Month: August 2008

Sacramento Bee, USA

‘Chicken Charlie’ fries his way to fair fame

By Allen Pierleoni – [email protected]

Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, August 17, 2008
Story appeared in OUR REGION section, Page B4

Canada on board with wrestling gold and bronze, rowing silver at Olympics
5 hours ago

BEIJING – Canada’s medal drought in Beijing is over – and it came to
an end with athletes winning one of each colour in quick succession
Saturday.

Freestyle wrestler Carol Huynh won the women’s 48-kilogram final about
20 minutes after rowers Dave Calder and Scott Frandsen finished second
in the men’s pair to earn the country’s first trip to the podium at
the Summer Games. Less than a half hour after Huynh’s win, fellow
wrestler Tonya Verbeek claimed bronze in the 55-kilogram event.

Huynh posted a 4-0, 2-1 win in a one-sided final against Chiharu Icho
of Japan. The 27-year-old from Hazelton, B.C., won gold at last year’s
Pan American Games and a bronze medal at the 2005 world championship.

She wiped away tears as O Canada was played after the medal
presentation.

"I was just thinking how proud I am to be Canadian," Huynh said. "And
I was just thinking about the road to how I got here. It’s been a long
one but a good one."

Huynh, making her first appearance on an Olympic podium, was thrilled
her parents could share the moment with her.

"I learned my work ethic from them," she said. "They worked so hard
for us to have a better life. There’s five of us kids that they had to
raise and support."

Calder, from Victoria, and Frandsen, from Kelowna, B.C., clocked a
time of six minutes 39.55 seconds, nearly five seconds ahead of the
bronze medallists from New Zealand.

The Canadians were about two seconds behind Australia for gold.

"I’m really proud of it and Scott is really proud of it," said
Calder. "The Australians had a great push through the middle. We
pushed back a little bit but congratulations to them. They definitely
deserved that.

"We’re very happy with a silver medal today."

Calder rowed in the men’s pair four years ago in Athens. That crew was
disqualified from the semifinal for leaving their lane.

Frandsen was a member of the men’s eight that finished fifth in 2004.

Verbeek completed the triple for Canada when she beat Sweden’s
Ida-Theres Nerell 1-0, 1-0. The native of Beamsville, Ont., won silver
at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"On behalf of the Government of Canada and all Canadians, I would like
to congratulate Carol Huynh, David Calder, Scott Frandsen and Tonya
Verbeek for their exceptional accomplishments," said Prime Minister
Stephen Harper in a statement. "Canada is delighted to see them
standing tall on the podium with the world’s best athletes."

"We are extremely proud of Canada’s Olympic team competing in
Beijing. Each day, our athletes exhibit dignity, respect, and
dedication to their sport and to their country."

The medal flurry comes as a welcome relief after Canada went without a
trip to the podium during the first seven days of competition.

There were three agonizing near-misses over that span – weightlifter
Christine Girard fell three kilograms short of bronze, Mike Brown
missed a bronze in the 200-metre breaststroke by 0.09 seconds and
shot-putter Dylan Armstrong fell a centimetre short of third place.

The pressure both in China – where expectations were high for the team
coming in – and back at home – where anxious fans wondered how Canada
could trail countries like Togo, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia in the medal
standings – had been building, but should now start to ease.

Meanwhile, three Canadians advanced to women’s and men’s trampoline
finals next week.

Rosannagh MacLennan of King City, Ont., was third and Karen Cockburn
of Toronto fourth in the women’s preliminary round, while Toronto’s
Jason Burnett finished seventh among the men.

The women’s final is Monday followed by the men Tuesday at National
Indoor Stadium.

It was a bittersweet day for Canada at the women’s three-metre
springboard semifinal. Blythe Hartley of North Vancouver, B.C.,
qualified for the final, finishing 10th with a total of 324.6 points
from six dives. The top 12 advanced to Sunday’s final.

Jennifer Abel of Montreal just missed the cut, finishing 13th in
296.1.

The struggles continued for the Canadian baseball team, beaten 5-4 by
the United States for a third straight one-run loss.

This one really hurt as they blew a 4-0 lead in falling to 1-3 at the
Games, leaving them needing wins in their final three preliminary
round contests to have any hope of reaching the semifinals.

The women’s softball team suffered an equally stunning loss, falling
2-0 to Venezuela. Canada (3-2) put runners on second and third with no
outs, but couldn’t push a run across against the upstart Venezuelans
(2-3).

"I thought we played well and hit hard, but unfortunately, we could
not find the holes," said Canadian catcher Kaleigh Rafter. "They made
some big plays and we just could not (get) any runs across."

In other Canadian action:

-Zach Bell of Watson Lake, Yukon placed seventh in the men’s points
cycling race.

"It went pretty well," said Bell, one of two Yukon athletes competing
at the Games. "I mean I knew I could ride a top-eight if I rode a good
race for me, but if I rode a perfect race, it would be a top-five."

-The struggles continued for the men’s water polo team, which fell to
0-4 with a 13-7 loss to Greece. Kevin Graham and Aaron Feltham each
scored three goals for Canada.

"We played well three of the four quarters but Greece scored five
goals in the first," said Nathaniel Miller of Beaconsfield, Que. "We
can’t give up such a big lead in an Olympic tournament."

-Carline Muir of Toronto advanced to Sunday’s semifinals in the
women’s 400 metres. The 20-year-old ran a personal best 51.55 seconds
to finish third in her heat and move on.

"I pushed hard right to the end," said Muir. "It was an awesome way to
start my first Olympic experience."

-Jessica Zelinka of London, Ont., set a Canadian record of 6,490
points en route to a sixth-place finish in the heptathlon.

"I came here, I did my best, I got a Canadian record, and I got close
to what I was aiming for, and I finished off strong so I’m really
happy," said Zelinka.

-Kelsie Hendry of Saskatoon failed to advance out of the qualifying
round in the women’s pole vault. She cleared 4.30 metres, but missed
on all three attempts at 4.40.

"The experience I earned is great but my performance wasn’t," Hendry
said. "I have to take what I can from this and just learn."

-Ashley Holzer of Toronto placed 15th in the individual dressage Grand
Prix special, scoring 68.76 per cent aboard Pop Art.

San Francisco Chronicle, USA

Russian troops blow up key rail bridge, set fields on fire
Forces dig in, despite new cease-fire pact with Georgia

Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Even as Russia signed a cease-fire agreement with Georgia Saturday,
its troops destroyed a key railroad bridge that links the Caucasus
region to the Black Sea coast, effectively cutting off east-west
transportation routes through the country, the Georgian Foreign
Ministry announced.

Russia denied blowing up the bridge, calling the charge "another
unverified allegation" in the wake of large-scale fighting over a
pro-Moscow separatist republic. A Los Angeles Times photographer
traveling in the area Saturday saw explosives attached to the
underbelly of a nearby railroad bridge, but it was still intact.

The blast in the Kaspi region forced Azerbaijan to suspend the
transport of crude oil to the Black Sea ports and stranded 72
Armenia-bound freight cars in Georgia, Interfax reported.

The bridge attack came as Russian soldiers dug into strategic posts
along the country’s main roadway, setting up gun positions,
camouflaging their hardware with tree branches and hiking on foot into
the sunburned hills. Russian soldiers interviewed between the garrison
town of Gori and the capital, Tbilisi, said they had been deployed to
protect the road.

Tanks flying Russian flags were parked in the small town of Igoeti,
about 25 miles from the capital, for most of the day.

A Russian tank convoy that streamed from Gori to Igoeti Saturday
afternoon left fields burning in its wake, apparently lit on fire by
Russian troops. By late afternoon, the Russian tanks had fallen back
but were holding positions at the edge of the nearby Lekhura River.

Russia’s aggressive troop movements in Georgia proper calls into
question its commitment to a cease-fire, Georgian and international
officials said Saturday.

"I don’t see why they signed it if they don’t want to implement it,"
said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, who was trying to make his
way from Tbilisi to Gori to evaluate the state of the cease-fire.

But Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that the Russian
troops might stay put in Georgia for some time.

Any departure would come gradually and would depend upon "extra
security measures" for Russia’s soldiers in the breakaway republic of
South Ossetia, Lavrov said. Asked how long the withdrawal would take,
Lavrov replied, "As much as is needed," Interfax reported.

"This does not depend on us alone, because we are constantly coming up
against some problems on the Georgian side," he said. "Everything
depends on how effectively and quickly these problems are solved."

Last week’s fighting has ramped up tensions between Russia and the
West and soured relations between Moscow and Washington, D.C., to a
degree not seen since the Cold War.

The mutual frustration probably will rise as Russia and the United
States square off diplomatically over the fate of South Ossetia and
Georgia’s other breakaway republic, Abkhazia. Washington has called
for Georgia’s borders and territorial integrity to be respected.

Moscow has vowed to back the republics’ drive for independence, which
critics regard as a veiled annexation of the former Soviet lands.

President Bush said Saturday that Russia could not claim the
republics. "There is no room for debate on this matter," he said.

For the time being, Russia’s troop movements in Georgia are being
scrutinized for hints of Moscow’s intentions. "If they violate their
own agreement, that has even more serious consequences," said Richard
Holbrooke, a prominent U.S. diplomat now in Georgia. "Each hour, each
day, is a test."

In the cool shade of an acacia tree, men from the roadside farming
village of Natareti clumped around a Russian tank. They had approached
the Russian troops not only to inquire how long they would stay but
because they were hungry, they said.

"We are very scared. We don’t know what to do," said Suliko Usradze, a
60-year-old farmer. "We can stand the fear but not the hunger."

The Russian occupation had interrupted their harvest. They had no fuel
for the tractors, and the soldiers had taken over their
farmlands. They were out of bread and flour. They had nothing left to
eat but potatoes.

Gainesville Times, GA

Georgians prepared in fight, Guardsman says
Dawsonville man helped train army

A stretcher team carries a simulated Georgian army casualty through
rotor wash into a waiting Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter.

POSTED Aug. 17, 2008 1:56 a.m.

As the clash between Russian and Georgian soldiers continues half a
world away, a Dawsonville member of the Georgia National Guard said he
is concerned for the Georgian soldiers he got to know last month
during three weeks of military exercises in their country.

"There’s a personal connection there because of being able to work
with these folks and I’m concerned because their line of work takes
them into harm’s way," said Maj. John H. Alderman IV, a public affairs
officer with the Winder-based 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.

"So I’ve been worried about them but I also know that they’re going to
do the best that they can, and they’re going to do their job well. And
they’re going to serve their country the same way I serve mine."

Alderman, who graduated in 1995 from North Georgia College & State
University and lives in Dawsonville, returned with his fellow guard
members Aug. 2 from exercises in the country of Georgia. The
multinational exercises had been planned since 2006.

Members of both the 121st and the Glenville-based 122nd Rear
Operations Center, along with other American forces, spent much of
July in the Asian country of Georgia. Some 1,000 Americans and 1,000
soldiers from the countries of Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and
Azerbaijan took part in Immediate Response 2008, featuring coalition
forces who will be going to Iraq. "Interoperability," or learning how
to work together, is the goal of the annual exercise, Alderman said.

Alderman said until last week, the country of Georgia represented the
third-largest contributor of coalition forces in Iraq after the United
States and United Kingdom. The Georgian army forces began returning
home from Iraq when Russians invaded the country on Aug. 8. "It was
great to work with (the Georgians). We’re good partners and they’ve
been a huge support in the war on terror down in Iraq," Alderman said.

During the July exercises, the 121st worked with the Georgian army,
participating in live-fire exercises, practicing maneuvers and taking
a Combat Lifesaver course, Alderman said. The 122nd trained the
commander of a Georgian army brigade and his staff in how to deploy
and lead their troops, he said.

Alderman said the forces were "fully integrated" during the exercises,
teaming Americans and Georgians side by side. This required using
interpreters and hand signals to communicate, both very valuable
skills for coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Alderman said.

One of the members of the Georgian army Alderman worked closely with
lived for a time with relatives in Atlanta ‘ whose sister city is
Tblisi ‘ and pointed out that behind New York, the largest number of
people from the country of Georgia living in the United States reside
in the state of Georgia.

Both Americans and multinational forces also were able to pick up a
few words of each other’s languages, which sometimes is all that is
needed when dealing with civilians and others in foreign lands,
Alderman said.

"That’s great training, too, because many of the places we go in the
world, that’s going to be the case. When we’re on the ground in Iraq,
we have to be able to communicate with Iraqis," he said. "It’s a great
opportunity for soldiers to understand that language matters and if
you can learn 10 or 15 words, that makes a difference."

In addition to dealing with language barriers both with civilians and
among themselves, the maneuvers practiced by the multinational forces
included scenarios that might be common on the ground in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Scenarios included establishing a relationship with a
local police chief in a mock village and raiding a simulated insurgent
bomb-making facility, he said.

"If you’re in a village and someone attacks you, they’re not attacking
you in a vacuum on a chessboard where there’s two armies. They’re
attacking you in a place where people live and they sell things and
they bring their kids to get water and take them to play soccer or
whatever," Alderman said. "Because of that, these simulated
situational exercises are designed to let them deal with that and they
have to understand that that’s part of the battlefield and they have
to be careful … and how do you operate in that environment."

Other than the purely military exercises, Alderman said part of the
training also includes time to learn about the culture of the host
country. Alderman said he and fellow soldiers got to explore the
country of Georgia and meet its people during the three weeks spent
there.

American soldiers not only attended Mass at a Georgian Catholic
church, but also visited an orphanage outside the capital of
Tblisi. The director of the orphanage showed Alderman and fellow
troops a decade-old photo that showed members of the Georgia National
Guard when American forces last visited the country.

To his amusement, Alderman said that on the road to Tblisi, he saw
local farmers selling watermelons out of the trunks of their cars ‘ a
reminder of July in the state of Georgia.

The country of Georgia is located on the Black Sea between Russia and
Turkey on a confluence of rivers and cultures. It was one of the first
Christian nations, established as a kingdom hundreds of years before
the Crusades. The Caucasus Mountains separate Georgia from Russia in
the region of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

The capital is a fairly modern city, Alderman said, and the heart of
Tblisi is very Western in appearance with shops, restaurants and book
stalls. But outside the capital, it is very clear that parts of the
country are deep in poverty, Alderman said. Many areas don’t have
paved roads.

The city and other parts of the country also feature monasteries and
citadels that are centuries old. Icons of St. George, often depicted
in Christian religious art across Europe, also feature prominently
across Georgia, Alderman said. Even the country’s flag is a
St. George’s cross.

Georgia, currently embroiled again in conflict with Russia, has a long
history with its neighbor. As Russia expanded its territory to take
over its neighbors, Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in the
early 1920s and was a key strategic site for the Soviets. After the
Cold War ended and the Soviet Union began to break apart, Georgia
declared its sovereignty in 1992. Some breakaway provinces, such as
South Ossetia, retain close ties to Russia.

Alderman said the Georgians’ tensions with Russia weren’t a focus for
himself or his fellow soldiers. They were simply concentrating on the
task at hand: training coalition forces for deployment to Iraq. As a
matter of fact, Russians were conducting exercises in their own
country and in the Bering Sea with Norway and the U.S.

"We were there for an exercise," Alderman said. "We were there to do
our job."

Alderman said the Soviet stamp remains visible across Georgia.
Soviet-era bases and military machinery now are in Georgian hands. In
Tblisi, many buildings clearly are Soviet architecture, including
buildings with friezes featuring hammers from the hammer and sickle
that was the symbol of the Soviet Union.

He said much of the construction was similar to what he had seen when
he was deployed to Iraq in 2005.

"But the Georgian flag is all over the place and the people are very
happy and very friendly," Alderman said.

The country of Georgia "is making its mark," Alderman said. "They have
chosen to align themselves with the West."

New Yorker, United States
Boundary Issues

by David Remnick

August 25, 2008

On a bright September day in 1993, not long before he ended his two
decades in exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered a rare public
address in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. Although Solzhenitsyn
was energetic at the lectern, he was all but finished with his epic
work as the chronicler of Soviet cruelty. With `One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich,’ `Cancer Ward,’ `The First Circle,’ and, above all,
`The Gulag Archipelago,’ Solzhenitsyn had not only exposed the secrets
of Soviet oppression and ruin; he had also presaged the collapse of
Communist ideology and Moscow’s empire.

But, in Vaduz, Solzhenitsyn, a principled conservative, could not join
in the West’s euphoria. He was deeply aware that the costs of
ideology, violence, and empire had not been paid in full. While
American triumphalists were still indulging in clichés of how
Ronald Reagan had won the Cold War, Solzhenitsyn anticipated the
persistence of the old and unrepentant élites, the former
Communist Party chiefs and K.G.B. officials who so easily transformed
themselves into `democrats’ and `businessmen’:

We were recently entertained by a naïve fable of the happy
arrival at the `end of history,’ of the overflowing triumph of an
all-democratic bliss; the ultimate global arrangement had supposedly
been attained. But we all see and sense that something very different
is coming, something new, and perhaps quite stern. No, tranquility
does not promise to descend on our planet, and will not be granted us
so easily.

Solzhenitsyn died on August 3rd, and he was buried near Turgenev in
the graveyard of the Donskoi Monastery. Vladimir Putin, the former
K.G.B. operative and Russia’s de-facto President, unabashed by irony,
paid tribute to Solzhenitsyn’s service to `the ideals of freedom,
justice, and humanism.’ Later that week, while attending the opening
ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Putin discussed with his
seatmates and fellow heads of state a non-sporting matter: he had
ordered his tanks and troop trucks into South Ossetia, in the
Caucasus. His Army also attacked Georgia proper, most forcefully the
city of Gori, the birthplace of Iosef Dzhugashvili’better known as
Stalin, who in his day helped redraw the volatile mosaic of the
Caucasus.

Part of the `naïve fable’ was that the collapse of the Soviet
Union would peaceably defy historical precedent. Empires, blinded by
hauteur and ambition, don’t often stoop to understand the complexities
of their human and territorial acquisitions, and care even less about
the disfigurements and time bombs they eventually leave behind. The
record is long: after the Ottoman decline came the slaughter of
Armenians and the drawing of senseless boundaries in the Middle East;
imperial Britain left in its wake the wars in Ireland, Palestine,
Nigeria, and the Indian subcontinent; the French provided a legacy of
imminent violence from Algeria to Indochina.

Nor was the Soviet breakup the result of precision engineering; its
dangers, similarly, were only briefly concealed. In December, 1991, at
a vodka-soaked confab in a hunting lodge near the Polish border, the
Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, and the leaders of Belarus and
Ukraine dissolved the union formed by the Bolsheviks and their tsarist
predecessors, instantly depriving Mikhail Gorbachev of employment. `I
well remember how a sensation of freedom and lightness suddenly came
over me,’ Yeltsin wrote of the event. Putin, Yeltsin’s successor, who
spent the perestroika years seething with resentment as an
intelligence officer in East Germany, saw it differently. Burning
secret documents as the Berlin Wall fell, Putin felt abandoned by the
Party and by the empire he had been brought up to protect; he later
called the collapse of the Soviet Union `the greatest geopolitical
tragedy of the twentieth century.’

Promises of a voluntary and effective commonwealth of liberated
nations soon became a rueful memory. With the lonely exception of the
Baltic states (particularly Estonia), democratic development came
slowly and fitfully to the former republics, when it came at all. The
Central Asian republics’the `stans”ranged in political shape from a
North Korean model in Turkmenistan to an oil autocracy in Kazakhstan
run by a dynast from the Communist era. Belarus is run by a petty
dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who informed a German newspaper that
`not everything connected with that well-known figure, Adolf Hitler,
was bad.’ In Azerbaijan, the patriarch Heydar Aliyev, a K.G.B. general
in his salad days, bequeathed the nation’s throne to his son,
Ilham. And so on. The levels of autocracy, criminality, tin-pot
cronyism, and resurgent nationalisms emerged on such a heroic and
ruinous scale that the historian Stephen Kotkin has referred to the
less fortunate republics of the former Soviet Union as
`Trashcanistans.’

Moscow did not engage in large-scale violence in the post-Soviet realm
until 1994, but, not surprisingly, when it did it centered on the
Caucasus’for centuries a cauldron of ethnic emotion and battle. By
levelling the Chechen capital, Grozny, Yeltsin reënacted the
tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, a politician whose early liberal intentions
were overwhelmed by his commitment to a senseless and unwinnable
war. Vladimir Putin has none of Yeltsin’s democratic pretensions. His
focus is Russian power and its reëstablishment. And, even as
the world rightly condemns his ruthless invasion of Georgia, imagining
the world as he sees it is a worthwhile exercise.

Taken individually, the West’s actions since the collapse of the
Soviet Union’from the inclusion of the Baltic and the Central European
states in NATO to the recognition of Kosovo as an independent
state’can be rationalized on strategic and moral grounds. But taken
together these actions were bound to engender deep-seated feelings of
national resentment among Russians, especially as, through the
nineteen-nineties, they suffered an unprecedentedly rapid downward
spiral. Even ordinary Russians find it mightily trying to be lectured
on questions of sovereignty and moral diplomacy by the West,
particularly the United States, which, even before Iraq, had a long
history of foreign intervention, overt and covert’politics by other
means. After the exposure of the Bush Administration’s behavior prior
to the invasion of Iraq and its unapologetic use of torture, why would
any leader, much less Putin, respond to moral suasion from Washington?
That is America’s tragedy, and the world’s.

There is little doubt that the Georgian President, Mikheil
Saakashvili, provided Putin with his long-awaited casus belli when he
ordered the shelling of South Ossetia, on August 7th. But Putin’s war,
of course, is not about the splendors of South Ossetia, a duchy run by
the Russian secret service and criminal gangs. It is a war of
demonstration. Putin is demonstrating that he is willing to use force;
that he is unwilling to let Georgia and Ukraine enter NATO without
exacting a severe price; and that he views the United States as
hypocritical, overextended, distracted, and reluctant to make good on
its protective assurances to the likes of Georgia.

Inevitably, a number of neoconservative commentators, along with John
McCain, have rushed in to analyze this conflict using familiar
analogies: the Nazi threat in the late nineteen-thirties; the Soviet
invasions of Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968. But while Putin’s
actions this past week have inspired genuine alarm in Kiev and beyond,
such analogies can lead to heedless policy. As the English theologian
Bishop Joseph Butler wrote, `Every thing is what it is, and not
another thing.’ Cartoonish rhetoric only contributes to the dangerous
return of what some conservatives seem to crave’the other, the enemy,
the us versus them of the Cold War.

Only one with a heart of stone could fail to be moved by the spectacle
of the leaders of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states standing by
Saakashvili last week at a rally in Tbilisi. But Putin is not Hitler
or Stalin; he is not even Leonid Brezhnev. He is what he is, and that
is bad enough. In the 2008 election, he made a joke of democratic
procedure and, in effect, engineered for himself an anti-constitutional
third term. The press, the parliament, the judiciary, the business
élite are all in his pocket’and there is no opposition. ButPutin
also knows that Russia cannot bear the cost of reconstituting empire
or the gulag. It depends on the West as a market. One lesson of the
Soviet experience is that isolation ends in poverty. Putin’s is a new
and subtler game: he is the autocrat who calls on the widow of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. To deal with him will require statecraft of a
kind that has proved well beyond the capacities of our current
practitioners.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

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 [email protected]

The Star-Ledger – NJ.com, NJ

The Georgian patriot who made Great Russia his awful project
Sunday, August 17, 2008

BY MICHAEL MORAN

So many of the scars history has left on the societies of the West
have a common and often overlooked origin: the improbable rise, from
the ethnic outlands of a multi-ethnic empire, of a super-nationalist,
a man whose roots in an ethnic group other than the dominant one seem
to ensure that, once in power, he transforms himself into something
more than just another patriot.

This kind of man, thankfully in short supply these days, redefines
loyalty to the state in terms of a cult of personality orbiting
himself, leaving whatever loyalty he once owed to the region of his
birth. A short list of such figures would include a Corsican (Napoleon
Bonaparte), an Austrian (Adolf Hitler), a Croat (Josip Broz Tito), an
Alawite (the late Syrian dictator Hafez al- Assad) and a Georgian
(Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili).

Dzhugashvili, of course, is better known as Stalin, and the conflict
that flared into conflagration last week between Russia and Georgia
had much more than a coincidental connection to him.

Stalin, who murderously ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his
death in 1953, was born in Gori, a Georgian city just south of the
Ossetian district that was the focus of fighting over the past week. A
significant debate is under way as to whether Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili overreached when he tried to dislodge ethnic
Russian separatists who have prevented his country’s rule of law from
holding sway in South Osse tia.

Or, as some proposed, did Saakashvili fall into a carefully laid trap
by the separatists’ ally in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin,
allowing the Russian leader to send a warning shot across the bow of
any so-called "independent" state that once made up part of the Soviet
Union that dares chal lenge Moscow’s writ?

Either way, Russia has asserted itself convincingly, and an old wound
reopened in dramatic fashion.

History suggests the youthful Dzhugashvili would be deeply un happy at
Georgia’s humiliation. His earliest writings — poetry mostly —
indicated his deep love for Georgia. Some historians have surmised
this might stem from the fact that his parents were, in the words of a
Sla vophile, former New York Times correspondent David Binder,
"assimilated Georgians whose ethnic origin was Ossetian."

But Stalin’s passion for Georgia dwindled after he joined the
Bolshevik cause. During Lenin’s rule, Stalin landed the job of
devising a Soviet policy for nationalities, a vital issue given the
many dozen ethnic groups that the Russian em pire had collected under
the czarist tyranny over the centuries. Binder, with five decades of
experience covering Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, says
Stalin’s plan by 1923 was to deny the major nationalities of the
"Union" — Ukrainians, Azeris, Kazakhs, Uz beks, Armenians, Georgians
and dozens of smaller minorities — any real authority over their
government.

Lenin and other top Communists opposed this, citing Marxist principles
of self-determination. But Lenin’s days were numbered, and upon his
death in 1924, the transformation of the assimilated
Ossetian-cum-Georgian patriot- cum-Communist internationalist was
complete. Stalin denuded eth nic minorities of all but superficial
power, granting them "Soviet republics" but ensuring that, from the
army on down, Great Russia would hold sway.

To understand the Russian- Georgian struggle at all, one must come to
grips with Stalin. His last ing impact derives not only from his
influence on nationalities policy but, more recently and virulently,
his persecution of selected "sus pect" groups before and after World
War II. Stalin’s bloody purges during the 1930s, which claimed as many
as 10 million lives, fell hardest on non-Russian Soviet citizens,
particularly those in the army or holding positions of authority or
cultural prominence.

Jews, Tatars, anyone who had held high office in czarist times,
"kulaks" or landed peasants, Mus lim activists and any national
minority that even hinted at a desire for greater autonomy — all were
targets of the Kremlin’s murder machine. When Hitler invaded in 1941
and the Soviet army, hollowed out by Stalin’s murderous paranoia,
collapsed before the German advance, many of these ethnic minorities
— among them Georgians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns,
Chechens, Central Asians and, yes, even some Russians — could hardly
imagine German rule would outdo the Kremlin in butchery, a debate that
continues to rage among these groups.

In any case, prominent members of all of these societies formed
anti-Soviet militias, joined German army units and, most famously,
took jobs as guards in concentra tion and death camps. The retribution
visited upon them, like most Soviet methods, was collective, not
individual: Entire peoples were uprooted from their native lands and
moved to Siberia or Central Asia. Historians estimate some 3.5 million
people were transported to remote areas — the lucky ones to settle
uninhabited tundra, the unlucky to the gulag prison camps made
infamous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died earlier this month.

So it should not surprise anyone that on Wednesday, the Polish,
Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian leaders turned up in the Georgian
capital, Tblilisi, to pledge support for the embattled state. "I am a
Georgian," said Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Unlike John
F. Kennedy, who made a similar as sertion in West Berlin in 1962,
however, Ilves and his fellow leaders flew home to nations still
bordering Russia. They may not believe Georgia’s president acted
wisely, but they feel his pain.

Putin, of course, is not an ethnic minority. He is Russian through and
through, and his Soviet cre dentials, too, are impeccable due to his
long service in the KGB. So perhaps that demonstrates the limitations
of broad historical comparisons like the one above. On the other hand,
Putin’s use of grievance as a way of stirring support among Russians,
his casual disdain for democracy and his willingness to call the bluff
of the West when he sees the chance to gain all recall a different,
overlapping pattern.

"It is very queer that the unhap piness of the world is often brought
on by small men," wrote the German novelist Erich Maria Remar que. His
1927 book "All Quiet on the Western Front" is widely re garded as the
greatest war novel of all time. To write those words about an abusive
martinet named Himmelstoss years before the rise of Hitler is
prescience defined. Whether Putin, all 5-foot-5 of him, fits the same
bill, the reader alone must decide.

Michael Moran is executive editor of CFR.org, website of the Council
on Foreign Relations in New York. He lives in Nutley.

Schenectady Gazette, NY

Tchaikovsky night proves rich and lovely

Sunday, August 17, 2008
GERALDINE FREEDMAN

SARATOGA SPRINGS ‘ Saturday night was Tchaikovsky night at the
Saratoga Performing Arts Center and the huge crowd couldn’t wait for
all the hoopla to begin. But conductor Charles Dutoit made sure
everyone sat through some great music before the cannons and fireworks
arrived.

Since the traditional `Solemn Overture, 1812’ was last on the program,
Dutoit chose to present some ballet music the crowd might not know ‘
the overture from `Romeo and Juliet’ and three excerpts orchestrated
by Stravinsky from `The Sleeping Beauty’ that the orchestra had never
performed. Best of all, he slipped in the debut of 33-year old
Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan, who turned out to be a real
powerhouse in the Violin Concerto.

In the `Romeo and Juliet,’ Dutoit took a langourous tempo and allowed
the lush melodies and colorful agitated sections to linger longer than
most ballet orchestras do. It made for a warm homogenous sound that
ebbed and flowed around Dutoit’s lovely phrasing. It was gorgeous
stuff and the orchestra sounded wonderful.

Khachatryan was spectacular. He’s a very intelligent and musical
player. He didn’t rush through anything. Instead, he applied
interesting dynamics and rubato to the romantic melodies. Dutoit
watched him closely and provided expert support and superb balances.

Khachatryan’s tone was rich and his technique was amazingly clear,
clean and effortless. Even the double stops and harmonics were
perfectly in tune. When he wasn’t playing, which wasn’t often, he
exuded a calm stillness. He didn’t move about much or bend his
knees. But his face was expressive.

The crowd exploded after the long first movement with huge
applause. After Khachatryan whizzed through the final movement without
dropping a note, it erupted into great cheers and gave him a standing
ovation and many curtain calls.

After intermission, concertmaster David Kim played an almost concerto
level solo in the `Lilac Fairy Variation’ from `The Sleeping Beauty,’
which had been cut when the ballet premiered. Kim played with rich
tones, sculpted phrases and much sensitivity. The excerpt didn’t sound
too ballet-like, but the Entr’acte and the `Bluebird Pas-de-Deux’ did.

As for the warhorse `1812,’ the orchestra gave it as much attention to
detail and passion as anything else. The crowd loved it.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
17 August 2008, Sunday

Conflict in Caucasus: risk or opportunity for Turkey?

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili shakes hands with Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential residence in Tbilisi. A
preliminary agreement to resolve the Georgian crisis is in place, but
hostilities continue in the besieged Caucasian state, forcing Turkey
to think about its priorities and face its dilemmas as a close ally of
Georgia and with strategic ties to Russia.

The crisis began when Georgia attacked the separatist pro-Russian
territory of South Ossetia on Aug. 7, sparking Russian
retaliation. Scores of people have died in the fighting. Russian
troops targeted not only the Georgian forces in South Ossetia but have
also occupied parts of Georgia, including the Black Sea port of
Poti. In sum Russia has repelled the Georgian attempt to seize back
control of South Ossetia, which liberated itself from Tbilisi’s rule
in the 1990s.

Turkey cooperates with Georgia in the field of energy, and Turkey
hopes to become an eventual energy hub for Europe via the gas and oil
pipelines that pass through both countries. Turkey also provides the
former Soviet Union country with critical military assistance and
training. But it also has important ties with Russia. Russia is
Turkey’s foremost trading partner with a trade volume of an estimated
$30 billion this year, up from $23 billion last year. Turkey is also a
key importer of Russian natural gas, as experts estimate Turkish
dependence on Russia for natural gas to be about 65 percent of the
total.

Concerned over the escalation of the conflict, the Turkish government
has had difficulty determining the correct response to the
crisis. Professor Mensur Akgün, who lectures on international
relations at Ä°stanbul’s Kültür University, said
nobody was prepared for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to make
such a move.

`Nobody could guess that Saakashvili would defy the Russian giant;
attacking South Ossetia means attacking Russia,’ he told Sunday’s
Zaman.

He said it was therefore not unusual for Turkey to be in an initial
state of limbo, as no foreign relations expert in the world could have
predicted such an act from Saakashvili. `Turkey has followed a healthy
policy by not supporting one side over the other,’ Akgün added.

Another seasoned observer of the region, Paul Goble, director of
research at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku, agreed. `I
don’t think Turkey could have intervened earlier and prevented
this. Indeed, I think the one thing Turkey could have done and still
can do is to provide genuine expertise to the new and often
inexperienced governments on how to read what the West and especially
what the Americans say. More established regimes know how to balance
what Washington says diplomatically with what it says publicly and
politically. Had Georgia been able to do that, it might have avoided
this problem,’ he explained to Sunday’s Zaman via e-mail from the
United States.

After initial calls for an end to hostilities, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip ErdoÄ?an made a surprise move and flew to Russia and
Georgia on Wednesday, calling on Russian and Georgian leaders to heed
his proposal for a Caucasus pact. ErdoÄ?an said such a regional
platform would play a key role in preventing similar clashes in the
future. He said it would also include crisis management mechanisms
based on principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE).

Saakashvili backed the idea, saying it would be beneficial to create a
common security mechanism in the region. Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also welcomed the proposal,
and ErdoÄ?an said after talks in Moscow that the foreign
ministries of the two countries would start working on the
idea. `Regional peace and welfare must be secured via cooperative
projects that reflect common sense and mutual interests, not
sentimentalism, clashes and tensions,’ he said.

Akgün said this is the kind of role that Turkey can play in the
region, similar to what it does in the Middle East. `Since the
mid-2000s, Turkey has become a force for solutions rather than
problems.’ He offered the example of the Turkish-mediated indirect
talks between Israel and Syria.

According to Goble, Turkey has some enormous opportunities but faces
some enormous risks as well in the wake of the Russian aggression in
Georgia.

`Its opportunities include establishing far closer ties with
Azerbaijan and Georgia and assuming the role of a major regional
power. Its risks include falling into the trap of a `cooperative’
venture with Moscow, something that would tie Ankara’s hands, forcing
it to sacrifice its interests to Russia’s,’ he said.

Goble added that it is important to recognize that Russia
miscalculated even more than Georgia. `The frozen conflicts have been
internationalized, Russia has suffered a black eye diplomatically,
Georgia has left the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and will
get into NATO as will Ukraine, and other countries in the region will
become more independent of Moscow as well,’ he stated.

Turkey’s EU membership, energy deals threatened?

Turkey sits in a volatile region bordering Iran, Syria, Iraq and
former Soviet republics. It wants to join the European Union, but some
EU states’ hesitation to expand the bloc up to the Caucasus may have
increased due to the Georgian-Russian conflict.

Amanda Akçakoca, a policy analyst at the Brussels-based
European Policy Centre, said this is a chance for Turkey to show those
in the EU — the French president in particular — the strong role
that Turkey can play through taking a lead peacekeeping role.

`ErdoÄ?an should be in regular touch with French President
Nicolas Sarkozy and Javier Solana [high representative for the Common
Foreign and Security Policy, secretary-general of the Council of the
European Union] so they can work on a solution together,’ she stated.

She also said this should serve as a warning regarding the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and
Armenia. `Nagorno-Karabakh is only a short distance from the key
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [BTC] oil pipeline, where both Baku and Yerevan
have been increasing their defense spending. Turkey could play a far
greater role here, again together with the EU, before Nagorno-Karabakh
also blows up in the world’s face.’

Since Turkey severed its ties with neighboring Armenia in the early
1990s in protest of the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan, Georgia has become a valuable outlet for Turkey to reach
the Caucasus and Central Asia.

According to Akçakoca, the EU will have increasingly close ties
to and responsibility for countries in the Caucasus regardless of
Turkish membership, but will be far better placed to deal with them
with a strong Turkey.

Turkey has worked hard to become a transit route for Caspian and
Central Asian oil and gas exports as Europe tries to reduce its
dependence on Russia. But Russia’s invasion of Georgia has raised
doubts about the security of oil and gas pipelines that cross Georgia
and the wisdom of further investment in the pipelines.

Necdet Pamir, board member of the World Energy Council’s Turkish
National Committee, worries about whether transit lines through
Georgia will remain secure in the long run and whether additional
foreign investment will be safe. `The Russians have demonstrated their
military capability of getting very close to the pipelines, and they
have shown that they can easily blockade Georgia,’ he said.

Pamir said that if the gas and oil pipelines are closed, Turkey’s
losses would total up to $12 million per day.

James L. Williams, publisher of the Energy Economist newsletter, was
blunt about the possible repercussions of the conflict. `The Georgian
president brought in the whole pipeline issue probably to send more
worries to the West, and especially to European consumers, so as to
draw more attention to the conflict,’ he said. `It’s not that we
should ignore it, but it’s certainly not a reason to panic.’

Turgut Gür, co-chairman of the Turkish-Russian Business
Council, said he is not too worried as he believes that the risk will
be limited to short-term effects only. He mentioned that trucking had
been temporarily impacted. He said that both Russia and Georgia were
important countries for Turkey, adding that `we can’t choose one over
the other.’ He noted that Russia values Turkey and is aware of what an
important role Turkey plays in the region.

The 1,000-mile BTC pipeline represents the core of Turkey’s economic
interests in Georgia; it can carry up to 1 million barrels a day of
crude from the Azerbaijani coast on the Caspian Sea through Georgia
and Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. The BTC is
owned by a consortium of companies. It was expected to carry more than
900,000 barrels of oil a day this month for export, bypassing routes
that would have taken the oil through Russia and subjected it to that
country’s transit fees.

Deliveries through the BTC pipeline were halted on Aug. 4 after a fire
was sparked along the Turkish portion of the route. The outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the
incident. BP also shut down a smaller line, the Western Route Export
Pipeline, which was recently overhauled. It can carry up to 160,000
barrels of oil a day from Baku to the Georgian Black Sea port of
Supsa. As a precaution, BP also shut down the South Caucasus gas
pipeline, which transports natural gas from the Azerbaijani city of
Baku through Georgia into Turkey. That gas is not exported.

17 August 2008, Sunday

YONCA POYRAZ DOÄ?AN Ä°STANBUL

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

guardian.co.uk, UK

Behind the tanks in Ossetia are key oil and gas pipelines, writes Alex
Brett Alex Brett
The Observer, Sunday August 17 2008

When Russian tanks poured into South Ossetia, it was the clearest
turning point in Russia’s relations with the West since the fall of
the Berlin Wall: Russia not only managed to destabilise a pro-Western
regime but, crucially, demonstrated to its neighbours how defenceless
they are against incursions by its armed forces.

For years, the US and the EU have been looking for ways of
circumventing Russia for energy, especially in the light of the
controversial cuts in supply it made to Ukraine, Belarus and the Czech
Republic. The opening of the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) from
Azerbaijan to Turkey should successfully enable the flow of 16 billion
cubic metres (bcm) of gas into Europe without Moscow’s interference.
However, with Georgia being the only viable country for the pipeline
to go through – as Azerbaijan is technically at war with Armenia – the
current crisis showed energy majors operating in the Caucasus how
tenuous their grip on resources could become should the Kremlin
intervene in the affairs of its neighbours again. The SCP was closed
for a time during the latest violence.

This is of particular concern to BP, which owns 25.5 per cent of the
SCP, and is already in dispute with Moscow over the status of
subsidiary TNK-BP.

Nick Day, chief executive of risk consultancy Diligence, says Russia
had been using its energy supply as a tool of its foreign policy and
that ‘the greatest threat to Western companies in the region is
renationalisation in former Soviet countries, which has already been
taking place in Russia. As a result of this conflict, countries
neighbouring Russia may offer oil and gas contracts to Moscow as an
olive branch.’

While a spokesman for the EU commission says the situation in Georgia
meant that the EU ‘had no time to waste’ in dealing with energy
security, the instability of the region covering the SCP threatens to
scupper Europe’s policy of diversifying its energy supply, giving
Russia a much stronger hand. This is chiefly due to the undesirable
nature, as Europe sees it, of the most viable alternatives – Iran,
whose nuclear programme is a bone of contention, and Iraq, whose
current instability is cause for great concern.

Europe has to look at the viability of projects already on the table
for its long-term energy supply. The Nabucco project takes gas from
the Shah Deniz gas fields in Azerbaijan, starting from Turkey and
ranging into the heart of Europe, with the potential for inputs from
Iran and Iraq. By contrast, the South Stream project starts directly
from Russia, taking Gazprom gas through new EU member states Romania
and Bulgaria and provides ease of access to greater resources. Nabucco
aims to provide 10bcm of gas from 2013 rising to 31bcm in 2021,
whereas the South Stream aims to supply 30bcm on completion, forecast
to be in 2013.

However, the Georgian conflict has caused great damage to the
viability of Nabucco. As Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy
Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution, points out, ‘the
South Stream project has been strengthened by the current situation
and Nabucco may fall by the wayside’. To that extent; ‘Russia has the
whip hand over Europe in terms of energy policy’. Ebinger reflects the
thoughts of most experts. Valery Nesterov, energy analyst at Troika
Dialog, says: ‘the resource base for the South Stream is stronger than
that of Nabucco. The South Stream has a head start; Nabucco has been
dealt another blow.’ Nesterov argues that any plans to supply the
Nabucco pipeline from Turkmenistan are not viable as the Turkmens are
already supplying around 90bcm of energy to Iran, Russia and China.

The geographic positioning of Turkey and Russia as the only suppliers
direct to the continent mean the EU’s bargaining position looks
weak. Furthermore, Turkish-Russian co-operation is proceeding at a
gallop. This was confirmed by Ankara’s silence on Georgia and comments
from the Turkish energy ministry suggesting they would ‘increase
supplies from Russia and Iran’ in the event of a shortfall from the
SCP. Nesterov says ‘deeper co-operation between Russia and Turkey is
likely. It is to both countries’ advantage.’

So the South Stream, in terms of viability, can provide guaranteed
energy to Europe over the longer term, while Nabucco is beset by
unresolved problems. When the only alternatives are gas from Iran and
the Persian Gulf, energy from Russia seems to reconcile Europe’s
regional strategic interests with security of supply at a smaller
diplomatic cost. But it is only the lesser of two evils.

Independent, UK

Ethnic tensions: War in the Caucasus is Stalin’s legacy

Arbitrary boundaries and forced repatriation are two of the causes
behind the constant conflicts in the former Soviet Union. Shaun Walker
reports

Sunday, 17 August 2008

The Georgians are bombing South Ossetia; the Russians have come
through the Roki tunnel to take Tskhinvali; a second front has been
launched in the Kodori Gorge; the Russians have occupied Gori, Poti
and Senaki. It’s been a week where names and places that previously
didn’t register a blip on the Western consciousness have suddenly
become headline news. Even most of the journalists covering the
conflict, shipped in from big bureaux across the world, had never
heard of Tskhinvali in the morning when they flew in. By evening they
were pontificating about the significance of its fall to the Russians
on live television.

The most intense stage of conflict is over now in South Ossetia, but
hopes for a negotiated settlement remain very slim indeed. The real
bad news, though, is that South Ossetia is not alone as a potential
hot spot in the former Soviet Union. There are many spots that you may
never have heard of, dotted all around the territory that was once
part of the Red Empire.

As well as South Ossetia, there is Georgia’s other breakaway state of
Abkhazia. Tiny South Ossetia is inconceivable as a "real country", and
could only be part of either Russia or Georgia, but Abkhazia might
have a better shot of making it. It has a coastline, which fuels the
tourist industry that is beginning to revive, and means that trade
with countries other than Russia is possible.

Hidden in the lush forest above the coast at Gagra in Abkhazia is a
lime-green mansion; one of several dachas built for Joseph Stalin, an
ethnic Georgian, along the Abkhaz coastline. He’d come for weeks in
the summer, relaxing on the balcony or playing a game of pool with
other leading Bolsheviks. It may have been here that Stalin made many
of the decisions that scattered and divided nations, and led to many
of the conflicts that have flared up since the Soviet Union
collapsed. National and ethnic identi

ties were shifted, encouraged or suppressed during different
periods. Whole nations were deported to Siberia or the Kazakh steppe,
scattered irrevocably like human dust. Borders between the different
entities of the union were changed at will, often with the express
intention of fomenting ethnic unrest.

In Abkhazia itself, huge numbers of Georgian settlers were moved in;
the Abkhaz language was suppressed and the Georgian language was
enforced in schools and universities. In fact, many ethnic Abkhaz talk
about the Georgian rule over their territory in the same terms that
the Georgians themselves talk about Soviet oppression.

While Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin undoubtedly ruthlessly exploit
the tensions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it is a foolish mistake to
think they created them. Ossetians and Abkhaz remember all too well
the aggressive and unpleasant Georgian nationalism during the early
1990s, and have no desire to be part of a Georgian state. Meanwhile,
after the wars in both regions at that time, many ethnic Georgians
still live as refugees in grim conditions in Tbilisi and other
Georgian cities.

The Abkhaz say that all the West’s posturing over "territorial
integrity" is meaningless ` why on earth should arbitrary lines drawn
up by Stalin be the basis for statehood in the 21st century? Now that
Saakashvili has been humiliated over the South Ossetian conflict, the
Abkhaz are more buoyant than ever, and it’s hard to see the territory
ever becoming part of Georgia again. The threat of conflict will
always loom, though, and when the Georgians rebuild their army and
country, we can expect to see renewed conflict.

Over the other side of the Caucasus Mountains, things are just as
volatile. We all know about Chechnya, and the bloody wars that Russia
has fought to bring the region under its control. For now, under the
iron-fisted rule of former rebel Ramzan Kadyrov, the situation is
relatively quiet, and ironically the odious Kadyrov has achieved far
more independence from Moscow than his rebel predecessors could have
dreamed of. He has built a Chechnya that for all intents and purposes
is independent from Moscow, and he’s done it using Moscow’s money.

Not too far from Chechnya is Prigorodny District, a disputed bit of
land between Ingushetia and North Ossetia. Stalin had the entire
Ingush population, along with the Chechens, deported to Kazakhstan
during the Second World War. By the time they were allowed to return
in the 1950s, their houses had been taken over by ethnic
Ossetians. Another small, nasty war in the early 1990s failed to solve
the problem, and there are still disgruntled Ingush refugees who want
to return; some of them were involved in the Beslan school siege in
North Ossetia.

One of the Kremlin’s fears about Georgian actions in South Ossetia was
a renewed stream of Ossetian refugees crossing the Caucasus Mountains
and flooding into Prigorodny, setting off more tensions with the
Ingush and repercussions across the North Caucasus. That’s not to say
that Russia’s response was born purely from security concerns, but if
Britain can feel justified to intervene for strategic reasons in Iraq
and Afghanistan, it’s hardly surprising that the Russians feel they
can use force on their own doorstep to prevent instability across
their southern region.

As well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia, there are two other "breakaway
states" in the former Soviet Union. There’s Nagorno-Karabakh, where a
war in the early 1990s killed 30,000. The territory is ethnically
majority Armenian, was part of Azerbaijan in the Soviet period, but is
now controlled by Armenian separatists. A shaky status quo sees much
of the territory still in ruins, no diplomatic relations between the
two countries, and a large chunk of Azerbaijan "proper" occupied by
Armenia. Malnourished conscripts point rifles at each other from muddy
trenches along the last genuine front line in Europe.

Then there’s Transdniester, a sliver of land controlled by
Moscow-loyal separatists but officially part of Moldova. It’s run by
Igor Smirnov, who might make the Guinness World Records for having the
bushiest eyebrows in the world. His land is a potential conflict zone
right on the EU’s border.

The list goes on and on. In the Fergana Valley, a three-country zone
in Central Asia where impoverished Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Tajiks live,
Islamic extremism is on the rise and the potential for ethnic conflict
growing all the time. All the way across the other side of the former
Soviet Union, the sizeable Russian minority in the Baltic states feels
oppressed and excluded from their countries’ drive towards the EU and
linguistic nationalism.

One of Vladimir Putin’s most-quoted phrases is that the "collapse of
the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 21st
century". This was widely interpreted as being part of the ex-KGB
agent’s hankering for the return of the Soviet past. But Putin spoke
the words while talking about the vicious wars that raged in its
aftermath and the wars that are likely to come in the future. The
week’s events in South Ossetia show how quickly simmering tensions can
erupt into vicious conflict. Look out for more violence in places
you’ve never heard of, coming soon