The Snatch

The Snatch
By Israel Shamir

A fast guy had thought that a wallet was unattended, and tried to snatch it. But to his distress, he was stopped in his tracks by a burly wallet owner. This could a fair description of Saddam Hussein snatching Kuwait. This also fits the war over South Ossetia. Georgian President Saakashvili thought he can take South Ossetia while nobody is looking; while everybody is watching the Olympiad. In order to maximise the surprise factor, he declared barely three hours before the snatch that he would never send troops in. Here the similarity ends. While Saddam succeeded to take Kuwait, Saakashvili failed to take over the SO. Saakashvili's strategy was also different, and reminiscent rather of Israeli conquest of 1948: he wantedto have Ossetia without the native folk, the Ossetians. For this reason he bombarded the SO capital, Tskhinvali, and caused mass exodus of the people ­ some thirty thousand of them, or almost half of population crossed the high mountains to the Russian side. The Russians rolled in and kicked Sakashvili troops out. cont'd