TBILISI, September 2. /TASS/. Politicians, not generals, managed Georgia's armed forces during its brief 2008 attack on South Ossetia, a parliamentary investigation has found, blaming civilian leadership for a poorly planned and executed attack.
"Based on what those questioned - General [Zaza] Gogava, General [Mamuka] Kurashvili, General [Mamiya] Balakhadze, Deputy Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, Shalva Dzahanshvili, military medic Lasha Koyava, and others - told the fact-finding commission, it is quite clear that in August 2008 the Georgian army found itself in a war waged by politicians who had nothing to do with military science. They ventured the attack on Tskhinvali, hoping for assistance from external forces and ignoring the opinion of the Georgian military," Teya Tsulukiani, a deputy speaker of Georgia’s parliament and head of the commission investigating crimes committed during former President Mikhail Saakashvili’s presidential term from 2003 to 2012, told the lawmakers summing up the commission’s six-month work.
According to Tsulukiani, the key task of the operation, i.e. the seizure of Tskhinvali, was delegated to the interior ministry instead of the army, which disorganized the military and led to harm to the civilian population. She cited General Balakhadze as saying that since the defense ministry’s forces were deployed as auxiliary to the interior troops, it was not clear who was in command and the two agencies’ units proved incapable of carrying out a joint mission.
The parliamentary fact-finding commission worked from February to August. It questioned witnesses - politicians, the top brass, and ordinary people. Key topics included the August 2008 conflict, cases of pressure on businessmen, maltreatment of prisoners. The commission’s mandate was expanded at some point to include high-profile cases linked to the developments after 2012, in particular former Prime Minister Georgy Gakharia’s decision before he joined the opposition.
The commission’s findings will be referred to the prosecutor’s office. Further on, the country’s authorities intend to appeal to the Constitutional Court to ban Saakashvili’s United National Movement party and affiliated associations.
In the early hours of August 8, 2008, Georgia launched an armed attack on South Ossetia. Russia moved to defend the republic’s citizens and, on August 26, 2008, recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another former Georgian autonomous region.