[referendum] south ossetia votes to secede

South Ossetia has overwhelmingly voted for independence in a referendum. “I can only say there has been a victory for South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity and more than 90 per cent of the people have voted in favour of independence for our republic,” Bella Pliyeva, head of the election commission, said. The vote yesterday is seen as illegal in the West and there were no Western monitors present at the poll, but Russia says it should be respected.

Wiki says the Ossetians are originally descendants of Iranian-speaking tribes from Central Asia. They became Christians during the early Middle Ages, under Georgian influence. Trouble is, there is no racial homogeneity in the region and there was a lot of intergenerational intermarriage with Muslims which created peace of sorts for a long time. This is similar to the situation I am now in, in another republic.

In 1991 the Georgian government declared Georgian to be the only administrative language but Ossetian leaders demanded that Ossetian be the language of their state. There have been simmering conflict and sanctions by Georgia itself, e.g. withholding power supplies and with Russia at odds with Georgia as an entity, it’s logical that they’d support South Ossetia, which then puts the whole question on the world agenda.

To try to create a separate state would require population transfer and dislocation, which is in the interests of certain parties in the background and creates a new, highly unstable region of probable bloodletting of the Kosovo type. Keep your eye on this one.