In-Forum, ND

A close-up view of the tragedy befalling the people of Georgia
Jane Ahlin,

Published Sunday, August 17, 2008

Jane Ahlin teaches English as an adjunct faculty member at MSUM. A
former commentator for KDSU (ND Public Radio), she has written for The
Forum opinion pages since 1989. Her column appears Sundays in The
Forum.

Wednesday’s e-mail from my friend in Georgia is lighthearted. The war
`seems to be over.’ She is `in a small village way East’ and, with
Georgian friends, has `bought fresh pork butt just slaughtered one
hour ago and then fresh trout ¦ to have a barbeque.’ In an aside to
her mother she says, `Mom, I told everyone that you would worry more
about the pork in the hot trunk than the Russians.’

Starkly different in tone from the frenetic e-mails since the onset of
war between Georgia and Russia when she still was in Tblisi, her words
convey a return to equilibrium. She is with friends, eating and
drinking, enjoying a pleasant moment after a long frightening weekend
of tragic loss. If not ongoing, the momentary relief had to have been
welcome

During the short war, however, there was no calm. Almost immediately,
my friend took in a young couple with a newborn baby because they
could not return to Gori where their neighborhood had been
bombed. (Note: even in Georgia, where people barely eke out a living,
war is televised. The young couple watched the bombing of their own
neighborhood on TV, not knowing whether other family members got out
safely.) After a few days, the couple with their newborn went on to
Armenia.

About the same time, my friend found out she had another family to
worry about, a family she had lived with briefly after arriving in
Georgia. Their entire village of 7,000 was evacuated, then bombed, and
the family who had been kind to her had to flee with nothing.

Understandably, my friend was upset by the initial American response
to Russia’s brutality; however, she was not as shocked as her Georgian
friends who remembered President Bush’s 2005 visit to their country, a
visit in which he was greeted like a rock star. In a country with
fewer than 5 million people, 150,000 turned out to hear him
speak. They cheered when he said, `The path of freedom you have chosen
is not easy, but you will not travel it alone ¦ as you build a free
and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you.’
Georgians loved him so much, they named a street after him.

But that was 2005. Here are Mr. Bush’s words at the onset of the war:
`I was very firm with Vladimir Putin ` he and I have got a good
relationship ` just like I was firm with the Russian president. And
hopefully this will get resolved peacefully. There needs to be an
international mediation there for the South Ossetia issue.’

Later, expressing disappointment over Bush’s lukewarm reaction,
Georgian President Saakashvili said, `Frankly, some of the first
statements [by Bush] were seen as a green light for Russia.’

The irony that French President Sarkozy as head of the European Union
was carrying the message for the West also was hard to escape
(remember freedom fries?). Even some of Bush’s most ardent supporters
wondered what was going on. (Was the president duped by the
reassurances of his friend, `Vlad,’ while they were in Beijing?) As
conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington
Post, Bush `needs to make up for his mini-Katrina moment when he
lingered in Beijing yukking it up with our beach volleyball team while
Putin flew to North Ossetia to direct the invasion of a neighboring
country.’

More importantly, the concern of other former Soviet bloc countries
underscored the sobering situation. Standing with Saakashvili and
fellow leaders of Poland, Estonia and Latvia, Lithuanian President
Adamkus said, `Let the world finally wake up and take the action and
provide the real security for the region.’ By then, the United States
had gotten tough: Humanitarian aid was sent to Georgia via military
transport and Condoleezza Rice was sent to France and on to Georgia.

As for my friend, she’s back in Tblisi, frustrated by international
political games being played at Georgia’s expense, wondering what will
happen next, and spending her days trying to get aid for the displaced
family from the village.

Ahlin, Fargo, is a regular contributor to The Forum’s commentary
pages. E-mail janeahlin@yahoo.com