South Ossetia

The war going on right now between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia is one of those situations where there's simply not enough solid information going in or out to say anything definitive besides, 'holy shit, Russia and Georgia are at war!'

Still, I have to disagree with Robert Farley's take on the situation, even if he's got his facts pretty straight. True, the Georgians technically started the affair with their overnight invasion, but that has to be taken in the context of the so-called 'sniper war' that had been going on all week, and the fact that the Russians have been steadily ramping up their support for Tskhinvali over the last few months. In fact, if you read Douglas Muir's excellent profile of South Ossetia over at Fistful of Euros, you'll notice that the whole idea of South Ossetia being able to maintain any sort of meaningful independence on its own is a joke. The so-called 'Peace Keepers' Russia has stationed in the region since the 1990s are pretty much de facto the Ossetian armed forces, with the Ossetian military itself barely constituting a militia. The Russians helped incite the original Ossetian rebellion and carve out the de facto republic, primarily as a means of forcing Georgia to join the CIS, and as a means of installing Eduard Shevardnadze as president. Most of the fighting is going on in and around the tiny 'capital city' of Tskhinvali, primarily because the rest of the country is semi-inhabitable. Its a battle, essentially for a town the size of Limerick, with an economy based primarily on it being a haven for organised crime and various forms of smuggling (also a little like Limerick.) Point being, the Georgian's have every right to take back under their rightful control a mafioso city-state backed up by an increasingly hostile neighbour that has made little attempt to disguise the fact that it would be delighted to annex it (vis, giving pretty much any Ossetian with a pulse a Russian passport, which has also served as a neat justification for sending in the tanks.) Moreover, whether the Georgian's 'legally' struck the first blow is a bit contentious. Saakashvili did declare a unilateral ceasefire, which was broken sometime last night, before invading. Which side fired first still isn't clear, and I'm disinclined to believe the various somewhat histrionic statements emanating from the South Ossetian news services.

However its clear that Saakashvili made some major miscalculations. If I'm reading the tea leaves right, his intention was basically to sucker punch the separatists (with his recently upgraded and US trained army,) fight a quick clean war before Russia could get involved and then perhaps see what the Abkhazian position looked like after victory. But there was no way he was ever going to take Tskhnivali without killing a few Russian 'peace-keepers' and thus provoking a response. And seriously, if he thinks that either the US or the EU has any interest in risking a shooting war with Moscow to pull his fat out of the fire, he's completely delusional.

But the sheer scale of Russia's commitment is astonishing. Within a few hours they managed to insert a formidable armoured force into the conflict zone and moreover, it looks like they're fielding some of their best (from the TV broadcasts they seem to be late Soviet period T-80 MBTs with fancy reactive armour plating.) Its difficult to say at this point whether the Ossetians and the Russians hoped to deliberately provoke a Georgian invasion, but from the looks of things they were damn well ready for one. So make no mistake, this is a war, not just a 'conflict' or 'tensions' or whatever euphemistic BS the news is peddling.

So what's the outcome? Frankly I don't know. From a humanitarian perspective its probably best if one side or the other delivers a decisive blow, right now, and sends the other guy packing. Otherwise, the war could drag on (and with Tskhinvali apparently already half-razed, will very quickly destroy the very little in South Ossetia that might possibly be worth fighting over) and turn into a really nasty guerilla conflict. Various small-time regional thug/war-lords from the Russian boondocks have already pledged to send volunteer militias to the conflict zone. The Abkhazians could use the opportunity to secure their own independence once and for all. And we could start seeing major terrorist operations within Tbilisi. From a political stand point, I hope the Georgians come out tops. It'll knock Putin and his power base down a few well deserved pegs, and allow the Georgians to finally secure a reasonable degree of autonomy for their country. It'll also make shipping Central Asian oil and gas through the Caucasus a hell of a lot easier - perhaps not a very politic reason for supporting a belligerent, but a real one nonetheless.

However, at this point I fear this is no longer a war for mere political objectives. It's become a war of pride, primarily between Saakashvili and Putin themselves. Both know that their own jobs quite likely depend on an acceptable outcome, and both define acceptable as the unconditional surrender of the other. Which means neither is likely to blink any time soon. And as the war has thus far been largely confined to a barren, desolate, rock of a self-declared Republic there's precious little to lose by fighting on.

Unless of course, you're a South Ossetian.

Post-Script: From a meta-media point of view, one of the most fascinating things about this conflict is its Wikipedia page. Once this stopped being a simple paragraph in 'Georgia-South Ossetia Conflict' and became its own full-fledged '2008 War in South Ossetia' entrance, I knew this was getting serious.