10.08.2008 Georgia, South Ossetia, Tskhinvali. A Georgian soldier killed during the war in South Ossetia.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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“We’d Better Burn It down So That They Would Never Return”
Kommersant special correspondent Olga Allenova, who was at the war, believes that the South Ossetia of these days resembles the Chechnya of 1999.
“I thought we wouldn’t even need guns here”
It was Russia’s wounded soldiers that first reminded me of Chechnya. They told us about the way military operations are carried out today and I realized that nothing had changed since 1999. On August 11, a military column was sent from Tskhinvali to the village of Nikozi. No one had told the soldiers that Nikozi was a Georgian settlement and it was going to be stormed. Those were 18-year-old guys, who had just arrived in the 58th army in Vladikavkaz. They went to the operation without even taking a packed lunch, water and medicines. They had no map of the area. The column would stop and turn back because it lost its way in the unknown territory. The medical machine got broken and stopped a few kilometers from Nikozi. As the fighting started, there was no one to take those wounded from the battle-field.
“We were told it was a peace-keeping operation,” Misha, a wounded soldier tells me. “I thought we wouldn’t even need guns here.”
I was shocked. I was sure the era of the Chechen wars was over and the army was different. I thought only professional soldiers were sent in the hot spots, as the Defense Ministry stated. I was mistaken.
Unlike soldier Misha, Beslan Sanakoyev from North Ossetia went to war deliberately. This is what he told me, “While they shelled the town, I was in the cellar with the natives. There were 10 adults and one child in the cellar. He trembled with fear all the time. They tried to close his ears, but the cellar shook, and the child felt that.”
Beslan tells me much about this child. The man has a gun in one hand, and he holds the steering wheel in the other. He takes us round the town in his car. When we see killed Georgian soldiers, he asks us to make shots of the scenes so that the whole world could see it. “Let everyone see that they should never come to this land with cruel intentions!”
I feel sick when I see these corpses. Beslan asks, “Do you feel sorry? Why? You should not. They came with guns here.”
“Perhaps they didn’t want to go here,” I reply. “Just like the Russian soldiers who got the order from the command.”
But it doesn’t work: I can’t convince Beslan.
He came to Tskhinvali on the first day.
“How did they let you enter the town?” I wonder. “You’re bearing a gun.”
“I didn’t ask anyone. No one is able to stop volunteers. We went to defend Ossetians.”
I could write a book about the volunteers going to South Ossetia. There were volunteers everywhere in the area. They ruled here. I once saw them stop a Russian colonel, and he had to give account of what he was doing in the town. Later he told me, “Those are serious guys. You shouldn’t contradict them.”
Beslan left Tskhinvali in his old car leaving a packed lunch and the gun with his relatives. Unlike Beslan, many volunteers left the town “loaded”. I saw people in camouflage take products and goods out of shops. “It’s war now, and everything should be shared,” they said. When we tried to photograph them, they shouted, “Get out of here!” And the Russian colonel cut it short, “They can kill you if you disobey.” The fear of looting made many South Ossetians return home on the fourth day of the conflict.
On August 13 an anti-looting committee was set up. But by that time many houses, which were abandoned, had been empty.
“We have survived another war”
I traced no looting in the village of Khetagurovo. It is not that easy to get to that village actually.
In Tskhinvali, everyone told me about Khetagurovo. They told me that it was ruined, that it was dead, that they’d never restore it. Khetagurovo is a strategic outpost, it is located at the beginning of the Zar road – the one Russia’s troops moved along on the first days of the war. If the road had been blocked, Tskhinvali would have been in a ring. The Georgian troops also went through Khetagurovo to get to Tskhinvali. I wanted to see it – I thought I would see the real face of the war.
To get in Khetagurovo, I had to walk round the entire Tskhinvali. There are no cars in the town. The volunteers, who drive their cars, usually easily take you to the town’s districts, but they don’t feel like going to Khetagurovo. They say it’s a long distance from here. In fact, it’s only 30 km from Tskhinvali. The thing is, there are no Russian troops in Khetagurovo. And its dangerous in the places where there are no Russian troops. I was lucky. There were UAZes near the Prosecutor General’s Office. The staff were waiting for a large group of investigators from Moscow, 150 people totally. The natives and the wounded also waited for this group.
Not only those survived waited for it. The corpses of the Georgian soldiers, which lay throughout the town and had even swelled from the oppressive heat, were also waiting. They were to be put in a refrigerator and be sent to the identification center. Perhaps, they would be handed over to the Georgian party. But there was neither refrigerator nor investigators here. Those dead can’t wait so long. Natives began burning them down. No one knew who exactly did it, but on the fifth day of the war the corpses turned into charred remains.
While everyone was waiting for the “special mission” from Moscow, we managed to persuade some of the staff to take us to Khetagurovo.
All we saw was an empty road and cars riddled with bullets.
At the village entrance there is an old man and an old woman sitting in front of a ruined house. When he sees our car, the old man rises immediately. His legs tremble. “No fear, we won’t do you any harm,” says the driver. Eduard is 80, his sister Zulya is 90. A week before the hostilities broke out, Zulya came to Eduard from a neighboring district. There were 700 people in Khetagurovo at that time. “There were rumors that we were to get out of the village because war would start,” remembers Eduard. “They told us that the Georgians warned us. But no one believed. Some people left, others stayed here. We have got used to it.”
First a column entered the village. Eduard and Zulya didn’t know whose tanks those were. When a shell got in their house, they hid in the corner in the kitchen and spent two days there. “They bombed two days,” Zulya says. “Something fell in the yard, the house shook. My heart ached. But I am alive.”
Sitting at the empty road, Zulya waits for a passing car to return home. There is no TV set, radio or telephone here. Zulya doesn’t know that there’s nothing left from her village.
We drive further along the big dead village. We see a cow and a woman beside it. She’s in an old coat. Despite the heat, Olga Tuayeva, 70, feels cold. “All my neighbors left,” she says. “They were looking for me, and I hid in the yard. They couldn’t find me and said I was dead. I’m here alone. There were tanks driving throughout the village. I heard the soldiers speak Georgian. I lay on the ground. I have no cellar, and I was afraid to stay in the house – if it had got ruined, no one would have rescued me.”
We see soil under her nails. She wipes away the tears with her black hands. “They all left. I should leave too. They forgot to take me with them. There are so many corpses here. They smell. I can’t bury them. I must get out of here.”
Olga points to two houses and says that many people died there. We try to get inside, but the entrances are blocked with beams and bricks, and the walls got shattered from shells. There are corpses here – no doubt. It’s hot, and the entire village “smells”.
We pass two quarters, and see that there is life there. Three men sit beside a cherry plum tree. They drink vodka and eat canned tomatoes.
“We have survived another war,” they say smiling. “We’ve just buried five people.”
Amiran Kabanov tells us what happened in detail. First the boots entered the village. Georgian soldiers entered the houses. They looked for arms and camouflage, and asked whether militants lived in the houses. “They told us not to worry,” remembers Amiran. “Then the tanks followed. It was at night. Then they started shelling. The Georgians fired two days. When I asked one of them why they destroyed our houses, he replied, “Your militants fire at our villages. The government will build other houses for you.” I asked, “What government? Saakashvili hasn’t managed to build anything in his country.” He had nothing to answer.”
I ask Amiran how many killed people there are in the village. He says they have buried ten people.
A group of young people passes by. They have guns and white bands on their sleeves. They look at us, then ask Amiran something in Ossetian, he replies.
“There are ten people in the village now,” he says after the young people leave. “These militants came at night. They are not natives, they are town-dwellers.”
“Why did they come?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps, it’s a substitute for the police.”
Another man living in Khetagurovo Nikolay Jusoyev is the only one left in the entire quarter. He’s 54, but it seems he’s 70. He moves with difficulty. When I ask him why he didn’t get away from here, he answers pointing to his crutch that he was unable to do it. He sits near the cellar of his house. He has a medal of the Hero. “They gave it to me in Tbilisi,” the man remembers. He wore the medal hoping that it’d save him from the soldiers. However, they didn’t actually do him harm. They stayed in the house where he lived, there were their headquarters in the building. When the firing stopped, Nikolay went out of the cellar to take cigarettes form his house.
“I just entered the house, they saw me and wanted to arrest. But as they saw the crutch, they freed me immediately. And suddenly our guy in camouflage appeared. He wanted to see whether his parents were there. The Georgians saw him and shot him down. I thought they would kill me too. But they only told me to get out.”
Nikolay smiles with his toothless mouth. “God knows what I had to bear.”
He hadn’t eaten anything for three days. Now he found bread, sugar and water in his house. “I drink sweet water with bread,” he says. “I won’t endure it long.”
I ask the man whether he wants go leave with us. But he doesn’t. “I was born here, and I will die here too,” he says.
I go down to the cellar to see the place Nikolay stayed in during three days. It’s dark, wet and dirty here. There are logs and rags on the ground. When I get out of it, I understand why Nikolay cries all the time.
After Khetagurovo I saw the villages of Tbet and Tsunar. They were all the same. There were three people in Tbet, and two in Tsunar. They could tell you nothing except for it was cold in the cellars. They looked at me and didn’t understand what I asked them. In Tsunar an old woman said, “I can’t get it. What do you want? I can’t get anything.”
I saw such women before. In ruined Chechnya.
“It’s safer here”
We return to Tskhinvali. There’s only military authorities here. No one knew where the President and the government were. It was announced that the government was in Java, but I saw no single minister there. People told me that ministers demanded that the military should give them their cars to evacuate. Only several officials stayed in Tskhinvali with the natives: Security Council Secretary Anatoly Barankevich, Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzayev, Foreign Minister Murat Jioyev and Information Minister Irina Gagloyeva. The fact that these people were in town inspired the natives.
I never saw President Kokoity in Tskhinvali at that time. No one wanted to believe that he’d left the town.
Perhaps this war resolved many political questions. But President Kokoity began losing his popularity with South Ossetians. It’s difficult to explain to these people why the brave and young president stays in Java, whereas his citizens – old people, women and children mainly – have to survive under bombardments.
We spent our last night in Tskhinvali at Oleg’s house. He was lucky – the walls and the roof of his house were not destroyed. There were also Tamaz and Irbek there. Irbek told us that the men were going to Georgian settlements to burn down the houses there.
“That’s right, I’ll also go there,” says Tamaz.
“Why destroy them?” I ask. “There was civilian population there, they were also bombed. They will have no place to live.”
“That’s the reason why,” says Irbek. “We’d better burn it down so that they would never return.”
Before leaving I went to the Interior Ministry of the republic. I saw something strange through one of the windows: old men and women stood in a room with barbed wire.
“Why have you detained them?” I asked an officer.
“Do they appear detained?” he responded. “These people are from Georgian enclaves. They were unable to get to Georgia. Or they simply didn’t want to.”
“Why are they here? In this room with barbed wire?”
“It’s safer here.”
Olga Allenova
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 18, 2008
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