 An analysis by Jacques Sapir about the Ossetia War: Who Trapped Whom? Verified data which contradict the medias' version of the facts | Jacques Sapir (b. 1954) is one of France's foremost economists and Russia experts. He is also an expert in Russian military matters. He teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris and at the Moscow Economics School. His latest books are La Fin de l'Eurolibéralisme and Le Nouveau XXIe Siècle - Du siècle américain au retour des nations.I translate here this important article which was not available until now to the english-speaking public. The questions its raises will not go away. Least of all for the people of Georgia.
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| The Osseto-Georgian Crisis: Who Trapped Whom? by Jacques Sapir (September 5, 2008) | The Osseto-Georgian crisis has given rise to diverse commentaries as to its causes. In Le Monde of September 4, 2008, Bernard Dreano maintains that the Georgian authorities were trapped by Moscow who made them believe that Russia was about to give up South Ossetia. In the contrary, Bernard-Henri Levy maintains that Georgia attacked in order to preempt an attack by Russia and that 150 Russians tanks were already on the spot in South Ossetia. This same thesis was used by the Georgian government, who claims that its action of August 7th was a reaction to the massive entry of the Russian armed forces through the Roki tunnel.
In fact, we dispose now of sufficient elements to attempt to sort out the true from the false. I shall present here a certain number of elements which will allow to refute both of these theses, but which also show that there are many questions remaining unresolved concerning this crisis.
I.
During the preparatory phase of the hostilities, two major military exercises took place. In Georgia were held under American command the maneuver Immediate Response 2008 (IR-08) combining the American forces (US Army and USMC), Georgia, Azerbaidjan, Armenia and Ukraine. These exercises were carried out from July 15th to 25th and seemed to have considerably increased President Saakachvili's confidence into his armed forces. At the end of the exercises, the number of military advisers (belonging to USMC) among the Georgian troops amounted to 117.
At the same time, the Russian troops, stationed in the North Caucasus (the 58th Army) carried out, in the presence of international observers, the exercice Kavkaz-2 which invoved considerable deployments. The theme of this exercise was the rapid deployment of troops of high operational efficacity to ensure the protection of a region threatened by an external intervention. One could not have indicated more clearly to the Georgian authorities the determination of the Russian government to intervene in case of an attack against Abkhazia or South Ossetia. The course of this exercise, which ended on August 1st 2008, stressed the very high degree of readiness of the Russian operational troops, which was signaled by the NATO observers who were present.
These information should have led the Georgian authorities to a more realistic appreciation of their military capacities in case of operations against South Ossetia. The question therefore to be asked is whether the United States have transmitted this information (and if they did not, why not?) and if it was discussed along the Georgian chain of command.
II.
During the days preceding the beginning of combats (from August 2nd to 6th 2008), the Russian authorities warned several times the Georgian authorities of their will to reinforce their peace-keeping forces because of the multiplication of incidents along the line of cease-fire. The Georgian authorities protested against what they called an unwarranted reinforcement of the forces in question. This testifies to the fact that they were informed and had taken notice of the strongly increased reactivity of the Russian side to the degrading local situation.
The combination of (I) and (II) leaves very little credibility to the hypothesis of a political "trap" set by the Russian authorities for the Georgian authorities to stumble into. If Moscow had attempted to "trap" Tbilissi, the Kavkaz-2 maneuver would have been kept much less explicit, much less demonstrative, and the Russian authorities would have remained much more passive between August 2nd and 6th.
III.
The reinforcement of Russian troups deployed under UN mandate in South Ossetia has been limited (to about 350 men). Bernard-Henri Levy's assertions about "150 russian tanks" having crossed the Roki tunnel on August 6 or 7 are incoherent with the rest of the events.
Indeed, if the Russian authorities had decided to deploy such a force, there would not only have been tanks transiting through the tunnel (150 tanks represent at least four bataillons - with 33 tanks each - which is more than an armored regiment), but there would have been the equivalent of a large fraction of an armored division (with, in addition to that hypothetical large tank-regiment, at least one regiment of mecanized infanterie, as well as means of artillerie and of anti-aircraft defense).
Contrary to the assertions of Bernard-Henri Levy and to the beliefs of people who do not know much about military matters, one does not move tanks around like toys. One moves around military units, with known tables of personnel and equipments. If one wants to end up with 150 tanks at a given place, one must transfer there the units whose sum of equipments will amount to the desired number. Taking into account the necessary means of support for armored units, this represents a considerable force, equivalent to about 2/3 of an armored division. As early as in the night of 7th to 8th of August, the Georgian forces should therefore have found themselves opposed to considerable military might, which was not the case. The Russian tanks reached the northern suburbs of Tskhinvali only in the morning of August 9th. The Georgian aircfat were not subjected to anti-aircraft defence during the day of August 8 (Russian TV films show Georgian SU-25 operating at low altitude without opposition). Whereas a regiment of Russian tanks would have had at its disposal considerable anti-aircraft means (in the form of missiles and rapid-fire cannons).
The Georgian artillery would have immediately been taken to task by the Russian artillerie (anti-battery fire). This started happening only during the day of August 9th.
IV.
If the plan of the authorities in Tbilissi had been to retake control of South Ossetia counting on Russian passivity, or even acquiescence, why then did the Georgian forces shoot without warning and deliberately at the Russian troops under UN mandate as early as August 7th?
At 11:40 on August 7th, that is about 30 minutes after the Georgian president had the Russian general in charge of peace-keeping informed that he intended to use force in order to "instaur constitutional order" in Tskhinvali, a grenade killed two Russian soldiers at an observation post [1]. During the night of August 7th, right from the beginning of the systematic bombardment of Tskhinvali and its surroundings (the first firing was registered around 23:30), one of the barracks sheltering Russian peace-keeping forces was deliberately targetted by the georgian artillery. This shelling provoked twelve dead on the Russian side, bringing to 14 the number of Russian victims of Georgian fire.
This fire was deliberately provocative and could only lead to a Russian reaction. Logic would have wanted to avoid to take to task these troops if one expected that they could remain passive. This again contradicts the hypothesis that the Georgian authorities could have taken their decision counting on Russian passivity, walking into a "trap" supposedly set for them.
The violence of the initial attack was deliberately provocative towards Russia, as is shown by the damages suffered by the civilian population in the urban aerea of Tskhinvali.
I refer here to the high resolution photograph of the region availabkle on www.unosat.org.
This satellite picture takes into account only the "vertical" damages (those caused by artillerie and 122-mm rocket-launchers) and the burned-up buildings. Damages caused by "horizontal" fire (tank guns or BMP-1 and 2 cannons, machine-gun fire) do not appear.
We notice two lines of damages which evidently correspond to the two firing axes of the Georgian artillery, one oriented South-West to North-East and the other South to North.
The photo allows one to evaluate the damages and I give the UNOSAT table concerning the city of Tskhinvali and the villages which are in the axis of the road and which constitue in fact the "suburbs" to the North of Tskhinvali. The first number designates the number of destroyed or severly damaged buildings, the second the percentage of buildings hit compared with the total number of buildings in the locality:
Kveno Achabeti 121 51,9%
Tamarasheni 183 50,7%
Kekhvi 154 44,3%
Kurta 144 43,4%
Zemo Achabeti 77 41,6%
Kemerti 96 30,6%
Tskhinvali 230 5,5%
Kheiti 12 5,4%
We know that the Georgian troops have penetrated only two thirds into Tskhinvali, that is at the level of 42°14' North in standard coordinates.
The shape of the damages, their geographic spread confirm several points:
a) the town sustained a deliberate and massive bombing from the Georgian artillerie.
b) this bombing does not correspond to the most violent fighting because an important part of the destructions is situated to the north of the most important line of advance of the Georgian troups.
c) Georgian fire seems to have had two objectives: on the one hand, to destroy a certain number of key buildings in order to disorganize the Ossetian command, on the other hand, to provoke a massive exodus of the population.
Let's not forget that all the witness reports at our disposal concur on the point that the majority of the destructions correspond to the night of August 7th to 8th at the time of the initial bombing. The South of Tskhinvali, if one is to believe Russian TV, was hit in the combats of the 8th and 9th, but the damage caused by horizontal is not visible on the picture.
A bombing of such extent could not fail to provoke a strong Russian response.
We must take notice of the fact that the military observers of OSCE have signaled these facts, as was reported by the German Spiegel. They have signaled the possibility that the Georgians may have committed war crimes during the attack of Tskhinvali [2].
Given the number of buildings that were hit, the fact that the shelling happened at night, and given the surprise aspect, it is very probable that the number of victims is quite elevated, maybe superior to 1000 for this attack alone.
V.
If the explanations so far advanced - Bernard Dreano's about the Russian political "trap", Bernard-Henri Levy's about a preventive attack in the face of a strong mechanised penetration by Russian forces - do not resist the test of facts [3], we must attempt to understand what happened.
I must first stress the heterogeneous and "semi-feudal" nature of the Georgian army and of the military chain of command. Following the programs of American military aid, the Georgian army was cleaved into one fraction supported and trained by US instructors, and whose pay is considerable relatively to the local conditions, in contrast with the rest of the armed forces, which are still ill-paid, ill-equipped and poorly trained. The high command, and a part of the political class (the minister of defense, the chief of staff, the president...) have gotten into the habit of "patronizing" certain units. They draw from it a certain amount of legitimacy, but also a guarantee for their political future in a country where political institutions are little stabilized and which has known a civil war a few years ago. For the soldiers and officers of these "patronized" units, patronage is a guarantee that the flux of money and equipment will not dry up and that their chance to be promoted are far greater than in the other units.
This results in armed forces which in certain cases are more faithful to men than to institutions. The chain of command finds itself therefore fragmented. This results also in great differences in the efficacity of the units, and the motivation and loyalty of the troops.
In such a context, a hypothesis entertained by several sources is that those in charge in Georgia may have attempted an operation onto Tskhinvali essentially with the goal of drawing a political benefit against president Saakachvili, whose last election has been strongly disputed. The latter would have found himself forced to launch himself into an escalation in order not to lose face and power.
The Georgian plan would then have rested on a series of hypotheses.
Supposing that the Russian troops of the 58th army had received massive leave (which would be logical at the end of great maneuvers, especially when they correspond to the beginning of the holidays) the Georgian leaders counted on a slowness of the Russian reaction (aggravated by the fact that the Russians leaders would be at Beijing for the Olympics) and not on the passivity of Russia.
They estimated that it would take at least 3 days to the 58th army to begin to react and probably 5 or 6 for it to deploy itself in South Ossetia. They deemed themselves therefore capable of occupying the majority of the territory of South Ossetia and to provoke such a flow of refugees in the direction of the North that the Roki tunnel would be blocked as a result. The deployment of Russian forces could be considerably held up in this way, which would allow the Georgian authorities to mobilize their international political support to have the new de facto situation validated and to present a tardy Russian reaction as a deliberate "invasion."
In order to succeed, such a scenario implies on the one hand that the Georgian troops be able to conquer Tskhinvali and its surroundings very rapidly (whence the necessity to deploy considerable means at the scale of the country and to act in a very brutal manner) and on the other hand that the Ossetian population be seized by panic. One must therefore deliberately provoke high civilian casualties in order to induce the flux of refugees which must render the Roki tunnel impracticable.
But this plan is very fragile. The analysis furnished in Jane's Defence Weekly stresses the strategic errors committed by the Georgians. [4] If the Russian troops turn out to be more reactive than foreseen, and if the advance into Tskhinvali takes longer than foreseen, then the Georgian troops will be caught red-handed.
One can think that the internal political game in Georgia, the shock of ambitions and of political combinations, may have driven to a far excessive risk-taking on the part of the Georgian authorities. And this even more so because the chain of command was fragmented. After all, the Georgian leaders would not be the first ones to start a war based on the premises of an erroneous strategic evaluation...
I must stress that if the Georgian plan was indeed the one here indicated, we recognize a coherence to the Georgian military actions of the first 36 hours of combat, including the deliberate attack onto Russian troops in observatory positions, as well as the murderous shelling of Tskhinvali and its surroundings, which are otherwise not understandable.
VI.
Still, the hypothesis presented in this way raises other problems, in particular, concerning the attitude of the United States.
Given the presence of military advisers integrated into the Georgian units, Washington could not have ignored what was afoot.
Anyway, the Israeli military mission (which trains the Georgians in the usage of drones) withdrew on August 6th...
Still, the American authorities did not intervene to quiet down the game, when they had reports at their disposal showing the state of preparedness of the Russian forces (reports sent by the observers who stood by the already evoked Kavkaz-2 maneuvers).
Even if renouncing to give a warning, the American authorities could still have removed their advisers. Yet they did nothing of the sort, taking the risk that American officers could be directly implicated in several violations of international law and in war crimes. They also took the responsibility that officers might be taken prisoners. In fact, there were two occasions when, on Sunday, August 10th, the Russian troops were a breath away from capturing American officers. It seems that the Russian officers deliberately let go the encircled Georgian unit in order not to have to handle a somewhat delicate political problem...
In whatever case, in this instance, the behavior of Washington was highly irresponsible.
Vladimir Putin maintains that the American government might have been behind the Georgian attack in order to favor the election of McCain. Honestly, this seems at first sight barely credible; but one cannot but notice that American responsility is indeed engaged, at least indirectly.
Had one wanted to trap the Russians, hoping to capitalize on the anti-Russian reactions of some countries, in order to advance agendas such as the widening of NATO and the anti-missile shield, or even in effect to relaunch the McCain candidacy?
Was it a simple succession of blunders in the US administration?
For the time being, both hypotheses, the one implying manipulation and the one implying a string of errors of judgment, are plausible.
What is not plausible is the thesis according to which the American administration would not have been informed of what was being prepared. The Israeli reaction demonstrates this.
VII.
It remains to evaluate what was the Russian position.
The warnings to Georgia had been made clear end of July-beginning of August. End of June, the Russian construction troops had finished to bring back into operational conditions the coastal railroad linking Abkhazia with Russia, thus allowing the rapid deployment of heavy Russian equipment in Abkhazia. Amphibious maneuvers had been conducted by the Russian navy in the Black Sea. Russia had therefore given manifest signs of its disquiet as to a possible degradation of the situation either in Abkhazia or, end of July, in South Ossetia.
One can nevertheless raise questions as to the degree of surprise in the Russian chain of command.
The 58th army had been maintained in a state of high alert and reactivity and it seems that leaves had been granted very sparingly. This indicates that Russian authorities expected something, but not necessarily an August 7th. The fact is that we see the Russian leaders fly off to Peking to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Moreover, if it did point out a heightening of tension, the local representation of OSCE in Georgia did not indicate the possibility for an armed conflict for the date of August 7th. [5]
Nevertheless, we have indications that those in charge on the Russian side suspected from August 4th Georgia to prepare a military action.
We have already mentioned the reinforcement of the number of Russian observers in South Ossetia, in response to the multiplication of incidents.
Less noticed is the fact, mentioned in the Russian press on August 5th, that "voluntaries" from North Ossetia were on their way to South Ossetia. These were a group of 600 to 800 men (nothing to do with the affabulations of Bernard-Henri Levy) which corresponds probably to a battalion of special forces of the Russian army (who are called the "SpetNaz") and, technically, of those called in the Russian forces "reydoviki."
This men were in charge of securing the Roki tunnel and reinforcing the defences of Ossetia. They find themselves engaged in the battle of Tskhinvali on August 8 and 9th and it will be they who will inflict the biggest losses to the Georgian armored and mechanized units who were attempting to take the city. The Georgian army had at its disposal 129 tanks (67 T-62 and 62 T-54 and 55) as well as 213 infantry armored vehicles (BMPs and BTRs). Available documents show that the Russian troops destroyed about 60 tanks in Tskhinvali and its immediate surroundings and that they captured intact about one hundred armored vehicles (for the most part BMP-1) when the Georgian forces disbanded beginning Sunday afternoon.
These men would also channel the flow of Ossetian refugees and insure that the road descending from the Roki tunnel be free on August 8 and 9, in order to allow Russian forces to come to the help of the Ossetians.
This demonstrates that the possibility of an aggression on the side of Georgia had indeed been taken into account by the Russian authorities. Still, the latter seem to have been surprised by the violence of the initial attack and by the fact that Russian observers, present under a UN mandate, became the target of deliberate Georgian fire. I believe that Russian authorities, beginning on August 5th, considered a Georgian attack probable but estimated that it would be limited to the conquest of some crests and hills, in response to the incidents occurring on the line of cease-fire. The measures taken by the Russian command between the 5th and the afternoon of the 7th of August go in the direction of precautions against the situation possibly getting out of hands. It is only in the afternoon of August 7th that the Russian command seems to become aware that the Georgian attack might have bigger ambitions. The Russian authorities were therefore not taken by surprise in the strategic sense of the term, for it can be seen that they had put in place all the dispositions necessary in a serious crisis. But they were taken by surprise in the tactical sense, by the degree of violence shown by the Georgians. Which determined in turn the degree of violence of the Russian response.
Still, the Russian response, in its totality, corresponds to the scenario of the Kavkaz-2 maneuvers, including the amphibious operation in the direction of Poti, which had been tested in the naval exercises at the end of June 2008.
We are then brought back to the question which has already been raised: these diverse maneuvers having been accompanied by foreign observers and in particular by those from NATO nations, it is hard to understand that the Georgian authorities would not have been warned of the risks they were taking, and it is just as hard to understand the "surprise" of the Western countries regarding the Russian reaction which was entirely foreseeable.
If there was a "trap," it was not set by Moscow.
(Translated by Anne-Marie de Grazia)
[1] see the article of the Spiegel of August 25th, 2008.
« The Chronicle of a Caucasian Tragedy, Part 3 : a disastrous décision »
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574812-3..."
[2] AFP, le 30 août 2008, via Le Figaro, http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2008/08/30/01011-...
the text of der Spiegel giving this information can be looked up at:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,575396,00.ht...
The OSCE has denied having transmitted these informations by diplomatic channels but has not contested the veracity of the facts. This combination of revelations and dementis is rather typical in an organisation like the OSCE. It indicates that the European militaries detached with OSCE and deployed on the terrain have organized "leaks" in order to bring to the public informations which their governments do not wish to see diffused. The author of this text has had confirmation by the members of the mission of observation in Georgia. Leaks of this kind have already been practiced in other cases, from Kosovo to Nagorno-Karabagh.
[3] The observers of the OSCE have in fact officially denied the entrance of mechanized Russian troops before August 7th.
[4] Richard Giragossian, "Georgian planning flaws led to campaign failure", JDW, 15 août 2008.
[5] Der Spiegel, « The Chronicle of a Caucasian Tragedy, Part 3 : a disastrous decision », article cité.
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| Une analyse de Jacques Sapir sur la guerre d'Ossétie: Qui a piégé qui? | | L'article original paru sur le site de Patrice de Plunkett | |
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