This is exactly the feeling one might get after reading the much talked about Report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (The Office of the State Minister of Georgia for Reintegration, Report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, http://www.smr.gov.ge/en/home, October 2, 2009). The governments and the publics in Georgia and the Russian Federation as well as major international actors, individual experts and Eurasia watchers with trepidation awaited the publication of the Mission, headed by Swiss Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini, which was created by the Council of the European Union on December 2, 2008. The Report first to be due by July 31, 2009 was ultimately made public at the beginning of October, causing the world’s leading media outlets, such as the BBC, to flash with headlines like “Georgia ‘Started Unjustified War’” or “Uncomfortable Conclusions for Georgia” (BBC, September 30, 2009).

No doubt, the Tagliavini Mission, established by the European Union first time in history “as a political and diplomatic follow-up to the conflict,” did extensive work on the munificent budget of 1.6 million euros (2.35 million USD), examining myriads of official and unofficial documents, eyewitness accounts and visiting Georgia, Russia and their neighboring countries on many occasions over the period of more than nine months. Ambassador Tagliavini solely was equipped with powers to make all relevant decisions on the methods and procedures to be used, the staff to be chosen and the content to be put in the report.

Progress on the report and its specificities, arguably, had been kept in secret, although a few politically inclined mainstream and tabloid newspapers and magazines throughout Europe, most frequently, the German Spiegel magazine, several times published stories about the report in progress, citing “anonymous sources” within the Tagliavini team who purportedly alleged the report would be more pro-Russian than pro-Georgian and would put blame on President Saakashvili of Georgia for the beginning of hostilities between the two neighboring countries in August 2008.

It seems Der Spiegel did indeed have reliable insiders within the Tagliavini mission since one of the most important revelations of its Report is that hostilities between Russia and Georgia started after “on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, a sustained Georgian artillery attack struck the town of Tskhinvali.”

To start with the positive side of the Report, there are some truly bold and encouraging conclusions in it, upholding the universal norms of international law:

1. Given Russia’s unilateral recognition of Abkhazia and “South Ossetia” as independent states, “established principles of international law such as respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of states were ignored.”
2. The Mission is especially concerned about the future of Europe’s security architecture that Russia has been attempting to overhaul in its entirety. “The political culture of cooperativeness that had developed in Europe since the 1970s, and which was enshrined by CSCE/OSCE landmark documents from the Helsinki Final Act (1975) to the Istanbul Charter for European Security (1999), as well as the relevant documents adopted in the framework of the Council of Europe, has suffered. The threat and use of force have now returned to European politics.” In this regard, the Report calls for efforts “to renew awareness of [the OSCE’s] importance for European security and cooperation, together with a return to its strict observance and application.”
3. As regards Moscow’s overt quest for a sphere of interest, the Report concludes, “political concepts and notions such as privileged spheres of interest or otherwise laying claim to any special rights of interference into the internal or external affairs of other countries are irreconcilable with international law. They are dangerous to international peace and stability and incompatible with friendly relations among States. They should be rejected.”
4. Concerning Russia’s claims that the two Georgian provinces had the right to secede from Georgia, the Report strictly states that “only former constituent republics [of the USSR] such as Georgia but not territorial sub-units such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia are granted independence in case of dismemberment of a larger entity such as the former Soviet Union. Hence, South Ossetia did not have a right to secede from Georgia, and the same holds true for Abkhazia for much of the same reasons. Recognition of breakaway entities such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia by a third country is consequently contrary to international law in terms of an unlawful interference in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the affected country, which is Georgia. It runs against Principle I of the Helsinki Final Act.”
5. The Report also found that the granting of Russian passports to Georgian citizens in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali was illegal. “The vast majority of purportedly naturalised persons from South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not Russian nationals in terms of international law. Neither Georgia nor any third country need acknowledge such Russian nationality. Consequently, the persons living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia who had first become Georgian citizens after the dissolution of the Soviet Union continue to remain so irrespective of “passportisation” policies.”
6. During and after the major phase of the military confrontation ethnic cleansing of Georgians from their ancestral habitat did indeed take place. Furthermore, “violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law such as ethnic cleansing have resurfaced as elements of political reality.” The Mission recommends that “international law should continue to be respected and observed in its entirety. All tendencies to accept the erosion or a selective application of some of its principles, such as the respect of territorial integrity, must not be tolerated.”
7. Furthermore, “the Mission found patterns of forced displacements of ethnic Georgians who had remained in their homes after the onset of hostilities. In addition, there was evidence of systematic looting and destruction of ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Consequently, several elements suggest the conclusion that ethnic cleansing was indeed practised against ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia both during and after the August 2008 conflict” in addition to “widespread campaigns of looting and destruction of ethnic Georgian settlements by South Ossetians, as well as ill-treatment, gender-related crime including rape, assault, hostage-taking and arbitrary arrests, together with the failure by Russian forces to prevent and stop violations by South Ossetian forces, armed irregular groups and armed individuals before and after the ceasefire in South Ossetia and the adjacent territories.”
8. “More than 35 000 IDPs/refugees are not expected to return to their homes in the foreseeable future, owing to the continued insecurity of the situation or to the destruction of their homes and property. It needs to be stressed that both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, together with Russia, must take appropriate measures to ensure that IDPs/refugees, including those from the conflicts of the early 1990s, are able to return to their homes with no conditions imposed other than those laid down in relevant international standards.” Nevertheless, the Report does not fully reflect the dire reality on the ground, namely, the countless facts that the entire Georgian villages in the Tskhinvali region have been bulldozed and the Russians are constructing military and other facilities in their place.
9. Contrary to what Russia had claimed – that its decision to intervene was to stop “the South Ossetian genocide” – the Mission found that in fact “the number of casualties among the Ossetian civilian population turned out to be much lower than claimed at the beginning. Russian officials stated initially that about 2 000 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia by the Georgian forces, but later on the number of overall South Ossetian civilian losses of the August 2008 conflict was reduced to 162.”
10. In regard to Georgia’s tireless efforts for years before the August war to change the negotiating format and replace the Russian “peacekeepers” with impartial international forces, the Report observes that “increasing pressure from the parties as well as the changing international environment made the existing peace mechanisms lose their grip on the situation and give way when the events took a critical turn.” The Mission goes even farther by saying that “no party to the conflict or party which is considered to be strongly supportive of any of the sides should assume a position of command, or chair, or arbiter nor exercise any other control of an operation which rests on the notion of impartiality and even-handedness in order to be effective.”

A desire to come up with a balanced document left plenty of room for second-guessing, dubiety and even contradictions and false assessments:

1. “Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive on 7/8 August could not be substantiated by the Mission. It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack, in spite of certain elements and equipment having been made readily available.”
2. Although the Georgian side provided the Mission with satellite images and other intelligence date proving extensive Russian presence in Georgian territory prior to the outbreak of large-scale hostilities, the Report nonetheless states that “the Mission had no access to intelligence reports or satellite imagery from intelligence sources.” Furthermore, the Report does not give the number of troops Russia poured into Georgia during the war.
3. The Report repeatedly claims that “open hostilities began with a large-scale Georgian military operation against the town of Tskhinvali and the surrounding areas, launched in the night of 7 to 8 August 2008. Operations started with a massive Georgian artillery attack.” On the other hand, the Mission found that the open hostilities were “the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents.”
4. As shown above, the Report does not dispute Georgia’s sovereignty over Tskhinvali and Abkhazia before or after the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war, but nonetheless says that “the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia, beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was [not] justifiable under international law.”
5. Even if one agrees with the Mission’s conclusion that there was no Russian military invasion prior to August 7/8, given the continuing shelling of Georgian villages in the Tskhinvali region what other options did the Georgian government have to secure its population. Would an operation conducted by lightly armed Georgian police officers have been sufficient enough against the heavy artillery used by the militias with the Russian help and encouragement? Would not this have resulted in more casualties? After all, is not it part of sovereign rights of any nation to establish law and order in its territory and guarantee peace and safety for all of its citizens? In Ambassador Tagliavini’s view, it seems it does not. Even worse, the Mission claims that while Georgia’s actions in “South Ossetia” were “illegal,” Russian and “South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence.” And here the question is whether any illegal militias in so many separatist enclaves across the globe have the right to “legitimate self-defense?” It is hard to imagine a more danger to the existing international system of sovereign nation-states!
6. On the question of the Russian “peacekeepers” stationed in Tskhinvali and Abkhazia, the Report on one hand says that “the existing peace mechanisms [lost] their grip,” but on the other it adamantly claims that “Russia had the right to defend them using military means proportionate to the attack. Hence the Russian use of force for defensive purposes during the first phase of the conflict would be legal.” Needless to say for how many years Georgia had claimed that Russia was party to the conflict and its “peacekeepers” should be replaced with impartial international forces respecting Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
7. Furthermore, when speaking of the peace mechanisms for Georgia’s Abkhazia and Tskhinvali, the Report although says that they were established as measures of “Realpolitik,” it does not go further to explain the nature of that very “Realpolitik.” In fact, Russian “peacekeepers” in both Abkhazia and Tskhinvali were imposed by the Kremlin on former Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze at the beginning of 1990s when Moscow was threatening with dismemberment of Georgia and total anarchy in its territory if Russian military presence in the form of “peacekeeping” missions were not canonized by the Georgian government. “Peacekeepers” in Georgian territories thus were quid pro quo for Russia’s formal acknowledgement of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
8. Although the Commonwealth of Independence States (CIS) forces – comprised of Russian troops, exclusively – were deployed in Abkhazia under Chapter VI of the UN Charter requiring the host government’s (in this case, Georgia’s) consent, the Georgian government failed to officially demand their withdrawal despite the Georgian Parliament’s resolution. This happened partly because President Saakashvili hoped for their replacement on the basis of multilateral international arrangements but also due to the West’s earnest request to refrain from unilateral withdrawal from treaties with Russia, no matter how “forcibly imposed” the Georgian government deemed them. As concerns the Russian “peacekeepers” in the Tskhinvali region, anyone who is familiar with the 1992 Sochi agreement legitimizing their presence in Georgian territory agrees that it can hardly be called an international document given the language resembling more a Soviet-style inter-kolkhoz eternal contract than an interstate agreement with due measures for implementation, supervision and termination. Although the OSCE later on was somewhat involved in the peacekeeping process, it never enjoyed a meaningful say in it.

Understandably, the Report is no NSC-68, and one should not expect truly grand strategic thoughts in it. Nonetheless, the major drawback of it is that it takes little if any notice of Russia’s geopolitical aspirations. Although it mentions “the impact of a great power’s coercive politics and diplomacy against a small and insubordinate neighbor,” it does not talk extensively about the specifics of Russian behavior especially after then-President Putin in 2006 called the demise of the Soviet Union “the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century” and started taking steps to reestablish Russian power. Merely stating that “the wave of newly-found self-consciousness that followed political changes in Georgia since the end of 2003 clashed with another wave of assertiveness emanating from the Russian Federation, which tried to establish a privileged zone of interest in its “near abroad” does not give the reader full sense of the patterns characterizing Moscow’s policies since the dawn of the Putin era.

The Report fails to adequately describe the reasons for and motivations of the increasingly authoritarian, revisionist and irredentist “great power” to clash militarily with a relatively small Western-oriented and liberalizing neighbor aspiring membership in NATO and other Western institutions. The Report says little if anything about the significance of the 2003 Rose revolution which laid grounds for Georgia’s reorientation toward the West, turning it from a failed state dependent on Russia into one of the most rapidly modernizing countries – a development which alarmed and angered Russia and caused it to act as soon as it could before Georgia slipped away for good from the Russian orbit. For some time before the war, high-level Russian officials several times explicitly stated that Russia would not allow Georgia’s NATO membership and would do everything it could to thwart the process toward membership.

On the question of Kosovo’s independence, although the report says that it had some significance for Russia’s own recognition of Abkhazia and “South Ossetia,” it is silent about then-President Putin’s threat in the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence that Russia had “its own home preparations” to react to the West’s challenge.

In fact, Russia’s war on Georgia was a truly Clausewitzian “continuation of policy by other means” after softer methods of coercion – aimed at Georgia’s isolation and impoverishment – all ultimately failed to bring Tbilisi back under Moscow’s control. After realizing that “regime change” could not be induced by other means, Russia resorted to hard power.

When talking of Russia’s claims that the primary reason behind its decision to intervene was “humanitarian,” the Report repudiates the humanitarian nature of the intervention by stating that there was no genocide taking place and the people living in the Tskhinvali region are legally Georgian not Russian citizens. In this regard, the Mission could have also mentioned the brutal methods used by the Russian leadership in Chechnya and ask a logical question whether a country indiscriminately bombarding its own towns and villages would have the right to unilaterally intervene in Georgia on humanitarian grounds. And, besides, what intervention could be called humanitarian without a due sanction by the UNSC?

The Report says, “Russia called its military actions in Georgia a ‘peace enforcement operation,’ “while Georgia called it an ‘aggression’”. “The international community, including major actors such as the EU, was reluctant to enter into any formal qualifications.” The question is if it is not a humanitarian intervention, what else could it be if not aggression? Trying to qualify Russia’s military intervention, the Report says that “the Russian military action outside South Ossetia was essentially conducted in violation of international law.” But why was it then legal in “South Ossetia” during the so-called “first phase” of the military conflict? How is that territory so different from any other part of Georgia? Does Georgia not have the same sovereign rights in its Tskhinvali region and Abkhazia as Italy does in South Tyrol or Spain in the Basque province? The Report offers more confusion than elucidation in this regard.

On one hand, the Report does respect Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and calls on all international actors to do the same, but on the other hand, intentionally or unintentionally, it limits Georgia’s sovereignty in Tskhinvali and Abkhazia to Russia’s advantage by justifying Moscow’s “self-defensive” measures in those territories. This is by far the most controversial and unacceptable conclusion of the Tagliavini Mission. Is not it the case when “what is right for Jupiter is not right for the ox?” Even though there is no “South Ossetia” by the Georgian Constitution, the Report uses the Russian term all along.

Peace is the ultimate goal of any grand strategic thought. The Tagliavini Report too claims it is aimed at perpetuating peace and security on the European Continent by upholding the fundamental principles of the European security architecture, such as the Helsinki Final Act and the subsequent OSCE documents, whose declared notions first and foremost are respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Unfortunately, some of the conclusions in the Report, namely, approval of Russia’s military action within the Tskhinvali region without any UNSC resolution and calling it an act of self-defense go directly against the very same principles that the Mission wants to defend.

Without giving a proper thought to Russia’s geopolitical aspirations, the Report fails to come up with a clear description of the situation and efficient remedies to redress it, notwithstanding general assumptions of declarative nature. It seems a balanced document putting blame on everyone was the aim of the Fact-Finding Mission, not a desire to correct the wrongs done by Russia when it violated Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Until occupation of the Georgian lands is ended and Georgia is restored to full sovereign status, peace and security in Europe will remain severely damaged and, even worse, there will remain a high probability that Russia might do the same to other neighboring countries. Until the international community comes up with a comprehensive document aimed at that end, we will keep asking the same question as Abuladze’s character does in the final scene of Repentance: “Then what is the purpose of a road that would not lead to the temple?”