Still tense in South Ossetia

Until a month ago, South Ossetia was a patchwork for Ossetian and Georgian villages. But in the aftermath of the war, the Georgian population fled and now the Ossetians are making sure they’ll never return. This village is strange because it’s deserted. Every house has been systematically burned and looted and some even bulldozed. There’s no embarrassment here about what’s being done. One woman tells me the Georgians are beasts and too dangerous to have living next to them. This is a sentiment shared by everyone left in the village. On the outskirts of the capitol of South Ossetia, there are a high rise buildings. The sides of them are peppered with bullet holes, the result of Georgian artillery fire when the Georgian Army tried to take over the town. This woman says Georgians are cruel and evil people. The woman’s anger is perhaps understandable but claims that Georgia was planning a genocide are widely exaggerated. The actual figure of deaths is in the dozens, rather than hundreds.