Keeping an Eye Out for Georgia

The International Crisis Group just released a new study on Georgia:

All sides in the conflict – Georgian, Russian and South Ossetian – committed war-time abuses, but the actions of Ossetian militias, who systematically looted, torched and in some cases bulldozed most ethnic Georgian villages, were particularly egregious. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called those abuses “ethnic cleansing” Human Rights Watch cited ample evidence to label them “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes”. The PACE also noted “the failure of Russia and the de facto authorities to bring these practices to a halt and their perpetrators to justice”. Indeed, Russian troops largely stood by, unwilling or unable to perform their security duties…

[Russia] has now gone two steps further, not only vetoing the UN mission that has been working in Abkhazia but also blocking a renewed mandate for the OSCE mission to Georgia that has been active in South Ossetia. Though none of the other 56 OSCE member states support it on this latter step, the fourth biggest OSCE mission is on the verge of closing on 30 June because a mandate extension requires consensus.

The ICG report focuses only on events with South Ossetia, with Abkhazia promised for a later report. Considering that just today, Abkhazian forces managed to attack and damage part of Georgia’s electricity infrastructure, let’s hope they come out with it soon.

As for the report itself, it’s vintage ICG: there is a pretty god description of the conflict and many of the politics around it, but also suffers from the usual weaknesses of ICG reports, like a touch of utopianism in the suggestions area. Russia’s six months of obfuscation on extending the OSCE’s Georgian mission are stemming from deep domestic political considerations as much as their specific angle inside South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Even so, it is very much worth reading.

Previously:
Registan.net’s coverage of Georgia’s instability.