It is mostly quiet now in the Georgian village of Kvemo Nikozi, where people work among cherry, apple and walnut trees that their families have tended for generations.
But the farmers don’t venture too far from home. Some of their old orchards are now out of reach, the fruit collected by other hands. At the edge of the village, Georgian soldiers make sure they don’t stray too close to an enemy who is also keeping watch on this disputed borderland.
On most of the world’s maps, all this territory belongs to Georgia. But maps made in Moscow state that the land beyond Kvemo Nikozi is in independent South Ossetia, and the small town visible across the fields is its capital, Tskhinvali. Russian troops patrol this supposed frontier for their South Ossetian allies, and arrest any Georgians who wander across it without permission.
It is five years since Georgia and Russia went to war over this region of about 30,000 people in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains. Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili insists he sent forces into South Ossetia on August 7th, 2008, to stop local militias and invading Russian troops from attacking ethnic-Georgian villages; Moscow says its soldiers entered the region to halt Saakashvili’s bloody bid to take it back under Tbilisi’s control. Hundreds of people were killed and tens of thousands fled as the Russian military routed Saakashvili’s forces and pushed towards Tbilisi.
Western intervention
The war was halted after five days with the signing of a hurriedly devised western peace plan brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
“I heard shooting, and then when I saw missiles hitting the next village, I realised it was the Russians attacking,” says Gocha Sosiashvili, who lives in Kvemo Nikozi.
“I was working in the fields when a missile exploded about 40m away and knocked me flat. We could feel the ground shaking from the blasts. That’s when I left the village. Thankfully, my wife and children had already gone away to visit relatives.”
Gocha and his brother, Khvicha, are talking about the war and life since with John Cremin, an Irish Army veteran who is leading a patrol of European Union monitors in the disputed border area.
“Back in 2008, the South Ossetians came into the village and stole whatever they could from our house. Everything from my tractor to the cutlery,” says Gocha. “We know exactly who did it – we used to live so close to each other.”
“I have land on the other side,” says Khvicha, gesturing to fields beyond the Georgian checkpoint at the end of the road, “but I don’t want to go there now.
“A couple of nights ago we heard Ossetians shooting and cursing Georgians. And a few months ago, men in masks came across with guns, demanding pigs, chickens and drink; now we feel safer with the checkpoint here.”
In some areas, nothing marks where territory controlled by Tbilisi ends and land claimed by Tskhinvali begins, and Russian troops or South Ossetian militia regularly detain Georgians for crossing this “border”; the EU monitors facilitate their release, usually after payment of a fine.
It is of more long-term concern to Tbilisi and its western allies that Russia is turning several sections of the administrative boundary into something resembling a real, permanent border, with trenches, barbed wire, observation posts and visual and audio surveillance equipment. In some areas, Russia is also nudging this nascent frontier ever deeper into Georgian territory.
Kremlin hardline
By crushing Georgia in 2008, Vladimir Putin – then prime minister, now once again president – showed the world that Russia would use force to impose its will on former Soviet states; in talks with Sarkozy, he reportedly made the Kremlin's position clear by threatening to "hang Saakashvili by the balls".
Within weeks of the war, Moscow recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which both broke with Tbilisi in early 1990s conflicts. Earlier in 2008, Moscow had vowed retaliation for the West’s recognition of a sovereign Kosovo, which was formerly a province of Russian ally Serbia.
Five years on, Russia has 5,000 soldiers and border guards in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and dominates their economies. The Kremlin retains a grip on one-fifth of official Georgian territory and Tbilisi’s Nato membership bid is likely to remain in limbo.
“Russia wants to dominate the region, and the conflict was about keeping us under control or destabilised,” says Giga Bokeria, secretary of Georgia’s national security council and a close ally of Saakashvili. Bokeria thinks Moscow is determined to stop Georgia joining Nato, but its actions are now constrained by its preparations to host next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, near the two countries’ border.
“After Sochi and before the subsequent Nato summit, I would not rule out the possibility of provocations on and around the occupation line,” says Bokeria. “Has Russia abandoned its plan to use force against Georgia if it feels it is losing us from its grip? Unfortunately not.”
South Ossetia and Abkhazia vow never to return to Tbilisi’s rule, and insist Russia is not an occupier but a trusted ally that gives them aid, investment and protection from Georgia. In places like Kvemo Nikozi, however, no one doubts who is really pulling the strings in South Ossetia, and who ultimately benefited most from the war.
“Russia is ultimately to blame. Without the Russians, the war wouldn’t have happened,” says Gocha Sosiashvili. “It’s the Russians who are making the border. And the Ossetians only act as they do because the Russians are backing them up,” adds his brother Khvicha. “We used to live fine with the Ossetians, but now the young generation over there doesn’t speak Georgian. They are being taught to hate us Georgians,” Khvicha says.
“Will we stay here?” he wonders, looking down at his son Luka (6). “Where else would we go?”