Advertisement
Published: August 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Ok, so I spent a few days in Georgia and much to my disappoint I didn’t see any Russian tanks. There was actually a big map in the lobby of my hotel which supposedly showed the location of the Russian tanks but getting there…well let’s just say I think the Georgians are little opportunistic. I stayed in Tbilisi the Georgian capital and other than the big board with all the pins showing Russian troop locations and possibly mined bridge locations etc, I didn’t see any single sign of the war. No refugee camp like I was seeing on CNN…life seemed pretty normal.
As soon as arrived I talked to the concierge at the Marriott to see about getting a ride out to Gori, where according to the big board with all the pins was only about 45K away and looked like the closest action. He took out his cell phone made a call, mumbled a few words, handed me the phone, and the voice on the other said, “hi, what network are you with?” To which I said, “I’m not a reporter”. Then he said, after a discernible pause and with an air of disappointment in his voice, “ohh…Gori is very
dangerous, a car costs $500 an hour and you must pay for the car if it is stolen.” Which I then said, after a discernible pause and with an air of disappointment, “ahhh…I’ll get back to you.” I then went outside and asked some of the taxis parked out front if they’d take me to Gori, all of which lead me to similar conversations like the one I’d just had on the phone.
So I resigned myself to no tanks but at least I’d explore city of Tbilisi. The city lies on the banks of the Kura River and has history dating back to 200AD. I found it a rather strange city though. There a very few restaurants or bars but there’s a huge number tiny little dingy casinos with big names like “Vegas Strip” or “Monte Carlo” filled with slot machines? War or no war, the city does not make my list of places to see in Europe.
About the war, and read on from here only if you want to hear me on my soap box, after spending time in Russia and Georgia, and listening to 12 hours of CNN, I’ve got my own take on
this thing. First a little history, the Caucasus’s has been an unstable area for the entirety of human history, it is home to an incredibly large number of ethnic groups, and in fact during the dark ages European religious scholars were convinced that the Caucasus area was the site of the tower of babble as there are forty distinct languages spoken all in an area the size of Oregon! The area is named for the Caucasus mountain range which runs east to west on the divide between the Black and Caspian seas and the range currently serves as the north/south boarder between Russian and Georgia. The areas boarders have historically been in a state of continuous movement as one ethnic gains power or another loses it. Attached you’ll see a map as the boarders sat roughly in 1928 which is just before the Russians annexed the whole area.
Stalin may have been a sly and devious dictator but he also had vision. Whenever the USSR annexed another group of states it always redrew all the boarders, splitting ethnic groups into parts, and then forming them into administrative areas. The idea being that anyone in the future would look at
this say what a mess you can’t split this back up! Stalin was also Georgia by birth and he was generous to Georgia when he redrew its borders. During the breakup of the USSR In 1991 Georgia declared independence, at which time South Ossetia and Abkhazia then declared independence from Georgia and a civil war started. No one doubts that South Ossetia and Abkhazia took the blunt of the damage in the war but in the end they won autonomy and have operated as autonomous regions for over 14 years. In fact for over a decade now you could not travel to Abkhazia via Georgia, the only way into Abkhazia is to go south from Russia!
On August 6th, after going on the air on the 5th and announcing his intention of negotiating a new cease fire with South Ossetia, the president of Georgia launched missiles at the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali and then moved tanks into the city…and well, we all know the story from there.
I personally have a hard time feeling sorry for the Georgians. They fired rockets and rolled tanks on what they claim are their own citizens and in doing so they
essentially stepped into a Russian trap. A trap the Russians setup because they’re still pissed about the west recognizing Kosovo claims of independence from Serbia- Serbia being a staunch Russian ally and Kosovo a western one. So the Russians are now playing tit for tat, they’re going recognize claims of independence from Russian allies that wants to split from a western one. And in reality South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably have a better reason to claim independence anyways, the only reason they’re part of Georgia today is because the soviets drew them into the boarder the Georgian administrative area. I love the Georgians- we don’t want to be part of the USSR anymore but we’re going to keep the areas the USSR included in our soviet boarders!
Bush has been pushing very hard for Georgia to become a full member of NATO…thankfully our European allies have said not so fast. We need to be very careful whom we let into joint defense agreements and we shouldn’t be doing so just because of some leftover cold war mentality…we could be in world war III right now because our ally Saakashvili rolled tanks on his own people!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.188s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0884s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Gigi
non-member comment
Places that are far away
Reading your aritcal is like having a lesson on history+geography. I do learn a lot of hard-to-remember placenames which only being heard in CNN.....