Conflict revives Cold War memories

GEORGIA:THE WEEK-LONG conflict between Georgia and Russia felt like a throwback to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Once again, drunken irregulars in balaclavas robbed refugees and journalists at gunpoint, torched villages and allegedly raped women, on the fringes of Europe.

On August 11th, three days after the conflict started, someone at Mtsekheta, 20km north of the capital Tbilisi, mistook fleeing Georgian troops for Russians. Cold War memories - of Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956 - resurfaced, and the panicked residents of the capital prepared for an imminent Russian arrival.

Were it not for EU mediation, led by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the Russians might have reached Tibilisi. "Their goal was psychological," says Salomé Zourabichvili, a former Georgian foreign minister who now opposes President Mikheil Saakashvili.

"They didn't intend to conquer the country, but to frighten us, to re-establish a relationship of domination." The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported in September that 163,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the conflict. Several hundred lives are believed to have been lost.

Georgia foolishly started it by bombarding the South Ossetian "capital" Tskhinvali with BM-21 multiple rocket launchers during the night of August 7th-8th, and sending Georgian ground troops into the breakaway enclave they had lost in the early 1990s. Backed by the Russians, the South Ossetians had provoked the attack by shelling Georgian villages, but Saakashvili fell into their trap.

Within three days, the Georgian army was routed by far superior Russian forces. Under the watchful eye of Russian officers, the South Ossetian, Cossack and Chechen militiamen of the "North Caucasus Volunteers" continued to "ethnically cleanse" Georgian villages in South Ossetia through the second week of August.

Saakashvili monopolised western satellite television, declaring on August 12th that "Georgia will never surrender". But despite the purchase of huge quantities of US and Israeli military hardware, and the presence of military advisers from both countries, Georgia was left in the lurch. "The United States spent 45 years working very hard to avoid a military confrontation with Russia. I see no reason to change that approach today," US defence secretary Robert Gates said on August 14th.

Russia promised repeatedly to leave the central Georgian town of Gori - strategically located on the main east-west highway, railway line and gas pipeline - but lingered until late August. And it took Moscow two months to comply with the peace agreement it signed in mid-August. The EU deployed a 200-strong observer force, but by mid-December the Russians were still denying the Europeans access to some villages. Russian troops continued minor violations of the ceasefire, entering and exiting villages just beyond South Ossetia, in "Georgia proper", at will.

In his 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech Winston Churchill said: "There is nothing [the Russians] admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness." More than 60 years later, Churchill's maxim holds true.

After Moscow recognised the "independence" of the Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in late August, there was empty talk of economic sanctions in the EU. Ultimately, dependence on Russian gas and petrol outweighed affection for Georgia's flawed democracy. The EU temporarily suspended negotiations for a new EU-Russia partnership agreement, but resumed talks in early December.

As a result of the summer war, Georgia has probably lost the breakaway enclaves forever. Saakashvili's leadership is increasingly questioned, both at home and abroad.