The Genocide in South Ossetia
The death toll is in for South Ossetia, where Russia accused Georgia of genocide, citing the murder of more than 1,500 civilians for a humanitarian invasion of Georgia.
The figure appears to be about four dozen. Quoting a hospital where virtually all the dead appear to have been taken, since the morgue was without electricity, The Wall Street Journal's Andrew Osborn puts the figure at 45; and Human Rights Watch says it was about 44. There may have been an additional few victims whose bodies did not reach the hospital.
O and G readers from the State Department and elsewhere have written me privately that they regard Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as reckless, irrational, and megalomaniacal. They and others I trust regard Saakashvili with opprobrium for bringing on Russia's wrath.
That Russia would defend South Ossetia was certain. But increasing evidence makes the attack look well pre-planned, not spontaneous. And the authentic death toll makes the justification appear to be a pretext for that attack.
I had a Skype call from Tbilisi tonight from Lawrence Sheets, with whom I reported from the Caucasus from 1992 through 2003. He was then with Reuters; now he's the regional representative for the International Crisis Group.
Sheets says that he's pored over the events leading up to the fighting, and says that Saakashvili was left with a choice on August 7th -- allow a devastating South Ossetian attack on Georgian villages adjacent to the regional capital of Tskhinvali, or stop it. And Saakashvili decided to stop it. Sheets doesn't regard that as reckless.
The course of events make it appear that the West may countenance both effective Russian annexation of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, under the guise of a form of independence, and occupation of swaths of Georgia proper. The best scenario seems to be only temporary occupation before a permanent imposition of the former -- the annexation part.
We got a picture of what that occupation could look like, at least for now, in the Georgian city of Gori today. Under the watchful eyes of Russian soldiers sitting on tanks, a paramilitary soldier stole two new SUVs belonging to United Nations officials, then dispersed them and journalists by firing into the air. As described by Yaroslav Trofimov, my former Wall Street Journal colleague, three of the U.N. officials escaped by jumping into his car, which then sped away.
The figure appears to be about four dozen. Quoting a hospital where virtually all the dead appear to have been taken, since the morgue was without electricity, The Wall Street Journal's Andrew Osborn puts the figure at 45; and Human Rights Watch says it was about 44. There may have been an additional few victims whose bodies did not reach the hospital.
O and G readers from the State Department and elsewhere have written me privately that they regard Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as reckless, irrational, and megalomaniacal. They and others I trust regard Saakashvili with opprobrium for bringing on Russia's wrath.
That Russia would defend South Ossetia was certain. But increasing evidence makes the attack look well pre-planned, not spontaneous. And the authentic death toll makes the justification appear to be a pretext for that attack.
I had a Skype call from Tbilisi tonight from Lawrence Sheets, with whom I reported from the Caucasus from 1992 through 2003. He was then with Reuters; now he's the regional representative for the International Crisis Group.
Sheets says that he's pored over the events leading up to the fighting, and says that Saakashvili was left with a choice on August 7th -- allow a devastating South Ossetian attack on Georgian villages adjacent to the regional capital of Tskhinvali, or stop it. And Saakashvili decided to stop it. Sheets doesn't regard that as reckless.
The course of events make it appear that the West may countenance both effective Russian annexation of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, under the guise of a form of independence, and occupation of swaths of Georgia proper. The best scenario seems to be only temporary occupation before a permanent imposition of the former -- the annexation part.
We got a picture of what that occupation could look like, at least for now, in the Georgian city of Gori today. Under the watchful eyes of Russian soldiers sitting on tanks, a paramilitary soldier stole two new SUVs belonging to United Nations officials, then dispersed them and journalists by firing into the air. As described by Yaroslav Trofimov, my former Wall Street Journal colleague, three of the U.N. officials escaped by jumping into his car, which then sped away.
Labels: abkhazia, georgia, ossetia, Putin, putin's labyrinth, Russia
12 Comments:
Steve,
I've come out very strongly against Saakashvili in this crisis, not just for what he did last week but for his whole aggressive and counter-productive policy towards S Ossetia and Abkhazia in general – which now means he has almost certainly lost them for Georgia.
This was my take on IWPR, following on a shorter piece for The Observer.
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=346078&apc_state=henpcrs
We need to reconstruct what happened last Thursday night. There was definitely firing on some Georgian villages, but the Georgian bombardment at 23.30 was ferocious and then followed by a ground offensive.
This is the eye-witness account of Larisa Sotieva, who has worked with conflict-prevention NGOs for years, now lives in London and was in Tskhinvali.
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=346117&apc_state=henpcrs
And this is Civil Georgia the next morning at 11.38 Tbilisi time
“President Saakashvili said he had announced a general mobilization of reserve troops amid “large-scale military aggression” by Russia.
In a live televised address on August 8, Saakashvili said Georgian government troops had gone “on the offensive” after South Ossetian militias responded to his peace initiative on August 7 by shelling Georgian villages.
As a result, he said, Georgian forces now controlled “most of South Ossetia.”
He said the breakaway region’s districts of Znauri, Tsinagari, as well as the villages of Dmenisi, Gromi, and Khetagurovo, were “already liberated” by Georgian forces.
“A large part of Tskhinvali is now liberated and fighting is ongoing in the center of Tskhinvali,” he added.”
No mention there of the “tanks in the Roki Tunnel” line that Saakashvili began to use a few days ago. Larisa said that the first Russian troops she saw at Java was at 8AM.
The bad explanation for the intensity of the Georgian offensive is that Saakashvili wanted to recapture S Ossetia in 24 hours, while Putin was at the Olympics, and present his Western friends with a fait accompli.
If so, military analysts then wonder why he didn’t make a bigger effort to block the Roki Tunnel. We will have to learn more.
And of course the Russians were planning their response as soon as Misha made his move.
As for casualties, if you take the usual proportion of three wounded to one dead and we know there are around 200 wounded in Vladikavkaz and 300+ in Tskhinvali, then number of dead comes out at around 160, maybe 200. Quite possible given the fact that not all are probably in the morgue.
Aerial bombardment of people in cellars fortunately does not inflict as many casualties as the damage it causes. Casualty figures from the 1994-5 assault on Grozny may have been as low as 3-5,000 despite the huge destruction.
But semi-destroying Tskhinvali and sending in your troops, if not genocide, is definitely a war crime.
And a crime against Georgia, given what happened subsequently.
Tom
Tom, thanks for the thoughtful and complete comment. Larisa's report -- which I had not seen -- is must-reading. A principal problem with the analysis out there is that -- unlike in the outbreak of the first Chechen war -- there was not a press corps observing.
As you know, parsing over fatality figures plays directly into the hands of the propagandists. They want to keep people busy discussing whether the number dead is 44 or 160. We can agree however that it's not 1,500 or 2,000. So let's leave that there.
Your main point in any case is not to debate figures, but Saakashvili's decision to attack and occupy. You regard that as a war crime.
I'm not prepared to say that, especially since I get a sense of piling on, and of what seems to me to be obscuring Russia's behavior as, well, what can one expect of Moscow, anyway? Saakashvili, being a Georgian, should have known better.
Thanks again and I hope you keep writing in. For those not yet linking in, IWPR, at www.iwpr.org, is a superb organization.
Best Steve
Enjoying all of the commentary here. Like most, I tend to see Russian military actions in the Caucasus cynically--that is, usually punitive in nature and meant to control the "hot-blooded" Caucasians.
Leaving emotions and ideals aside for a second (though I know you really can't), do readers feel Russia is at all justified in thinking that either the Georgian military or angered Georgian citizens would lash out/kill non-Georgians, especially in Ossetia, b/c of the rebel activities? In other words, even given Sheets analysis, is there reason to entertain the notion that the Russians did have citizens to protect from Georgian nationalism, even if you feel solidly that the rebels' actions were provocative and worthy of put down?
Pavel Felgengauer says that today it's absolutely obvious that the Russian invasion wasn't spontaneous. It was pre-planned with the plans having been made in April
http://novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/59/04.html
Pavel Felgengauer says that today it's absolutely obvious that the Russian invasion wasn't spontaneous. It was pre-planned with the plans having been made in April
http://novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/59/04.html
Thanks N. That is a good article, and there is a link to the English version of it in the fourth paragraph of this posting.
"But increasing evidence makes the attack look well pre-planned, not spontaneous."
Um, the job of a professional military staff is to have plans for likely contingencies. Give someone like Saakashvili an Army with GRAD rocket launchers, and a lunatic, indiscriminately destructive bombardment of Tskhinvali is a very likely contingency.
Saakashvili rained death and destruction on Tskhinvali, with area weapons that are by their nature indiscriminate and massively lethal. And the Russian Army was ready when he did.
To: Anonymous, the one who wrote:"the job of a professional military staff is to have plans for likely contingencies."
Read Pavel Felgengauer's analysis, best if in Russian (a link is provided above), before being a smart aleck.
If you want to talk about the duties of a general staff, I would agree with your assertion and go even further and say that the job of a military staff is to have plans for ANY and ALL (not just the likely ones, as you say) contingencies and then assign each contingency its own probability. It's called scenario-based planning. We can debate the stuff in length but do read Pavel Felgengauer's analysis first.
Paul Goble (citing ingushetiya dot ru) reported a small riot between Ossetians and Ingush in N. Ossetia. No deaths, but I worry that N.O. will cynically settle S.O. refugees in Prigorodny to dilute what's left of the local Ingush community, thus both jump-starting that mess and adding to the low-level insurrection in Ingushetia.
(Steve, thank you again for sharing your insights. Please accept my grateful apologies on behalf of all annoying, self-educated, armchair Caucasus geeks. Because I'm an even more annoying, self-educated, armchair Middle Volga geek, I'll be counting on you when unrest hits Ufa and Kazan, seeing that they have oil too.)
n:
Felgengauer, the self-appointed expert, knows nothing about military affairs. His standard trope is to either villify the Russian army or portray it as a bunch of bumbling fools. If they are not evil, then they are incompetent. If they win, it's only through brutality and numerical advantage, disregard for casualties, etc., etc. Only a few months ago he was describing the Georgian army as the creme de la creme of CIS, and that Russia had nothing to match it.
Now that the Georgeans got their asses kicked, the excuses are coming thick and fast (I did not even bother to read it). But the fact is, the Russians were outnumbered 10 to 1 on day 1, and are still outnumbered 2 to 1 in Georgia (not counting the Georgian reserves). They deployed very little airpower. If they were well prepared, don't you think they'd deploy something more recent than the crap we've seen so far? The truth is, the professional Georgian army in their smart American uniforms was beaten by a bunch of skinny conscripts with derelict equipment.
Pavel Felgenhauer is like everyone else on the region -- sometimes he gets it right, sometimes wrong. For instance, as noted in these comments, he anticipated a tougher stand by the Georgians. He also has his own lens for evaluating the military. But he remains one of the best and hardest-working military analysts on the ground in the region. So he remains a must-read.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm certainly pro-Russian. About a quick military response. A few days before conflict Russian troops has military exercise near the border (so did Georgian + US troops inside Georgia). Hence, it could have been expected, that response will be quick.
There is a question of genocide, it bother me as well, however, most bothersome thing is lack of foreign journalists in S.Ossetia. We all saw the bias against Russia, and reports from Georgia. But there was not (and still is not) single western journalist in the area of actual conflict. What's up with that?
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