South Ossetia: A Digression

I've been following the travel blog of a Czech journalist, Tomáš Poláček, as he hitchhikes his way through the Caucasus. He started in Odessa, Ukraine, and thumbed his way across the Crimean Peninsula. He experienced a region that most of us only know through the news. If we know anything about this region, it is only at a very cursory level. Most of us probably didn't even pay much attention to news coverage from here -- it all seems so distant, so foreign.

If you do pay close attention to world news, here are some places you should recognize:

Beslan
Ossetia
Chechnya
Ingushetia

All these regions (or city, in one case) have been in the headlines of world papers in recent years. The news has not been good.

Chechnya was the rebellious Russian province that Putin bombed into submission. The Chechens fought a guerrilla-warfare resistance, though peace seems to be settling on Chechnya and the capital city of Grozny in recent years.

Ingushetia is the neighboring province that has been the home of many resistance fighters. Again, things have calmed here in recent years. Both provinces are known for rugged terrain populated by people who are generally Muslim and tough like their land.

Beslan is a city in another province, Dagestan, where an elementary school was besieged by the above-mentioned militants. If you recall, it was the opening day of school in 2004. Kids were bringing flowers to their teachers and instead met the Kalashnikov rifles of the terrorists who held about 1,000 people captive for several days. In a murky ending several hundred died when Russian troops stormed the school -- perhaps as they heard explosions from inside.

Ossetia is divided into two parts. North Ossetia is in Russia. South Ossetia is part of Georgia. Sometime after Georgia's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, South Ossetia and another small enclave, Abkhazia, declared their own independence and sought closer ties with Russia. This has always been a burr in the saddle of the Georgian people. Georgians are not known for being calm and dispassionate. Quite the contrary, they are fiercely loyal to their own and have had to be tough as nails in order to survive. For centuries they have been a small Christian enclave (like Armenia) surrounded by Islamic nations.

Last summer, Georgian president thought the opening of the Olympics in Beijing would be a good time to retake South Ossetia by force. This was one of the worst calculations by a national leader ever. Not only did he receive no support for this attack, the Russians also seized the chance to launch an all-out "defensive" operation. Russian troops beat the Georgians back and humiliated this ally of the West. They could have marched into Georgia's capital had they so chosen.

At any rate, the Czech travel writer Tomáš Poláček visited South Ossetia as one of his last stops. He had arrived there believing the Georgian account of the war, but he left convinced that the Georgians are guilty of genocide. It's hard to know if he drank the Kool-aid or if he, as a rare Western visitor to this region, has seen something none of us in the West would want to admit. Is it possible that the Russians were right?

Foreign politics are so messy, and we rarely if ever get to glimpse the full picture. While I tend to sympathize with the Georgians, I can't help but believe that world leaders are not always as smart as we would hope. Nor are they as honest as we would like to think.

In the kingdoms of this world absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let's not forget that the kingdoms of this world are on a path for destruction. Only God's Kingdom is eternal. May we remind one another where our citizenship lies and from where we expect a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.