Georgia On My Mind

Harrying a withdrawing army is never good for bystanders. The various 'Lines' that marked the withdrawal of German forces through Italy from 1943 can be readily discerned by the memorials in every town and village, no matter how remote, to executed local people caught between partisan action and military examples being made. Who picked out the victims and often helped with the executions, usually the activist remnants of the Fascists, are still remembered and their descendants feel the shame, despite deep-seated reconciliation.

The purpose of the harrying is, of course, post war positioning and local power seizing. In major industrial and resource centres it is national and international power seeking. Which is what is going on in Georgia.

Blowing up and shooting Russian personnel, as they pack up to leave the buffer zones around their enclaves to European Union peace observers, is a venomous effort by the unsavoury Georgian regime to assert claims to bravery and resistance when the reality is that the Georgian army merely shelled undefended towns and ran away as soon as the Russian Army appeared. They are still about their attempts to cause trouble in the Caucasus and undermine the European Union-brokered settlement.

Resistance is one thing, and gratuitously putting at risk the lives and settled existence of innocent people is quite another. Fortunately the Russian Army is not withdrawing through what has suddenly become enemy territory with broken chains of command and collapsing internal discipline. No group, least of all the unpleasantly authoritarian current Georgian regime, should act to invite reprisals as part of a policy game.