ARTICLE: How a smouldering feud became war (theaustralian.news.com.au)

By Marc Champion and Andrew Osborn in Tskhinvali, Georgia August 18, 2008

THE fighting that threatens to remake the post-Cold War world began in the craggy mountains of separatist South Ossetia province when ethnic fighting that has long plagued the area abruptly got much worse.
On August 1, a roadside bomb hurt five Georgian policemen.
By evening, snipers, presumably Georgian, had killed half a dozen South Ossetians, mostly off-duty policemen out fishing or swimming.
After dark, artillery shells began raining down on Georgian enclaves ringing this provincial capital. The South Ossetian leaders began sending women and children to safety in Russia - and mobilising men into brigades.
Six days later, fighting flared to a level not seen for years between the ethnically Georgian and ethnically Ossetian villages that form the patchwork of the separatist region. It was then that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent thousands of US-trained troops into the province, after which Russian forces swept in, crushing his assault.
In the aftermath, Russia and Georgia have each blamed the other for the escalating violence, insisting their own intentions were peaceful - and forcing Washington to choose between two erstwhile allies.
But an examination by The Wall Street Journal suggests both sides had been preparing for war for months, if not years. With the two historic enemies armed and convinced an attack could come at any time, all it needed was a trigger. That appears to have come last Thursday, in the form of intense shelling by the Ossetians, an ethnic group that identifies strongly with Russia.

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