Jonathan Eyal, the director of studies at the Royal United Services
Institute (Rusi):
"It would be much worse than the Yugoslav wars, mainly because it has
the old traditional element of an east-west confrontation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/russia.georgia1/print
Analysis: Georgia's decision to shell Tskhinvali could prove 'reckless'
President timed action to coincide with Olympics, says academic
* David Hearst and James Orr
* guardian.co.uk,
* Friday August 08 2008 17:05 BST
It has always been hard to work out who fired the first shot in any of
the many conflicts that had broken out in the Caucasus.
Ever since June 1992, when the tiny mountain enclave of South Ossetia
won the first round of its bid to detach itself from Georgia, the two
sides have been intermittently at war.
But the flare-ups in the last decade have been skirmishes, and for a
while it looked as though peace had broken out.
The weapons used today - tanks, multiple rocket launchers and fighter
aircraft - made the fighting qualitatively different.
Observers had little doubt that the operation to take South Ossetia back
under Georgian control bore the hallmarks of a planned military
offensive.
It was not the result of a ceasefire that had broken down the night
before - it was more a fulfilment of the promise the Georgian president,
Mikhail Saakashvili, had made to recapture lost national territory, and
with it a measure of nationalist pride.
The assault appears to be have carefully timed to coincide with the
opening of the Olympics when the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin,
was in Beijing.
Tom de Waal, of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and an expert
on the region, said: "Clearly there have been incidents on both sides,
but this is obviously a planned Georgian operation, a contingency plan
they have had for some time, to retake [the South Ossetian capital]
Tskhinvali.
"Possibly the Georgians calculated that, with Putin in Beijing, they
could recapture the capital in two days and then defend it over the next
two months, because the Russians won't take this lying down."
If Georgia calculated that Russia would be inhibited by Putin's presence
at the Olympics, that soon backfired.
Within hours, the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, chaired a session
of the security council in the Kremlin, ordering units of the 58th
Russian army to retake Tskhinvali. The Russian president's military
credentials are so weak - he had no other choice.
Many of the 75,000 inhabitants of Tskhinvali and its outlying villages
are now Russian citizens, with passports and rights to settle in Russia.
Northern Ossetia, with whom the southern separatists want to join, is
formally part of the Russian Federation. While Georgians view South
Ossetia as a part of its sovereign territory, there is a rival Ossetian
claim.
It predates the current authoritarian regime in the Kremlin, but still
links the enclave to the mothership of the Russian Federation.
Jonathan Eyal, the director of studies at the Royal United Services
Institute (Rusi), warned that all-out war between Russian and Georgia
would amount to "the worst crisis in Europe since the end of communism".
He described Georgia's decision to shell Tskhinvali as a brazen effort
to humiliate the Russians.
"It is clearly a calculated gamble by the Georgians," he said.
"If they manage to overrun South Ossetia, where there are probably only
around 1,000 Russian troops at the moment, they will have humiliated
Russia and would have created a triumph for themselves.
"They will also have propelled the west into a diplomatic involvement on
the ground."
Eyal claimed there was considerable sympathy among western powers over
Georgia's difficult relationship with Russia.
He said the country was suffering from a deliberate "strategic
fermentation" of the separatist movement by the superpower.
However, he warned that taking on Russia at a time when Medvedev was
keen to establish his influence carried significant risk.
Russia could not afford to stand quietly by while Georgia made such a
public assault on its troops stationed in the region, he said.
"There is an element of trying to call the Russians' bluff by assuming
that the Russians will not be able to afford all-out war in Georgia," he
added.
"I personally don't buy that ... Putin cannot afford to be seen to be
humiliated in such a brazen, public way. It's inconceivable that the
Russians will sit quietly by.
"The only possible outcome is that either a ceasefire is negotiated and
a mediation effort begins, or it goes out into an all-out war."
Eyal said he believed Georgia's move to strike South Ossetia would
generate a mixed reaction from world powers.
He described a feeling that the country was "more sinned against than
sinning" but that there was also significant frustration over the
actions of its president.
"If it goes into an all out war, the predicament for the west is acute
and the crisis would be the worst crisis in Europe since the end of
communism.
"It would be much worse than the Yugoslav wars, mainly because it has
the old traditional element of an east-west confrontation.
"There is considerable sympathy for Georgia among western governments
such as the US and London. It is clear that the Russians have fermented
the separatist movement for a particular strategic purpose.
"There is also, however, an enormous amount of frustration with the
reckless behaviour of the Georgian president at this moment."
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