Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008
From: GORDON HAHN <gordon-hahn@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Response to Worms/ JRL#176 [re: Russo-Georgian War]
Mr Worms does not seem to get it. I am not interested in pushing one side's story over the other. I am interested in uncovering the multicausal nature of this war. The Georgians are no less responsible than the Russians - that's my point. I have stated it elsewhere several times. Every time I point out that the Georgians have been accused of doing the same things the Russians have done - whether it's prepare for war, move troops near the combat zone, ethnic cleanse by burning houses, etc. - Mr Worms' response is usually to repeat an allegation against Russia. He has not addressed satisfactorily any of the most serious problems with Saakashvili's statements, but he is very good at obfuscation.
On my chronology: I used the Georgian Foreign Ministry's timeline to the extent I could. My timeline begins from June, its begins from August and is full of distoritions of the facts and changes over the time of its existence. Thus, the fact that the Georgians changed the time it claimed Russian forces entered South Ossetia. This is similar to its possible dissimilation when first it explained it's termination of the ceasefire by the Ossetians' alleged failure to hold to it and then later explained it as a result of knowledge that Russian forces entered the Roki Tunnel at 23:30 local time on August 7. Now they are claiming, through the tapes, that they moved because they had this information from the tapes, which for 5 weeks they failed to mention. This can only not seem curious to someone who has his mind up that only the Russians can ever be guilty in the former USSR or who does PR for a government opposing Russia. Thus, Mr Worms regards a rank-and-file Russian soldier's statement after the fog of war published in Russian army newspaper that Russian forces were in South Ossetia early on August 7 as evidence of a pre-planned surprise attack, ignoring the Georgians' moving of forces for weeks illegally into the conflict zone and the numerous wholes and changes to the Georgians' claims
Mr Felgenhauer's article that is noted by Mr Worms is curious because it only includes information revealed publicly by the Russians themselves (hardly a sign of preparing in secret for a surprise attack, but more likely a warning; one that was ignored by Tbilisi's excitable president) on the Kavkaz-2008 exercises. The other information repeats without siting a report on the Chechen jihadists' website over a month earlier and coincides with Georgian forces' July 4 escalation of military means in the hitherto routine tit-for-tat exchanges of small arms fire. The website, Kavkaz tsentr, the main propaganda organ of the Caucasus Emirate (IK) jihadists of the Russia’s North Caucasus, posted an article claiming IK’s intelligence department, the ‘Mukhabarat’, had information that Russia will begin a “blitzkrieg” operation against Georgia lasting 7-10 days between August 20 and September 10 in order to seize the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia and weaken Saakashvili. [“Moskva nachnyot voennye deistviya protiv Gruzii v kontse avgusta,” Kavkaz tsentr, 4 July 2008, 8:19, www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/07/04/59264.shtml.] On the next day, Moskva.ru posted an article claiming that “several days ago” opposition Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer predicted a similar operation in Abkhazia, but a web search turned up no such claim. It may have occurred on electronic media, or there may be some other more or less exotic angle here. Moskva.ru may have taken its report from Kavkaz tsentr. Then one might begin speculating about how the Chechen jihadists might have been fed this information, by whom, and what for. This, however, is unlikely to yield much of a result as to the causes of the war and those responsible.
On the timing of the beginning of the war: We can go around and around on this one ad infinitum, and it may take years or more to sort it all out. If one bothers to go back and look at in-time reports (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru), the various timelines that have emerged (the Georgian Foreign Ministry's, Nicolai Petro's), then it becomes quite clear that the Georgians have been lying about many things. From late June, they as much, if not more than the Russians were responsible for the military escalation of the simmering conflict. The Russians certainly provoked the Georgians politically more than the Georgians did the Russians, but the Georgians did provoke the Russians in a military-political sense by cozying up to NATO and refusing to sign an agreement not to use force.
As I have suggested, the focus of analysts (not PR people) on August 7 is misplaced, the war was much longer in the making. Anyway, Mr Worms is confusing things when he refers to an OSCE report about the Western sources for Der Speigel's report that 12,000 Georgian forces had moved into and near the conflict zone by the morning of August 7. Der Speigel cites Western intelligence sources and NATO military officers. In the article I mentioned, there is no mention of the OSCE reports. As with Saakashvili's "unprecedented" atrocities, "internment camps," and the "US takeover of Georgia's air and sea ports," Mr Worms has no viable response to the German colonel's witnessing Georgian war preparations in July, the July 4 Georgian attacks killing and wounding Ossetians, etc. I might add here the former defense minister (2004-06) Irakli Okriashvili statement that he and Saakashvili worked out the South Ossetian invasion plans already in 2005, a mere year after Saakashvili first tried to resolve the issue by force. A response, of course, would require some objective research, but this is not necessary when one has his or her mind made up.
To be sure, as Mr Worms points out, moving thousands of fighting-ready troops and artillery of various kinds into the conflict zone was moving within Georgian territory, but that's not the point. Very slippery Mr Worms. The point is that it was a violation of the ceasefire agreements. Moreover, if thousands of Georgian troops were not in position on August 7, then with whom were Russian troops fighting on Aug 8? You cannot have your cake and eat it to. If the Russians are at fault for having there forces in the area and at the ready at the time, then so are the Georgians.
Mr Worms again fails or refuses to recognize the limits for analysis of the UNOSAT pictures. he fails to address my point that significant damage cannot be reported in the pictures and that the destruction of 50 percent of the larger urban buldings in the city of Tskhinvali constitutes much greater destruction than 50 percent of small houses in the Georgian villages, which moreover burned after the fighting, as Mr Worms inadvertently acknowledges trying to make another point (see below). I am not sure that but for one, "none of the Ossetian villages" suffered from the kind of damage Georgian villages did, but for purposes of parsimony I'll skip over that one. Mr Worms writes: "With the exception of Khetagurovo, which hosted an Ossetian artillery position during the fighting, none of the Ossetian villages suffered from this kind of damage. How does Professor Hahn explain the discrepancy? Fire services overwhelmed by too much to do. Right. Another UNOSAT map shows that most of the fires in the Georgian villages started AFTER the Georgian forces had withdrawn." The discrepancy is explained very simply. First, the Georgians were focused on Tskhinvali (which was invaded by thousands of troops which somehow entered the city but were not in or even near the conflict zone earlier in the day, according to Mr Worms' surrealistic account), a city made up of much larger and many concrete buildings of the kind not to be found in the samll villages consisting of wooden and other types of more inflammable materials. Second, the issue is not in fire services, really. These villages were evacuated before Georgia attacked (another issue Mr Worms fails to explain in light of his view that the Georgians were not planning anything). The likely explanation is a most simple one, Mr Worms: There was fighting, there were fires caused by the fighting, the Georgians withdrew and the fires caused by combat spread with no one around to put them out. Moreover, as Mr Worms no doubt knows, but carefully is sure not to bring up, the Georgian side cut off Tskhinvali's and other adjacent South Ossetia areas' water supply in the days before Saakashvili's attack.
I am await the pictures of the internment camps and the unprecedented atrocities, Mr Saakashvili spoke of. Pictures of temporary holding camps hardly suffice to constitute what Mr Saakashvili was implying, Mr Worms, and you know it. Where are the camps? Not pictures, the camps.
I think readers, Georgian and others, will over time discern where the PR lies and where the research is. I and other American taxpayers will be interested in history's final judgement on president Saakashvili (and the others responsible for this war in Washington, Moscow, Tskhinavali, and Sukhumi) as will many Georgians.
Dr. Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002) as well as numerous articles in academic journals and English and Russian language print and electronic media. He has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities, as well as Saint Petersburg State University, Russia as a Fulbright Scholar and has been a fellow at the Kennan Institute and the Hoover Institution.