(The following article is from the November 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India

     The recollection of being in the midst of that terrible internecine killing amongst the Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims in what was then Yugoslavia is still fresh in my memory. A recent visit to Tbilisi - the tragedy of the recent Russian-Georgian impasse overarching the scenic beauty of the city - reminded me again bitterly of the unfinished business left behind by that perennially anti-US power (now, alas, relegated to the position called the former Soviet Union) on the important issue of the right to self-determination.  

     I had personally witnessed the tragedy overwhelming the peoples of Ingushetia and Chechnya not many years back. Again, the issue involved the notion and perception of self-determination, with a large dose of the geo-political ambitions of the "land of the free" ladled on. The Russian-Georgian conflict belongs to a different chapter of a more straightforward history, without the sideshows the other ethnic conflicts had produced.

     The corporate media have done their level best to portray the Russians as the brutal attackers on "innocent" Georgia, and the leading victim as the US-leaning president of that country, he of the "rose revolution" and the south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line twang-and-drawl, Mikhail Saakashvili. A classic strain that meanders through the powerful body of works of Karl Marx concerns the nature of a revolution: who benefited, he said, was more important than who sparked it off. The same historically immutable principle also applies to war.

     Who started the Russo-Georgian war that took in its stride nearly 2000 casualties and thousands of refugees? The answer is Georgia. Why Georgia did provoke its powerful nuclear neighbour? The answer is even more palpable. In a world where the Warsaw Treaty no longer exists, the US-Britain-France-Germany "sign of four" wanted NATO-leaning Georgia to provoke Russia on three of its weakest geo-political points: ethnicity, security considerations, and borders.

     The cold war, (mes) frères, has not ended, just restructured. We hold no brief for Russia, nor for the Putin-Medvedev power clique after witnessing a nation run to political, economic, ethnic, and social ruination by its military-former KGB/OGPU-former perestroikans who make up the ruling oligarchs.  

     The point - nagging and awkward - does remain, however, as to the clear ambition of the Georgian president (who practised law in the southern US) to swallow up the Russian-majority south Ossetia, and Abkhazia (both rich in untapped oil resources), and to line up at NATO's welcoming portals at the same time.  

     Why should Russia, its foundations already shaken to the core by poverty and social unrest, allow this to happen? Would Sarkozy's France see Strasbourg join hands with Angela Merkel's Deutschland with the anti-national slogan of "language is uber alles?" Would Brown and his chums allow Scottish nationalism to raise its Connery head beyond the Pennines? Would Merkel allow south German provinces and enclaves to lean towards der osterreich? Then why should we single out Russia as the villain, just because Bush would have us shout it out?

     I shall only draw the attention of People's Voice readers to four pointers that may help clear the fog of uncertainty in explaining the bloodshed to the south of Russia.

     A succession of Georgian ruling elites under Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze, and Saakashvili have fomented ultra-Georgian nationalism against the Russian-speaking regions of south Ossetia (north Ossetia is in Russia), and Abkhazia.  

     Then again, recall the eager manner in which Georgia provided all sorts of help to the Chechen and the Ingushetia rebels a few years back when south Caucasus again bled heavily.  

     It is very apparent that the US wants to muscle in directly through Saakashvili into this oil-rich region, where it already has an understanding on oil supply (the so-called Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pact) bypassing Russia's vital energy interests.

     Finally, what is covered up in the corporate media is the sad fact that a low intensity conflict has been in place in the south Ossetian and Abkhazian regions ever since Georgian troops invaded the two enclaves back in March of 1990, and were beaten back by the local militia with a generous dose of ammunition and "commissars" from the USSR that was soon to get perestroikaed under Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Co.

     The conflict has thankfully been brought to close in a manner long anticipated. Russia has recognised the two "breakaway regions" as independent states, and speaking in a voice that reminds us of Tsarist times, the present Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has justified the act "of protecting our own against ethnic discrimination" as one based on "universal values." Is Crimea the next theatre of the absurd? In the meanwhile, "members of parliament" from both south Ossetia and Abkhazia have started to be present with voting rights at the 34th session of the Russian Parliament.