The conventional wisdom is that Georgia kicked off the war on August 8th, launching an offensive into South Ossetia in retaliation for the violent rebuke of its unilateral cease fire from South Ossetian militias (backed by Russians) on ethnic Georgian villages near the border.
The Georgians pounded South Ossetian positions and quite nearly took the whole of the region before Russia, in a startlingly and obviously premeditated manner (this goes far beyond contingencies), intervened and began an invasion that served well-beyond its stated goals of ‘protecting Russian citizens’ or even more cynically, ‘defending human rights.’
The rest is well known to the world, although the details and the extent of Russian brutality is only now starting to make itself known – from looting, to bank robbery, to blatant falsification of the South Ossetian civilian death toll.
However, to suggest that the South Ossetia conflict somehow ‘began’ on August 8th is misleading; so too, in fact, is the persisting phrase ‘frozen conflict,’ which – despite a differing definition – seems to imply that the hostilities only broke out in true form when the Georgian military launched an offensive against Tsinkhvali in response to South Ossetian militias attacking Georgian villages in the conflict zone, in defiance of a cease fire. In reality, South Ossetian provocations and Russian aggression has been a fact for some time now, with a low-level conflict being fought consistently for years – and especially after the 2003 Rose Revolution that tilted Georgia decidedly West.
In response, Russia’s patronage for separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia became increasingly overt – with a string of verified attacks against Georgian territory and assets by Russia and their statelet allies. Any google news query will answer any lingering questions as to the length of this conflict – which should put to bed any idea that this conflict only ’started’ with ‘Georgian provocation.’
Indeed, despite furious denials, Russian elements have conducted a long-standing mini-war of subversion against the Georgian state through diplomatic means, economic embargoes, extensive spying aimed at destabilization, periodic air strikes inside Tbilisi-controlled Georgian territory, and even downing a Georgian drone with combat aircraft over Georgian airspace.
This war – whatever historians will eventually choose to call it – is not one with such-firm beginnings as most media reporting would suggest, nor does the current cease fire (if it can even be called that) signal its end. People should take this into account when looking to assign blame. As I was telling a friend today – to blame Saakashvili for the current crisis would be tantamount to charging the Serbian nationalist assassin who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand with the First World War.
