TFGG01: OSSETIAN IRREGULAR MILITIAS PRIMARILY

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 002566

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/26/2018
TAGS: PREL PGOV PREF PINR RS GG
SUBJECT: TFGG01: OSSETIAN IRREGULAR MILITIAS PRIMARILY
RESPONSIBLE FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST GEORGIAN MINORITY

REF: A. MOSCOW 2490

B. STATE 90055

Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Eric Rubin; reason 1.4 (d)


1. (SBU) Summary: There have been numerous reports of
violence against ethnic Georgians both in South Ossetia and
around the town of Gori committed by "irregulars" --
unorganized militias who followed behind the Russian army
into South Ossetia. A human rights activist who was in South
Ossetia near the end of the fighting told us that any
Chechens and Dagestanis fought as part of the Russian army
and that militias responsible for the looting and possible
atrocities against ethnic Georgians were either North or
South Ossetians. End Summary.


2. (SBU) At the outbreak of the fighting in South Ossetia
there were anecdotal reports in the media of volunteers, most
notably from North Ossetia and Dagestan, signing up to fight
against the Georgian army (Ref. A). In addition, the media
reported that the Eastern Battalion of former Chechen
fighters led by Sulim Yamadayev and who reported to the
Russian Ministry of Defense also took part in the fighting as
volunteers. The media later reported that men from Chechnya
and Dagestan died in the fighting. These reports were based
on bodies being returned to Chechnya and Dagestan for burial
after the fighting ended.


3. (C) Tanya Lokshina, Senior Researcher in the Moscow
office of Human Rights Watch, told us August 22 that although
it was difficult to know for sure, she believed the looting
and atrocities ascribed to the "irregulars" were carried out
by either North or South Ossetians and not fighters from
elsewhere in the North Caucasus. She said that she did not
see a great number of irregulars from outside Ossetia, and
that the men killed during the conflict and eventually buried
in Chechnya and Dagestan were either in the Russian army or
commanded by it. Lokshina supported the statement by her
colleague Anna Niestat to reporters that no Georgian
residents in South Ossetia reported serious misbehavior by
Russian soldiers and said that, on the contrary, the Russian
army had done a great deal to protect these Georgian villages
from marauding paramilitaries. Both said that young males
from North and South Ossetia fled to the woods to fight after
the Georgians began to shell Tskhinvali on August 8.

Comment
--------------


4. (SBU) It does not appear that the threatened flow of
"irregulars" from Chechnya or Dagestan ever materialized. In
an August 25 article, Novaya Gazeta reported that, on the
contrary, hundreds of ethnic Chechen and Ingush soldiers
resigned from military and law enforcement structures rather
than "volunteer" to fight in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even
though it might cost them any chance at future government
jobs or immunity from prosecution for previous acts.
BEYRLE