Nowhere people

Each day for 12 years, the rhythm of life in this village of plywood shacks and misery in North Ossetia has been the same. Those who have jo...

Each day for 12 years, the rhythm of life in this village of plywood shacks and misery in North Ossetia has been the same. Those who have jobs in the nearest city hike to the main road or, with luck, catch a bus. Children walk to school 8212; a mile and a half along roads that are muddy or buried in snow. At 5 pm, the water tap opens up for three hours.

There is a reason why no bus stops at Gizel, why there is no school, no running water and two outhouses for 300 people: Gizel is strictly a 8216;8216;temporary8217;8217; place, set up in this Russian republic in 1992 to accommodate some of the 100,000 refugees fleeing South Ossetia8217;s separatist war against Georgia. Somehow, the war never officially ended, and many refugees never went home.

Nowhere are these frozen conflicts as volatile as here in the North Caucasus, where ethnic battles that erupted after the collapse of the Soviet Union could reignite at the slightest provocation.

Here in North Ossetia, the hostage-taking at Beslan reminded many of another conflict from 1992, with the Russian republic of Ingushetia, that killed 200 people and displaced thousands. The Beslan hostage-takers were reportedly led by a well-known Ingush militant. No sooner had the hostages been taken than some Ossetians began pulling weapons out of their closets, determined to strike against Ingush villages in North Ossetia. 8216;8216;Me and my friends had a plan. We wanted to go to an Ingush village8230;and capture two schools there,8217;8217; said a veteran of the Ingush-Ossetian war.

Frozen conflicts plague the region. In South Ossetia, officially part of Georgia but seeking to join Russia, periodic mortar attacks and small-arms skirmishes claimed several dozen lives over the summer as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili moved to end the de facto autonomy there and in Abkhazia.

The world may tune out the conflicts in these areas, but analysts warn that it does so at its peril: The conflict belt runs along the vital energy corridor linking Caspian Sea oil supplies with Western Europe and the US.

Abkhazia was the site of the reported disappearance of more than a pound of highly enriched uranium sometime in 1992. Under the Soviets, Ossetia was split between Georgia and Russia, largely due to the Caucasus range. Today, about 95 per cent of South Ossetians hold Russian passports, and Russian border guards and peacekeeping troops patrol the frontier.

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Saakashvili has accused Russia of supplying missiles to its peacekeepers in South Ossetia and engaging in a military buildup on its borders. But Moscow has spoken in favour of a negotiated settlement, and of maintaining Georgia8217;s territorial integrity. 8216;8216;There are no fools in the Russian leadership who want a war on their hands right now,8217;8217; said Sergei Mikheyev of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow.

In an interview, South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said that South Ossetia had the same right of self-determination that Georgia exercised when it withdrew from the USSR, taking South Ossetia with it. During the war that broke out in 1991, 1,000 people died and more than 112 villages were destroyed. Before the war, Gizel was an unfinished recreational centre for a farm.

In talks, Ossetian refugees have demanded restitution from Georgia. Now Saakashvili has been offering some benefits and the possibility that displaced South Ossetians could take over their lost homes. But most here regard the idea of integrating South Ossetia into Georgia as a pipe dream. 8212;LAT-WP