BLOOD IS SPILLED ON JAGGED EDGE OF KREMLIN’S FORMER EMPIRE
Daniel McLaughlin

Irish Times
Aug 9 2008
Ireland

Russia is not only protecting its people in South Ossetia but
confronting Georgia, a former ally now aligned with the US, writes
Daniel McLaughlin

THE FORMER Soviet Union is studded with so-called frozen conflicts,
but none has flared up with the ferocity of South Ossetia.

Armenia and Azerbaijan still argue over Nagorno-Karabakh, Moldova has
made little ground trying to woo its separatist region of Transdniestr,
and Georgia is intent on reasserting control over the spectacular,
sub-tropical Black Sea region of Abkhazia.

They, and the dispute over South Ossetia, are the jagged edges that
remained when the Kremlin’s empire peeled apart with relatively
little bloodshed.

In the 1990s, Russia played a game of geopolitical containment in
its backyard, as Boris Yeltsin sought to quell rebellion in Chechnya
while holding the restive Russian Federation together in the teeth
of a communist revival and regular financial turmoil.

However, enriched by record energy prices and emboldened by the
pugnacious Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to reassert its influence
over what it calls the "near abroad", an area in which it resents
the growing influence of the United States and European Union.

Of Russia’s neighbours, Georgia has become a particular worry to
the Kremlin that Putin passed on to his protege, Dmitry Medvedev,
earlier this year.

Georgia’s US-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili has had the
Pentagon help train his armed forces to bring them closer to the
standard required by Nato, which he hopes to join as soon as possible.

His eagerness to take a chunk of the Kremlin’s former dominions into
Nato has won him major support from Washington and the EU, as has
Georgia’s importance as a transit route for gas and oil heading west
from the Caspian and bypassing Russia.

Saakashvili’s disappointment was immense, then, when Nato refused to
put Georgia formally on the path to membership at this year’s summit,
after Germany and France complained that such a move would anger
energy-rich Russia.

Georgian officials say that those countries’ fear of Moscow’s wrath
emboldened the Kremlin to step up provocations in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, and recent months have witnessed a series of shootings and
bomb blasts which Tbilisi has blamed on Russia and the separatists,
and vice versa.

In its bid to prevent Kosovo’s independence, Moscow threatened to
respond to any such declaration by recognising the sovereignty of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia – even though it is ultimately terrified
of any precedent that could embolden separatists in Russia’s Caucasian
republics, like Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

"It boils down to Kosovo independence, Nato’s Bucharest summit and
possibly also Russian internal politics and the transfer of power,"
said Svante Cornell, co-director of the Stockholm-based Institute
for Security and Development Policy.

"Irrespective of who triggered this recent action, the general
direction of Russian policy is clear, which is: we are taking control
of these territories, and we’re not even pretending that we’re not."

But among experts on Russia and the Caucasus, there seemed to be no
consensus on why South Ossetia’s slowly thawing frozen conflict had
suddenly become a torrent.

While each side blamed the other for provoking all-out fighting,
some analysts suggested that both Tbilisi and Moscow may have seen
this as a good time to change "facts on the ground" in the Caucasus –
with Georgia hoping Russia would react slowly as Medvedev settles into
the Kremlin, and Russia banking on Washington being distracted by its
presidential election campaign, and the EU fearful of the threat to
Russian fuel supplies.

Other commentators said Saakashvili had little choice but to move
against what Georgian officials call a criminal regime funded by
Russian handouts and the profits of smuggling, and with an ever-growing
arsenal of weaponry from its sponsor to the north.

"At the end of the day, the Georgians realise that time is not on
their side and they could not let South Ossetia and Abkhazia become
even more messy and Russian influence even stronger," said Tomas
Valasek of the Centre for European Reform.

Contraband, arms – and now Russian troops and mercenaries – enter South
Ossetia via the Roki Tunnel, a 3.5km-long pass through the Caucasus
that links the province with Kremlin-controlled North Ossetia. Russian
and South Ossetian peacekeepers do their utmost to prevent their
erstwhile Georgian colleagues and monitors from the Organisation
for Security and Co-operation in Europe from observing what comes
through the tunnel and then makes its way to the separatist capital
of Tskhinvali along a road that has been freshly laid by the Russians.

For many Georgians, the true purpose of this so-called Road of Life
was revealed yesterday, as it carried Kremlin men and armour towards
Tskhinvali, and a waiting Georgian military that has been beefed up
by recent investment, new equipment and US training.

"This could be a prolonged and bloody conflict with an unpredictable
end," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It’s a hell of a
logistical nightmare to try and take and keep South Ossetia against
a rather fine Georgian military."