Kurt Bassuener August 10th, 2008
The conflict that began in the Georgian breakaway enclave of South Ossetia on August 7 shows no sign of ending, with Russian aircraft bombarding targets well outside the conflict zone - outside the capital, in the Black Sea port of Poti, and in the city immediately south of South Ossetia, Gori, which had been a staging area for the Georgian effort to re-establish sovereignty over South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali. Some of the best reporting comes from Al Jazeera English’s Jonah Hull, who has been in the conflict zone since before Saakashvili’s effort to retake South Ossetia, by interviewing refugees moving into North Ossetia, in Russia. His footage of civilian casualties in Gori yesterday was bracing.
The conflict has now expanded to Georgia’s other separatist area, Abkhazia, which has called for UN military observers to leave, and has mobilized its armed forces to approach its self-declared borders and itself declared a state of war, citing an “obligation” to support South Ossetia. Georgia claims thousands Russian troops have landed in Abkhazia, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, based at Sevastopol in Ukraine’s Crimea, is establishing a blockade off the Georgian coast - though Moscow denies this is the case.
Georgia is calling for a ceasefire, but Russia has not yet taken them up on it, apparently aiming to secure both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia declares that is is withdrawing its forces from Tskhinvali, but Russia disputes this - a BBC correspondent claimed that there was still some combat going on. US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad claimed that Russian forces were preventing the withdrawal of the Georgian troops. Russia is demanding a unilateral withdrawal of Georgian forces from South Ossetia and a signed agreemement with South Ossetia of non-aggression as conditions for a cease fire. Russian UN Ambassador Vitali Churkin was in rare form in the UNSC today, asking whether 2000 civilian casualties and tens of thousands of refugees constituted a genocide, and mused whether the Georgians thought Russian peacekeepers in a pre-conflict joint force would have “run away” like those in Srebrenica…
In his speech to announce a state of war yesterday, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called on the West to assist Georgia with acts, not words, and repeatedly cited Georgian democracy and international values. Russia, too, is citing international standards, claiming this operation is “peace enforcement” and ”humanitarian intervention,” using terms to mimic those employed in 1999 with regard to the NATO operation in Kosovo. Vitali Churkin made this link directly in rebutting Khalilzad’s criticism of attacks outside the conflict zone, citing bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
Russia seems to have been waiting for a pretext to “teach Georgia a lesson” for some time, annoyed by its persistent efforts to get into NATO and the EU, and citing Kosovo as a precedent for its intervention. Prime Minister Putin is firmly in charge, arriving directly in North Ossetia from the Olympics in Beijing to command the operation. He may even be aiming to get Saakashvili ousted from within. That does not look in the immediate offing.
But what does seem clear is that Saakashvili dramatically miscalculated his position when he attempted to seize Tskhinvali, and gave Russia the rope to hang him with. His calls for international support are being met only in the diplomatic realm, but it is hard to see what else he could have expected when picking a fight with his much stronger and increasingly assertive neighbor. Far from drawing closer to the EU and NATO, the war that Georgia has stumbled into makes these goals that much less likely.
Yet without a doubt, calling the Russian military action “disproportionate” is accurate. Putin senses there is no external will to resist his drive, and he’s certainly correct. But the Russian war in Georgia may have the opposite consequence than Putin intended, convincing other neighbors of the need to get into binding arrangements with the West, rather than deterring them.
