Monitoring Officer: 10 years of service

At the conference table in the OSCE SMM Luhansk hub – where ordinarily operational briefings are held and presentations given – Tinatin Bezhanishvili stands beside a cake. As the acting hub leader and former Patrol Group Leader at the Kadiivka Forward Patrol Base, there has been little that has ever left her unable to respond but now as she faces her smiling colleagues, there to celebrate and honour a woman who has given 10 years of service to the OSCE, she is momentarily left speechless.

From the wine-growing region of Khatheti in Georgia, Tinatin initially worked with an NGONGO
non-governmental organization, supporting Chechen refugees in the Pankisi Gorge and later with the OSCE Mission to Georgia, working on law enforcement capacity building. From there she joined the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, focusing on community policing capacity building.

Arriving in Ukraine in August 2016, she found herself right on the contact line, leading a group of 36, including 26 monitoring officers, at the Kadiivka forward patrol base.

There she was to see the conflict up close and personal. Daily patrols along the contact line put her and her colleagues face to face with the fighting and its effects on the civilian population. “When you see how people in places like Zolote are affected, you just want to help,” she says.

And help she did. From the base, she and her small tight group of monitoring officers were regular participants in mirror patrols, forming a monitoring blanket on both sides of the contact line that allowed engineers and workers to enter areas where critical civilian infrastructure was in immediate need of repair or maintenance. In one instance, teaming up with colleagues from Popasna forward patrol base, they monitored adherence to the ceasefire, enabling repairs that restored water to over 10,000 people. “Being right in the middle of a conflict that has caused so much pain and suffering can be incredibly frustrating and heart-breaking but sometimes we do get to make a real difference to real people,” she explains.

Tinatin and her team were, however, to soon know pain very directly and personally. On 23 April 2017, on a day she will never forget and hopes is never repeated, Tinatin, on a day off, woke to the sound of her phone ringing. It was the worst news imaginable. One of the patrols that had set off from the base early that morning had been caught up in an explosion, and the medic on board, Joseph Stone, was killed. Two other SMM patrol members sustained injuries. “There was no time to go into shock or even to cry,” she remembers. “I was in charge on the ground and I had to respond.”

The response, in co-ordination with colleagues in Luhansk, Sievierodonetsk and Kyiv, led to immediate medical assistance and evacuation of the patrol members, and the removal of Joe's body and the destroyed vehicle to a government-controlled area, allowing for the start of an investigation into the incident. “We had a number of immediate priorities,” she explains, “foremost of which was the safety and security of our colleagues and friends.” “For me personally, it was also hugely important to get Joe back, for us as his friends but especially for his family,” she adds.

In all, Tinatin has spent over three years in Ukraine, including a subsequent stint as the deputy hub leader in Luhansk city, where she oversees daily patrolling along the contact line and elsewhere, and manages more than a hundred monitoring officers. “There is an enormous responsibility involved in sending out a patrol; their safety and security is paramount,” Tinatin says.

Right now though, as she stands before her colleagues, celebrating and remembering 10 years with the OSCE, Tinatin finally finds the words that had been eluding her. “In this conflict and others, we have seen bad days we all hope to never see again,” she says, “but there have been many good ones too where we in the OSCE have made a difference.”