In September 2008, in the woods outside the occupied Georgian town of Kareli, the fighters under my command demanded to see my documents. They refused to believe that a sitting member of parliament and former chief of the military police was fighting beside them as an ordinary rifleman. I produced my parliamentary credentials. They passed the card from hand to hand in silence.

Their disbelief has stayed with me for 18 years, not because they doubted who I was, but because, years later, I watched my entire nation believe something far less believable.