South Ossetia: The War Way of Life

A year has passed since Georgia and Russia fought a short and violent war over the impoverished Ossetian enclave around Tskhinvali. Shots are still sometimes fired along the border, and both sides continue to accuse the other of provocation, Ben Judah writes for ISN Security Watch.

Like any nationalist, South Ossetian Defense Minister Yuri Tanaev uses history to explain everything. He says that Georgians have always sought to eradicate Ossetians on the southern slopes of the Caucasus. There is nothing new about this and even the latest incidents can be traced back to a thousand-year arc of violence and retribution.

Like a typical soldier, he is coarse and gruff. “The Georgians [...]  provoke us by firing special bombs that explode mid-air before reaching targets in our territory. They fire shots in the air.”

“For the people of Tskhinvali, every shot fired causes serious damage psychologically. After 20 years of violence, every time something goes off, people get truly frightened,” Tanaev says.

Yet with the Russian army in South Ossetia, Tanaev is certain the Georgians will not launch any more direct assaults.
“Russia is engaged in training our forces and has four bases in the territory. They have 1,500 troops here and recently installed 800 border guards. We are strong now. We took lots of material the Georgians had from their base in Gori and in total there are about 2,000 Ossetian forces here.”

Earlier that day, Tanaev had proudly pointed ISN Security Watch in the direction of an armored personnel carrier trundling down a mud road. “Isn’t it great? [...] It’s Israeli [...] we seized it during the war.”

Once a fighter...

In Sukhumi, at a dinner with three elite veterans who had seen fighting in each of the successive wars between Georgians and the breakaway states since the fall of the Soviet Union, Nadir Bitiev, a part-Ossetian advisor to the Abkhaz president, said he first started fighting at the age of 16. He also saw action in Tskhinvali last year.

“What you don’t understand in the West is that wars fought here in the early 1990s never really ended, and because your observers don’t know anything about those, you don’t understand the grievances people feel. These stem from the obscure language rights policies of Soviet Georgia and even from before the founding of the Soviet Union.”

Bitiev introduces his companions as members of an elite military unit, modelled on the Russian GRU, the foreign military intelligence agency.

Sacha is a burly man. He toasts St George repeatedly and slams ISN Security Watch’s correspondent for saying he is British (“You’re a Jew. It’s shameful to say you’re British”).

He attempts to explain Caucasian politics with the crockery,  gesturing to the salad plate, as “the Georgians,” then to his glass of vodka as “the Ossetians.” For Russia, he chooses the shashlik (kebab). “Everything is now in its right place. But we cannot have the Georgians moving to take our land. We can live next to each other but not together.”

Later, driving back to the hotel, the third man, known as Ruslan ‘the Chechen’,  said of the car: “It’s a great car [...] it used to belong to Georgian policemen. [W]e got in, and they got out very quickly.”

Watching Sacha and Ruslan joke in the front seat, the effects of 20 years of sporadic armed conflict on society seemed evident. Parts of the Caucasus have an almost ‘wild west’ feel to them, where fighting is just a part of life.

Tragic Tskhinvali

In an interview with de facto South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity in his office on the anniversary of the war, Kokoity took a melancholy tone: “South Ossetia is really perfect for tourism, we have mineral waters and beautiful mountains, people could come and visit.

“Our infrastructure has been badly bombed, and the successive four wars with Georgia in the past 20 years damaged everything. We now have a special plan for building 50 new economic sites, and Russia is building gas and water pipelines. Russian cities are also donating housing stock: Moscow built a whole new district here,” the president, a former championship wrestler, says.

The Kremlin is footing the bill, and Kokoity does not deny this. “It is no secret that the major part of our budget is aid from Russia.”

Nor does he deny the fact that his government is filled with ethnic Russians with military careers behind them. “Well it’s no secret we have manpower problems.”

Kokoity explains: “We are going to integrate with Russia but not into Russia. We have signed 48 separate agreements and hope to join the Union State Treaty between Russia and Belarus when Minsk recognizes us.”

Outside the presidential office, the future has not arrived. Most of Tskhinvali lies in ruins. The majority of homes still standing seem to be empty, and for the memorial service held on the aptly named Stalin Street, barely over a 1,000 people turned up.

For almost everyone, proper jobs seem a distant prospect. Some analysts claim that the enclave’s population is barely over 15,000 inhabitants. Virtually every young man on the streets was in uniform and as the memorial service reached its climax (a video-screen of flashing images of former US president George W Bush, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvli and bombs) the mothers and girlfriends of the dead could be seen crying discreetly. There are no clear victors here.

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