US-Russian Tensions In Caucasus Erupt Into War

[suchandra]

US-Russian tensions in Caucasus erupt into war

 

 

Bill Van Auken – WSWS.org August 9, 2008

 

 

Long-escalating tensions between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia erupted into full-scale war Friday, leaving hundreds if not thousands of civilians dead and turning thousands more into refugees, forced to flee for their lives.

 

The immediate focus of the fighting is the attempt by Georgia to militarily seize control of the enclave of South Ossetia, which has existed as a de facto independent entity for the past 16 years, and Russia’s armed intervention to counter this assault.

 

Underlying this military confrontation, however, are far broader conflicts. Feeding the bloody confrontation in South Ossetia is US imperialism’s drive to establish hegemony over the vast energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus through the assertion of American military power in the region. The Russian ruling elite, for its part, is seeking to reassert its grip over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

 

This bitter rivalry between Washington and Moscow—the world’s two greatest nuclear powers—lends the fighting in the Caucasus a particularly explosive and dangerous character. The tensions between the two countries have been exacerbated in the recent period by the Bush administration’s drive to incorporate Georgia into the NATO alliance, a move that Moscow sees as part of an attempt to establish a military encirclement of Russia.

 

The US-backed Georgian regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili sent massed military units into South Ossetia on Thursday morning, after claiming that South Ossetian military forces had shelled Georgian villages, supposedly violating a unilateral cease-fire declared by Tbilisi.

 

 

 

Aftermath of a Russian airstrike on Gori, Georgia, Saturday.

 

 

 

While the Georgian regime initially claimed it was carrying out a “proportionate response,” it quickly became clear that it had launched an all-out military offensive aimed at conquering the region. Using artillery, tanks, truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers and war planes, the Georgian military laid siege to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

 

Much of the city was reportedly in flames Friday. The regional parliament building had burned down, the university was on fire, and the town’s main hospital had been rendered inoperative by the bombardment. The International Red Cross reported that ambulances were unable to reach the wounded.

 

“As a result of many hours of shelling from heavy guns, the town is practically destroyed,” Marat Kulakhmetov, the commander of Russian peacekeepers in the territory, told the Russian news service Interfax.

 

Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian leader, estimated late Friday that more than 1,400 civilians had been killed in the Georgian military assault.

 

“I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars,” Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, told the Associated Press after fleeing the city with her family to a village near the Russian border. “It’s impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged.”

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged Georgia with utilizing massive violence with the aim of forcing the Ossetian population to flee. “We are receiving reports that a policy of ethnic cleansing was being conducted in villages in South Ossetia, the number of refugees is climbing, the panic is growing, people are trying to save their lives,” said Lavrov.

 

According to Moscow, among the dead were ten Russian peacekeepers, while 30 more were wounded in the shelling of their barracks by the Georgian forces. The peacekeepers were deployed in the area as part of an agreement reached between Moscow, Tbilisi and South Ossetia to end the fighting that erupted following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent bid by the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to separate from Georgia. The inhabitants in both regions feared the newly independent Georgian regime would abolish their autonomous status.

 

Since then, however, Tbilisi has charged that the Russian troops are backing the South Ossetian forces.

 

Russia seized upon the deaths of its troops and the civilian casualties as the justification for sending a tank column and infantry into South Ossetia, where they have become engaged in fierce combat with Georgian units for control of Tskhinvali.

 

“In accordance with the constitution and federal law, I, as president of Russia, am obliged to protect lives and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are located,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a meeting of his security council at the Kremlin. “We won’t allow the death of our compatriots to go unpunished.”

 

Meanwhile, Georgian authorities charged that Russian warplanes had struck the country’s military bases, airfields and the main Black Sea port of Poti late Friday and early Saturday, killing some civilians. Bombs reportedly fell on the capital of Tbilisi and on the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

 

“All day today, they’ve been bombing Georgia from numerous warplanes and specifically targeting (the) civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among (the) civilian population all around the country,” Saakashvili told the US news network, CNN.

 

Saakashvili announced that he had called up the country’s reserves, while sources in Georgia said he was expected to announce the imposition of martial law.

 

The timing of the Georgian incursion, on a day when world attention was focused on the opening of the Olympics in Beijing, where both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and US President George Bush are present, hardly seemed fortuitous.

 

Saakashvili, however, suggested that it was Russia that had chosen the date, calling it a “brilliant moment to attack a small country” and charging that the quick response by the Russian military demonstrated Moscow’s preparations for an intervention.

 

The Georgian president declared that his country was “looking with hope” to the US. The armed confrontation with Russia, he claimed, “is not about Georgia anymore. It’s about America, its values... America stands up for those freedom-loving nations and supports them. That’s what America is all about.”

 

Under the Bush administration, Washington has attempted to forge close ties with Georgia, particularly since the US-backed “Rose Revolution” that paved the way for Saakashvili’s rise to power.

 

US imperialism’s main interest in Georgia is as an American bridgehead into the oil and gas-rich Caspian Basin and as a strategic transit route for funneling energy supplies out of the region, while bypassing Russia.

 

To cement its ties with the Georgian regime, Washington has provided hundreds millions of dollars in military aid, while sending in large numbers of US military trainers for the country’s growing armed forces.

 

Georgian troops, meanwhile, account for the third largest contingent participating in the US occupation of Iraq, numbering some 2,000. Tbilisi indicated Friday that it would seek US help in bringing at least 1,000 of these soldiers back to participate in the fighting in South Ossetia.

 

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov alluded to the US military support for Georgia, declaring, “Now we see Georgia has found a use for these weapons and for the special forces that were trained with the help of international instructors.” He added, “I think our European and American colleagues... should understand what is happening. And I hope very much that they will reach the right conclusions.”

 

Last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a provocative visit to Tbilisi, denouncing Russia and reiterating US backing for Georgian NATO membership. Washington’s NATO allies in Western Europe, however, have greeted the proposal coolly, seeing it as an unnecessary provocation against Russia, upon which they depend for energy supplies.

 

Whether Rice during her visit gave an explicit green light for the intervention in South Ossetia, or whether the Georgian regime felt the demonstration of US support gave it the assurance of Washington’s backing for such a military action, is not known.

 

In the wake of Friday’s assault, Washington has stopped short of providing explicit support for the Georgian action, but has made it clear that it backs the position of its client state in the Caucasus.

 

The United Nations Security Council failed to support a Russian-backed resolution calling for an end to the fighting because of Washington’s opposition to a clause calling on all sides to “renounce the use of force.” The clear implication is that the US is backing Georgia’s right to take military action.

 

Secretary of State Rice, meanwhile, issued a statement effectively condemning Russia, while providing tacit justification for Georgia’s intervention. “We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia’s territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil,” she said. “We underscore the international community’s support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

 

The eruption of war in the Caucasus is the end product of the increasingly aggressive policy pursued by US imperialism in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR nearly 17 years ago. Washington has systematically manipulated national conflicts in the region to further its own aim of military and economic hegemony. This began with the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia.

 

All of the arguments used by Washington to justify its support for Bosnia and Kosovo and its military assault on Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s could be employed just as effectively to condemn Georgia’s intervention and defend South Ossetia, as well as Russia’s military intervention on its behalf.

 

In this case, however, Washington has elevated Georgia’s “territorial integrity” as the paramount principle in the conflict, effectively justifying Georgia’s military intervention and an assault on the province’s Russian population that Moscow has branded as “ethnic cleansing.”

 

The apparent contradiction between these two policies only underscores the fact that US imperialism’s supposed aversion to ethnic cleansing and the suppression of ethnic enclaves is entirely dependent upon who is doing it and whether or not it serves US strategic interests.

 

There is a direct link between this latest war and those waged by the US in the Balkans. In February, the US and the West recognized Kosovo’s “independence” based on its unilateral secession from Serbia, in direct violation of various UN resolutions. The aim in backing this secession—as in its support for the suppression of similar secessionist entities in Georgia—was to further US military plans for the encirclement of Russia and the securing of access routes to the Caspian Basin.

 

In the run-up to Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would set a precedent for similar actions by other territories in the former USSR—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in particular. In its aftermath, the Russian regime stepped up its support for both territories.

 

Now, the eruption of war in South Ossetia poses the threat of a regional conflagration that can bring the world’s two biggest nuclear-armed powers, the US and Russia, into direct military confrontation, with the immense dangers that such a conflict poses to humanity.

http://wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/ruge-a09.shtml

[suchandra]

Well yes, people still believe that wars are orchestrated by some rascals and not by the law of karma.

 

War between Russia and Georgia orchestrated from USA

 

 

Pravada.ru – August 9, 2008

 

 

The US administration urged for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict between Russia and Georgia over the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia.

 

In the meantime, Russian officials believe that it was the USA that orchestrated the current conflict. The chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security, Vladimir Vasilyev, believes that the current conflict is South Ossetia is very reminiscent to the wars in Iraq and Kosovo.

 

“The things that were happening in Kosovo, the things that were happening in Iraq – we are now following the same path. The further the situation unfolds, the more the world will understand that Georgia would never be able to do all this without America. South Ossetian defense officials used to make statements about imminent aggression from Georgia, but the latter denied everything, whereas the US Department of State released no comments on the matter. In essence, they have prepared the force, which destroys everything in South Ossetia, attacks civilians and hospitals. They are responsible for this. The world community will learn about it,” the official said.

 

In the meantime, it became known that the Georgian troops conducted volley-fire cleansings of several South Ossetian settlements, where people’s houses were simply leveled.

 

“The number of victims with women, children and elderly people among them, can be counted in hundreds and even thousands,” a source from South Ossetian government in the capital of Tskhinvali said.

 

The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters that Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia question its consistency as a state and as a responsible member of the international community, Interfax reports.

 

"Civilians, including women, children and elderly people, are dying in South Ossetia. In addition to that, Georgia conducts ethnic scouring in South Ossetian villages. The situation in South Ossetia continues to worsen every hour. Georgia uses military hardware and heavy arms against people. They shell residential quarters of Tskhinvali [the capital] and other settlements. They bomb the humanitarian convoys. The number of refugees continues to rise – the people try to save their lives, the lives of their children and relatives. A humanitarian catastrophe is gathering pace,” Russia’s Foreign Minister said.

 

The minister added that the Georgian administration ignored the appeal from the UN General Assembly to observe the Olympic truce during the Beijing Olympics.

 

“The Georgian administration has found the use to its arms, which they have been purchasing during the recent several years,” Lavrov said. “The fact that Georgian peacemakers in the structure of joint peacemaking forces opened fire on their Russian comrades from one and the same contingent speaks for itself, I think,” the minister added.

 

“Now it is clear to us why Georgia never accepted Russia’s offer to sign a legally binding document not to use force for the regulation of the South Ossetian conflict,” Lavrov said. “Not so long ago, before the military actions in South Ossetia, Georgia’s President Saakashvili said that there was no point in such a document because Georgia would not use force against its people, as he said. It just so happens that it is using it,” Sergei Lavrov said.

 

Sergei Lavrov believes that the international community should stop turning a blind eye on Georgia’s active deals to purchase arms.

 

“We have repeatedly warned that the international community should not turn a blind eye on massive purchases of offensive arms, in which the Georgian administration has been involved during the recent two years,” La

[weallshineon]

In the 1950s, the then Soviets become frustrated with the American pushing into South East Asia and gave China the Atom Bomb to scare off the Americans.

Now with the Americans transporting Georgian troops from Iraq to Georgia and Israel training Georgian troops and providing weapons.

Wouldn't it make sense to the Russians to secretly provide nuclear weapons to Iran? The Russians are already building the nuclear reactor there?

If I was in the Russian Government that’s what I would do.

Stuff all the Russian businessmen who depend on western markets to make money. I think many Russian military men are sick and tired of seeing their homeland suck up to the Americans. Maybe they will be clever and give Iran the BOMB.

Lets face it, when it does happen, and unfortunately, it will (unless of course the devotees of Krishna work together in what we know as the real world to stop it), War will be inevitable.

[suchandra]

 

In the 1950s, the then Soviets become frustrated with the American pushing into South East Asia and gave China the Atom Bomb to scare off the Americans.

Now with the Americans transporting Georgian troops from Iraq to Georgia and Israel training Georgian troops and providing weapons.

Wouldn't it make sense to the Russians to secretly provide nuclear weapons to Iran? The Russians are already building the nuclear reactor there?

If I was in the Russian Government that’s what I would do.

Stuff all the Russian businessmen who depend on western markets to make money. I think many Russian military men are sick and tired of seeing their homeland suck up to the Americans. Maybe they will be clever and give Iran the BOMB.

Lets face it, when it does happen, and unfortunately, it will (unless of course the devotees of Krishna work together in what we know as the real world to stop it), War will be inevitable.

 

It's hard to understand what's actually going on there, ultimately looks like family clans having a clinch?

 

U.S. Military Instructors Command Hirelings in Georgia

 

 

Kommersant – August 12, 2008

 

 

Thousands of mercenaries are fighting for Georgia in this burning conflict with South Ossetia. They are commanded by the U.S. military instructors, RIA Novosti reported with reference to a high-ranked officer of Russia’s military intelligence.

 

“From 2,500 to 3,000 mercenaries fight against Russia’s peacekeepers on behalf of Georgia,” the unnamed source said. Amid them are the natives of Ukraine, some Baltic states and the Caucasus regions.

 

The U.S. military instructors directly command and coordinate actions of mercenaries without being involved in actual fighting, the source specified. According to intelligence data, there are roughly 1,000 military instructors of the United States in Georgia.

 

Task force of Russia has annihilated a few groups of mercenaries. Some of mercenaries have been captured, and investigators are working with them, the source said.

www.kommersant.com/p-13081/mercenaries_Georgia_U.S._instructor/

[Bart Happel]

It's an unbelievable mess there. Don't try to understand it now..

[suchandra]

 

It's an unbelievable mess there. Don't try to understand it now..

"Mike Whitney: For the most part, Americans are still in the dark about what really happened last weekend. There's a great video circulating on the Internet by a Russian citizen that has been living in USA for the last 10 years. He sums up the role of the US media with great precision. He says, "The western media – especially CNN – is feeding you complete horseshit. Russia did not invade Georgia first." The youtube can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c26Q-qxDEA

 

.

 

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c26Q-qxDEA&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344">

 

The coverage of the western media has been abysmal. Nearly every article and TV news segment begins with accusations of Russian aggression concealing the fact that the Georgian Army bombarded and invaded the capital of South Ossetia one full day before the first Russian even tank crossed the border. By the time the Russians arrived, the city was already in a shambles and thousands were dead. "

[suchandra]

Deceiving the World with Pictures

http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/08/deceiving_the_world_with_pictu.html

 

This photo was first published by the Reuters as an image of a "dead woman being carried by the Georgian soldiers from the town of Gori". But this "dead woman", incredibly, is clutching the nurse's arm.

 

This man exhibiting rage and grief happens to sit in the exact same place where the earlier picture was taken: the same pile of garbage is behind his back and scraps of metal from the picture of a "dead" woman being 'rescued' are lying around like in the earlier photo -- plus some, additional, unidentified scraps of metal. What are these supposed to represent?

 

Fighting Dirty: Pictures to Provoke Hatred and More Suffering

 

Remember the image of an emaciated Bosnian Muslim allegedly caged behind "Serb barbed wire", in a "Serb concentration camp" Trnopolje? The fake photo filmed by a British news team became a worldwide symbol of the war in Bosnia. Even after it was proven that the "prisoner" wasn't a prisoner to begin with, and was filmed outside the gate, part of which had barbed wire, this picture had still continued to be proudly exhibited all over the world to this day as the "evidence" that Serbs ran the "concentration camps" in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even the Hague tribunal's web site carries this fake image on its home page, offering another demonstration of its patent bias and voluntary blindness, a willful disregard for the facts and truth in all forms.

Deception through imagery is as old as man's ability to produce images. But photo-manipulation and staging the atrocities against one's own people to have them immediately filmed, disseminated throughout the world and used to provoke violent reaction -- retaliation -- against the designated culprit, was never used with so much success in propaganda war as during the 1990s, against the Serbs in all stages of Yugoslav civil wars.

Someone Keeps Moving "Their Son"

 

The caption Reuters gave to this photo is "Georgians stand next to the body of their son in the town of Gori". The woman is looking up towards the sky from where, presumably, death had stricken "her son".

 

But for the purposes of this photo the body of the "son" has been obviously moved quite a bit away from the curb. This was clearly not done in order to cover up the naked parts of the dead man's body, nor to allow some measure of dignity to the dead. Was it done for the light? (One should challenge Reuters to find a mother -- any mother -- who would allow the body of her child to be dragged through dirt half naked like this, while she is taking instructions from a photographer where to stand, where to look and what to do next)

 

Shameful role Western mainstream media has played in demonizing the Serbs and spreading the filthiest, basest propaganda against the Serbian nation and its leaders during the civil wars in the territory of former Yugoslavia, had dealt a fatal blow to Western news agencies' claims of neutrality, objectivity and impartiality. It turned out that Western mainstream media is a willing cobelligerent in the aggressive imperial wars West is constantly engaged in, being no more than a tool used by Western political powers to advance their own agendas.

One will often hear Reuters, AP, AFP, DPA and others refer to, say, Serbian RTS as "Belgrade's official TV", as if BBC, CNN, CBC, ABC and others are "independent", far removed from the offices of their respective states' governments and administrations. Rubbish! If they are all independent and each on their own, then how come they're all always tooting the same horn and always rooting for the same side in every conflict, every war, every confrontation -- how can that be?! How was such a wide consensus achieved on every single international issue, when was this perfectly unison choir formed, spanning millions of newspapers, magazines, web sites, TV studios and news agencies? Are they all copying from each other because they are all border-line retarded, a world wide club of semi-retards who can't come up with a single original thought, or because they follow political instructions, an unwritten, unquestionable set of rules, a codex saying you either fall in line and follow the script, or you're out in the cold, and out for good? You decide.

But, when you see the rigged photo stories like these latest ones from British Reuters, be kind and remember -- they might be out to destroy entire nations, but someone's paycheck depends on it, so ...they had to do it.

[Samia]

http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

 

Nothing new of course it is the same thing the Arab media and its supporters in world media have been doing for years to drum up hate against Israel.

 

 

Ooops.

[bija]

I wouldn't be surprised if Putin sees a great opportunity for power swing, and is planning many things. He is a huge demon!

 

The American nation has had such sway for so many years. Over the coming years we will see an alliance between China and Russia deepen. Russia has mass resevoir of natural gas too.

 

The way I see it the workings of material energy are moving along. We in the west have had a huge opportunity, due to affluence, to apply ourselves spiritually. But instead we have utilized poorly the comforts. So maybe we will get the results now...

 

Which is a swing in world power where athiests (China and Russia) have more of a say in what goes down in this world.

 

Ofcourse the simple-hearted devotees do not join in this play of material energy. Except for purification. Hari! Hari!

[suchandra]

According Michel Chossudovsky Press TV, "Washington helped Georgia to take control of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, because it needs Georgian territory to use for bombing against Iran."

 

'Caucasus crisis prelude to war on Iran'

 

 

Press TV – September 8, 2008

 

 

Prominent anti-war activist Michel Chossudovsky says the Caucasus conflict is a prelude to a joint attack by the US and Israel on Iran.

 

According to Chossudovsky, the Canadian economist, the United States had been actively involved in the planning and logistics of the Georgian military operation in South Ossetia.

 

In mid-July, Georgian and US troops held a joint military exercise dubbed 'Immediate Response' involving respectively 1,200 US and 800 Georgian troops.

 

Shortly after the military drill, Georgian military forces launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia on August 7. Russia, in response, sent its troops into the region.

 

The conflict in South Ossetia resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, and the displacement of 34,000 others, according to both Russian and Western sources.

 

Chossudovsky, the forensic Global Research author, said Georgia would never act militarily without the assent of Washington.

 

"The war on Southern Ossetia was not meant to be won," he said, adding that, "It was intended to destabilize the region."

 

"Let us be under no illusions. This is not a civil war. The attacks are an integral part of the broader Middle East Central Asian war, including US-NATO-Israeli war preparations in relation to Iran," Chossudovsky cautioned.

 

 

 

Hermes-450

 

 

 

According to the Debkafiles, in addition to the Israeli military advisers' aid to Georgia to carryout the August 7-8 ground assault, Israel supplied Mikheil Saakashvili's government with Hermes-450 and Skylark unmanned aerial vehicles.

 

Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Duma Deputy Sergei Markov told Press TV that, "this war in South Ossetia is somehow connected with the aggression of Washington against Iran and the possible bombing of Iran."

 

"Washington helped Georgia to take control of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, (because) it needs Georgian territory to use for bombing against Iran," he added.

 

Tel Aviv and Washington accuse Iran of developing nuclear arms, and have threatened to launch air strikes against the country.

 

However, the UN nuclear watchdog has announced that no evidence had been found to support the US and Israel's allegations against Iran.

 

CS/DA

www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=68765§ionid=351020101

[Kulapavana]

 

Nothing new of course it is the same thing the Arab media and its supporters in world media have been doing for years to drum up hate against Israel.

 

 

Georgia is actually using Israeli 'consultants' in orchestrating their media misinformation campaign.

 

All demonic people use it to further their dirty desires.

 

US media are pathetically biased.