Georgia after the humiliation

Saakashvilli will be forced to answer tough questions

by Tatul Hakobyan

Published: Saturday August 30, 2008

Vagharshak Zurnachian. Tatul Hakobyan / Armenian Reporter

Gori - Vagharshak­ Zurnachian moved to Josef Stalin's birthplace from the Armenian village of Ashkala in Georgia's Tsalka region in 1941. He, like the majority of Armenians in Gori, lived in the train station district, on Leselidze Street. The 83 year old, who lost his wife ten years ago, did not flee Gori during the bombings of the city. "At my age I have nowhere else to go," he explained.

"When the Russians entered the city, people were running around in panic," Mr. Zurnachian said. "The police also ran away and the city was abandoned. For a couple of days there was only the Russian army and a few elderly people in the city. The Russians were not bothering anyone."

In the early hours of August 22, the last of the Russian soldiers were leaving Gori in armored vehicles. A few cars could be seen in the city; there was bread for sale in the market and the owners of a few undamaged shops were opening the doors for those returning home. In front of the municipality building, where a large statue of Stalin stands, facing Russia, dozens of foreign and local journalists were reporting live for their TV stations.

Vladimir Tushmalishvili, 72, put all the blame for the events in Gori and the Georgian-Russian war on the administration of his own country. His house, as well as all the apartments of several buildings on Sukhishvili Street are in ruins or badly damaged. The buildings are in the neighborhood of the Georgian tank base in Gori. The Russian air force leveled that base to the ground in just a couple of hours.

"Seven people have been killed in our building," Mr. Tushmalashvili said. "Those who survived can no longer live here. They suggest that my daughter and I live temporarily in the kindergarten," he added, displaying the ruined and looted apartments from the inside.

During my two-day stay in Gori, I talked to many people. None of them said the Russian soldiers were responsible for the looting of the apartments. On the contrary, many confirmed that the Russian soldiers kept law and order when the Georgian police fled Gori immediately after the first bombing.

The Russian media, which has been prohibited from broadcasting in the territory of Georgia, constantly replayed a scene where Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, ran to avoid Russian bombs, while visiting Gori, and one showing the nervous president was chewing on his tie. By doing so, the Russians were trying to humiliate Mr. Saakashvili in the eyes of the Georgians. In a way the Russians have already succeeded in humiliating Mr. Saakashvili and the Georgian army, which was trained with the help of the United States, in the eyes of the average Georgian citizen.

Taxi driver Avtandil, whose wife is Ossetian, constantly cursed Mr. Saakashvili on the road to Tbilisi from Gori. The most modest of those curses was "cowardly rooster."

"Was this the army? After the first bombing, the Georgian tanks and armored vehicles were overtaking the rest of the cars fleeing Gori," recounts Avtandil with black humor. He also confesses that he earned a lot of money during the war - first from those escaping, then from foreign journalists, who paid large sums of money.

As the anti-Russian mood reached its peak in Georgia after the aggressions in August and the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the Kremlin, Russia will have a hard time in finalizing the humiliation of Mr. Saakashvili in the eyes of Georgian citizens. However, once the air clears, the Georgians themselves are going to direct harsh questions to Mr. Saakashvili and the Georgian government.

Until August 8 Georgia controlled at least 30 percent of South Ossetia's territory. After the Georgian­-South Ossetian war in 1992, life in the breakaway region was stabilizing; relations between Ossetians and Georgians were restored and about 50 Georgian villages lived in relative stability next to about a hundred Ossetian settlements. Today the 50 Georgian villages are partly or completely ruined and looted as are other Georgian villages located near South Ossetia; dozens of residents have been brutally murdered and thousands of Georgians have become refugees.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said in an interview with Europe 1 radio on August 27, "In a certain way ethnic cleansing is taking place" in villages previously controlled by the Georgian side inside South Ossetia.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR reported up to 15,000 people have fled south from South Ossetia into Georgia proper. In addition, some 73,000 people were displaced from the areas outside South Ossetia.

They have mainly settled around Tbilisi or in the capital city's schools and other establishments. Some of them are seeing Tbilisi for the very first time. And these people who have lost their homes can curse the Ossetians and the Russians, but they are demanding answers from Mr. Saakashvili.

Until August 8, Georgia controlled the Kodori gorge, a small part of the territory of another breakaway region, Abkhazia. Here, just as in the Georgian village of Kurta in South Ossetia, Mr. Saakashvili had established Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's Georgian regimes to counterbalance the separatists' regimes. Georgian troops fled Kodori and Kurta within a couple of hours, leaving behind large quantities of munitions.

Until the crisis in August, there was talk of rearming the Georgian army, and the United States was pointing out that the Georgian contingent was the third largest in Iraq after the United States and the United Kingdom; today nothing much remains of that army.

Georgia's image suffered immensely. The country, which George W. Bush hailed as "the beacon of democracy" and was supposed to serve as an example to neighboring countries was humiliated by Russia in a couple of hours. If until August 8 it was possible to imagine the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as an integral part of Georgia, then today such talk is superfluous.