Ruined houses, rubble and the red roofs of refugee villages – a year on from Georgia’s military defeat by Russia, its landscape is showing the long-term scars of its failed bid to dominate South Ossetia
APPLES HANG HEAVY again in the orchard of Nikolos Kasradze, a bitter-sweet reminder of better times. His house now lies in ruins and he sleeps in a tent beside a pile of twisted shell-casings fired by the Russian troops who descended on his village a year ago. Just down the road, Georgian forces patrol the de-facto border with South Ossetia, a tiny patch of land that triggered a vicious five-day war last August between the Kremlin and the West’s closest ally in the Caucasus.
“We were used to occasional gunfire around here, and couldn’t believe that there would be war,” Kasradze (32) recalled this week. “But as it got worse we got the children out, and then, when Russian planes started bombing, we left as well. Only my father refused to go, but we finally got him out when Russian helicopters were flying over, firing at everything. Twenty minutes later, their tanks rolled into the village.”
The tiny village of Ergneti was swallowed up as Russian forces drove back Georgia’s bid to retake control of South Ossetia, a tiny province that had been run by separatists since a bloody bout of fighting during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Hundreds of people were killed and almost 200,000 displaced by last year’s war, which wrecked Georgia’s economy and ruined its chances of early entry into Nato, while also demonstrating Russia’s determination to retain its influence in the strategically crucial Black Sea region.
Twelve months on, most South Ossetians have returned to homes that are now protected by the more than 3,000 Russian troops stationed in their homeland, whose post-war declaration of independence has been recognised only by Russia and Nicaragua.
About 29,000 Georgians are still displaced, however, many from villages in South Ossetia that were looted and razed by local militias as Russian troops looked on, in what some claimed was justified revenge for Georgia’s indiscriminate shelling of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.
The Kasradze family are more fortunate than many of their compatriots. The little house built for them by relief agencies with EU money stands on their own land, rather than in one of the refugee villages whose rows of identical red-roofed dwellings now dot the Georgian landscape. But the cottage is tiny for a family of seven people – that’s why Nikolos sleeps in a tent – and they have no idea whether they will be able to rebuild the eight-room home that was passed down from Nikolos’s great-grandfather. The family’s fields are parched because the South Ossetians blocked the flow of water from the mountains and, although their apples appear to be thriving, the Kasradzes and their neighbours face financial ruin because they can no longer sell their produce in South Ossetia or Russia.
“We used to trade all over this region before, but now there is nowhere to go,” says Nikolos’s mother, Madina Kasradze (58). “We haven’t even got buckets to collect the apples or boxes to pack them in, never mind a good house and cellar for storage. We had such a nice place here before – now we just don’t know what to do.”
A COUPLE OF miles down the road in the village of Tirdznisi, 63-year-old Tariel Samadashvili’s home is rising from the rubble. “We had a great place, full of things. My grandfather started building it, then my father made improvements, and then me. But last year they took everything and burned the house down,” he says, surveying the repair work he has started, using compensation money from the government. “The Russians drove through here in their tanks and the Ossetians came behind, doing what they liked. We used to have Ossetian neighbours and lived together without problems. We need to get back to those days, otherwise we’ll be fighting all the time. With that huge country of theirs, what do the Russians want here?”
This is a sentiment heard often among Georgian victims of the war, most of whom insist that they could live peacefully with South Ossetians if Russia withdrew and gave them a chance.
“The Russians held us captive for two days on a road to prevent the Georgians shelling it, and on the day I was released they looted my house and burned it down,” says Kocha Kakhniashvili (44), who used to work as a welder and had a three-storey house and orchards that yielded some 15 tonnes of apples each year. He lives now in one of the hundreds of houses thrown up by the Georgian authorities to cope with the flood of refugees, who each receive the equivalent of €10 and a UN food parcel each month. Conditions in the settlements vary greatly: while some consist of solid houses with electricity, gas and running water, others have leaky roofs, cracked walls and no amenities.
The only real work for the refugees is in their own little kitchen-gardens and on projects run by the UN refugee agency and other aid groups, involving tasks such as digging wells and building fences. Thousands of refugees are also still stuck in makeshift dormitory accommodation in schools, community centres and other public buildings. This all helps to explain the widely held dream of a swift return to their former homes.
“All the Georgian houses in my village were robbed and burned down, but I hope to go back. Maybe we’ll be there in five years, if the Russians clear off,” says Kakhniashvili.
Even men such as Kocha Petriashvili, who took up arms against South Ossetian militias in 1991 and again last year, dream of going back to their villages inside the self-proclaimed republic. “We stayed after the Georgian troops pulled out, and tried to defend our homes. But it wasn’t like 1991,” he says. “This time, we had Kalashnikovs but the other side had tanks, so it was hopeless. But it’s the Russians who are to blame – without them there wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe we can go home in a year’s time, if America and the European Union give us enough support.”
The war, however, did nothing for Georgia’s standing with Washington and the EU, and confirmed many people’s view that president Mikheil Saakashvili is an unpredictable hot-head. They say his attack on Tskhinvali was bound to fail and that it gave Russian hawks, such as prime minister Vladimir Putin, the perfect opportunity to seize control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgia which declared independence last year and is now guarded by Russian troops.
Saakashvili’s military adventure enabled Russia to humiliate Georgia and to expose the impotence of its EU and Nato allies. Russia has now reasserted its authority in a Caucasus region that is a vital transit route for oil and gas heading west from the Caspian Sea. If unstable Georgia was to become a failed state, the EU’s efforts to reduce its energy dependence on Russia would be doomed.
GEORGIA’S LEADER MAY also have ruined any chance Tbilisi had of regaining South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the foreseeable future.Russia dominates every aspect of life in both regions and insists it will do everything necessary to defend their residents, to whom it has given Russian passports.
While many Georgians dream of going back to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, locals there refuse to countenance a return to rule from Tbilisi, which they associate with oppression dating back to Soviet times and the brutal wars of the early 1990s and last year.
While Abkhazia’s sub-tropical climate, Black Sea coastline and soaring Caucasian peaks give it enough tourist and agricultural potential to survive as a independent state, South Ossetia is wholly reliant on Russian handouts, subsistence farming and extensive smuggling operations.
Its leader, the ex-wrestler and alleged former gangster, Eduard Kokoity, makes no secret of his ambition to unite South Ossetians with their ethnic kin in the Russian republic of North Ossetia. “My goal in life, my political goal, is to unite my people,” he said recently. “We will build our own state, which will be in alliance with Russia, together with Russia – and I am not excluding that one day we will be part of Russia. The people of South Ossetia want to be united with Russia.”
Moscow has promised to repair the damage wreaked by the war, but a recent visit by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev found rubble-strewn Tskhinvali little changed. It is unlikely to be coincidence that a Russian construction magnate was this week named as South Ossetia’s new prime minister, with a brief to accelerate rebuilding work and stop funds being squandered and stolen.
Across the disputed frontier dividing Georgia and South Ossetia, between the refugee villages, the gutted houses and the silent orchards, move little reminders of the old life: a few Georgians venture to the other side to tend their fields, and a bus brings a couple of dozen Ossetian children the other way to attend school. But tension has risen ahead of this week’s anniversary of the war, and people living here are scared and feel they have no control over their future.
“We’re hearing more gunfire now, and it reminds us of last year,” says Nikolos Kasradze, sitting in the shade between his temporary house and his shattered home. “I don’t know if there will be another war – that’s a question for Putin and Medvedev.”