South Ossetians Fear War

“Let them start, and put an end to our suspense,” commented a special forces policeman in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval as tension over the breakaway region reached a peak last week.

Tension has been high here for a month ever since new Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili succeeded in ousting the leader of another rebellious region, Aslan Abashidze of Ajaria, and turned his attention to South Ossetia, which seceded de facto from Georgia in 1991.

Saakashvili’s statements that he wants to see Georgia reunified have been backed up in recent days by a campaign of pressure – a show of military force, pledges to pay pensions to residents of South Ossetia, the distribution of fertiliser as humanitarian aid in rural areas, and attempted visits by cultural and sporting delegations and by the president’s Dutch wife Sandra Roelofs.

The South Ossetian authorities reacted with alarm. On June 5, the local parliament appealed to the Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, to incorporate South Ossetia into Russia.

Nearly everyone interviewed by IWPR in Tskhinval (which the Georgians call Tskhinvali) expressed the hope that Russia, which has a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia, would not allow Georgia to retake control.

The crisis has further harmed relations between Georgia and Russia. Russia has issued statements of concern over the worsening situation in the region, while the Georgian authorities denounced what they said were illegal military convoys sent across the border on June 11 and 12.

In another sign of Moscow’s close involvement in the region, two officers from Russia’s intelligence service the FSB, one of them an ethnic Ossetian, were appointed to top posts in the South Ossetian equivalent, the KGB.

Many South Ossetians said that mobilisation of volunteers had started. However, IWPR saw no significant number of armed people in the streets, while officials denied they had any need for additional forces. The unrecognised republic’s interior minister Robert Guliev told IWPR, “We have enough resources at our disposal to keep the situation under control.”

Tskhinval residents said the atmosphere reminded them of the start of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict in 1989. Local television has been showing wartime documentaries and also broadcasts suggesting that there has been discontent in Ajaria since the Georgian government reasserted control there in May.

To counter this message, Georgian television has begun broadcasting in the Ossetian language, but locals said the language used was poor and hard to understand.

The Georgian government says it is trying to crack down on what it says is a major smuggling route from Russia across the mountains via South Ossetia into Georgia. Tariffs have been raised and trucks detained.

“Georgia has achieved the main thing, which is to cut off contraband from South Ossetia,” Saakashvili said. “And as a result, the country’s budget will get an additional 150 million [US] dollars.”

IWPR saw only a dozen trucks on the usually busy Ossetian Military Highway, which crosses the mountains. There was also unusually little activity at the huge wholesale market at Ergneti, on the outskirts of Tskhinval. The market is “dying”, one trader said.

This is causing anger in South Ossetia as a major source of income is drying up. “We are not restricting the movement of goods,” said Guliyev. “Let everyone receive food and oil. Georgians themselves are suffering a great deal – because of these restrictions, the price of flour in neighbouring Georgian regions has reached around 50 dollars a sack.”

In turn, the South Ossetian government is restricting access to the the territory for Georgian government officials, non-governmental organisations, NGOs, and journalists. Georgian officials “should receive permission for entry from the ministry for foreign affairs,” said Guliev. “ We don’t particularly want to see [Georgian] NGOs here, because everyone knows their underlying origins.”

The restriction extends to South Ossetian organisations, which are being told to consult the local foreign ministry if they want to travel to Tbilisi for work.

The foreign minister of the unrecognised republic, Murat Jioyev, told IWPR that, “We would just like NGOs to have more transparency in their activities. Many international organisations that try to treat South Ossetia as part of Georgia supply our NGOs with grants, and the NGOs take the grants indiscriminately.”

There was particular concern over the arrest of Kosta Dzugaev, a former speaker of parliament who is now director of the Centre for Information Technologies and Intellectual Resources in Tskhinval.

Dzugaev was arrested on June 3 on his return from Tbilisi where he had been attending a conference. He later told IWPR, “The KGB people questioned me and I was accused of ‘reprehensible links’. I was released the next day.

“I put this incident down to purely internal South Ossetian political reasons. A certain group of people who see me as their political opponent wanted to take the opportunity to suppress me politically and socially.”

The South Ossetians have also hit out at the main international body monitoring the conflict, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE.

According to foreign minister Jioyev, the OSCE failed to criticise a build-up of Georgian troop in the area. “They said they were monitoring the situation and preparing a report for Vienna, but here we did not see efforts by them to pacify the situation”.

He said the OSCE had further raised tensions by accompanying Sandra Roelofs on her uninvited visit to South Ossetia on June 1.

“We see it as biased attitude to the sides of the conflict. We will raise questions at the OSCE. This shows how ineffective the OSCE’s mediating functions are.”

The OSCE mission in Tbilisi called these allegations “totally groundless.” Deputy head of mission Veselin Nikolaev told IWPR that there may have been a “misunderstanding of the role” of the OSCE mission on South Ossetia’s part.

The OSCE can monitor and provide assistance to peacekeeping forces, but is unable to take action itself, he said.

As for Roelofs’s controversial visit, “the mission was not involved in the planning or conduct of that event,” Nikolaev said. The first lady had herself asked to visit the OSCE office in Tsinkhval, he said.

Many are now fearful that instability will grow.

Ex-combatant Timur Tskhovrebov said that while war veterans were capable of putting the past behind them, “these politicians mess around and get in our way. Why don’t they let us live? I have just started bottling mineral water and found ways to export it, but all this now casts doubt over my plans.”

Archil Gegeshidze, senior fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies in Tbilisi, said that if Saakashvili’s government keeps its head it might be able to re-establish control of South Ossetia peacefully – just as it recently did in Ajaria.

By giving pensions, restoring transport links and supplying electricity, “we show that we are treating them as our own citizens. Generally we don’t make war against our own citizens,” he said.

Central government largesse will put the separatist authorities in a dilemma, he continued. “Their reputation and authority would be seriously damaged if they deny their citizens a chance to get aid from us.”

“As in Ajaria, our hopes lie with the people.”

But at the joint headquarters of the peacekeeping forces, Russian army colonel Yury Akhmetov said the military situation was tense.

“I went to look at the check-points in the area and found Georgian reinforcements installed there, contrary to previously reached agreements,” he told IWPR. “They simply laughed at me when I told them to withdraw. They said they were carrying out orders. I think they were just making fun of us.

“Still, I am sure that if we weren’t here, there would be war”.

Valery Dzutsev is IWPR coordinator for North Caucasus, based in Vladikavkaz. Sebastian Smith, IWPR’s Caucasus trainer-editor, contributed to this article from Tbilisi.