British Officer Helps Police in Georgia
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Tbilisi, Georgia — A senior Scottish police officer has swapped community policing in Stirling for Georgia’s conflict zones.
A former assistant chief constable in Central Scotland, Maureen Brown, has arrived in the war-torn Caucuses to prepare for 200 European Union peace monitors to arrive by October 1 to observe the cease-fire between Russian and Georgian forces.
“A lot of what I have to do here in Georgia is transferring my experience in Scotland of working with people on the ground and building partnerships,” she said.
“We are working to turn the political agenda into operational reality.”
The E.U. monitoring mission, including British police and non-uniformed military, will seek to enforce a cease-fire deal requiring Russian troops to withdraw, by October 10, to pre-conflict positions within the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The monitors will also police the return of 70,000 Georgians, driven from their villages by fear of South Ossetian militias and Russian troops.
But President Medvedev of Russia yesterday signed a military co-operation pact with leaders of the breakaway regions in a further defiant act that will deepen the anxiety of Georgia’s government and the European Union.
The British police officer, on secondment to the European Union, stressed that the key element to her job was building links with local people to ensure that the monitors were not plunged into conflicts between victimized Georgians and South Ossetian militia.
“When the mission arrives with the 200 monitors everything will be ready for them to go in.”
Hansjoerg Haber, a German diplomat, will head the mission in Georgia after October 1.
The U.N. refugee agency confirmed earlier this week that there was a “great deal of fear among the people currently residing” in “buffer zones” set up by Russia around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“Beatings, looting, and arson by marauding militias have created an atmosphere of fear and insecurity,” said the UNHCR.
The Daily Telegraph spoke to men, who asked not to be identified, hiding from South Ossetian militia in the deserted village of Tkviav, the zone where the E.U. monitors will enter on October 1.
