Another Side of the Georgian-Russian Conflict

When it comes to coverage of the ongoing feud between Georgia and Russia, the Western mass media have a tendency to draw their testimony from "official" sources – political leaders, think tank analysts and the representatives of semi-political organizations such as the OSCE and Western-funded NGOs. However, with only a few exceptions, the voice of the common people is rarely heard. This tacit media complicity all too often invalidates the viewpoint of regular Georgians or Russians as being irrelevant, while it ends up bolstering the policies of their increasingly bellicose governments or blessing the programs of allegedly populist organizations supported from without.

Further, media articles featuring miniature maps of the Caucasus tend to be political too. That is, while they reveal the jagged borders of far-flung territories unknown to most outsiders, and the locations of various cities therein, they tend to pay less heed to the geographical realities – something which is unfortunate, considering that the history of the entire Caucasus region has always been shaped by the exigencies of its rugged, mountainous terrain.

Having had an interest in the country and its key problems for several years, I endeavored on my latest trip to Georgia to visit other parts of the country, and get a mixture of opinions that would include the testimonies of non-official people whose lives are being affected by the decisions of their increasingly rash leaders.

A nice place to visit: Georgia's northern terrain is a joy to see – unless you can't exit.

Into the Mountains

It is less than a four-hour drive north to reach the Russian border from Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. But the road is winding and difficult, as it cuts through mountains that reach their peak in Mt. Kazbek (16,558 feet). Known as the Georgian Military Highway, this historically strategic route is marred with crater-sized potholes and disintegrates completely into dirt and rocks at its summit, the Jvari Pass. At many points, the road is carved out of sheer cliff faces and contains numerous built-in tunneled underpasses on the sides – a necessity, owing to the massive snowfall this area gets in winter. Needless to say, the views are magnificent throughout.

I negotiated this route after enlisting the services of one Tariel Tabashidze, a 40-year-old agronomist by training who now works as a translator for German and U.S. companies and individuals. Since the journey is definitely too challenging for the average car, we took his brother's trusty white Lada Niva – the Russian answer to a Jeep. Along the way, Tabashidze proudly recounted how the very same vehicle had been hired out a decade ago to BBC reporter Andrew Harding for his forays into neighboring Chechnya.

Unlike that volatile region, Georgia's Kazbegi region is a sparsely-populated oasis of tranquility, featuring abundant wildlife and medieval stone churches, sprinkled with tiny villages that culminate in the small town of Kazbegi itself, just a few miles from Russia. The proximity of the border means that the dilapidated shops in Kazbegi and its outlying villages are filled with Russian goods. Georgian farmers also send the majority of their produce north for export. Unlike claims of allegiance with Russia voiced by secessionists in Georgia's South Ossetian and Abkhazian provinces, Kazbegi's Russian relationship has nothing to do with politics. Rather, the greater distance and geographical difficulties of communicating with Tbilisi – especially in winter, when the whole area is snowed under – mean that the locals must rely on their connections with their much closer neighbors to the north, and especially the regional center of Vladikavkaz.

For remote mountain villages, having connections with nearby North Ossetia, over the Russian border, is necessary for survival.

The Border Swings Shut

However, these connections were instantly severed by the tragedy of Beslan on Sept. 1. In the wake of this deadly terrorist attack, Russian President Putin ordered the closure of Russia's border with the south as a security measure. Yet by early October, when I visited, the Kazbegi border (known as the Upper Lars crossing) was still closed. Any security risks (had there really been any) were long ended.

There was another factor to consider here. Almost exactly two years before, I had traveled via helicopter to another border point – Shatili – which sits snug on the Chechen part of the Russian border. Here, young OSCE monitors had, two days earlier, been stopped in a remote place by a dozen heavily armed Chechens. Luckily for them, the monitors were released, but with the following warning: "We know all about your little camp. So if you tell the Russians about us before two days have passed, we will destroy it."

From this and many other accounts, it thus seemed that Russian charges are justified. At least on their part of the border, Chechen terrorists did occasionally slip in and out of the Georgian wilds. However, it was also hard to believe that any such individual would be found standing in line, waiting to be processed at an official border checkpoint. Whether or not the Russians decided to close the border at Kazbegi would thus mean little for state security.

Pressing on to the closed border checkpoint, this old woman planned to camp overnight until it reopened.

And so even if initially understandable, the Russian border closure simply made no sense. And, as I found, it has meant trouble for both local Georgians and travelers trying to pass through. Elderly Makhvala Sargishvili owns a kiosk located (literally) in a hole in the wall running outside her tiny mountain village. Crammed inside the shop window were dusty boxes of outdated Russian provisions. Almost all of her products came from Russia, but with the blockage at the border she was faced with a real problem. "Life is not so bad, but not so good, either. This problem with the border is really difficult for us."

These comments were shared by three farmers, Giorgi, Emzar, and Vano, pitching hay in the idyllic mountain village of Kobi. Tomorrow would be dog-fighting day in the village, they announced; there was simply nothing else to do for entertainment. "There's no TV," said Giorgi, "and nobody has enough money to get married. There are now 59 couples from these villages waiting to have a wedding someday."

Agriculture is the only source of income for these villagers, and a very seasonal one. Within a few weeks after my visit, they predicted, the snow would start falling. Now, with the Russian border closed, "we can neither get goods we need nor export our produce," lamented Vano. Geography, not politics or ethnicity, had forced these Georgians to throw in their lot with the Russian Ossetian population to the north.

"We feel like animals. We have been stuck here for 32 days," said Isak Ogosian (right).

The Stranded Armenians

However difficult the border closure was for ordinary Georgian villagers, those most affected at the time were 25 Armenians who'd had the bad luck of reaching the border just as the carnage in Beslan was unfolding. Some were trying to go to Russia for work, others to return to their adopted homes in Vladikavkaz. None of them were prepared for the ordeal that would leave them trapped at the border for almost two months.

"We feel like animals," growled Isak Ogosian, the group's bearded spokesman. "We have been stuck here for 32 days. We have to sleep sitting up in the bus. And, despite our pleas, nobody helps us."

Among the disconsolate bunch were old ladies, young mothers and small children. They had little remaining money and supplies, and subsisted only due to the help of the already impoverished locals. While Georgian media had paid them a visit early on in the saga, nothing substantial had been done to ameliorate their situation. The mountain chasms falling into the river – in any other situation, hopelessly breathtaking – had become a sort of prison.

Indeed, life seemed pretty unhappy for the stranded Armenians. Some people slept in the rusty old bus, while one old woman prepared some variety of borscht in a metal pan. A little boy kicked one of the many crushed cans littering the ground as if it were a soccer ball. Off to one side, a young man snoring in a sleeping bag competed with a mangy, dozing dog. When they couldn't get him to wake up, Isak formed the shape of a cross on his back with some grass, sending the rest into hysterics. It was a rare uproarious moment for a dejected and powerless group of forgotten travelers.

"All we want is to go back to Armenia," said Anna, 22, pictured with daughter Angelina.

"Nobody gets to go through [the border] except important people," charged Elizabeta Abramovna, a retired doctor who moved to Vladikavkaz 37 years ago with her late husband, then an official in the Soviet government. "Because of my complaining, everyone knows about me now, the governments and media. But still nobody helps us." According to her, the official response to the travelers' requests was a perfect example of passing the buck: since the Georgian side gave them permission to exit Georgia, it was no longer their problem when the Russians denied them entry. The Armenian officials they had consulted said there was nothing they could do either.

For a month the Armenians had lived with the vague promise that the border would soon be open. Nevertheless, this endless waiting had caused some to give up hope.

"About 12 of them want to just forget it and go back to Armenia [190 km/118 mi. to the south], where they have family," revealed Isak. "All we need is about $100 to hire a minibus. This situation is hard, especially for the children," he said, nodding at 3-year-old Angelina, an adorable and shy little girl hiding behind her mother, Anna. "All we want is to go back to Armenia, just to get at least to the [Armenian] border," said Anna. "After that we can find a way, somehow." And that is how we left them, in the chilly afternoon preceding yet another spectacular Caucasus sunset.

Yet the saga continued. Only on Oct. 22 was the border finally reopened. Armenian President Robert Kocharian "hailed" the event as "evidence that tension in North Ossetia is subsiding after the Beslan events." In other words, not only did his government fail to help his own stranded citizens, but the president went out of his way to toe the Kremlin's official line on the reason for the border having been closed in the first place.

For his part, Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, appearing together with Kocharian, could only grumble that the border closure "has reminded us once again that sales markets should be looked for not only in Russia." Wonderful. Yet unless Saakashvili proposes to detonate hundreds of miles of mountain range, it doesn't seem likely that the north Georgians of Kazbegi will change their habits.

A woman enjoys the trapped bus' spacious sleeping quarters.

The Ossetian Question

And why should they? "We have no problem with the Ossetian people," said my earnest guide, Mr. Tabashidze. "It is the politicians who create these conflicts." His opinion was echoed by villagers we surveyed. "For us, it should not be a problem to visit a doctor, say, or go in the Russian shops there [in Vladikavkaz]," said Giorgi the farmer from Kobi. "This is our normal life."

Indeed, though the South Ossetian "government" desires to join up with its kin on the other side of the border – Russia's North Ossetia, where the Beslan saga unfolded – there is no wide-ranging ethnic hostility as has been the case in the Balkans, for instance. The Georgians of Kazbegi, at least, have long been trading with and visiting the Ossetians just over the border, and vice versa.

Hostilities often seem to be manipulated by the decisions of powerful leaders far above and far removed from the areas in question. Indeed, as a Georgian soldier unlucky enough to be serving in the South Ossetian "neutral zone" told one recent visitor, "this isn't between us and the Ossetians. It's between us and Russia."

"We have no problem with the Ossetian people," said interpreter Tariel Tabashidze. "It is the politicians who create these conflicts."

Threats of War

However, the continued brinkmanship between these two major players is having its predictable local effect. "We will not wait long," threatened an unnamed local from the Georgian village of Abasheni, on the edge of the neutral zone. "We will wait two or three days and then we will also shoot at [the South Ossetian town of] Tskhinvali." The threat follows weeks of agitation from Georgians who claim they are being targeted by Ossetian paramilitaries during overnight outbursts of violence. The Georgians blame the Ossetian side for provoking the attacks, while the Ossetians are equally adamant that it's the Georgian army that is inciting them. For his part, the Russian major general heading the Joint Peacekeeping Force in South Ossetia told the protesting Georgians that he "cannot control everybody." The Georgians question whether Russia is even interested in controlling their Ossetian charges. In this vacuum of responsibility, however, "both sides are laying mines despite the pleas of OSCE to stop," and talk has again returned to war.

As if to set an example, Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili last week started a three-week military training course for army reservists. President Saakashvili – who wants to ban anyone who hasn't undergone such training from taking up a civil post – sees the militarization of Georgian society as indispensable for proving the unity of the "Georgian nation." These perhaps ominous developments occur at a time when the Georgian government is beefing up its military presence in the conflict area. The Ossetians are likewise digging in.

It was the international shock over Beslan that seems to have hushed the Georgian government's warmongering words in September. After all, the summer months had been "hot," peaking in late August with Saakashvili's memorable declaration that Georgians should prepare for imminent war with Russia. However, if these recent developments are any indicator, it appears that sufficient time has passed to allow for heated words to once again shape the political discourse. Unfortunately, this will also mean that foreign media coverage of Georgia remains obsessed with the breathless statements of officials – and not the common people they allegedly empowered with last year's "Rose Revolution."