The war in Georgia has become a poker game in which Russia holds the best cards, and thousands of refugees will suffer, writes Lara Marlowein Tbilisi
THE GEORGIAN FARMER had fled his village of Tkhviavi the previous afternoon, when armed men arrived and began setting fire to houses. I met him at a bus stop on the national highway to Tbilisi, where he waited with other refugees. On the verge of hysteria, he could not recount coherently what he had been through. But his question, posed in a loud wail, stayed with me: "How can this happen in the 21st century?" It's possible the farmer had heard George W Bush's televised statement from the White House a day and a half earlier. "Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people," Bush said. "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."
Georgians have been glued to television sets and radios since the war started on August 8th. When asked what they need, refugees and those who've remained behind in frontline towns deprived of electricity rank news on a par with food and transport. The telecommunications network is saturated much of the time, because Georgians call each other constantly to share the tiniest scrap of information.
Thanks in large part to Bush, the 21st century is shaping up to be just as messy as the 20th. The West was still reeling from petrol at $125 a barrel, hundreds of thousands of dead in destroyed Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Now, in a bolt from the blue, a war in the Caucasus involving obscure names such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
At best, as the US defence secretary Robert Gates reminded us on Thursday, this war will affect Russia's relations with the West for years to come. True, the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili fired the first shots in the night of August 7th to 8th, bombarding the South Ossetian "capital" of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket-launchers, but Russia responded with extreme violence, including aerial bombardments against Gori, Poti and the outskirts of the capital, Tbilisi.
US and Georgian officials claim that Russia "provoked" Saakashvili into attacking. "For days, so-called South Ossetian peacekeepers were firing from behind Russian lines on Georgian villages," said the US special envoy to the region, Matthew Bryza. And, he added, Russia sent reinforcements into South Ossetia through the only access point, the Roki tunnel, before the conflict started.
But Saakashvili should never have started a fight he could not win, an increasing number of his compatriots are saying. Georgian troops were quickly driven out of South Ossetia, and Russian troops - accompanied by the marrauding irregulars of the "North Caucasus Volunteers" - entered Georgia proper from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since the beginning of this week, the Russians have played the role of pyromaniac firemen, purporting to be "peacekeepers" in Georgia while their proxy militia drives farmers from villages around Gori.
An estimated 100,000 refugees have converged on Tbilisi, which is already home to 300,000 refugees from the South Ossetian and Abkhazian wars of 1991-1993. Many are refugees for the second time now, having fled Tskhinvali 17 years ago.
Georgians have reacted with generosity. Middle-class residents of Tbilisi are sharing small apartments with a dozen or more relatives. "This is the time when we have to share what we have," says Avto, a farmer in a village near Gori who has taken in a family of three. When I returned from Gori on Thursday evening, two men were carting away bags full of towels and bed linen, donated to refugees by my small, family-run hotel.
TRUTH WAS AN immediate casualty of this war. The wildest rumours circulate. On Monday night, reports that Russian troops were only 20km from Tbilisi spread through the city. There was panic on the streets, as people rushed home to pack. It seems someone in Mtskheta, 20km northwest of the capital, mistook retreating Georgian troops for Russians. Georgian media later blamed European journalists for creating panic.
Georgian state television is quick to report alleged atrocities, for example the kidnapping of a five-year-old girl from a minibus carrying refugees. The government has established a freephone hotline to report the actions of the Russians and irregulars. There is no doubt that the invaders have stolen a large number of cars, ransacked shops and burned houses. Accounts of rape, kidnapping and murder are more difficult to substantiate.
Each time I delved into a report of a beheading or summary execution, it turned out to be second- or third-hand information, with one exception. A middle-aged woman named Cicino, from Kavaleti, told me: "People from the village gathered together and walked towards the Russians, to ask them for safety. They fired in the air. They shot at a handicapped young man who was running, and he fell dead. We buried him. They went in the houses and drank all the alcohol they found. They party in the houses, and then they break everything. They slaughtered two cows and roasted them and partied. Everything I tell you I saw, with my neighbours."
Natalya (49), a Russian woman married to a Georgian, fled from the village of Marana. With her fair hair, high cheekbones and blue eyes, she stood out from the other refugees. The militiamen, too, saw she was different, and spoke to her in Russian. "They aren't killing people," Natalya claimed, "But when they get drunk, they shoot every which way, and it's terrifying. Most of them were Ossetians, but some told me they were Chechens and Cossacks. They had slanted eyes. I asked them how long they would stay, and they said maybe a month. 'We're not thieves,' they told me, laughing. But they are stealing."
THE MERE PROSPECT of the arrival of Russians, and especially the infamous "Volunteers", is enough to make most refugees flee. "There were a lot of atrocities in the wars in the early 1990s," explains Alexander, a university student who fled Gori. He claims the 1991 war in South Ossetia started because an Ossetian murdered his newborn niece in her cradle, because the infant's father was Georgian.
"In South Ossetia, five people were kidnapped and castrated and their genitals stuffed in their mouths," Alexander continues. "In Abkhazia in 1993, the Chechens and Cossacks were very savage. They decapitated their victims and played football with their heads. There are videos of it. The Georgian government filed a suit for war crimes at the European Court of Human Rights, but nothing happened." True or false, these tales of atrocities have become part of Georgian folk memory.
Were it not for the deaths of hundreds of people, including five journalists, and the suffering of the refugees, this war would seem almost farcical. There has been no aerial bombardment since last Monday. Aside from schools occupied by refugees, Tbilisi is functioning as a normal, modern city. For the journalists who have flocked here, it's a commuter war; one sleeps in a comfortable hotel with internet and satellite television in Tbilisi, and drives the 60km to the front line at Gori each morning.
Georgian forces retreat, then muster up the courage to drive up to within a few hundred metres of the Russian checkpoint at Gori. The Russians are the cat; the Georgians the mouse. The Russians say "boo" by sending out a patrol, and the Georgians speed away in a panic. The media wait all day in the no-man's-land between them. On Thursday, a female Georgian television presenter was milling around with the other journalists when a stray bullet grazed her left forearm. She fell to the ground, and was taken into the television van to have her arm bandaged. She was back on air within minutes, triumphantly waving her war wound.
Maj Gen Vyacheslav Borislav, who presents himself as the Russian commander of Gori, is straight out of central casting. Overweight, apparently drunk and cursing, Borislav allowed a handful of journalists to accompany the short-lived return of Georgian police to Gori on Thursday. Though Moscow had promised to withdraw from the town, which had a pre-war population of 150,000, Borisov told the Georgians he'd take them under his command and deploy them on joint checkpoints with Russian troops. "In two days I'll check how you're working," the Russian general reportedly told the policemen. "And if you are not working well, I will dismiss you." It's not clear what caused the police to beat a hasty retreat from Gori; the general's condescension, or an attempt by a Georgian policeman to arrest a looter.
Now the best intentions of Georgia's western allies have collided with the seemingly immoveable force of Vladimir Putin's will. There is talk in Washington of excluding Moscow from the G8 club of the world's most powerful nations, banning Russia from the World Trade Organisation and boycotting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
But, as Condoleezza Rice flew into Tbilisi yesterday with a new peace proposal in her pocket, it was clear that Russia holds the best cards in this high-stakes poker. Rice reportedly planned to offer Russia new concessions, in particular a "temporary" dispensation for Russian troops to continue to patrol six miles into Georgia.
Poor little Georgia. With a population roughly equivalent to that of Ireland, its rash, young leader, a US-trained lawyer, promised his compatriots he'd take them into Nato and the EU, and get back the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
As the US defence secretary Robert Gates said this week, there seems to be fighting between Georgians and these minorities every August. An attempt to retake South Ossetia in the summer of 2004 failed. Two summers later, Saakashvili sent troops into the Kodori Valley of Abkhazia.
THESE OPERATIONS INCREASED Vladimir Putin's loathing for Saakashvili. In the days of the Soviet Union, the Russians regarded Georgia as a playground, the land of Black Sea resorts, wine, mineral water and gangsters.
The sophisticated, westernised Georgians regard the Russians as oafs. "I am ashamed of Russia," Isa Ordjonikidze, a poet and literature professor told me. "I wish the rest of the world would teach them some culture."
For their part, the Russians seem to regard the Georgians as upstarts and American lackeys. Saakashvili sent 2,000 soldiers to Iraq - the third largest force there, after Americans and Britons, though he had to repatriate them for this war. I saw Georgian soldiers in US military uniforms this week, and ate US rations off the back of a pick-up truck with Georgian policemen. The 125 US military advisers who trained them have been reassigned to the US "military humanitarian" relief mission.
This week, Putin's protégé president, Dmitry Medvedev, called Saakashvili a "lunatic bastard" with whom Moscow will not negotiate. Saakashvili has likened Russia to a "hungry crocodile" - Georgia being a man who is eager to keep his leg.
Saakashvili has transformed Georgia's economy, which grew 12 per cent last year. The sparkling glass, marble and steel terminal at Tbilisi international airport rivals any airport in Europe, and the total absence of bureaucracy is stunning for a former Soviet republic. Though he has shown an unfortunate authoritarian streak, Saakashvili also took on corruption, firing half of the 30,000 traffic police who used to extort bribes.
But Saakashvili refused to heed Putin's repeated warnings that he would not tolerate countries in the Caucasus joining Nato. The Nato summit in Bucharest in April recognised the candidacy of Georgia and the Ukraine, and would have gone further had it not been for French and German opposition - interpreted here as "Sarkozy selling us out for Russian gas". Europe imports 25 per cent of its natural gas from Russia. The BTC pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey carries 2 per cent of the world's petrol. Moscow denies Georgian and US accusations that it has attacked the pipeline in the week-old war.
"For centuries," Putin said recently, "Russia has played a positive, stabilising role throughout the Caucasus. She was the guarantor of security, co-operation and progress in this region. It was thus in the past, and it shall be so in the future." Putin also warned he would consider independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo to be a precedent for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but the US and EU nonetheless recognised Kosovo's independence last February. In an ironic role reversal, Georgia now plays the part of Belgrade, trying to hold on to a breakaway province. And Russia supports the Ossetians and Abkhazians, just as Nato supported the Kosovo Liberation Army. This week, president Medvedev swore Russia would act as a "guarantor" for the pro-Russian enclaves "in the Caucasus and throughout the world". Though a wider war is in no one's interest, tensions further afield are feeding the conflict. Ukraine, which also wants to join Nato, has been emboldened by the war in Georgia, telling the Russians they need permission to enter and leave the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Also this week, the US and Poland concluded an agreement for the US to deploy part of its missile shield - which Moscow opposes - in Poland. Negotiations had lasted for 18 months, but once the Georgian war started, Washington was prepared to give Poland all the military assistance it wanted.
The ultimate danger, which no one dares contemplate, would be war between the US and Russia. "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," the US defence secretary said on Thursday. Which is why, despite Saakashvili's ardent support for the occupation of Iraq, Tbilisi will probably be left in the lurch.
US journalists have mercilessly recalled the first meeting between Bush and Putin, in Slovenia in 2001. "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul," Bush said at the time, calling Putin a "straightforward and trustworthy man".
With similar naivety, Nicolas Sarkozy now assures us that if Saakashvili will only sign the peace accord with the Russians, everything will fall back into place and we can all go back to our summer vacations and watching the Beijing Olympics.