THOUGHTS ON RUSSIA AND GEORGIA
John Stinson
AINA
8-12-2008 19:25:30
CA
(AINA) — Under the terms of a Department of State contract, I was
hired to be an advisor to the Republic of Georgia’s Ministry of Defense
and General Staff. I arrived on the very day of the "Rose Revolution"
which launched the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili into the
international arena. My job was to assist the Georgians in their
reform effort — the extant military organizations were based on the
Soviet model and they wanted to chance into a modern, Western model.
I was to advise the Ministry staff on planning, programming and
budgeting. Similarly, I worked with the General Staff — their G-5 —
on military force structure and stationing. There was a parallel effort
going on which was to thoroughly reorganize the ground forces from
the individual soldier level up. Part of this work (but not within
the scope of the contract) was the reshaping of the entire national
security apparatus of the former soviet republic. For example, the
Georgian Ministry of Interior maintained its own fleet of trucks,
tanks and artillery (for internal security purposes). These units
were either integrated into the regular armed forces or reshaped
into something like our Department of Homeland Security. These are
the people who suffered the initial casualties during this invasion
— Georgian cops with patrol cars vs. IEDs planted by separatists
supported by Russian tanks and artillery.
We formed their new units based on a US light infantry battalion model
— but with fewer crew served weapons (machine guns and mortars,)
very little logistical support, armored vehicles, artillery or air
defense weaponry. This was done specifically to assuage Russian angst
that Georgia might take military action in the provinces stolen from
them by Russian interference in the early 1990s.
These "break-away" provinces have been organically part of the Georgian
nation since before Roman Times. There was a real King Midas and a real
"Golden Fleece" from this area. Many of the Greek Fables attributed
to Aesop are in fact folk tales of Georgian origin. Abkhazia (on the
Black Sea) and South Ossetia (in Central Georgia) were Georgian before
the 1st Russ refugee ever settled in what is now Moscow.
The Soviet Union regularly forcibly moved ethnic peoples far from
their normal homelands as a control measure. Ossetians are people
from the North Caucasus — the part of Georgian they live in is called
Samachablo by the Georgians but was denominated South Ossetia by the
Soviets during the USSR period in the 1920.
South Ossetians normally take vacations in August to visit their
relatives in the North Caucasus. There is only one way to get there —
the Roki tunnel — otherwise they have to go far to the east or west (a
series of mountain passes into Chechnya or out to the Black Sea). This
year, the normal vacation period for the Ossetians became a call of
ethnic cleansing by the Russians against the Georgians. The Georgian
President responded by taking journalists to the conflict zone and
showing them that there was no mobilization of Georgian forces —
only Russian propaganda. No matter — the Russians generated an
incident and the Georgians were forced to respond.
Much — if not all — of what you’re hearing from the Russians in
the news is classic disinformation. There are open source reports
that the Russians are claiming that some of the bodies found in
Georgia have had US or NATO insignia on them and that we are engaging
in genocide. Russia clearly has been planning this for quite some
time — they’ve had their railroad troops repair the tracks on both
sides of the Russian/Georgian border; they hacked all the official
Georgian governmental outlets and many of the private businesses
(anybody with an .ru e-mail and an IP address in Georgia); their navy
has landed troops far from the conflict zone; heavy trucks and tank
transporters have been moving south through the mountain passes from
the North Caucasus.
Most disturbing is the timing of all this — President Putin launched
this during the Olympic Games as he was meeting with President Bush —
clearly a direct & personal insult.
This war is very much about oil — there is a pipeline from Azerbaijan
through Georgia into Turkey. This is a private business venture
managed by British Petroleum. Clearly, if the Russians can cut this
then Europe will continue to be dependent on them for oil and gas.
Russian railroad troops refurbishing the double-tracked, electrified
heavy, main line from Russia into Georgia along the Black Sea
is part of a larger plan to provide munitions and "material" to
Iran. Russia and Armenia have already signed an agreement for a Russian
"private" company to take over the Armenian railroad. There are rail
connections in Armenia into Iran. Open source reports indicate a
three-way agreement is being developed to fix the Armenian-Iranian
rail connections. A cowed (and crippled) Georgia would be forces to
allow the transshipment of whatever cargo the Russians wanted to send
through its client (Armenia) to its ultimate customer (Iran.)
What is going on in Georgia now is of a piece with Ukraine in the 20’s,
Finland in the 30’s, the Berlin Airlift in the ’40’s, Hungary in the
’50’s, Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Afghanistan in the 70’s, etc.
It is noteworthy to say the population of Georgia is less than that
of metropolitan Boston and yet they have more soldiers in OIF than
anybody else save the Brits and South Koreans.
John Stinson is a West Point graduate and retired Special Forces
Lieutenant Colonel who spent one year in Georgia and two years in Iraq.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress