Tshkinvali shelling: Georgia lured into open confrontation?

After Abkhazia is cleared from the world opinion, South Ossetia is stumbling into uncontrolled conflict. After a Georgian civil water cut was matched by a South-Ossetian water slashing, troop re-deploying was observed by South-Ossetian border forces, in numbers of “an artillery battalion and two mortar batteries from the 4th motorized brigade of the Georgian Defense Ministry”, moving from the army base in Gori to Tskhinvali.

Sniper firing was reported to kill 6 South Ossetians in the regional capital Tskhinvali, and as of Saturday 2nd, South Ossetian prime minister Yury Morozov ordered women, children and old people from vulnerable areas to be evacated.

South Ossetian envoy to Russia, Mr Dmirty Medoyev, precised in early July help could come from North Ossetia. Hereafter an interview from Rossiya TV.

Lack of any economic interest would make one think this conflict is a mere proxy war that was staged by Russia in retaliation of Georgian participation in the BTC (Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan) pipeline, and duly used to steer the country towards Moscow again. Yet the conflict was frozen since the demise of the USSR, before pipeline dreams were afoot. The two regions just follow their petty interests as mainly dependent on Russian tourism and trade with the north, the lack of compelling business-talk from Tbilisi being a demonstration of the current dis-functional Georgian comundrum.

Moscow may think well to enhance the already flourishing economic relationship with Sukhumi. An economically booming independent Abkhazia (it is unclear to which shade) would supposedly lure Georgia to re-open business with Russia.

What is more interesting, Moscow is not openly demanding for any annexation, insisting that South Ossetians and Abkhazians are sovereign states fit to decide, impliciting that the current situation serves her at best. Certainly a North-South Ossetia unification will alter the uneasy ethnic balance with the Inghush people, another frozen conflict Chechen separatists tried to torch with the Beslan School Hostage crisis.

On the other side, the lingering as Break-away provinces can´t continue ad libitum.