ossetians and Georgians stretches back at least as far as 1839 when Mikhail Lermontov, wrote Demon, a poem about the enmities that pervade life in the high mountains of the Caucasus. When a Georgian prince was ambushed on his way to his wedding, the wicked bullet of the Ossetian/found him in the darkness, Lermontov wrote.
As Russia stands on the brink of war with Georgia over control of South Ossetia, the words were a useful reminder that things have changed little in a century and a half.
Historically, Russia has played off tribes and ethnic groups against one another in a bid to divide and rule the troublesome region. The three-sided conflict between South Ossetia, Georgia and Russia harks back to old imperial policy.
Ossetia was independent of Georgia but was absorbed into the Russian empire with Georgia, in 1801, and when the Soviet republic of Georgia was formed, following the revolution of 1917, the southern part of Ossetia became part of it. North Ossetia stayed in Russia.
As the USSR collapsed in 1991, South Ossetians moved to reclaim their independence from Georgia and, aided by Moscow, fought a brief civil war, broke away and began running their own affairs.
The Georgian government claims that Moscow supported and continues to support the rebels. After the introduction of Russian peacekeepers into the region, Georgia plausibly claimed that the Russian garrison of 1,000 tacitly supported the rebels.
For the 12 years following the civil war an uneasy truce reigned between Tbilisi and the breakaway capital in Tskhinvali. But this changed with the election of Mikheil Saakashvili as president of Georgia in 2004.
Unsuccessful attempt
The US-backed Saakashvili made restoration of the territorial integrity of Georgia his priority. Neighbouring Abkhazia, another Russia-backed breakaway region, and South Ossetia once again became the site of sporadic fighting as Tbilisi unsuccessfully tried to retake the regions.
Its efforts included setting up a rival government to the Russian-backed Eduard Kokoity in South Ossetia.
Since November 2006 Tbilisi has supported an alternative de facto South Ossetian administration led by Dmitri Sanakoev.
With two competing governments struggling for legitimacy, an inexperienced and easily provoked Georgian government in Tbilisi, and an increasingly belligerent and assertive Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, the situation was ripe to get out of control.
The flames were fanned by increasing distrust between Russia and the US as each jostled for influence in the region - the US supporting the Georgian government and Russia supporting the separatists.
This spring negotiations between Georgia and Nato over Georgia's possible accession to the Atlantic alliance shocked Russia, which is deeply opposed to the movement of Nato closer to its borders.
According to Dmitri Trenin, analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, the Russian position on Georgia's Nato bid was that "they can either be in Nato or they can have Abkhazia and South Ossetia".
Since the Nato bid, he said, the two sides had been engaged in a low-key battle of feints, deceptions and provocations - each trying to provoke the other into showing itself to be irresponsible and aggressive.
"The Georgians have been trying to get the Russians to show their true colours, that they are empire-minded and expansionist," Trenin said. And that would help the pro-Western government convince the West that it needed the protection of Nato membership.
For their part, the Russians were doing their best to provoke the Georgian government "to show them to be irresponsible firebrands" and thus unfit for Nato membership, he said.
The spark came last Friday, with the heaviest fighting since 2004. A Western diplomat in Tbilisi who had travelled to Tskhinvali said it was difficult to tell who started shooting first.
"What is clear is that last Friday there was a bomb attack on a Georgian vehicle, which injured six people; a response from Georgia, which ended up killing six on the south Ossetian side; then a pause; and then heavy fighting resumed," the diplomat said.
With Georgian forces seemingly in a pitched battle with Russian peacekeepers around Tskhinvali, and the arrival of Russian forces as reinforcements, Trenin said: "I am afraid this is just the beginning of a much, much bigger problem."
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