South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

“Moscow waited for almost 24 hours, during which Georgian artillery and planes were sending the capital of South Ossetia to ruins. Almost 1600 people were killed in the shelling. Now it is being presented by the mainstream media exclusively as Russia's intervention and expansionist policy.” --Centre for Humanitarian Programmes, Republic of Abkhazia

American news coverage of the US-Georgia-Russia conflict continues to be appalling--blindingly biased and simplistic, and yet my knowledge of the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is scant.
On August 12, I received an e-mail from a humanitarian organization in Abkhazia describing events as they had unfolded on the ground in South Ossetia. I wrote directly to them. What is below is the e-mail response I received from Liana Kvarchelia. She has kindly given me permission to post it on 3quarksdaily.

September 2, 2008

Dear Laray,

I am glad that there are people who are interested to hear the other side of the story. Indeed I was told by friends in the US that the coverage there is extremely one-sided. I do not know if you read Russian. If so, I can recommend you a website www.apsny.com. Apart from that you can find some information on our country and the situation in www.circussianworld.com. There are some articles there including mine. I have also written about the conflict for the Accord series published by "Conciliation Resources", based in London.
On the whole I must say that we have found ourselves (not without some doze of surprise) in the epicenter of global conflict. It is clear to many people that there is power struggle going on between the US and Russia, with EU trying to accommodate their own interests, that not always compliment each member states' vision. However our conflict with Georgia has a much longer history that the EU, and definitely longer than Georgia's plans for NATO accession.
When at the end of the 19th century many Abkhazians having lost to the Russian Empire fled to Turkey and further, other ethnic groups were competing in resettling the vacated territories. Later when the Bolsheviks came, Abkhazia as well as Georgia became union states with an equal status within the USSR. But Jozef Stalin, Georgian by origin, reduced the status of Abkhazia to an autonomy within Georgia in 1931.
The Abkhazian language was banned, it was substituted by Georgian. Since the '30-40s the second wave of Georgian settlers came to Abkhazia. This process continued throughout our existence in the USSR as a Georgian autonomy. That's how we ended up a minority on our land. The 1990s was the time when Georgian nationalism was at its peak. "Georgia for Georgians" was a popular slogan. All non-Georgians were announced to be "hosts on Georgian land." Not many people even in the USSR knew that Abkhazians protested against being within Georgia even in the Soviet times, every decade. But in the '90s these protests became known to the world.
On 14 August 1992 when the Abkhazian Parliament was discussing a draft proposal for a Federation with Georgia, the Georgian bombs started falling on our heads, and the Georgian tanks attacked our towns and villages. It was a bloody war, with crimes committed first by Georgians and then by Abkhazians. The Georgians purposefully burnt down our State Archives and our Institute of Literature, History and Culture. It was quite symbolic. You can read about all this in the UNPO report that organized a fact finding mission to Abkhazia in 1992.
You can also read about it in Tom de Waal's article specifically devoted to the State Archives. Georgia lost the war, but tried to use its anti-Russian position to mobilize (quite successfully) Western support for its so-called "territorial integrity."
I respect the people of Georgia, and I respect their desire to be independent, but I also want them to respect my people's desire to be independent too. Not long ago I was interviewed by a US public TV company. You can find the interview on their website pbs.org.
I hope people in the US will be questioning what they hear from the mainstream media. There are some people in Georgia whom I know personally, and who are questioning the policy of their leaders. I hope that their number increases.

All the best,

Liana Kvarchelia
Centre for Humanitarian Programmes
Sukhum, Republic of Abkhazia

Further reading:

Julian E. Barnes and Paul Richter, “NATO rapid-response unit proposed to address fears about Russia,” LA Times, 19 September 2008

Noam Chomsky, “Toward a Second Cold War?,” CounterPunch, 11 September 2008

Michel Chossudovsky, “The Militarisation of the Eastern Mediterranean: Israel's Stake in the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline,” Global Research, 23 May 2006

Laray Polk lives in Dallas, Texas. She can be contacted at [email protected]

Comments

[cgb]

Not sure who this Centre for Humanitarian Programmes, Republic of Abkhazia is, but 1,600 did not die in the shelling. More likely it was about 300, on both Georgian and Ossetian sides. And it wasn't all shelling that caused the deaths. A lot of it was lawless mobs afterwards setting houses on fire.

And the Georgian attack was more likely a response to mobilizing Russian tanks coming through the Rokki tunnel.

This conflict was boiling for a while, and it's not surprising that folks missed the preamble and the runup.

Russian coverage is equally simplistic and just as blindingly biased as your description of the American media. The clipping you just put up is better crafted but still biased.

[LO]

FYI - This Centre is a respected NGO in Abkhazia that has worked on democracy building and conflict resolution initiatives for more than a decade.

Here's a crazy idea! Lets move away from the unconstructive propoganda wars and find out the truth about who did what here.

At this point, very different claims have been made by Russia and Georgia, each allegedly backed up by intelligence evidence that experts say remains inconclusive. Georgian claims that Russia moved into SO first have not been 'proven' or 'accepted' as fact, even by its closest allies. CGB is wrong on that point. They have not been accepted inside Georgia, where the government faces growing calls for an independent inquiry. Russian claims that it responded to a major military offensive against Tskhinvali are plausible, given they didn’t reach Tskhinvali for two days (it’s a three hour drive from the tunnel to the city), and testimony of people in the town who lived under intense Georgian shelling for several days. However many questions remain and their version has not been conclusively accepted. The debate can only be characterized as mutual mud slinging but the real truth about what happens is still unknown - 7 weeks after the war.

Instead of endlessly speculating, we should be demanding a credible, truly independent and publicly accountable fact finding investigation. “Our secret intelligence” beats “their secret intelligence” cannot be the basis of major decision making in democracies. It will never work as the basis for peace in the region. International conflict resolution NGOs and Human Rights Watch have been calling for such an inquiry, and EU foreign ministers have given at least rhetorical support. But, the fear is that states will bury this idea, because some have a lot to lose if the truth comes out. (Not least the United States whose role in the early hours of the fighting remains murky in terms of whether it used its huge leverage on Georgia to try to avert this war.)

What happened in South Ossetia and Georgia is a major tragedy for all peoples concerned. The least we owe the victims of this on both sides is to find out the truth. Until then, publics in Western Europe, the US and Canada should be holding their government's feet to the fire for taking reckless decisions in the absence of proven information.

[Mullen]

'Abkhazia as well as Georgia became union states with an equal status within the USSR. But Jozef Stalin, Georgian by origin, reduced the status of Abkhazia to an autonomy within Georgia in 1931".

First of all, do not try to present Stalin to be a Georgian nationalist. Stalin did everything in his power to destroy Georgia and Georgians. Was not it him who supported Abkhazian and South Ossetia to have any kind of autonomy? Yes, he was. In this way he awarded them for fighting on Bolsheviks' side against independent Georgia. Georgians always were in majority in Abkhazia, which is confirmed by histori monuments and archeological evidence, as well as linguistic data.

Abkhazian languge was not banned by Georgians. When the central Soviet authorities introduced Russian schools and limited Abkhaz language instruction, it was Abkhaz government which in 1939 asked for Georgian shools instead of Russians.

[CCBC]

The sequence of events as reported by OCSE, a neutral (but EU-centric) observer is summarized in der Spiegel. Georgia attacked; Russia responded.

[Mullen]

Spiegel? Are you kidding. Everybody knows who pays Spiegel. Plus it is old news.

Independent investigation is NYtimes on 18 September.

[CriticalMassI]

Who pays Spiegel?

CMI (aka Nobody)

[CCBC]

@Mullen: The OCSE is neutral. You can find spurious reasons to ignore their report, but it shows that you have no interest in discussion: your mind is closed.
The NY Times has no Georgia analysis on September 18. But, on the 16th, it did publish claims by Georgia that intercepted phone traffic proves Russia invaded. Is that your independent analysis? Few seem to accept it. Some, like myself, believe the story was concocted to counter the OCSE report which also included phone intercepts.

[Hektor Bim]

I find it hard to trust any "independent" source of news from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, precisely because those governments serve only at the pleasure of the Russian government and are throughly penetrated by gangsters. (In many cases, the ministers and army chiefs are Russian citizens who aren't even from Abkhazia or South Ossetia.) The Russians even made sure to cancel the elections in Abkhazia when they had the temerity to pick the wrong leader.

We may never know the exact sequence of events that led to the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali. Hinting at nefarious US plots without trying to back it up isn't convincing.

What your beloved Abkhazian correspondent leaves out is the vicious ethnic cleansing that followed the Georgia-Abkhaz war. Georgians were a plurality in Abkhazia before the war (almost 50%), but something like 150,000 of them have not been able to return - i.e. they have been ethnically cleansed. Remember, this is out of a total population of something like 500,000 before the war, which is something like 150,000 to 200,000 in Abkhazia now.

With the recent war, the Abkhaz continued their practices and now have ethnically cleansed the Kodori gorge as well, which previously the never controlled.

Similarly in South Ossetia, all the Georgian villages and many parts of mixed villages have been burnt down by Ossetian irregulars and their inhabitants ethnically cleansed. The population of South Ossetia was approximately 25-30% ethnic Georgian before the war, but not anymore.

So what these wars have resulted in is massive ethnic cleansing and massive destruction, which it would be nice for a "Center for Humanitarian Programs" to make note of.

It's nice that Liana Kvarcheli wants to be independent, but since the government of Abkhazia isn't really independent (it is only a puppet of Russia), I don't see why we should cheer for exchanging one despotic rule by a larger country over Abkhazia for another that was brought about by enormous pain and suffering.

[Lisa]

I thank Liana Kvarchelia for this information. The US media is a disgrace and the reporting on this in the West has just ran the American line.

The negative and abusive comments here way off the mark.
The only puppet government is that of Georgia, all educated in the US. Condy Rice visited just a couple of weeks before Georgia attacked but made the fatal mistake of underestimating the Russia reaction. They are not scared of the West, and while US and co. have been screwing around in Iraq, Russia has been getting very Rich and more powerful than ever before. Clinton brokered the deal with Russia that they would not take NATO up to the Russian boarders. The US backed Georgia seeks to break this important part of ending the cold war.

[Liza]

USA gives the best education. So what is wrong with being educated there? And what does it have to do with being a puppet?

On the other hand, Baghapsh received his education in Tbilisi. Why is he not a Georgian puppet?

Rice made a fatal mistake? Russia's actions are fatal and first of all for Russia itself. A great Russian thinker Nikolay Berdyaev said: "Русские живут во вред себе и назло другим". Indeed.

[MattInOz]

Liza,

"USA gives the best education" - careful, you're on pretty shakey ground there. It may have a wealth of top thinkers and scientists in it's institutions (and good luck to it) but the country that gives the "best education" is certainly not one in which religion is equated with science in the majority of the citizens minds.

[Liza]

Everything is relative. Compare it to Russian education.

[Russkii]

Russia may be a long way from being a perfect country, but at least is has restored its former might and stuck it to the US on the world arena. The American imperialists are not going to succeed in having their way with former Soviet republics.

[Oleg]

Russia never will be a great power. Because of several things listed below in famous quotes about them:

1. "The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.” Emo Philips

2. "Народ, что ненавидит волю, обожает рабство, любит цепи на своих руках и ногах, грязный физически и морально...готовый в любой момент угнетать все и вся". - Шмелев

3. "Наиважнейшею приметою удачи русского народа есть его садистская жестокость". - Горький

4. "Народ равнодушный до наименьшей обязанности, до наименьшей справедливости, до наименьшей правды, народ, что не признает человеческое достоинство, что целиком не признает ни свободного человека ,ни свободной мысли. - А.С. ПУШКИН."

5. ''Не народ, а скотина, хам, дикая орда, душегубов и злодеев.'' БУЛГАКОВ

6. “Народ который блуждает по Европе и ищет что можно разрушить, уничтожить только ради развлечения." Достоевский

etc.

[David]

Liana Kvarchelia writes:

"I respect the people of Georgia, and I respect their desire to be independent, but I also want them to respect my people's desire to be independent too. "

This is too cynical taking into account that 300 000 Georgians are kicked out from Abkhazia where they always were in majority. The territory of Abkhazia is covered with monuments of Georgian culture since the 9th century and there is not one evidence of Abkhazian culture. I believe Abkhazs lived there from time immemorial, but did not develop any culture, like (architecture, alphabet, etc. There aristocracy was always georgianazed. Check their names (Sharvashidze, Anchabadze etc). Their literary language was Georgian untill Russians showed up. And so on and so on...

Almost all toponyms there are Georgian includings Sukhumi (and not sukhum by the way). Georgians are burried there for centuries. And now what? They want to be independent on Georgian soil not even letting displaced people return?

[Birte]

Having just found this site, I am shocked to see that there is so much doubt about the sequence of events.
Here in Germany, the reports started the moment it happened: Georgia attacked South Ossetia, and everyone was wondering why Saakashvili was doing that, since it seemed to make no sense at all, and how Russia would react. It was not until 24 hours after the attack that Russia started to move troops in the direction of Georgia. The next day there was a total swing - suddenly all the media turned on Russia, blaming them for their intervention. Anyone politically aware enough to watch the events with interest was just shaking their head at the one-sidedness of the coverage. Now most of the reports seem to be aimed at making people forget about what happened first. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.