After the Revolution

Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, has said a declaration of independence for the region is days away. Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia.

The BBC ran an article today raising the question of whether recognition of Kosovo’s independence would bring the spotlight back to the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in Georgia.

Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Around the same time, the breakaway region of South Ossetia declared its independence from Georgia in a referendum ignored by every country but Russia.

When Mikheil Saakashvili was elected president, he declared his intentions to bring the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under Georgian control.

South Ossetia is led by Eduard Kokoiti, who won unrecognised presidential elections there in December 2001 and November 2006.

Yet some villages still populated by ethnic Georgians remained under Tbilisi’s jurisdiction after the 1990-1992 conflict. These are ruled by Dmitry Sanakoyev, an ethnic Ossetian elected president in an alternative 2006 vote.

Recently the Georgian government has enticed Ossetian families to move to these “temporary administrative entities” presided over by Sanakoyev by offering them homes, jobs and anonymity.

As Russia, South Ossetia’s only ally, opposes granting Kosovo independence, Ossetians have been reluctant to compare the two regions too closely.