Legend11 said:
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/382744
"The war in South Ossetia is essentially over, and the Georgians have lost. This was Georgia's second attempt in eighteen years to conquer the breakaway territory by force, and now that option is gone for good. So are the country's hopes of joining NATO. Yet sections of the Western media are carrying on as if the Russians started it, and are now threatening to invade Georgia itself.
Meanwhile, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is playing on old Cold War stereotypes of the Russian threat in a desperate bid for Western backing: "What Russia is doing in Georgia is open, unhidden aggression and a challenge to the whole world. If the whole world does not stop Russia today, then Russian tanks will be able to reach any other European capital." Nonsense. It was Georgia that started this war.
The chronology tells it all. Skirmishes between Georgian troops and South Ossetian militia grew more frequent over the past several months, but on Thursday, August 7, Saakashvili offered the separatist South Ossetian government "an immediate ceasefire and the immediate beginning of talks," promising that "full autonomy" was on the table. Only hours later, however, he ordered a general offensive.
South Ossetia's president, Eduard Kokoity, called Saakashvili's ceasefire offer a "despicable and treacherous" ruse, which seems fair enough. Through all of Thursday night and Friday morning Georgian artillery shells and rockets rained down on the little city of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital, while Georgian infantry and tanks encircled it. Russian journalists reported that 70 percent of the city was destroyed, and by Friday afternoon it was in Georgian hands.
The offensive was obviously planned well in advance, but Saakashvili didn't think it through. He knew that the world's attention would be distracted by the Olympics, and he hoped that Russia's reaction would be slow because Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was off in Beijing.
Given three or four days to establish full military control of South Ossetia, he could put a pro-Georgian administration in place and declare the problem solved. But his calculations were wrong.
There was no delay in the Russian response. A large Russian force was on its way from North Ossetia (which is part of the Russian Federation) by mid-day on Friday, and Russian jets began striking targets inside Georgia proper. By the time Vladimir Putin reached the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz on Saturday morning, the Georgian forces were already being driven out of Tskhinvali again.
By Saturday evening, Georgia was calling for a ceasefire and declaring that all its troops were being withdrawn from South Ossetia to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe." Saakashvili's gamble had failed - and, as Putin put it, the territorial integrity of Georgia had "suffered a fatal blow".
Not just South Ossetia has been lost for good. Georgia's hope of ever recovering its other breakaway province, Abkhazia, has also evaporated. On Saturday, the Abkhazian government announced a military offensive to drive Georgian troops out of the Kodori gorge, the last bit of Abkhazian territory that they control. How much does all of this matter?
It matters a lot to the 300,000 Georgians who fled from Abkhazia and South Ossetia when the two ethnic enclaves, which were autonomous parts of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in Soviet times, declared their independence after the old Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Georgia's attempts to reconquer them in 1992-93 were bloody failures, and after this second failure it is clear that the Georgian refugees will never go home.
It is a reason to rejoice for most Abkhazians and South Ossetians.
Although they are Orthodox Christians like the far more numerous Georgians, they are ethnically distinct peoples with different languages, and they always resented Stalin's decision to place them under Georgian rule.
Whether they ultimately get full independence or simply join the Russian Federation, they will be happy with the outcome.
The Bush administration's bizarre ambition to extend NATO into the Caucasus mountains is dead. Russians are pleased with the speed and effectiveness of their government's response. And nobody else really cares.
There is no great moral issue here. What Georgia tried to do to South Ossetia is precisely what Russia did to Chechnya, but Georgia wasn't strong enough and South Ossetia had a bigger friend. There is no great strategic issue either: apart from a few pipeline routes, the whole Transcaucasus is of little importance to the rest of the world. A year from now the Georgians will probably have dumped Saakashvili, and the rest of us may not even remember his foolish adventure.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His column appears each Wednesday." |
+ to Nirvana:
Georgia did not attack, they performed actions within their own territory. Seriously, according to international mandate S. Ossetia is still part of Georgia and if militias are riling up within a country's own borders you should at least try and end it. The Gerogian act of declaring truce first but then attacking is vile but at least it was within it's own borders.
For instance if we look at the conflict the Turks have with the Kurds, we do not see the whole world rile up when both sides fight in the Eastern provinces of Turkey.
What did cause a minor shitstorm was when Turkish patrols crossed the border into Iraq to take out insurgents. The Kurdish PKK is on an international list of terrorist organizations and the world thus favors the Turkish military in this conflict, but that didn't stop the critque Turkey got when they went into Iraqian territory.
What Russia did was far worse. They not only got involved in disputed Georgian territory to aid militia's... militia's for crying out loud! But they then proceded to cross further upto a few miles of the Georgian capitol of Tblisi. They call it a buffer zone, I think it's occupation. How do you think the Russians saw the Barbarossa operation of Germany in 1941 when they got into 60 miles of Moskou. Do you think that was a buffer zone?!
Furthermore, the blatant lying about targets being attacked by Russia caused not only unnecessary civilian casualty's (of which Georgia is guilty aswell I know) but also killed members of the international press. Both sides are guilty...
But one is a lot more guilty of acts of war then the other.
