Not the one in Iraq.  I swear to God I’ll have my blog done in a bit.  I apologize for the wait here, I just haven’t gotten to my lunch break at work yet, and that’s when I’ll be writing it.

August 7th, the day before the Olympics started, a conflict started between Georgia and Russia.  Georgia, who gained their independence from the former USSR in 1991 attacked the capital of the separatist region of South Ossetia, hoping to over take it and bring it back into the fold of Georgia as a more unified nation.  In response, Russia began an air strike, naval, and cyber campaign against Georgia on behalf of the region.  Since then Russia has launched an invasion force from Abkhazia, another separatist region along Georgia’s norther border.  Much violence has ensued, and it’s left more than 200,000 people homeless.  Countries around the world have called for a cease fire, and Georgia signed a cease-fire treaty for the EU, one that Russia discarded claiming that Georgia had ignored the cease fire by using helicopters in a bombing campaign.  Russia has announced that it will support a cease-fire on the conditions that Georgia disarms and withdraws forces from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I just want to say a few things about this conflict while it’s still going on.  What we have here is a country that managed to become independent from the Soviet Union during their break up in the early 90’s.  Later, around ‘95, we had these two areas that had major separatist movements that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of roughly 250,000 ethnic Georgians who were citizens in the area.  Through the use of violence they managed to gain a kind of de facto independence from Georgia, however they are still technically a part of the nation.  Now, we have Russia north of these two regions (both regions are pro-Russia) who has launched a full on offensive in Georgia when Georgia tried to bring a separatist region back into the fold.  We have Russia saying that the lack of Western nations denouncing the move “raises very serious questions about sincerity and their attitude towards our country”.  Our country, they said.  Russia then moves a full invasion force into Georgia from the northeast region of Abkhazia, a force that we are supposed to assume was amassed over the course of a couple of days.  These actions are the ones that have been denounced by Western nations, and Georgia is saying that Russia is attempting an ethnic cleanse of the region, attempting to over power the small country and bring it back into the fold that is Russia, and was the Soviet Union.  Russia’s actions here look a little suspicious to me.

As a friend of mine said, it’s hard to be on either side of a conflict where people are shooting at each other, but I can’t help but feel for Georgia in this case.  While it could be said that they started the conflict by moving into South Ossetia, it is not Russia’s place to defend the separatist region that is part of Georgia, and even less they’re place to refer to South Ossetia as “our country”.  I have a hard time believing that the level of action we’ve seen in this conflict wasn’t to some level planned by Russia, especially considering the cyber-attacks that we’re seeing on the countries government sites.  This had to have more prepared for than the quick response that occurred over the weekend.  This appears to be a direct military action by Russia, possibly to try to reincorporate the entire country of Georgia.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/11 at 12:58 PM  •   •  permalink