Entering South Ossetia is like falling into a political black hole. At the top of a twisting, heavily wooded gorge, just below the highest ridge of the Caucasus chain, you leave Russia through a series of checkpoints, steel gates and customs controls. Your passport is stamped, your boots are inspected. And then you arrive – nowhere. When I went through some weeks ago, there was no one to check my papers or welcome me to one of the world’s newest independent nations. There was just the yawning black entrance to the 4km-long Roki Tunnel, famous now as the route the Russian army took to invade Georgia during the five-day war in August that sparked the worst crisis in east-west relations for nearly 30 years.
As far as almost the whole of the rest of the world is concerned, South Ossetia is still simply part of Georgia. Its statehood is recognised only by Russia, Nicaragua and Somalia. It is hard to take it seriously as an independent state. Even before the war, it had only 70,000 people – and an economy based principally on smuggling. Now, after the largely forced departure of almost all its ethnic Georgian inhabitants, the population may be closer to 50,000. And half of them live in one small town of mouldering and, since August, shell-blasted apartment blocks – the capital, Tskhinvali.
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