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By Diana Kulchitskaya
On August 8 2008, hours before the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, a war broke out more than 10,000 kilometers away. The armed conflict in a small Caucasian country drew people's attention to the region. A week of news bulletins all over the globe were filled with reports from the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The images of dying men and women and destroyed houses shocked the world. The world once again realized how fragile peace is.
The armed conflict in the Georgian separatist provinces lasted only a week. However, it had a serious impact on global politics. The actual fighting took place for 5 days, but brought back the cold war rhetoric, leading to a humanitarian and diplomatic crisis.
Perhaps the most astonishing fact was the number of versions of accounts the media gave. There were so many discrepancies in the official reports of the Russian and Georgian authorities that it seems almost impossible to make sense of the chain of events. People in Western countries and in Russia saw two totally different pictures of the war. However, despite the numerous contradictions, we can still try to reconstruct the approximate chronology of the conflict.
The question ‘who started this military attack?’ bothered not only ordinary people; it also propelled world leaders into intense discussions. The United Nations and the European Union tried to find out who was to blame for this “5-day war”. There was great uncertainty over the fate of Georgia and its breakaway territories.
After the fire was over, a diplomatic war broke out. On August 26, ten days after the peace treaty was in power, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a document, declaring South Ossetia and Abkhazia separate countries. The clash between Russia and its Caucasian neighbor brought a linguistic change to the names of the capitals. The toponyms Tskhinvali and Sukhumi lost the letter "I" at the end and become Tskhinval and Sukhum. That change was made to emphasize a deliberate refusal of the Georgian spelling.
Russia was critized worldwide following its decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazi as separate states. Russian experts also agree that this was a hasty decision that could undermine the country’s reputation on the global scene.
"President Medvedev should not have announced this so early. At least some time should have passed. Besides, there was no discussion with the world leaders, which may also put Russia in a dangerous position," says Anatoly Tzyganok, the head of the Military Prognosis Center.
That was not the only mistake in Russian policy. According to analysts, the country has shown serious weakness on the information front line. Georgians were far more equipped with various PR techniques and methods. Many officials from the Saakashvili team gave live interviews to Western TV channels. They had a significant advantage because they spoke in English and managed to give the world a clear vision of their standpoint.
Russia seemed totally inept in its use of the media in this war of words. The Moscow "talking heads" were Vitaly Churkin, the county's representative in the United Nations, who spoke Russian during the meeting of the Security Council, and Vice-president Servey Ivanov, whose only national exposure was a one-time appearance on BBC. Meanwhile, it was unusual that Saakashvili addressed his nation in a foreign language. He probably wanted to express his perspective of the conflict in front of the foreign media cameras.
In trying to make sense of the situation in the Caucasus, different specialists have offered varying explanations as to why the war broke out. Some of the experts claim that the main goal of the Georgian president was to join the NATO bloc. They think that he started this armed campaign in order to tackle the problems with the countries’ borders, as NATO does not accept states with separatist movements. Others think that the main aggressor in the conflict was Russia, which tried to regain its influence in the region.
Sergey Markedonov from the Institute of Political and Military Analysis claims that the conflict in the Caucasus is complex. He thinks that many factors should be taken into account when speaking about the causes of the war.
"Joining NATO was only one of the motives for Saakashvili to start an armed attack. It was only a tool. He wanted to see Russia colliding with the other world leading powers and present himself as a pro-western leader. However, that was not the only cause that led to this crisis. We shouldn't forget that the first clashes in South Ossetia were in 1989, and there were armed conflicts in 1991. At that time, NATO was not an issue in the region", says Markedonov.
Markedonov thinks the problems in the Caucasus arose because Georgian leaders did not want to take responsibility of the ethnic policy. They preferred to leave it in other leaders’ hands. The former President of Georgia, Mikhail Shevardnadze, had a good relationship with Russian authorities and thought that Russia would just give South Ossetia and Abkhazia as a present to his country. But, it didn’t work out. As a result, a shift was made toward NATO membership.
The conflict in Georgia and its breakaway provinces is raising more questions than giving answers. Only time will tell who's right or wrong. But, the real tragedy appears in the lives of everyday people. According to the official statistics, about 2,000 people were killed during the conflict. More than 118,000 have left their homes and become refugees. Many of them have lost their relatives during the clash and will never return home.