Fear and Loathing in Tbilisi

OK

To start things off I'm going to make this posting a little different from my last few on the conflict. I've tried in my previous posts to compile fragments of news I've spent the day reading into a single document attempting to summarise the current situation. Whilst I hope this has been useful for those trying to find out exactly what's going on without wading through piles of agency reports this approach has presented a few problems:

Firstly, a lot of you have been messaging me throughout the day trying to find out how I'm doing as opposed to wanting to know "who said what?" and "where's being bombed?", so I will start off this post by filling you all in on my personal situation and hopefully assuage some of your fears.

Secondly, I've been using of information from press agencies, it's becoming increasingly apparent that a lot of these sources are not particularly reliable, a particularly good example of this would be the reports of martial law in Tbilisi which proved to be spurious. There's a lot of propaganda and misinformation coming from both sides that's reflected in the difference in coverage by Western and Russian agencies.

Additionally many Georgian news sources as I mentioned in my previous post are down though Rustavi2 is back on the air if not the internet and civil.ge is accessable through refuge.ge. So I'll try and provide a "ground level" report here based more on sources in Tbilisi. Whilst these are equally subject to rumour and propaganda I hope to give you a perspective you might not find in most other places on the internet. So in the second part of this post I'll try and get you all up to speed but I'll try to use a broader range of sources.

Finally in attempting to provide a journalistic style report of current events I've deliberately tried to leave my own baggage behind and avoid expressing my own opinion. Having lived in Tbilisi for the last five months and grown very close to the people here I have my own, constantly developing take on the situation. In the last part of the post I'll take the opportunity to get a few things off my chest and share my own perspective with you.

Me

First things first I'm safe, whilst a few tourists are leaving the country, embassies are issuing travel warnings, Tbilisi is not too far from the conflict zone and bombs have been dropped within a few kilometres of the city limits I still believe I'm in one of the safest places in the country. Whilst everything right now is subject to change a Russian air raid on Tbilisi propper would be an extreme turn of events.

There are still hundereds of foreigners in the capital, possibly including Russians, as I write the only organisation I know of that is close to pulling out is the American PeaceCorp who are notorious for their over-cautiousness. A direct air strike on say for example Georgian administrative buildings in Tbilisi would not only risk injury to western nationals (the British Embassy and major hotels are all on the same road as the parliament and M.o.D buildings) but would escalate the war to a level at which NATO would almost certainly be forced to intervene.

The Russians are not stupid and especially whilst the Olympics are on will continue to portray their actions as Peacekeeping activities largely centred around South Ossetia to avoid provoking an international outcry. The targets that have been bombed were chosen as military targets and I do believe that despite the attrocious civilian casualties in sustained in Gori the Russians will for sake of face try to avoid civilian death where possible.

The situation is however extremely fluid and how it will continue is anybody's guess. I am in contact with the British Embassy and spend most of my time glued to the internet. Should the situation take a turn for the worse I can assure you all that I will get to somewhere safe as fast as possible. I have a good group of expat mates here, we stick together constantly and have discussed a number of contingency plans should our embassies prove useless.

I am determined however to see this through, I won't take any unecessary risks but the thought of having to leave Georgia right now appals me. For starters I have a lot of Georgian friends who've been called up as reservists, should as expected Georgia's fortunes take a serious turn for the worse many expect that non-reservists and those without military experience will be drafted. The thought of leaving and reading an email from the comfort of my parents house in Worcester from Eka (my boss) telling me that Beka (her brother and my friend) has returned from Tskinvali in a body bag makes me feel sick.

Secondly I did a Security Studies degree, I'm interested in working in development (though a lot of interesting journalism opportunities have presented themselves recently too) I will inevitably end up living in a number of countries that are unstable to say the least. This might not be the last time something like this happens to me. This is something you and I will both have to get used to I'm afraid.

Thirdly my organisation really needs me right now, we've lost a key member of staff to the draft, if things escalate we may lose more. The organisation has been in something of a malaise for the last few years and again with a fresh refugee crisis (more on this later) we are needed now more than ever. I'm particularly concerned about the Georgian ethnic city of Gali in Abkhazia, residents there have faced violence and persecution ever since the province separated from Georgia. This war could provide fresh impetus to their persecution, possibly leading to fresh refugee flows into neighbouring towns like Zugdidi.

Additionally (and I feel a pang of guilt for saying this) this is interesting, this is very fucking interesting. This is an experience that will stick with me for the rest of my life and I don't feel ready to finish it now. I've committed myself to another year and I want to carry it out.

Anyway the rate at which things are changing it could be over in a few days. The Georgians don't stand a chance against Russia, whilst I can't say it will finish soon I can't see the Georgian army sustain this.

We shall see.

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is strange, the atmosphere here is unlike anything I've experienced before. It's so quiet, with the draft the only people on the streets sometimes seem to be women, the old, and the very young. To be honest with you too much of my time has been spent in offices glued to every other update on the internet and whilst I'm in contact with my Georgian friends most of my time has been spent disecting the situation from every angle with expats.

In both the Georgian and Expat communities people are still absorbing it all and reactions are mixed. There is a lot of nationalist sentiment, last night we hit the streets with a bottle of vodka and tried to take it all in. As I mentioned in my earlier post there've been nationalist demonstrations, we joined the convoy and chatted to the demonstrators, most were upbeat, confident and fervently nationalistic. All of them however talked about "suidobis", peace.

Flags were waved, songs were sung, car horns were honked and cries of "Sakhartvelos Garumajos!" (Georgia Cheers!) rang out across the street. Many of those demonstrating were due to leave for the army today. I couldn't help worrying that their optimism and enthusiasm would be shortlived, tonight has seen much less of this activity, though the cars still drive past flying the flag and honking their horns a new, more tense feeling seems to have entered downtown Tbilisi.

Outside the parliament today refugees from Gori gathered seeking accomodation. I saw the tail end of it, and tried talking to a few unfortunately most were older and unable to speak English. From discussions with expat friends I've heard that there were angry scenes when they first arrived, many were furious with Misha (Georgian's pet name for Saakashvili) for starting the war and endangering their city and lives.

Many Georgians are terrified, I've been in contact with Eka (my boss) a couple of times, she sounded tired, stressed and spoke often of how terrible the situation is. I really fear for her, an IDP (displaced by the first war) from Abkhazia herself she has no desire to see more bloodshed. She's watching her family and friends being dragged up to fight a war which can't be won, she fears her husband and the father of her two young children might get drafted too. She's out of Tbilisi this weekend, I await apprehensively to catch up with her properly on Monday.

Short chats and facebook status messages indicate the same undertone of fear and foreboding amongst a lot of other friends and aquainances too. We all seem to spend every spare second desperately looking for fresh information, sharing stories and rumours and speculating about what might happen.

Debate generally centres around where it's all going, none of us really have much of a clue, and we all worry that no one does, not Misha, not Putin, not Bush.

"How long will it last?" "How far will it spread?" "How will Nato react?" "How much did the Yanks know about it in advance?" "How long has it been planned for?" "Did you hear about this?" "Do you know what really scares me?" "What's the line we'd cross where you'd go?" The same questions keep on coming back again and again. We slip in and out of it, spending time talking about music, women, men, this club in Detroit, this party I went to in Bradford on time where.. But as soon as the small talk dies down we're right back to it "Will there be a ceasefire?" "Would Misha even contemplate pulling back troops?" "I just heard Muradi's going to the front"

There's always so many questions from our friends who've left Georgia too, I hope a lot of you are reading this now, it means a lot to us that there's all these people out there thinking about it. There's also the constant chats with friends and family back home who see the news and worry about us, the pictures on the TV are scary, war is scary, we've all got a lot of keeping in touch, catching up, reasuring and filling in to do. Thanks for all your concern and support guys! Sorry if we can't give you all the neccessary time, there's so much going on and we're talking to so many people. All I can say is keep on reading and I'll do my best to keep you up to date.

We love you all. It's strange to think a load of people out there aren't connected to this, in a way we all envy the messages we see about parties and festivals and holidays and new tattoos. But again, this is where we all need to be and none of us really want to go.

Ugh, it's half past two here and I'm getting mushy.. There's stuff I need to fill you in on, I'm going to get back to serious reporter mode.


Update

As I said before there's so much contradictory information out there, and so much of it's so politically loaded. Good luck to the rest of you who're trying to dig through it all to find "the facts". Numbers for one thing are certainly not to be trusted, the Russian news agencies for example are reporting 1,500 ossetian civilian and 15 Russian troop casualties, which seems ludicrous.

I'll try and keep to stuff that's happened since my last post but I'm very tired and I may end up repeating stuff, I'll try and keep it as short and digestable as possible, you've already read a lot and I've already written a lot.

There seems to be moves at the moment to broker a ceasefire, the BBC is reporting that a delegation of US and EU envoys is on its way to Georgia as I write to help bring an end to hostilities. Saakashvili called for a truce much earlier in the day, however the Russian side has stated that it's not prepared to negotiate unless Georgia withdraws its troops.

Given the damage that has already been done to Georgia in terms of life, infrastructure and international face I think at this stage this is unlikely, Misha needs to be able to tell the public that this awful misadventure has achieved something. A cynic might say that his call for a ceasefire only came after the tide of battle started turning against Georgia and the war opened up on the Abkhaz front.

Georgia and Russia are arguing over who "controls" Tskinvali. Control seems to me to be a bit of a mute point at the moment, there's going to be very little left of Tskinvali left at the moment.

Rhetoric on both sides is inflamatory, the Russians are accusing the Georgians of genocide and ethnic cleansing, this reads as an eerie reflection of the descriptions of Russian and Abkhaz behavior in the first war.

The Georgian's accuse the Russians of trying to "Destroy" Georgia, given the disasterous consequences we are already seeing of the war it is not hard to see how many Georgians could think that the very integrity of Georgia as a state might hang in the balance. With this mindset potentially prevalent amongst a significant segment of society and perhaps more importantly the military, I worry that this might provide motivation to Georgia to keep on fighting "to the death"

We are still trying to verify some very concerning reports coming from the Georgian side that the Russians have targeted the Baku, Tbilisi, Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that links Azeri gas fields to Turkey. I'll be writing more about the pipeline in future posts, in it's cruicial to Georgia's economy, how the west will react and perhaps Russian motivations.

The End?

For the time being though I'm going to have to sign off. I haven't quite achieved all I wanted with this post, the above update is patchy at best and I haven't got the energy to form a cogent monologue on my own feelings about the whole thing. Suffice it to say I'm very fucking pissed off with Misha for rising to Russian bait and embarking on this suicidal venture. I'm also very fucking pissed off with the Russians, it's hard not to be, they've shaped the situation for the last 15 years, it could be argued that there are many in the Kremlin who wanted this war.

But it's a long and complicated analysis, it's quarter past three I'm currently running on cheap cigarettes, brandy/coke cocktails, energy drink and a caffiene pill I got from an American friend. This is not sustainable. I need to rejoin my friends for a final fag and brandy before bed.

Keep reading.