Paul Goble
Vienna,
August 13 – The population of the breakaway republic of Abkhazia finds
itself deeply divided between those backing an ethnocentric model in
which nationality would play the key role and those supporting a civic
nation model in which citizenship not ethnicity would be the basis of
political participation, according to a leading Moscow specialist on
the region.
And both because of the ethnic diversity of the
republic and because of the opposition of the international community
to states in which one ethnic group is given primacy over others,
Sergey Markedonov argues, the outcome of this increasingly contentious
debate will have a larger impact than many might think
(http://www.politcom.ru/8643.html).
If the civic model is adopted,
there is a chance that the partially recognized republic of Abkhazia
could develop in a more or less stable country on its own. But if the
purely ethnic definition is used, that could undermine social and
political cohesion within Abkhazia and increase tensions between
Abkhazia and its neighbors.
The current political debate was
touched off by the passage by the republic’s parliament of amendments
to Abkhazia’s law on citizenship that provided for offering citizenship
to ethnic Georgians who had returned from the Gal district and who had
not compromised themselves in the eyes of Abkhazia by fighting against
that republic.
On August 5, representatives of the Abkhaz
opposition assembled in Sukhumi and demanded that President Sergey
Bagapsh not sign the law but rather return it to the Popular Assembly
for reworking. That is what he did, and the following day, the
parliament appointed a working group to come up with yet another
revision in the republic’s citizenship law.
As Markedonov points
out, all Abkhaz citizenship legislation (as adopted in 1993, 1995,
2002, and 2005) has been based on two “underlying principles.” On the
one hand, all the republic’s citizenship laws have excluded from
citizenship any who “with arms in their hands fought against the Abkhaz
Republic.”
On the other, he continues, the legislation has been
ethno-centric in each case, clearly defining Abkhazia as “in the first
instance” a state of the ethnic Abkhaz, intended as a home not only for
those of that community living there now but also for the descendents
of Abkhaz who were expelled from the North Caucasus in the 1860s and
1870s.
To those ends, the paragraph that the parliament initially
voted to amend at the end of July specified three groups who could
acquire Abkhaz citizenship: ethnic Abkhaz regardless of their place or
residence or passport nationality, representatives of other ethnic
groups who have lived in the republic “not less than five years,” and
those who acquire it through naturalization.
A major reason why the
issue of the relationship of citizenship and ethnicity is so sensitive
in Abkhazia is that unlike Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, “where,”
Markedonov points out, “there exist dominating ethnic communities, the
Abkhaz even after military actions and the expulsion of the Georgian
population do not form an overwhelming majority.”
Given population
shifts during the course of the violence, there are today no
universally agreed upon statistics for the ethnic make-up of Abkhazia’s
population, but Markedonov suggests that there are 70-80,000 Abkhaz, a
roughly the same number of Armenians, some 35-45,000 ethnic Russians,
and 55-60,000 ethnic Georgians concentrated in the Gal district.
Consequently, the parliament’s approval of a measure that would extend
citizenship to the ethnic Georgians could easily tip the political
balance in Abkhazia not only domestically but in its relations with
Georgia and other countries, and not surprisingly, therefore, many who
opposed such a move denounced its supporters as “traitors.”
This
emotional reaction has been fuelled in addition by the anticipation of
the upcoming presidential elections in Abkhazia with both the incumbent
president and his opponents concluding that victory of one or the other
may depend on just who gets to vote, something the citizenship
legislation will establish.
Extending Abkhaz citizenship to the
ethnic Georgians of the Gal district thus appears to many as an
“either/or” issue, Markedonov says: “either apartheid (this model was
realized after the completion of the conflict) or attempts at
integration (which the Abkhaz powers that be began to make very timidly
beginning in2005).”
There is, of course, “a third variant,” the
Moscow expert points out, yielding the territory and its people to
Georgia. “But if one speaks seriously,” that is not possible and there
is a compelling need for some compromise, possibly on extending Abkhaz
citizenship to those who lived in Gal in 1994-99 and also to ethnic
Georgians lacking Georgian citizenship.
But Markedonov suggests
that Abkhazia needs to find a way to include the ethnic Georgians in
the Abkhaz political community lest they become “a fifth column” and a
source of new tensions. As a result, he says, “Abkhaz politicians will
be forced to return to the issue of broadening the basis of Abkhaz
citizenship” whether they want to or not.
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/08/window-on-eurasia-abkhazia-caught.html
