Knolevi – Village of Constant Stress

We won’t be responsible if anything happens to you there, we recommend staying and seeing the rest of the village,” said Georgian soldiers to an International Rescue Committee representative, who was attempting to cross the conditional line dividing the village Knolevi into two parts – the buffer zone and another smaller district known as the hot zone. The two border a line on a road, including a piece of inhabited ground that separates Georgian and Ossetian checkpoints from each other.
Another Ossetian military post lies up in the hills, can observe the entire gorge.
“Ossetians shoot almost every day, whenever they want. For example, yesterday they had been shooting around five minutes, it was into the air, but anyway, it is terrifying to listen even if you know they don’t shoot at you,” said Eliso Maisuradze, a village resident. Another woman, short and very thin, with a wrinkled rather nervous face, said that Ossetian soldiers react to her every single word or abrupt move; they considerate unacceptable and immediately shoot.
She lives close to the woods, and as she says, her activities in her backyard have been never left noticed by the soldiers. She is not alone with that feeling, almost all 32 families living in Knolevi, express the same feeling of ominous presence. As if “Big Brother” is always watching them. Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia lies in no more than 35 kilometers from Knolevi.
That feeling of fear and constant stress made doctors reason that the villagers suffer from massive high blood pressure.
Manana Amonashvili, a program manager at International Rescue Committee remembers one of the last visits there in the Buffer zone villages, when she brought doctors to examine the people.
“Two doctors spent the whole day examining people and they both were surprised with the results at the end of the day – the majority of the population suffer from high pressure, they concluded it was as a result of war and recent life under the permanent stress,” she claimed and added that the primary, urgent need of the population is to have long-term professional psychological aid, “Furthermore, it is obvious that a large number of somatic disease are caused by the stresses.”



Amonashvili is leading protection monitoring program throughout the twenty five buffer zone villages, which began from January 2009. She spends five or seven days in the villages and knows almost everyone by name, their problems and struggles.
The International Rescue Committee launched its emergency work in Georgia when the August War began between Georgia and Russia. From 2009, the Committee spread its long-term program into twenty five buffer zone villages, monitoring human conditions and supporting them with special references to different governmental and international organizations to provide them with needed health or any other kind of care. Being founded (1933) by the suggestion of Albert Einstein, to assist Germans suffering under Hitler, now the International Rescue Committee is on the ground in forty two countries providing emergency relief, relocating refugees and rebuilding lives in the wake of disaster.
“In case of urgent needs we also have a modest budget to deliver some aids to some individuals,” the program manager says. She has set local volunteer network that helps them to be informed and cover all twenty five villages at the same level.
Knolevi inhabitants conveyed they feel abandoned by everyone. After the war, all 32 families returned back to their houses, some of them found their homes burnt. They receive governmental aid, about 24 – 30 GEL per person; also they receive free monthly food products and some of them get aid for children. They also have free medical service and medicines. Listening to them, one can only guess that they are in an informational vacuum and are not fully aware of their rights and aids due to them.
“We have heard that head of our municipality has changed, but this new one is originally from the lower village and he doesn’t want to arrive here, neither he nor his representatives,” said one of the gathered women, hoping to learn some useful news from us.
Manana Amonashvili is concerned about the medical service system, “Almost all kinds of services are free of charge for victims of war, but the fact is that the Minister of Health and Social Care releases the order for free medical service just for one month, after each month he produces the document again for one more month. Sometimes the process impedes the services and doctors have to wait for the new resolution and at the end of the day patients suffer from it, especially when one needs emergency surgery.”
She has to repeat to the people about their rights over and over. But the way to the regional center is long, and one singular procedure needs two or more visits to the center, which is problematic for them.
Delivered aid is clearly not enough, particularly when people have been cut from their fields. Eliso Maisuradze showed their fields, which goes up to the hills – now the territory is controlled by Ossetians.
“We have left just small gardens closer to home and we cultivate them to get some vegetables and fruits, while we had a good piece of land and we usually lived with it,” she told.
Olena Petsun, adviser at Directorate General of Democracy and Political Affairs at European Council and Sabrina Burchler, Human Rights Adviser at European Council Georgian office, studied the situation and listened to these and some other stories in Knolevi. They have planned to include these hardships in the next report, which they are about to release. Insecurity and poverty are issues they plan to emphasize.
Amonashvili from the International Rescue Committee, on her way, marked infants of the village as feasible bodies for the next feasible support delivered to the village. Fortunately, all three children had no vitally important needs to solve. This time.
Anna Chichinadze
12.06.2009