Nice and Cheesy

My former colleague at the BBC, James Rodgers, has filed a brief culinary report from Moscow which sheds light on Russians' current attitudes to their Georgian neighbours in the aftermath of the recent war:

"My local supermarket has just started selling fresh khachapuri, a kind of hot bread with cheese and other fillings. It's a traditional dish from the Caucasus, a staple of Georgian restaurants. But while the delicatessen sells a variety of different kinds from different regions of the Caucasus, it manages to advertise them without mentioning the word Georgian. Perhaps, given the current state of relations, the shop feels it might leave too bitter a taste in their customers' mouths."

A Time to Remember

As this turbulent year ends, the Eurasianet website has published a retrospective tribute to my friend and occasional colleague, the photographer Alexander Klimchuk, who was shot dead in South Ossetia alongside another Georgian journalist during the war in August. Elizabeth Owen, the author of the tribute, sums up the feelings of many of Sasha's former comrades here in Tbilisi when she says: "You are missed."

The Spoils of War

"After four months of continuous pillaging, you'd think there would be nothing left to take - but astonishingly, we found looters coming back for more." The Al Jazeera report on the destruction of ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia is online here.

Grim Reckonings

The Georgian parliamentary commission investigating the war in August has published its report, blaming Russia for provoking the hostilities. That’s hardly surprising, considering the body’s official title - the ‘Temporary Commission on Military Aggression and Acts of Russia against the Territorial Integrity of Georgia’. But the commission did criticise the military and civilian leadership for failing to predict Russia’s response and for an inept military campaign. The report came not long after a leaked Pentagon assessment of the Georgian army also concluded that the country’s fighting force was deeply flawed.

The human impact of the war is again highlighted by this report from Al Jazeera, whose correspondent managed to get rare access to one of the villages in South Ossetia where the Georgian population has been driven out and houses have been burned and looted by militias. She also managed to interview and photograph looters (see picture above). However, severe restrictions still apply to journalists seeking to travel to South Ossetia - if they're even allowed in at all by the authorities - and the full picture of what happened there during this brief but tragic conflict has yet to emerge.

Information War: Update

A report from the Associated Press details the Georgian government's release of surveillance recordings aimed at discrediting a South Ossetian activist by exposing her alleged links with the Ossetian KGB (as it's still called there). The activist, Lira Tskhovrebova, is currently visiting the United States to promote the Ossetian case against Georgia amid the continuing 'who started the war?' furore, but she strongly denies working for the security services. The AP story highlights Tskhovrebova's use of an expensive American public-relations firm. The PR company helps Tskhovrebova with her two websites, Truth for Ossetia and Help Ossetia Now, which regularly post comments to blogs covering the Ossetia issue, including this one.

In the Twilight Zone

More on the impact of unexploded cluster munitions, like this potentially lethal 'bomblet' (pictured left), which were scattered across villages in the conflict zone by the Russian and Georgian armies during the war in August. From my column in The Moscow Times:

Robert Nikolishvili was pointing out the spot where a bomb dropped in the courtyard of his village home during the Georgia-Russia war when there was a loud explosion in the field behind him. Although he was injured by a shell during the conflict in August, Nikolishvili didn’t seem worried by the sudden blast, but simply chuckled ironically and carried on talking. He already knew it was caused by a de-mining crew which was busy destroying unexploded cluster munitions left behind when the Georgian and Russian armies exchanged rocket fire across the nearby orchards.

More than 100 nations signed up to an international convention rejecting the use of cluster bombs last week. But Georgia and Russia, the most recent countries to deploy these weapons, weren’t among them. Some states continue to insist that cluster bombs have ‘legitimate’ military uses. But when they detonate, they scatter little ‘bomblets’ which sometimes remain undiscovered, primed to kill or maim civilians, long after politicians have agreed peace deals and soldiers have returned to their barracks.

The Georgia-Russia war only lasted a few days, but experts estimate that it could have left thousands of unexploded munitions which will take months to clear. For farmers like Nikolishvili in the Georgian village of Brotsleti, a few kilometres from South Ossetia, the bomblets caused them to lose most of their crops - their only source of income - because it was too dangerous to bring in the harvest. “We’re afraid to go into the fields because some of the bombs are hidden,” he explained.

Despite substantial evidence, Russia completely denies using cluster munitions during the war. Georgia says it didn’t use them in civilian areas, only against the Russian military. Campaign groups accuse both sides of not telling the truth and showing a callous disregard for civilian lives. Russian munitions killed more people, alleges Human Rights Watch, but Georgian bomblets have also been found in several villages. “Even if they both deny it, the evidence is on the ground,” insists Joseph Huber of Norwegian People’s Aid, which is involved in the clean-up operation.

Four months after the war, parents in Brotsleti are still nervous about letting their children play outside alone in case they’re attracted to the toy-like bomblets. Robert Nikolishvili said his neighbours were also worried that fighting could start again in what remains a highly volatile area - a place described by Amnesty International as a “twilight zone”. As if to illustrate Nikolishvili’s point, as he spoke, distant rounds of automatic gunfire echoed through the village from the direction of South Ossetia. “This is how we are living,” he sighed.

Georgia's War on Drugs

Georgia has responded to its growing drug-addiction problem by instituting a harshly punitive system of on-the-spot testing and substantial fines for users. Rehabilitation services are extremely limited in this impoverished country, however, and some Georgian drugs experts have alleged that the authorities are more interested in generating revenue than helping addicts to get treatment. But a leading Georgian MP is unapologetic: “If drug users are able to fund their habit, why should we not force them to contribute to the state budget as well?” More details from my report in the global drugs policy magazine Druglink International here.

Kusturica for Ossetia?

I've often thought that Emir Kusturica, the Serbian director of surreal comedies like Black Cat, White Cat (pictured), has a sufficiently twisted sense of humour to make a film about the Caucasus region, where the chaos of everyday life sometimes mirrors the Balkans. Now it seems that Kusturica is about to do just that - but it will be a documentary, and looks set to be extremely controversial. The Serbian media is reporting that the director has been engaged to make a film about the Russia-Georgia war from the South Ossetian point of view. Georgian film directors are already questioning whether the proposed movie will be 'honest' (if it's ever made, of course) - particularly because a campaigning Ossetian historian is involved in the project, which will reportedly be made with Moscow money. This won't be the first Russian-backed film about the recent conflict, however: the distinctly partisan War 08.08.08 The Art of Betrayal is already online, as the post-war media battle for moral supremacy continues.

Banning the Bombs

More than 100 countries this week signed up to a landmark international convention rejecting the use of cluster bombs - particularly unpleasant weapons which can remain unexploded and kill or cripple civilians for years after a war has ended. They were used by both sides during the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia - neither of whom signed the convention. The United States and other major arms-producing nations didn't sign either, although Britain, which used cluster munitions in Iraq, did join the call for a worldwide ban - a sign that things can change. This is my report for Al Jazeera from villages on the edge of South Ossetia where de-miners are clearing up Russian and Georgian cluster munitions. There's more on the campaign to ban these weapons here.

A Boy Called Map

Georgia is the only place in the world where I've seen spraypainted graffiti in a subway depicting the NATO logo, and the Western military alliance's decision this week not to give this country a 'Membership Action Plan', which would allow it to progress to the next stage towards NATO membership, has come as a major disappointment to many people here (although it was wholly predictable in the wake of the disastrous war with Russia and the long-running conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia).

Two-thirds of Georgians who voted in a plebiscite in January said they wanted to join the alliance. Their enthusiasm for membership is, at least in part, related to article five of the NATO treaty - the bit which says that NATO countries will take action to assist any fellow member which comes under attack. When your neighbour is Russia, that's a powerful inducement.

"We are a small country, and it’s important to have a lot of strong countries behind us," said one woman responding to a vox-pop survey in a Georgian newspaper today. Another was more direct: "It's important, because NATO could defend us from enemies."

How much do some Georgians want to get the 'Map' (as it's referred to here) - the Membership Action Plan which would take them one step closer to NATO? A lot, if this line in a recent report from the news agency AFP bears any relation to the truth: "Georgian Prime Minister Grigol Mgaloblishvili said Monday that he had met a man in the mountains of his country who had named his newborn son Map."