As an old, better say ancient, newspaper man I sometimes feel pure aesthetic admiration for Western writers of headlines covering the Georgia-South Ossetia war. Take this one, in The Observer: "Russian tanks roll into Georgia as cities burn." This masterpiece should go into any serious textbook on propaganda warfare. It hammers into the readers' minds the simple pseudo-thought: Georgian (not South Ossetian, oh no!) cities burn because Russian tanks are rolling in. Now, take this imaginary headline: "South Ossetian capital completely destroyed, some 2000 civilians dead in streets, buried in cellars, as Georgian artillery, missiles, war planes bombard it." Whoa, that won't do. You can't do this to a staunch US ally aspiring to embark on the road to NATO membership come December. You must remember that that ally was given a budget of nearly a billion US dollars to increase its army fivefold within a few years, that that army has bought huge amounts of military hardware with US money and has been entirely US-trained since the US-backed "revolution of the roses." So the battle lines are very clearly drawn. The Georgian assault on South Ossetia is just another move in the new Big Game - the US-led West ganging up on Russia that has had the audacity to rise from the ashes of the 1990s and lay claim to true sovereignty and a right to protect its own interests. As the Big Game unfolds, who cares about the plight of the tiny Ossetian people, or rather that part of the Ossetian people that had the misfortune of being handed over by Stalin to his Georgian motherland? Does anyone remember that the name of South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinval, was changed to Staliniri in 1934 and bore that proud name until 1961, lest anyone should forget whose gift it was? Ossetians are ethnically as distinct as can be from Georgians. They speak an Indo-European language related to Persian, not Georgian. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, all they wanted was to join the other part of their tiny nation, the North Ossetians in Russia. In 1991, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the then president of newly independent Georgia, proclaimed his infamous slogan, "Georgia for Georgians." In that framework, there could be no Ossetians in Georgia - so the region was "abolished." Gamsakhurdia was a bit of a poet, and the "abolition" could be taken for a kind of poetic license. In raw life, though, it led to a bloody war in which the South Ossetians thrashed what was then the Georgian army, won a de facto independence and were only prevented from joining their brethren across the ridge by Russia sticking to the internationally accepted precept of territorial integrity of existing states (a principle that was recently so flagrantly trampled on in the case of Serbia, part of its territory truncated by NATO and the European Union). Instead of letting the two Ossetias unite, two former Politburo buddies, President Shevardnadze of Georgia and President Yeltsin of Russia, signed in 1992 the Dagomys Accords - and sealed them with a bear hug - which effectually enforced peace on the region, the peace to be kept by a combined three-partite force - Ossetian, Georgian, and Russian. Since then, Russia has scrupulously stuck to those Accords despite numerous pleas from South Ossetia to be received into Russia. The Ossetians even dug up some four-hundred-year old papers to prove that they had gratefully come under the dominion of the White Czar long before Georgia, or what was left of Georgia after the Turkish and Persian invasions, became part of the Russian Empire. Economically and financially, South Ossetia has continued to be inalienably linked to Russia, just as it was in the Soviet Union, for how else is its population to survive? People have to eat, they must have something to wear and live in and on, get medical help, educate their children, engage in commerce - all those little things that ordinary life consists of. With all ties with Georgia severed by a fierce war, the South Ossetians' only hope of survival was to look to Russia for all those little things. Ninety-eight percent of the population exercised their right to choose Russian citizenship. To coin a phrase, Georgia had not a snowball's chance in hell of bringing South Ossetia (or Abkhazia, the other, and bigger, Stalin's gift to Georgia, which also won independence from it in the 90s) back under its sway by peaceful means. Too much blood had been shed, too many atrocities committed, too many refugees, widows and fatherless children around. And what could Georgia offer the two unrecognized republics? Absorption in Georgia's basket-case economy? Another round of ogruzinivaniye "Georgianization"? They'd had enough of it under Stalin and later, with masses of Georgians resettled on Abkhaz and South Ossetian territory and practically all official positions of any significance filled by Georgians. That was mostly what they had revolted against. (If you don't care for dusty historical archives, you can read all about it in the epic volumes by Fazil Iskander, in my considered opinion one of the two top Russian-language writers of the second half of the 20th century - who just happens to be an ethnic Abkhaz.) No more ogruzinivaniye for these peoples. Now, if you cannot get a peaceful, political solution, what are you left with? A military one, what else. On its own, Georgia could only have waged a suicidal war on two fronts, against South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as for a long time the phrase "Georgian army" was thought to be the shortest joke ever. Not so since the US stepped in. It is a well-documented fact that the "revolution of the roses" was US-sponsored and actually conducted according to the same scenario, even by the same US string-pullers, as the previous overthrow of Milosevic in Serbia. That was how Georgia was recruited on the US side in the Big Game. Since 2003, Georgia's military budget increased 30-fold, Georgia became the biggest importer of military hardware in the region, if not in the world, and all of this with US money and with the aid of US military personnel. The other day Vitaly Churkin, Russia's permanent representative in the Security Council, stated that the US seconded 127 of its servicemen to Georgia's defense ministry alone. This must be on record somewhere. The US fully intends to draw Georgia into NATO, to build more military bases around Russia, thousands of miles from its own territory and a few kilometers - literally - from Russia's. Now, Georgia can only join NATO if it resolves its territorial disputes. It has just a few months to do so, if it wants to join the MAP, membership action plan, in December when NATO foreign ministers meet, or at the latest in April next year at NATO's 60th anniversary summit. Anyone who has the slightest acquaintanceship with the situation in the region knows with absolute certainty that restoring Georgia's control over these breakaway territories by military means - in violation of the existing international agreements - is, apart from these international repercussions, a sheer impossibility. Any military moves, if they were not speedily curtailed, would be just the start of a long-drawn-out conflict, a repeat of the 1990s war on an even greater scale, with other peoples of the whole Caucasus region inevitably becoming involved, just as they had been drawn into it in the earlier conflict. For years Russia has been trying to make the Georgian side realize that this country is taking its role as a peacekeeper in the region quite seriously, as it has for centuries. According to the peace accords mentioned above, Russia has the explicit obligation to interfere and enforce peace, should either of the two warring sides try to break those accords and attack the other side. This should have been enough to any reasonable people, but we are not dealing with reasonable people here. The US is hell-bent on establishing a world hegemony by relying on brute force, disregarding the fact that it is getting bogged down wherever it attempts to enforce "democracy" à l'Americaine, and practically going bankrupt in the process, with its state debt running at $10,6 trillion, as recently signed into law by President Bush. In the person of President Saakashvili of Georgia the US found a willing and even eager puppet. The phrase "a monkey playing with matches near a powder keg" about describes the picture. The Saakashvili regime has long embarked on a course of continual provocations and violations of the Dagomys peace accords, amassing heavy military hardware in the conflict zone, as expressly prohibited by those accords. The provocations included attacks on Russian peacekeepers, shooting at South Ossetian civilians, and other dirty tricks. All that was in preparation for a final, or what was intended as final, assault on South Ossetians and Russian peacekeepers. In a post mortem on any military conflict the all-important question is - Who struck the first blow? In this case, there can be no doubt whatsoever on this score - Saakashvili did, and even boasted of it, declaring that Georgian troops were in control in Tskhinvali and that "constitutional order" had been restored in South Ossetia. How that "victory" had been achieved is extremely characteristic, and should be taken into account by anyone dealing with Saakashvili, if they do not want to be impudently bamboozled and conned. On Thursday, August 7, Saakashvili threw up a smokescreen. He positively mounted a barrage of lies to cover the Georgian military's preparations for that "final assault," declaring a unilateral ceasefire, a withdrawal from the conflict zone, blah-blah-blah. And all the time columns of Georgian troops were heading for Tskhinval and heavy equipment was amassed on the heights surrounding the city which, unfortunately, lies in the valley and is thus highly vulnerable to bombardment. Now, you do not destroy even a smallish city, of less than 100,000, within a few hours without lots of heavy equipment, without a careful plan, and plenty to shoot with. And it was all in place on that night of August 7/8. Heavy artillery, mine-throwers, tanks, self-propelled ordnance systems, howitzers, the lot. Do you happen to know what a Soviet-made Grad missile thrower is? It's a very modern version of the Second World War katyushas, multiple vehicle-mounted missile launchers intended entirely for indiscriminately blasting to smithereens whole areas, none of your target shooting with Grads. All these opened fire on Tskhinval right after midnight, just a few minutes after Saakashvili ended his peace-loving harangue. Toward morning, Georgian warplanes joined in the fun of bombing and strafing the residential areas, the university, the parliament building, the hospitals, the kindergartens, private homes - most of the city is - was - one-storey. When the city was reduced to rubble and uncontained fires, columns of Georgian tanks and armored personnel carriers moved in, continuing the slaughter of civilians and of scattered South Ossetian self-defense forces. Some of the first casualties of Saakashvili's assault were Russian peacekeepers, stationed there, along with Georgian and Ossetian troops, under international UN-sanctioned agreements. Twelve to fifteen Russian peacekeepers died immediately, some 150 were wounded. A survivor told reporters that the wounded had been shelled as they were been taken toward the Russian border. Under international law, peacekeepers enjoy the same diplomatic immunity as diplomatic personnel. Any assault on them represents a casus belli. The Russian parliament had every right to break off diplomatic relations with Georgia and perhaps declare war on it, to give the crowds in Tbilisi celebrating victory over tiny South Ossetia a doze of their own medicine. Instead, Russia chose to stick strictly to its duty under the Dagomys Accords - enforce peace and restore the status quo ante. Reinforcements were sent in to help the hopelessly outnumbered peacekeepers. The Georgian aggressors were beaten back, as they had known they would be. Oh, that was when the balloon went up. The Western media and politicians, so eloquently silent on the night of the Georgian aggression, went into a sustained, virulent anti-Russian hysteria. To listen to what the US and UK representatives in the Security Council said on August 10, you'd have to conclude that there had been no Georgian aggression, no destruction of a city and ten South Ossetian villages by the Georgian side, no scorched earth policy implemented by the Georgian army, none of the hundreds and thousands South Ossetian civilians dead, wounded and fleeing their homes. No mention even of any of this. No, it is all about big, bad Russia attacking poor, little, defenseless Georgia. The battle cry from Tbilisi to Washington is, Stop Russia! Enough to make one vomit, really. Look, I've lived a long life crowded with all sorts of experiences, a few of them mind-boggling. But what has been done by Georgians (US-backed Georgians, I stress) to Tskhinval opens up quite a new dimension to expressions like "humanitarian disaster," "crime against humanity," and "ethnic cleansing." Even before the Georgian all-out assault, the water supply to Tskhinval had been cut off. Ever tried to live without water for days on end? Then there was no gas supply, no electricity, little or no food left. And on top of all that, a brutal assault with every imaginary kind of military hardware - on civilians huddling in cellars which, God knows, are no protection against heavy ordnance. So far, I have yet to see any of this on Western TV. The pictures are all from the Georgian side. The BBC's Richard Galpin, complete with bulletproof vest and enormous helmet 20 kilometers from the war zone, has dug up an hysterical Georgian woman to show the camera, obviously without a clue to what she is being hysterical about. Had he, or any other Western reporter, crossed the front line into South Ossetian territory, he would have found thousands upon thousands of such women, old men, and children to interview, and also other thousands whom he would not be able to interview for a very simple reason - they are all dead. Dead bodies are everywhere - in the streets, in cellars, on the roads, in the woods where villagers tried to hide. Some are badly charred, and no one to identify them, where they can yet be identified. No place to keep the bodies, as there is no electricity, so they have to be hurriedly buried, often in orchards and kitchen-gardens, as even the cemeteries have been bombed out of existence. I'd say that some of the living envy the dead. As all the hospitals have been destroyed, the wounded have to be treated in cellars by torch light, without water even to wash the wounds. Some of the pictures on Russian TV will make you have nightmares, as you see masses of maggots in the wounds of the elderly being ineffectually swabbed by nurses. By torchlight, let me remind you. None of these pictures appear on Western TV. Propaganda warfare is propaganda warfare, and it suits the Western media bosses and governments to let Georgia's President Saakashvili viciously attack Russia on every conceivable TV outlet. The more so that he speaks passable American English - like his troops, he has been US-trained. South Ossetian survivors' hair-raising tales of horror are not heard, either. Like that of an old woman who saw another old woman running in the street carrying two kids overtaken by a Georgian tank and crushed under the caterpillars. That's democracy bearers for you. You'd say that "cut-throats" is a somewhat exaggerated description of the Georgian military. Not so, eyewitnesses will tell you - because they had seen those throats cut. Including the throats of wounded civilians. In true Nazi style, they are said to have driven civilians into a barn and burned them alive. No wonder President Medvedev has given orders for all cases of these atrocities to be documented and saved for a future tribunal, preferably international. An order endorsed by Russia's ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin (let me remind you that Lukin was a co-founder of Russia's most important liberal, Western-oriented party.) But international tribunals, that's something for the future. At the moment of writing, President Saakashvili goes on putting up a smokescreen, aided and abetted by his US mentors and US allies. He is talking about a withdrawal of Georgian troops, about his desire for a ceasefire, and Western diplomats, politicians, and the public at large believe him and not the eyewitnesses in the area who experience right now, at the moment of writing, Georgian sniper fire and shelling. There are also reports of Georgian troops blowing up a dam or dams, to inundate Tskhinval and finish off those still hiding in cellars. Still, one's hopes are for some open-minded observers to go to the area and see for themselves what Saakashvili and his US backers are up to and what they have "achieved." For the true picture to emerge, and for responsible statesmen, particularly in Europe, to realize the dangers of such adventurist games. The repercussions of this US-Georgian venture for security in the Caucasus region and in a wider area are all too obvious. Abkhazia is scared of a repeat of Georgia's venture in South Ossetia and taking preventive measures, like forcing out Georgian heavily-armed troops that had entered the Kodori gorge in violation of the 1994 Moscow agreements that designated the gorge a demilitarized zone. Across the border, Chechnya and Adygeia are ready, like in the past, to help out an ethnically related people. Not to mention the Cossacks. A NATO member, Turkey, is already said to have sent warships with marines on board to the Georgian coast, near Poti. Ukraine's President Yushchenko, another NATO aspirant, is threatening action against Russia's Black Sea fleet now based in the Crimea, under an agreement between Russia and Ukraine which will only expire in 2017. The fleet's warships have taken some preventive action of their own, firing at Georgian vessels approaching the Abkhazian coast. Two are said to have been blown out of the water. A most sinister touch is the US direct involvement in the conflict, eight American transport planes carrying Georgian troops and materiel right into the war zone. What if there were only seven or six left after the foray? It is, after all, a war zone, where anything can happen. The Russian General Staff speaker also reports an anthropological curiosity - black-skinned "Georgians" among those dead and captured during the hostilities. Not many, but there are some. What price peace-loving rhetoric, Mr. Zalman Khalilzad? Now for a wider view. Should Russia get bogged down in a conflict with Georgia, Russia's ally Armenia, a completely landlocked country surrounded by hostile nations, will find itself in an untenable position and liable to attack by Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey, also desirous of resolving yet another frozen conflict, the one in Nagorny Karabakh, and likewise by military means, as there appears to be no chance of a political solution... And so on and so forth. Like I said, let a monkey with matches near a powder keg, and you never know where the thing will end. It is time to take away those matches, and step away from the brink. Wars are nasty things that have a self-perpetuating logic of their own. From across the Atlantic, this may seem like an exciting campaign exercise in the presidential election, with one of the candidates still harboring a wish to avenge a past defeat. It appears in a completely different light if one's mother lives perilously close to the war zone. Come to think of it, close or distant, a war can get to you anywhere on the planet these days. All I can say is, God forbid. Gmadlobt, as they say in Georgian. Thank you. Thank you, no Third World War, please.
