ou are better off not controlling land where the people living there dont want you.
To a great extent the reason why the majority of the people there don't want the Georgians around is that the Georgians in the area where forced out.
Shrinking Georgia would be rewarding the ethnic cleansing.
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"The biggest difference, though, is how South Ossetia and, especially, Abkhazia managed to forge themselves as autonomous regions of Georgia in the first place.
In 1989, only 17 percent of what is now Abkhazia was ethnically Abkhaz. Almost half its population were ethnic Georgians. The remaining population was made up mostly of Russians, Armenians, and Greeks. After a brutal war of ethnic-cleansing in 1992 and 1993, most of the Georgians were killed or driven out. More than 200,000 remain internally displaced persons inside their own country. Most of the Russians, most of the Greeks, and almost half the Armenians have also since left. An Abkhazian majority that wants to secede from Georgia wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for that war and the mass reduction of ethnic Georgians who lived there.
South Ossetia is more ambiguous. Unlike Abkhazia, that district did begin in the post-Soviet era with an ethnic Ossetian majority, but ethnic Georgians made up nearly a third of its population until most were driven out by Russia’s invasion last month."
...
Kosovo, to be sure, has something in common with Abkhazia. But the surface-level similarity exists far more for the convenience of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Ministry of Disinformation than it does on closer inspection in the real world. The Kosovo precedent, framed more appropriately, is a warning to tyrants and mass murderers that they may permanently lose territory they attempt to ethnically cleanse. Russia’s Abkhazia precedent, on the other hand, encourages ethnic-cleansing by rewarding its victors with international recognition of territory they violently carve out for themselves.
South Ossetia has a bit more in common with Kosovo. Though ethnic-cleansing has taken place there on a smaller scale, at least that district had an Ossetian majority to start out with. But its microscopic population of 60,000 makes the analogy a little ridiculous. If every disgruntled minority group of that size in the world justifies a massive foreign invasion and de-facto annexation, watch out. Few borders on Earth are so perfectly drawn along ethnic lines. Russia’s own are certainly not.
There are sensible reasons to be concerned about the Kosovo precedent, but the Abkhazia and South Ossetia precedents are far more dangerous to peace and stability in the world.
commentarymagazine.com
michaeltotten.com
hrw.org
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In practical terms we are probably going to have to accept that the ethnic cleansing does get rewarded. We aren't going to go to war to push the Russian out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, or even the other parts of Georgia that they occupy.
But not going to war over the issue, doesn't mean pretending that its just or acceptable, or putting primary blame for the situation on anyone else but Russia. |
