'Ossetia Is for Ossetians, Let the Georgians Suffer'

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Opinion

Barry Artiste

Certainly makes one proud to live in North America, when portions of the world around us collapses.

Those who deride the West, should know, we are still the number #1 destination for those fleeing civil strife and death. We are not perfect, but at least we are not them.

(Photo Inset) Dmitry Lovetsky / AP
Yekaterina Doguzova, left, and her daughter-in-law Zemfira Doguzova weeping at Lenya Doguzov's grave in Ksuisi.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1010/42/370559.htm

'Ossetia Is for Ossetians, Let the Georgians Suffer'

01 September 2008

By Yuras Karmanau / The Associated Press

KSUISI, Georgia — After Georgian soldiers stormed South Ossetia and killed Vitaly Guzitayev's friend, he hid in the woods. Once the Georgians left, he set fire to the elegant brick homes of ethnic Georgians who lived nearby.

"Georgians must not return here. Ossetia is for Ossetians," Guzitayev spat, sitting on a bench in Ksuisi two weeks later.

"Let the Georgians suffer. Now we are independent from them." Arson gangs have targeted the homes of ethnic Georgians in breakaway South Ossetia as the conflict over control threatens to erase a centuries-old ethnic mix.

Since the warfare between Georgia and Russia in early August, Associated Press reporters have witnessed burning homes and looting in villages.

The conflict has pitted neighbor against neighbor in this region of mountain slopes and fruit orchards where two ethnic groups have lived side by side for centuries: Georgians, whose culture is rooted on the Black Sea coast, and Ossetians, whose language and customs point to the east. Georgia says at least 28,800 ethnic Georgians have fled South Ossetia in recent weeks, part of a larger exodus of 160,000 people from the conflict zone.

South Ossetian officials say the region's population of Georgians was only 14,000 when the fighting started. Whatever the figure, no one disputes that there are few Georgians left in South Ossetia.

Olia Bugadze, 68, is one of a handful of ethnic Georgians left in Ksuisi. She said she hid in a corn field as Russian troops swept through, then watched as neighbors descended on her home, looted it and set it on fire.

Now she camps in the ruins of her kitchen. "I am afraid," Bugadze said. "Every day they threaten me and want to drive me out of Ossetia.

" Georgian officials say some ethnic Georgian men were summarily shot by militia fighters in the aftermath of the fighting, a claim that The AP was not able to independently confirm.

However, an AP reporter saw dozens of ethnic Georgians — all middle-aged or older men — who were rounded up after the fighting and held in the basements of South Ossetia's Interior Ministry.

They were forced to haul debris on streets bombed by Georgian rockets.

The AP saw at least three such groups escorted by armed South Ossetian policemen.