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  • Georgia on their minds

    Georgia on their minds

    Russia wants South Ossetia and Abkhazia back - and so does Georgia. When I
    met soldiers in these breakaway regions, they were ready for a fight
    Simon Reeve

    Guardian/UK
    April 20, 2008 9:00 AM

    During lunch in a quiet café, the tough young South Ossetian soldiers
    downed mugs of vodka to celebrate their sergeant's birthday, then
    linked arms and sang patriotic songs of war and independence. After a
    few rounds, as if remembering their duty, they sobered up, gathered
    their Kalashnikovs, and headed off to man defences and pillboxes on
    the frontline with Georgia.

    A breakaway region of Georgia, South Ossetia is one of several
    separatist republics scattered across former Soviet states that are
    at the centre of rumbling conflicts largely forgotten by the rest
    of the world. Despite being the cause of regional wars after the
    Soviet Union collapsed, the issues that provoked fighting in South
    Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan,
    or Transniestria, a renegade sliver of a country between Moldova and
    Ukraine, have never really been resolved.

    Visiting several of these breakaway states a few years ago, including
    South Ossetia, was a trip through a timewarp. Fields were ploughed by
    horses and old trucks belched soot. Development had been slow and most
    people were poorer than during Soviet times. I was struck by a sense
    that both sides were waiting for the other to make a bold, decisive
    move. Either the separatists would finally declare full independence,
    or the former mother country - be it Georgia or Moldova - would attack
    and invade.

    These tense situations need careful, patient diplomacy. But Russia
    has been meddling in the former Soviet states, partly to discourage
    Nato and the west from moving closer to its borders, and partly in
    the hope of recovering fragments of the old empire.

    So the Kremlin has openly wooed, funded and encouraged separatists in
    areas of Georgia and Transniestria, which split from Moldova. Russia
    has also established military bases in both regions, with hundreds
    of soldiers and heavy weaponry on the ground. The Kremlin calls
    them "peacekeepers"; Georgian officials wryly describe them as
    "piece-keepers".

    Now, as revenge for western recognition of Kosovo, and because Moscow
    has never really accepted the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russia
    has announced it is further strengthening economic and political
    links with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

    It is a bold attempt to encourage the two separatist states to join
    Russia and ultimately accept annexation. But the new move by the
    Kremlin dramatically increases the risk of war with Georgia, which
    has long vowed to take back control of its separatist republics.

    So what do South Ossetians and Abkhazians want? When I visited South
    Ossetia, the state was on a war footing. Locals stressed they were
    Ossetes, not Georgians, and wanted unification with their brothers
    in the region of North Ossetia, across the border in Russia. Like
    the separatists in Abkhazia, who view themselves as an ancient ethnic
    group, they would prefer full independence, but would settle for rule
    from Moscow over rule from Tiblisi.

    Even if this crisis can be resolved peacefully, which seems unlikely,
    others still simmer across the former Soviet Union. Transniestria
    and Nagorno-Karabakh, now an almost entirely Christian enclave inside
    Azerbaijan since Muslim Azeris were forced out, are both at the centre
    of possible future wars. Troops on both sides seemed ready for a
    fight. Surely it is time the European Union took a more active role
    in resolving these festering conflicts. The alternative could be war
    on the EU's eastern border.

    Leaving South Ossetia, I chatted with heavily-armed Russian
    "peacekeepers" on the border with Georgia. All clearly felt they
    were defending an enclave of Mother Russia. I asked what they would
    do if Georgian troops tried to retake South Ossetia. One pointed to
    the Russian flag velcroed onto his uniform.

    "We will take off our badges," he said adamantly, "and we will fight."

    --Boundary_(ID_R/cl5BEjaQVsAIGvTKnLD w)--

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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