'The Ossetians are marauding'

NY Times:

As the conflict between Russia and Georgia enters its second week, there is growing evidence of looting and “ethnic cleansing” in a number of villages throughout the area of conflict.

The attacks — some witnessed by reporters or documented by a human rights group — include stealing, the burning of villages and possibly even killings. Some are ethnically motivated, while at least some of the looting appears to be the work of profiteers in areas from which the authorities have fled.

The identities of the attackers vary, but a pattern of violence by ethnic Ossetians against ethnic Georgians is emerging and has been confirmed by some Russian authorities. “Now Ossetians are running around and killing poor Georgians in their enclaves,” said Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Borisov, the commander in charge of the city of Gori, occupied by the Russians.

A lieutenant from an armored transport division that was previously in Chechnya said: “We have to be honest. The Ossetians are marauding.”

...

Dozens of houses were on fire on Tuesday in the northern suburbs of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Reporters saw armed men moving on the streets, carting away electronics and other household items. It was not clear who the men were. They did not appear to be part of the Russian forces, but the Russians were not stopping them.

“We’re not a police force, we’re a military force,” said a Russian lieutenant colonel in response to a reporter’s question. “It’s not our job to do police work.”

Still, there was some evidence that the Russian military might be making efforts in some places to stop the rampaging. A column of 12 men with their hands on their heads, several wearing uniforms, were marched into the Russian military base in Gori on Thursday afternoon. The identities of the men were unclear.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on Thursday that documented attacks by ethnic Ossetians in and around Tskhinvali on Wednesday. Researchers saw a number of houses on fire in the town of Java. They quoted a South Ossetian intelligence officer as saying that his fighters had burned the houses to “make sure” that the Georgians could not come back.

...

The report’s findings also seemed to indicate that early Russian accounts of casualties, which in the first days of fighting reached 2,000, were far too high. In Tskhinvali , where the heaviest fighting took place, the local hospital received 44 corpses and 273 wounded people from Aug. 6, after clashes between separatists and Georgians, to Aug. 12, the report said, citing a doctor.

The report quoted the doctor as saying that the majority of the wounded were affiliated with the military, although it was not clear if he meant the Russian or Georgian armies or Ossetian fighters. As of Aug. 13, none of the wounded remained in the hospital, the report said. Many were transferred to mobile hospitals in the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

...

The Human Rights Watch report undercuts the Russian rationale for the war in the first place. In fact it puts the lie to their tale of genocide and ethnic cleaning by Georgians and the Russian now appear to admit that the ethnic cleansing is being done by the Ossetians. While this story apparently was run under the fold or inside the paper, it appears to contradict much of what Moscow had been saying about why it went to war. It deserves more attention.

CNN reports:

...

More than 118,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in the Georgian republic, the U.N. refugee agency estimated Friday.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday it estimated that more than 118,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, citing statistics supplied by the Russian and Georgian governments.

About 30,000 people from South Ossetia fled to Russia, according to officials in the Russian region of North Ossetia, while up to 15,000 people from South Ossetia went south into Georgia proper, the Georgian government said.

Around 73,000 people in Georgia proper are displaced, including most of the population of Gori.

The Russian "humanitarian" effort appears to have been completely botched. In fact it has had the opposite effect of what Russia said it intended.