Occupation With No End in Sight

Georgians in 'Security Zone' Resigned to Russians' Presence

DZEVERA, Georgia, Aug. 28 -- When Kako Kechkhvashvili and his wife packed their things and fled this farming village on Aug. 12, they planned to return when the Russian soldiers and their tanks withdrew.

But four days ago, with acres of their untended apples dying on the branch, they could wait no longer. They moved back home to Dzevera, now set behind a series of Russian checkpoints within what Moscow calls a "security zone" in northern Georgia.

Too late to rescue their dry, brown orchard this season, they lost out on the roughly $1,500 they could have earned at market. And unlike their compatriots in parts of Georgia abandoned by Russian forces last week, they say they are increasingly resigned to a military occupation with no end in sight.

"It all depends on politicians, but I think they will be here for a long time," Kechkhvashvili said of the uniformed soldiers the Kremlin refers to as "peacekeepers." "We stayed away, but now we have nowhere else to go. We could not stay with relatives forever."

After the Russian army withdrew a week ago from broad swaths of Georgian territory, drivers again cruised unhindered on the country's main east-west highway, and the once-occupied city of Gori was extolled on television as a "symbol of freedom." But residents of northern villages like Dzevera, and of other places in undisputed Georgian territory that Russian forces have not left, are bracing for a long-term Russian presence on their land.

The violence has waned here since the conflict's early days, when South Ossetian militia fighters shot residents dead in their homes and abducted travelers from minibuses. But many residents have reported rampant lawlessness such as robberies and torched crops; a blackened wheat field along the twisting gravel road into Dzevera stands as evidence.

In nearby Karaleti, residents said they called the Georgian fire department when a home was set ablaze at 5 one recent morning, only to be told that the Russian checkpoint was closed. The house burned to the ground.

Nearly everyone interviewed expressed concern about how they would endure indefinite occupation, hemmed in by Russian military checkpoints on unpoliced roads.

Tahia Davitidze, 63, said her family had long made a living by selling produce in the Gori market, taking a 75-cent bus trip there each day along with other village farmers. But the bus has stopped running because of the Russian checkpoints, she said. The only way into town now is by taxi, which costs about $12.

"At first we lived in fear and panic, when the tanks and the militias came and burned some of the houses," she said, as she and her family shared bowls of fruit in a room with a low stone ceiling. "Now I am afraid they will never leave and life will never be what it was."

The Georgian government is encouraging residents to return to the occupied villages, hoping their presence will help undermine the legitimacy of Russian rule.

On Friday, workers rushed to construct tents for more than 1,000 displaced people on a run-down soccer field in Gori, just a few miles from Russian forces. Residents of occupied villages will be brought there in the coming days and remain until they are willing to return home, said Zviad Kuchadze, an official in Georgia's emergency department.

Georgian officials maintain that they still intend to regain control of the occupied villages and of breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the separatist enclaves that were at the center of the Russia-Georgia war that broke out three weeks ago and are now under Russian control.

On Friday, Georgia's Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution declaring that Russian peacekeepers should be legally classified as "occupation forces." The Russian government has recognized the enclaves as independent states over strong objections from the West.

"We will never consider occupied territory to be gone," said Giga Bokeria, Georgia's deputy foreign minister. "Georgia's territorial integrity must be restored."

But other Georgian officials lament that such an outcome now seems far-fetched, with Russian forces digging in both inside the enclaves and in the occupied Georgian villages. "It is hard for me to say it, but it will take an enormous effort to get our territory back, even beyond Abkhazia and South Ossetia," said Nick Laliashvili, an opposition member of Parliament.

Beyond the farming communities north of Gori, Russian forces are redrawing boundaries far from the conflict zone. They have chased Georgian police from Mosabruni, less than an hour's drive from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Russian and South Ossetian forces fly their respective flags at checkpoints on the road to Akhalgori, which they refer to only as Leningori, its name during Soviet times.

"The new border is there," said a Russian colonel named Anatoly, who declined to give his last name, pointing down the road to Mosabruni, which before the war was in undisputed Georgian territory. "On this side is South Ossetia. On the other side is Georgia. We will not go any further. And they cannot come any further."