Intruders

The name “South Ossetia” would have been seldom quoted outside of Georgia and Russia before August. In all likelihood, scant people would be able to recognise the name, let alone disclose information to others upon its whereabouts and current political state of affairs.

It must’ve been a bitterly cold day in November when I first happened upon details pertaining to what is the de facto independent nation of South Ossetia. It is located in the north region of Georgia, and forms part of the border between the internationally recognised boundary of Georgia and Russia. The section defined as being South Ossetia is 3,900km², equating out to roughly 5.6% of Georgia’s confirmed territory. To put that into perspective, South Ossetia is precious little more than 1/100^th of the size of the UK, and is just under 2½ times bigger than Greater London alone.

The troubled disputes in South Ossetia have been ongoing effectively from before Georgia even announced its independence from the old Soviet Union. South Ossetia first declared its independence from Georgia in 1990, with an overall goal of unifying itself with North Ossetia (currently considered part of Russian territory) to form an individual nation for Ossetians. The Georgian Supreme Council took offense to this, declaring any such announcements illegal, and therefore void. The bitter hostility between the two sides from that moment on only depreciated right up until the first South Ossetian war in 1991. Here, it was the Georgians who triggered the alarm by marching into South Ossetia’s capital city, Tskhinvali. Naturally, South Ossetia, soon bolstered by a number of volunteer recruits from North Ossetia, rebelled, ensuring that bloodshed ensued around 3,000 people were killed.

What is always important to remember is that South Ossetia operates completely separately from Georgia. What we see on an ordinary map as the country of Georgia is never going to tell us the full story. South Ossetia isn’t even the SOLE separatist region within Georgia: a region in the north-west quadrant known as Abkhazia (also mentioned is a small number of news reports), functions in a similar vein to South Ossetia, and in addition, it too longs for independence.

The main difference between this existing war over South Ossetia and the one that occurred during nearly the entire calendar year of 1991, and over half of 1992 is the involvement of Russia. Last time around, Russian military took a very lax approach to the violence; surfacing intermittently. In the end, a ceasefire was negotiated with the HELP of the Russians. The Russians now have a vested interest this time to block any attempts of Georgia regaining control of the area, as many South Ossetians are in possession of Russian passports. Georgia accuses Russia of attempting to annex South Ossetia.

If you look at this example of an escalating argument over land, other cases are present nearby. Abkhazia, as I mentioned earlier, has also been a de facto independent nation since the 1990s. Nagorno-Karabakh, which is enclosed by Azerbaijan, called for secession in late 1991, and Transnitria – making up around 50% of the border between Moldova and Ukraine – announced its separation from Moldova over a year prior to that. Moreover, the horrors of Chechnya and Kosovo have been in the news on frequents bases (Kosovo, as of 2008, is now a partially recognised country). Do you notice a pattern? Apart from Kosovo – it being part of collapsed Yugoslavia, where unrest has not died down – all of these regions are located within the boundaries of the Soviet Union, meaning even now, nearly 17 years on from the end of the Cold War, conflict thrives. And worse is that none of them have attained universal country status recognition. In fact, all but Kosovo are not seen as countries by any nations of the world, signifying a product where the world audience is left largely ignorant to the struggles necessitated when these people pursue true freedom.

A ceasefire was said to have been implemented a few days ago. But further pandemonium has since erupted.