Refugees from Russia-Georgia Conflict

Like all acts of war, the conflict between Russia and Georgia is causing a refugee problem. Nicholas Kulish writes in the NY Times:

A cease-fire agreement appears to have stopped the war, but for the refugees in this mountain camp outside Tbilisi, a return to the lives they left behind in South Ossetia is at best a distant prospect.

Zalina Tsodniashvili, her two teenage sons and her husband sleep on four rickety cots in one room in a dreary three-story concrete building left over from the Soviet era. But she said worse than their discomfort was the torment of not knowing what had become of her mother. Every displaced person in her building has suffered, she said, and the building houses hundreds of them.

She was on a visit to help her ill mother with household chores when the attack began. “When they bombed, I grabbed the little ones and ran. My mother didn’t follow,” Ms. Tsodniashvili, 32, said Tuesday, telling her story through an interpreter.

One after another, the refugees told their tales, and similarities cropped up about the tragedies they had endured when the fighting was heaviest. They told of covering dead neighbors and family members with blankets and branches, not daring to take the time to bury them in the onslaught. They described driving or walking through devastated towns and villages in their search for temporary refuge. Click here for the full story.

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