summing up georgia

Why I had to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions

By President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9c7ad792-7395-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html

Financial Times August 26 2008 18:48 | Last updated: August 26 2008 18:48

On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation – the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and inter national precedents for such a move.

Not all of the world’s nations have their own statehood. Many exist happily within boundaries shared with other nations. The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living “under one roof” need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

After the collapse of communism, Russia reconciled itself to the “loss”

of 14 former Soviet republics, which became states in their own right, even though some 25m Russians were left stranded in countries no longer their own. Some of those nations were un able to treat their own minorities with the respect they deserved. Georgia immediately stripped its “autonomous regions” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy.

Can you imagine what it was like for the Abkhaz people to have their university in Sukhumi closed down by the Tbilisi government on the grounds that they allegedly had no proper language or history or culture and so did not need a university? The newly independent Georgia inflicted a vicious war on its minority nations, displacing thousands of people and sowing seeds of discontent that could only grow. These were tinderboxes, right on Russia’s doorstep, which Russian peacekeepers strove to keep from igniting.

But the west, ignoring the delicacy of the situation, unwittingly (or

wittingly) fed the hopes of the South Ossetians and Abkhazians for freedom. They clasped to their bosom a Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whose first move was to crush the autonomy of another region, Adjaria, and made no secret of his intention to squash the Ossetians and Abkhazians.

Meanwhile, ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognise Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia. We argued consistently that it would be impossible, after that, to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians (and dozens of other groups around the world) that what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them. In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.

Seeing the warning signs, we persistently tried to persuade the Georgians to sign an agreement on the non-use of force with the Ossetians and Abkhazians. Mr Saakashvili refused. On the night of August

7-8 we found out why.

Only a madman could have taken such a gamble. Did he believe Russia would stand idly by as he launched an all-out assault on the sleeping city of Tskhinvali, murdering hundreds of peaceful civilians, most of them Russian citizens? Did he believe Russia would stand by as his “peacekeeping” troops fired on Russian comrades with whom they were supposed to be preventing trouble in South Ossetia?

Russia had no option but to crush the attack to save lives. This was not a war of our choice. We have no designs on Georgian territory. Our troops entered Georgia to destroy bases from which the attack was launched and then left. We restored the peace but could not calm the fears and aspirations of the South Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples – not when Mr Saakashvili continued (with the complicity and encouragement of the US and some other Nato members) to talk of rearming his forces and reclaiming “Georgian territory”. The presidents of the two republics appealed to Russia to recognise their independence.

A heavy decision weighed on my shoulders. Taking into account the freely expressed views of the Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples, and based on the principles of the United Nations charter and other documents of international law, I signed a decree on the Russian Federation’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I sincerely hope that the Georgian people, to whom we feel historic friendship and sympathy, will one day have leaders they deserve, who care about their country and who develop mutually respectful relations with all the peoples in the Caucasus. Russia is ready to support the achievement of such a goal.

so true! :

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the EU discussions are the product of a "sick imagination" and Western confusion.

"Apart from that my friend Kouchner also said that we will soon attack Moldova and Ukraine and the Crimea ... But that is a sick imagination and probably that applies to sanctions as well," Lavrov told reporters in the Tajik capital.

"I think it is a demonstration of complete confusion," he said.

The warning was made "just because they're upset that the 'little pet' of certain Western capitals didn't fulfill their expectations," Lavrov said, referring to Georgia.

It was the pro-Israeli crowd in the Republican Party that pulled the old switcheroo and refocussed on the Middle East rather than Eurasia. Now, powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment (Brzezinski, Albright, Holbrooke) have regrouped behind the populist 'cardboard' presidential candidate Barak Obama and are preparing to redirect America's war efforts to the Asian theater. Obama offers voters a choice of wars not a choice against war.
                                                                                                                  --  Mike Whitney  13 August 2008

The Role of Israel in the Georgian War

August 17, 2008

by Brian Harring

www.brianharring@yahoo.com

Georgia became a huge source of income, and military advantage, for the Israeli government and Israeli arms dealers.. Israel began selling arms to Georgia about seven years ago, following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated to Israel and became weapons hustlers.

They contacted Israeli defense industry officials and arms dealers and told them that Georgia had relatively large budgets, mostly American grants, and could be interested in purchasing Israeli weapons.

The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation. 'We are now in a fight against the great Russia,' he said, 'and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own. '

Kezerashvili's door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel. Compared to countries in Eastern Europe, the deals in this country were conducted fast, mainly due to the pro-Israeli defense minister's personal involvement.

The Jerusalem Post on August 12, 2008 reported: 'Georgian Prime Minister Vladimer (Lado) Gurgenidze(Jewish) made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community's most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman.' The Prime Minister of Georgia, principally a nation of Orthodox Christians called Rabbi Steinman saying 'I've heard he is a holy man. I want him to pray for us and our state.'

Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity and began doing business in Georgia were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res.) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res.) Yisrael Ziv.

Roni Milo conducted business in Georgia for Elbit Systems and the Military Industries, and with his help Israel's defense industries managed to sell to Georgia remote-piloted vehicles (RPVs), automatic turrets for armored vehicles, antiaircraft systems, communication systems, shells and rockets.

The Ministry of Defense of Israel had supplied the Georgian government their Hermes 450 UAV spy drones, made by Elbit Maarahot Systems Ltd, for use, under the strict control of Israeli intelligence units, to conduct intelligence-gathering flights over southern Russia and, most especially into a Iran, targeted for Israeli Air Force attacks in the near future.

Two airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli military aircraft, intended to launch an attack on identified targets relating to Iranian atomic energy projects. This attack was approved by President Bush in an undertaking with the government of Israel signed in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2006.

The thrust of this top secret agreement was that the Israeli government would have 'free and unfettered use' of unspecified Georgian airfields, under American control, onto which they could ferry fighter-bombers which then could fly south, over Turkish territory (and with clandestine Turkish permission) to strike at Tehran. The distance from Georgia to Tehran is obviously far less than from Tel Aviv.

No one expected that these attacks would completely destroy Iranian military or scientific targets, but there would be the element of complete surprise coupled with serious property damage which might well interdict future Iranian atomic development and certainly serve as a serious warning to Iran not to threaten Israel again. Using Georgian bases, with the consent and full assistance of, the United States, would make such an attack much more feasible that attempting to fly from Israeli bases with overflights that might have serious regional diplomatic consequences.

Now, thanks to the irrational actions of the thoroughly unstable Georgian president, all of these schemes have collapsed and it is now believed that the Russian special forces have captured, intact, a number of the Israeli drones and, far more important, their radio controlling equipment.

In the main, Israeli military and intelligence units stationed in Georgia were mostly composed of Israel Defense Force reservists working for Global CST, owned by Maj. Gen. Israel Ziv, and Defense Shield, owned by Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch. 'The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers,' Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili.

By this manner, Israel could claim that it had a very small number of IDF people in Georgia 'mainly connected with our Embassy in Tiblisi.' The Russians, however, were not fooled by this and their own intelligence had pinpointed Israeli surveillance bases and when they went after the Georgians who invaded South Ossetia, units of the Russian air force bombed the Israeli bases in central Georgia and in the area of the capital, Tbilisi. They also severely damaged the runways and service areas of the two Georgian airbases designed to launch Israeli sir force units in a sudden attack on Iran.

Israel is currently a part of the Anglo-American military axis, which cooperates with the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Israel is a partner in the Baku-Tblisi- Ceyhan pipeline which brings oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean. More than 20 percent of Israeli oil is imported from Azerbaijan, of which a large share transits through the BTC pipeline. Controlled by British Petroleum, the BTC pipeline has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucusus:

'[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, ' (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will 'channel oil to Western markets', what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel, via Georgia. In this regard, an Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has also been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are far-reaching

What has been planned, is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.

The Isreali unmanned surveillance drones

The unmanned Israeli clandestine surveillance drones are a favorite of intelligence agencies world-wide. Their most popular drone is the Hermes 450 drone aircraft.

The Hermes 450 is a large, capable 450 kg spy drone manufactured by Elbit Systems of Israel. Able to stay airborne for a maximum of 20 hours, it has a 10.5 metre wingspan and is 6.1 metres long. It can carry a variety of different surveillance packages, including the CoMPASS (Compact Multi-Purpose Advanced Stabilised System), which is a combined laser marker and infrared scanner.

Elbit also offers Hermes with the AN/ZPQ-1 TESAR (Tactical Endurance Synthetic Aperture Radar) from Northrop Grumman of the US, a ground-sweeping radar which can detect objects as small as one foot in size and pick out those which are moving from those which aren't. Radars of this type are essential for full bad weather capability, and help a lot with scanning large areas of terrain. Electro-optical scanners such as CoMPASS tend to offer a 'drink-straw' view of only small areas in detail. The TESAR is the same radar used in the hugely successful 'Predator' drone, in service for several years now with the US forces.

The U.S. Army has a drone trainng school located at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, an intelligence center located 10 miles from the Mexican border and the home of massive telephonic intelligence intercept units, aimed at Central and South America. At present there are 225 soldiers, reservists, and National Guardsmen training at this school. And on the faculty are three Israeli specialists.  This unit is not destined for the middle east or even Pakistan; it has been set up to conduct surveillance of northern Mexico. There are two reasons for wanting to watch our southern neighbor. The first is to watch for great treks of illegal aliens but the second, and most important, is to conduct reconnaissance of territory over which American military units might be traversing in any punitive actions that could very, very well be triggered by the growing political instability in Mexico, caused by a growing struggle between the central government and the very powerful Mexican-based drug lords, who are wreaking havoc in that very corrupt country.

If a highly irate CIA employee, complaining of 'excessive Israeli influence' in his agency, had not passed on files of information to the Russians late last year in Miami, in all probability, we would be reading about a stunning Israeli attack on Tehran. Now, the Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries, supplied and manned by Russian 'technicians,' have the probable coordinates of such an Israeli surprise attack, from the north, which would give the defenses of Tehran a vital heads-up.

This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2869.htm#001

War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial drive as local conflicts. It's likely to be a taste of things to come

August 14 2008
by Seumas Milne

The Guardian,

The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that 'Russian aggression must not go unanswered'. George Bush denounced Russia for having 'invaded a sovereign neighbouring state' and threatening 'a democratic government'. Such an action, he insisted, 'is unacceptable in the 21st century'.

Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon's infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?

You'd be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an all-out attack on South Ossetia to 'restore constitutional order' - in other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it claims as its own in South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali. Several hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week, along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement: 'I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of women and children,' one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov, told reporters on Tuesday.

Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain's minister for Europe, called a 'small beautiful democracy'. Well it's certainly small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed coups, the most recent prettified as a 'Rose revolution'. Saakashvili was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently described as an 'increasingly authoritarian' government, violently cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last November. 'Democratic' simply seems to mean 'pro-western' in these cases.

The long-running dispute over South Ossetia - as well as Abkhazia, the other contested region of Georgia - is the inevitable consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia, minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an international state border.

Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to bring Georgia into NATO, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline through its territory aimed at weakening Russia's control of energy supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of Kosovo - whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - and conflict was only a matter of time.

The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a fully fledged US satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in Iraq - hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili's links with the neoconservatives in Washington are particularly close: the lobbying firm headed by US Republican candidate John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has been paid nearly $900,000 by the Georgian government since 2004.

But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush administration's wider, explicit determination to enforce US global hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was defence secretary under Bush's father, but its full impact has only been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of the 1990s.

Over the past decade, NATO's relentless eastward expansion has brought the western military alliance hard up against Russia's borders and deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted at Russia.

By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why Saakashvili launched last week's attack and whether he was given any encouragement by his friends in Washington.

If so, it has spectacularly backfired, at savage human cost. And despite Bush's attempts to talk tough yesterday, the war has also exposed the limits of US power in the region. As long as Georgia proper's independence is respected - best protected by opting for neutrality - that should be no bad thing. Unipolar domination of the world has squeezed the space for genuine self-determination and the return of some counterweight has to be welcome. But the process of adjustment also brings huge dangers. If Georgia had been a member of NATO, this week's conflict would have risked a far sharper escalation. That would be even more obvious in the case of Ukraine - which yesterday gave a warning of the potential for future confrontation when its pro-western president threatened to restrict the movement of Russian ships in and out of their Crimean base in Sevastopol. As great power conflict returns, South Ossetia is likely to be only a taste of things to come.



Georgia on their mind

By Mahir Ali

FORTY years ago tomorrow, Soviet tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia to bury an experiment in socialist democracy that had become known as the Prague Spring: a broadly popular effort by elements within the Czechoslovak ruling party to shake up the postwar political model imposed throughout much of Eastern Europe.

It was by no means obvious where the reforms would lead, but the combination of political and cultural freedoms with a socialist economy could potentially have evolved into a model that would have appealed to progressive-minded citizens in Western bourgeois-democracies. The party bosses in Moscow did their capitalist sparring partners a huge favour by decreeing that Czechoslovakia’s course must be reversed by force. Of course, that wasn’t their main purpose: they were driven largely by the fear that the Prague infection might cross borders within the communist bloc.

This was, mind you, the Brezhnev era, characterised by a lack of imagination at the helm, which fed into a determination to maintain the status quo. The epic bloodthirstiness of the Stalin years was a thing of the past, but the spirit of Uncle Joe had not been effectively exorcised (notwithstanding the Khrushchev interregnum), and deviations from the mundane uniformity decreed by the Kremlin were frowned upon. Sadly but inevitably, the Prague Spring was perceived as a challenge to Moscow’s authority.

Had Czechoslovakia’s path not been blocked in 1968, it is at least conceivable that Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union itself would have evolved along different lines, and the upheavals and sharp transitions of two decades later could somehow have been avoided.

Be that as it may, in recent weeks Russian tanks have again been on the move in a foreign land for the first time since Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, the Georgian incursion has elicited semi-spurious comparisons with that earlier invasion. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for instance, has been quoted as saying: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbour, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”

Her boss has made similar noises, albeit without putting himself through the ordeal of trying to pronounce “Czechoslovakia”. The general thrust of American comments can be summed up by Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s pronouncement: “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

For a man who not only fervently supports the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan but has indicated that he is keen to extend a similar privilege to Iran, this is hypocrisy of breathtaking proportions. To point this out is not to imply that the Russian military action against a tiny neighbour was justified. But it does have a context, which has been all but ignored by American officials, politicians and much of the media, partly because the alternative entails acknowledging wrongdoing, or at least brash stupidity, on the part of Mikheil Saakashvili, the young New York lawyer who became president of Georgia four years ago.

His elevation to that post was considered a triumph for US foreign policy, given that he worships the Bush administration, is extremely keen to join Nato, and has contributed more troops to the Iraqi misadventure than any country other than the US and Britain. Nearly half those troops were airlifted back to Georgia with American assistance after the fighting began. Georgia’s modest army has been equipped and trained by the US and Israel, and about 130 American military advisers are based in the country.

It is extremely unlikely that they were unaware of Saakashvili’s intentions or of the likely Russian response. There is thus far no evidence that the Americans encouraged the Georgian provocation — and no explanation for why they didn’t prevent it.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia have long been anomalies in the geopolitical sense, as they were incorporated somewhat arbitrarily into Georgia, despite the absence of strong cultural or ethnic affinities. This did not matter all that much while the Soviet Union was intact, but when Georgia became independent in 1991, the two territories sought to break away. Georgia wasn’t willing to let go, and violence followed. Ultimately, both achieved a degree of autonomy, with Russian assistance. Saakashvili, basing his appeal on a nationalist platform, sought to change this.

His success in recovering two other zones with separatist tendencies may have blinded him to the likely consequences of toying with Russian sensibilities in South Ossetia. He clearly harboured illusions about Georgia’s invulnerability on the basis of his status as one of Uncle Sam’s favourite nephews. The US would have been reluctant at the best of times to directly take on Russia over such a matter, but even the dumbest administration wouldn’t seriously weigh the possibility when it is so obviously otherwise engaged, with its military capacity stretched to the limit.

When a planeload or so of American humanitarian aid headed for Georgia, the nephew had the audacity to announce that US forces would be taking over control of his country’s ports and airports. The uncle’s representatives hastily responded with a string of denials, even as Rice headed towards the war zone — quite possibly relieved to be dealing with a crisis that fell within her area of academic expertise, unlike the blasted Middle East.

However, the secretary of state’s presence in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, had little immediate effect on the Russian show of force. An early ceasefire agreement mediated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union apparently had little effect, as Russian troops overran the town of Gori (which happens to be Josef Stalin’s birthplace), encountering little resistance.

At the beginning of this week, a pullout from Georgia proper was supposedly underway, Moscow having made its point. Long-term occupation was never a prospect, but the future of South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) is no longer in Saakashvili’s hands. In fact, once the upsurge in nationalist feeling wears off, his political future could be in doubt, given the astounding lack of nous that went into staging an unnecessary provocation.

In the years since the Soviet Union imploded, the US has established military bases across a majority of former Soviet republics. Others have been incorporated into Nato, despite promises to the contrary.

Russia has now given notice that it is no longer willing to lie back and accept this encirclement.

It is perfectly reasonable to entertain qualms about a resurgent Russia’s intentions under Vladimir Putin and his handpicked clone, Dmitry Medvedev. However, unlike the Soviet conquest of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago, its resolve to challenge American hegemony in the 21st century may actually pay dividends in the medium term.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com

Tkviavi residents turn against Georgian regime

Sean Walker The Independent

Passing along the road to Tkviavi, the lush green fields, bountiful orchards and gentle slopes of the Caucasus foothills give off the air of a sleepy rural paradise. But the scorched earth and burnt-out shells of cars that litter the roadside are clues that all is not right here, and the silence gripping the town that two weeks ago had a population of 1,300 is eerie.

Tkviavi is the closest town inside Georgia "proper" to the border with South Ossetia and its capital, Tskhinvali. Its residents watched as Georgian troops poured up the road three weeks ago in their ill-fated push to regain South Ossetia, and they watched as the army fled, leaving their village undefended. Along with them went the young of the town, scared of counter-attacks. Only the elderly and sick remained.

Then, on 12 August, Russian jets bombed the village, destroying dozens of homes. For a week afterwards, the feared maradyori – marauding gangs of South Ossetians and other irregular militias – surged down the road from Tskhinvali in an orgy of looting, torching and killing.

Now, its people are stuck in limbo. The Russians have established a checkpoint further down the road at Karaleti, preventing those who fled from returning to help their elderly relatives.

But while there was initial fury among the residents at the "Ossetian dogs" who had robbed and trashed their homes, now the target of the anger in Tkviavi seems to be changing. There is a corresponding backlash against President Mikheil Saakashvili, for bring misfortune upon them.

"Please tell everyone in Russia, in the world, that we want to be with Russia, we don't want Saakashvili. He has brought us nothing but trouble," implored Karaman Goguashvili, 77. "We don't need Nato, we don't need America, we need to be friends with Russia."

When asked if they agreed with this, the other villagers in the group nodded vigorously. "We're all people who have been through a lot in our lives, we're not easily scared," added Mr Goguashvili, pointing out the garden where he and his wife hid during the looting raids. "But now we are all scared. Many people have died here. Who will defend us? Who will look after us? We are left here all alone."

In one area at the edge of the town, some houses are razed. Debris and twisted bits of metal litter the ground. A large group of villagers showed us round their destroyed houses, each one recounting a tale more pitiful than the last.

Inside another house that had only light bomb damage, two elderly men sat in stained white vests. They sat in silence, their hands clutching a rail in front of them and shaking uncontrollably. When questioned, neither man even registered the question or the presence of a stranger in the house. They simply continued staring at the wall, their scrawny hands quivering. "He's been like this ever since the bombings," wailed the distraught wife of one. "We don't know what to do. We need medicines, doctors. But nothing is coming."

The Russian bombing attacks on Georgia have mostly targeted military infrastructure, and where they have missed, such as in Gori, there were obvious military targets nearby. But there is nothing of military importance in this village, and the bombing raids came days after the Georgian army had fled.

One shopkeeper said he had only voted for Mr Saakashvili because government officials told him his shop would be closed down if he did not. "Russia protected Georgia for hundreds of years; we've always been close to Russia," said another resident. "The Ossetians behaved like dogs, but if Russia is our friend, then the Ossetians will be our friends, too."

There were more nods of agreement. "We are just simple people, we are peasants," rejoined Mr Goguashvili. "Perhaps all the intellectuals in Tbilisi who want to be with America are far cleverer than us; perhaps they understand the world better than we do. But we are the ones left here who have to live with this," he said, with a mournful gesture towards the wreckage behind him.