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The devil went down to Georgia By Gideon Levy Tags: Georgia, Russia GEORGIA - The frail elderly woman, leaning on the shoulders of her two daughters, spoke in a faint voice. Occasionally the girls offered their mother a bottle of water. Her face was pale and bathed in perspiration; a kerchief covered her head. All around, men and women screamed themselves hoarse. One woman lay on the road, howling bitterly. The whispering old woman told her story to the world's cameras: how her house was burned, how she was forced to leave everything behind and flee in terror of the pillagers, how she had already seen everything in the old days, but now, again, war. Without taking along anything, she ran for her life from her burning village, on the outskirts of Gori. The attackers may have been Ossetian militiamen, or perhaps neighbors from Chechnya, maybe they were even masked Cossacks - she had no way of knowing where they swept in from, plundering everything in their path. Now she was standing on the road just outside Gori, next to a sign that points to the "J. Stalin Museum" - Stalin was born in Gori - not knowing which way to turn, having no idea where she would spend the rest of her life. The next time you see Mikheil Saakashvili fulminating, Vladimir Putin issuing threats, the leaders of the European Union expressing concern or George W. Bush spouting promises, maybe you'll remember this old woman standing on the road outside of Gori. A day earlier, I had received a phone call from the office in Tel Aviv: The plane to Tbilisi leaves at two o'clock. It was then a little after one. The El Al flight was almost completely empty. On a map in the cockpit the pilot showed us possible alternative landing sites, in case we were unable to land in the deserted international airport. The flashback was immediate: This is what it felt like 15 years ago, when I landed in the closed airport of besieged Sarajevo. Advertisement But that was where the comparisons ended. Tbilisi greeted me with an oppressive silence. The day before, and the day after, too, rumors were rife about Russian tanks approaching, but on this particular night there was hope. Masses of people gathered in the square next to the parliament building, for what was described as a victory rally. But it turned out to be a demonstration of repressed fear. Photos of a mustachioed "Adolf" Putin, and militant slogans about the integrity of the unpromised landwere not conducive to a feeling of security. The next morning I rushed to open the curtain in the hotel room, to see if Russian tanks were stationed in the Georgians' Liberty Square, with its monumental gold statue that could be destroyed by one blow. The cold war is long over, Europe is uniting, the golden stars of the EU flags glitter everywhere, even in the office of President Saakashvili, the darling of Europe and of Washington, and also at the mass rally. But coveted Europe is not here, and Russian tanks are again making intimidating forays on the road leading from Gori to the capital, in Brussels' backyard. 'Gori, no problem' It's not easy to find a driver who will take us to the frontline in Gori. Red-haired Lasha calls a friend in Israel to tell him dramatically that he has Israeli passengers in his Mercedes. But all the way to Gori he drives wildly, constantly crosses himself, sometimes three times in a row - to be on the safe side. When he isn't crossing himself, he calls a taxi driver friend who is already at our destination, and reports to us: "Gori, no problem." But there was a problem - it started next to the sign leading to the museum. Thick columns of black smoke rose from the houses in the villages around Gori, Karaleti and Svaneti. Ossetian militiamen were looting everything. A correspondent for one of the British networks was robbed, and his driver almost executed by masked men. The road to Gori cuts through vineyards, corn fields, rivers and hills. An aged peasant is tilling his soil with a plow probably as old as he. Lasha's radio is blasting out the best of Western pop: "Raindrops are falling on my head" on the way there, and "Sunny, thank you for the sunshine you gave to me" on the way back. A burned-out Georgian tank, about five kilometers from Gori, hurls us instantly back to reality. A traffic report: The road is packed on the way out of Gori, almost empty on the way in. A convoy of Turkish trucks making its way home has stopped by the roadside, the drivers at a loss. In the other direction are dozens of cars that have parked along the escape route, either because the ordeals of the road were too much for their vehicles' old engines, or possibly because the drivers and passengers have no idea where they are going. They are huddled in groups around the cars, trying to plan their next move. No one knows how many refugees have been created here - certainly tens of thousands. The images nauseatingly recall other conflicts in this violent region: a sputtering Lada car, packed with household utensils, blankets, clothes, whatever could be grabbed in the heat of flight. Ten passengers in the Lada, 50 in a van, fear and despair engraved on their faces. A black dog lopes along the road, also in full flight. A Red Cross van is carrying spaghetti in the other direction. An Audi 6 in a poor state: no hood, no windows. Its passengers are screaming in a dreadful cacophony. I pick out a few words: "Bolsheviks," "bandits," "wai ma, wai ma" - the Georgian version of "oy vavoy." Woe is us - the keening of the new refugees, the last in the world, for the time being. 'They fire, we fire' The lever of the toilet in the minister of reintegration's office is broken, and you have to stick your hand into the tank to make it flush. On the minister's desk stands a model of a Lufthansa plane, along with a flag of the EU, of which Georgia is not a member. There is also a souvenir from Israel and a wooden club, for whatever contingency. There are two maps on the wall: one of South Ossetia, the other of Abkhazia, two battlegrounds for which the minister is in charge. Temur Yakobashvili, who was born in 1967, attended Harvard and Yale, but speaks standard Ashdod Hebrew. We are struggling with their new "Ge-or-gi-a" in Hebrew, but he uses the traditional "Gruzia." He was in Israel not long ago, together with his president, for the "Shimon Show," the festivities marking Israel's 60th anniversary, hosted by President Shimon Peres. Since January of this year, the minister has been "in shit," as he puts it, as the official responsible for these conflicted regions. Direct, smart and sophisticated, he appeals immediately to the warm Jewish emotions: "War is a familiar thing, but when Cossacks attack a population and perpetrate a pogrom, as happened today, I, as a Jew, have a different feeling." Apparently they don't want you in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yakobashvili: "If there is an apartment building and the occupants of one flat throw out everyone else, what does that tell you? The population of Abkhazia was 17 percent Abkhazian, but they perpetrated ethnic cleansing and so only Abkhazians remained. It is a local apartheid regime. But it's not the Abkhazians, it's the Russians. They are trying, so far successfully, to implement their politics in the Caucasus. The Russians planned all this very well. Half the world is on vacation, half is at the Olympics, America has economic problems and Europe is busy with the EU constitution and with Kosovo. The Russians thought this was the time to strike. It looks like they were right. I personally went around the world and said that the Russians want to push us into a war. I was told: You are wise-guy Georgians, exaggerating Georgians, crying wolf. And the Russians started the war. "First the separatists started shooting at us. We shot back. They fire, we fire. We told the Russians: Make them stop. Tell them to stop this nonsense. Let us hold negotiations with the separatists and the Russians. The EU organized a meeting with the separatists, and they said, no. A meeting was arranged for August 7. The Russian diplomat's car broke down; he said he had a flat. What about the spare, we asked. It's flat, too, he said. The separatists didn't answer the phone, only the Russian general showed up. I asked him how we could contain the situation. He told me he had no control. Restrain yourselves, he said, even if there are provocations. "I reported to my president, and he told the army to hold its fire. The separatists destroyed two villages. Then reports arrived that the Russians had sent tanks into the tunnel. We checked, and it was true. What choice did we have? Either you hit now or you are hit tomorrow. We did not enter a trap, we were pushed into it. It is nonsense to say that we started." Asked what they will do now, the minister preferred to say the following: "First of all, we say thank you to Israel. Not to the government of Israel, but to those Israeli companies that made it possible for us to fund our army, for it to hold out against the Russian army. I spoke with the Russians, and they told me they didn't know that Georgia had an army like this. They sent a thousand tanks into Georgia - they didn't send a thousand tanks into Afghanistan at the beginning of that war. And they didn't think they would encounter the resistance they did. We destroyed their 58th Army, we downed 17 planes and three helicopters, and we burned more than 60 tanks." Yakobashvili went on to say that the West had betrayed them, that it was a "disgrace" that Israel had stopped its arms supplies to Georgia, that the UAVs (unpiloted aircraft) the Israelis had supplied were no more than "video cameras" and that it was a pity his country had not bought arms on the black market. He branded the Russians terrorists and said the only thing he saw from the United States was "naming and shaming." And now a Western delegation was knocking at the door. The saddest birthday song I met French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy at the entrance to Gori, I met the refugees from Gori at a protest rally in front of the parliament building, and at night we all went to the Shardan Restaurant together. The food was bad, the wine worse, and exactly at midnight, a few hours after another spate of rumors about Russian tanks making their way toward the capital, the waiters turned off the lights in the packed restaurant. A birthday cake was brought in to the sounds of "Happy Birthday to You," played through a raspy loudspeaker. It was the saddest birthday song I have ever heard. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Tears of joy Shahar Zubari's bronze medal was Israel's first of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 'Germ of corruption' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats his prediction that Israel will be wiped off the map.   1.   Gideon - the angel 17:39  |  Anonymous 15/08/08   2.   Learn Gideon, THIS is ethnic cleansing, war crime, etc 19:59  |  Alain 15/08/08

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