Bombings and gun attacks are on the increase, writes Daniel McLaughlinin Tskhinvali.
SOUTH OSSETIA is a schizophrenic place.
Legally part of Georgia, most of it is run by separatists who want to join their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, across the border in Russia. Often, the tiny rebel capital of Tskhinvali and the villages near by are quiet by day, but crackle with gun and mortar fire by night. And the old men who pause under shady trees in Tskhinvali look like pensioners anywhere, passing time and reminiscing. But here they talk of weapons, killing and the possibility of war.
"From the Soviet days the Georgians always discriminated against us, and made us deny we were Ossetians. Then in the 1990s they opened their prisons and sent convicts, police and soldiers to fight us. But we drove them out. Now they seem ready to attack us again, but we're not scared. There are no cowards here." Lev Gogichaev's friends murmur agreement.
Then they recall how Joseph Stalin divided Ossetia between the Russian and Georgian Soviet republics in 1922, and how the south tried to re-join the north in the dying days of the Soviet Union, and Georgia reacted by sending troops to crush the secessionists.
At least 2,000 people are believed to have died in the 1991-1992 war and tens of thousands were forced from their homes. It ended when a coup ousted a nationalist Georgian government and new president Eduard Shevardnadze and Kremlin counterpart Boris Yeltsin agreed a deal for peacekeepers from Russia, Georgia and North and South Ossetia to patrol the ravaged region.
But 16 years on, talk of war is once more getting louder.
Hundreds of South Ossetian children were evacuated to North Ossetia this weekend after alleged Georgian sniper and mortar fire killed six people and injured 15.
Tbilisi denied using mortars or snipers and accused the rebels of firing the very same weapons at Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Russia - relied upon by Tskhinvali and deeply mistrusted by Georgia - warned that "the threat of large-scale military action . . . is becoming ever more real". In recent weeks, bomb blasts and gun attacks have increased, cranking up tension in this tiny region - home to perhaps 40,000 people - where Georgian and Ossetian villages sit side by side, guarded by troops and militia who regularly shoot at each other.
This patchwork has been called a "bloody little chessboard" - and many people now see the pieces upon it being guided by powerful foreign hands.
Last summer, Georgia said a bomb that landed in a field between South Ossetia and a military radar base had been dropped by a Russian aircraft.
In April, furious over the West's support for Kosovo's independence, then Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a decree establishing direct links between Moscow and separatist leaders in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway province of Georgia.
Then, just hours before US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited Tbilisi last month, four Russian fighter jets flew over South Ossetia on a mission that Moscow claimed halted a major Georgian attack on the region.
"Russia's initial aim was to retaliate over Kosovo and to stop Georgia joining Nato and, when the West showed its incapacity to act, Russia saw the possibility to finally annex these territories and redraw the borders of eastern Europe," said Temur Iakobashvili, Georgia's minister for re-integration of its rebel regions.
Tbilisi was thwarted in its drive for a "membership action plan" - a key step on the road to Nato membership - when the likes of Germany and France argued at an April summit of the military alliance that energy-rich Russia would be angered by such a move.
Iakobashvili argues that Moscow will foment trouble in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and provide the rebels with cash, weapons and political support, until western powers show that they will not be deterred from bringing Georgia into the Nato fold.
Tbilisi also advocates a bigger US and EU role in security missions and negotiations in both separatist provinces.
"Russia is not an honest broker," said Iakobashvili. "It's part of the problem, not the solution."
In the dilapidated headquarters of the separatist government of South Ossetia, deputy prime minister Boris Chochiev hails Russia and condemns Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili and his western backers for wrecking hopes of a peaceful settlement.
"Russia sends us money and electricity. We don't need more weapons - the Georgians left plenty behind when they ran away after the war," he told The Irish Times. "All we see is Georgia preparing for another war. But we wouldn't be alone. It would be a war of the Caucasian peoples against Georgia, and Russia would be obliged to protect its citizens. About 98 per cent of South Ossetians already have Russian passports."
Much responsibility for monitoring the region falls to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which also runs economic rehabilitation projects that encourage South Ossetians and Georgians to work together - often with startling success.
"At local level, Georgians and South Ossetians can get on and want to live their lives in peace," said the OSCE's chief military representative in Georgia, Steve Young. "But as regards the military situation, the level of tension is at its highest since 2006, and if it continues to rise then there is the potential for a deterioration into some form of armed conflict."
It is troubling that few officials in Tbilisi, Tskhinvali or Moscow would disagree with him. "We don't want war. But we won't give up one centimetre of our territory to anyone," vows Iakobashvili.
And Chochiev insists: "There's no way back. We were part of the USSR, not Georgia. And now we want to rejoin our people in North Ossetia, and Russia."
Beneath the trees in Tskhinvali, a few young people have gathered to hear the old men talk. "It's worrying when the mortars and shooting start, but we are used to it," says Aslan Lolaer (22). "We are tired of all this tension, young and old want peace. But we are ready to defend our homeland."