| 16 October 2009 |
Reply to Svante Cornell’s article : “A damning verdict on Russia” (13 Oct. 2009 - The Guardian)
Despite the EU Report’s sober conclusion
not only that Georgia fired the first shot in the Ossetian war of
August 2008 but also that it had no legal justification for doing so,
Svante Cornell has the gall to argue that ‘firing the first shot does
not necessarily mean bearing responsibility for the conflict’. Lost in
the sophistry is the long-held dream of Georgia’s leadership of
launching large-scale offensives against both S. Ossetia and Abkhazia to
return them to the Georgian fold.
Cornell aims to disorientate his
readers, treating the Report’s conclusions as equivocations. The
investigators were ‘not in a position’ to consider the Georgian claims
‘sufficiently substantiated’; whilst ‘acknowledging Russian provision of
military training and equipment to the rebels’, he takes no cognizance
of such facts mentioned in the Report as how the ‘US since 2005 embarked
upon an extensive military aid programme for Georgia’ or as that ‘the
Georgian armed forces had about doubled their strength in terms of
manpower compared to the Shevardnadze years, with much better training
and equipment than ever before, and much of this newly-acquired military
strength was garrisoned on modernized military bases; the most
important of them in Senaki facing Abkhazia and the other one near Gori
facing South Ossetia’.
Another point where Cornell betrays his
impartiality is the pot-shot he aims at so-called ‘passportization’.
Russia's distribution of passports to Abkhazians and Ossetians was based
on their recipients’ voluntary choice. Compare this to Georgia’s
forcibly changing the nationality of the Abkhazian residents of the
whole Gal region of Abkhazia into Georgians, a practice pursued
throughout the whole history of Georgia’s coexistence with Abkhazians.
This fact is still ignored by the EU and is not mentioned in the Report.
Does this not deserve real condemnation?
Should not European Countries perhaps be condemned for granting the Georgians EU citizenship?
These are just a few facts. The EU
attitude towards Georgia only encourages it to take further extreme
actions. The dangerous ambitions of the Georgian establishment and their
supporters should rather be kept in check, for these are what pose the
real danger to peace and security in Transcaucasia.
Asida Lomia and Liudmila Sagaria
Abkhaz Civil Society Representatives.
Sukhum, Abkhazia
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