A bit of trouble in South Ossetia

From the AP last Thursday:

Hundreds of ethnic Georgians confronted Russian peacekeeping forces in the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Thursday, throwing paint and gasoline on the troops and forcing them to stop blocking a road project, officials said.
...
Several dozen Russian peacekeepers deployed armored vehicles Wednesday near the village of Tsunar, where workers were building a bypass road to several villages.
...
Residents from three villages mobbed the peacekeepers Thursday, demanding they allow the construction to continue. Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for South Ossetia's unrecognized government, said villagers then threw paint on the Russian armored personnel carriers and gasoline on a nearby peacekeeper post.

(See this map of South Ossetia.)

RIA Novosti said of this road:

The situation in the conflict zone was aggravated after Georgia, without consulting with South Ossetia, started building a road near the villages of Avnevi and Nikozi. On Wednesday, Russian peacekeepers blocked the construction until consultations had taken place.

This article said:

The Russian ministry said the fact that protesters were ferried to the site by bus is an indication of the premeditated nature of the action, adding that Georgians had threatened Russian peacekeepers with weapons.

This incident served as a spark that set off a weapons hot confrontation in this tense region. It's not clear who started shooting first, or why exactly, but the IHT reported:

Forces in Georgia and its breakaway province of South Ossetia on Saturday accused each other of opening fire on settlements, a clash that left several people wounded, officials said, as tensions in the region spiraled.

Andrei Patayev, spokesman for separatist authorities, charged that Georgian forces had opened fire with guns, grenades and mortars on South Ossetia's main city, Tskhinvali, wounding two residents.

Mamuka Kurashvili, head of the Georgian segment of the three-sided peacekeeping force in the province that also includes South Ossetia and Russia, declined to comment on the allegations, but claimed separatist forces had shelled an ethnic Georgian village outside Tskhinvali, injuring three people.

RFE adds:

Three separate mortar attacks were launched on Tskhinvali on June 29 and 30, reportedly killing one young man and injuring a second man and a woman. Moscow and Tskhinvali have blamed Tbilisi for the attacks, although Georgian officials have denied any responsibility. That denial raises the possibility that renegade elements within the Georgian armed forces were acting on their own initiative, as was apparently the case in August 2004, when Georgian Interior Ministry troops launched a disastrous attack on South Ossetian villages in which up to a dozen Georgians were killed.

Rustavi2 reported on Friday:

Last night the Georgian village of Tamarasheni, situated in the Didi Liakhvi Gorge, the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict zone, came under gunfire several times from the paramilitary unites of the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Al Jazeera reports both sides are firing:

Several people have been wounded in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region in new clashes between the army and separatists.

Violence continued into its third day on Saturday, with two people injured after Georgian forces attacked Tskhinvali, the separatists' main settlement.

Georgian forces are also reported to have attacked two villages with mortars and grenade launchers and the South Ossetia's separatist administration said that snipers were firing on a large apartment block in the north of Tskhinvali.

Georgian authorities said South Ossetian troops had fired mortars at the village of Tamarasheni, wounding an 18-year-old man.

"Rocket-propelled grenades were launched today for one to two hours from the Ossetian village of Kverneti," Mamuka Kurashvili, commander of the Georgian forces in South Ossetia.

It is not encouraging that tensions don't seem to easing. Georgia is bringing up armored carriers.

ReliefWeb has this:

Local residents in the South Ossetian conflict zone resumed a protest rally and blocked a road leading to the breakaway region’s capital, Tskhinvali, on July 2, Georgian media sources reported.

Protesters, who are demanding the resumption of irrigation water supply to their villages, are gathered in the Georgian village of Ergneti at the administrative border with South Ossetia.

Secessionist authorities in Tskhinvali cut the supply of irrigation water to the Georgian villages in early June, in retaliation for the suspension of potable water supply to Tskhinvali. The breakaway region’s capital has had its supply restored since mid-June, acording to Tbilisi, but the South Ossetian side has refused to reciprocate.

A similar protest rally was held in Ergneti on July 1. Locals fear the loss of crops without irrigation water.

The Russian Foreign Ministry called on Tskhinvali on June 29 “to show maximum restraint and goodwill in relation to current problems, particularly water supply.”

Meanwhile, a series of shootouts in the conflict zone in recent days left four Georgians and at least two Ossetians injured. One South Ossetian militiaman, targeted by a sniper, was killed, according to the South Ossetian Press and Information Committee.

Regnum adds:

Residents of the Georgian village of Ergneti have dug over the Gori-Tskhinvali road and thus blocked the transport link to remote South Ossetian villages. As REGNUM was told at the South Ossetian committee for information and press, persons clad in civilian cloths and Georgian police officers instigated the villagers to do this. There some foodstuffs in the remote villages left for several days. “This can result in a humanitarian catastrophe,” a statement released by the committee says.

Today, on July 2, residents of several Georgian villages resumed their protest action by closing a highway that goes to the South Ossetian capital. The residents are thus protesting against water supply cut-offs from the South Ossetian side.

The Georgien blog has a number of links worth checking out.

Russia still maintains "peacekeeping" troops in South Ossetia. The troops arrived in the wake of a ceasefire in 1992 after South Ossetia, which enjoyed some autonomy under the Soviets, declared independence from Georgia in 1990.

Georgia wants to reunite the breakway region with the rest of Georgia, but the Russian troops are Russia's way of maintaining a thorn in Georgia's side. Russia and Georgia have been at odds (in ways too numerous to recount here), and the fact Georgia wants to join NATO does not please Russia to say the least.

This kind of confrontation can erupt into something more serious if cooler heads don't prevail.