openDemocracy - 16 April 2010
Seventeen years after civil
war, Abkhazia is finally recovering under Russian protection. But many
inside the country are unhappy, fearing association with their big
brother will result in another loss of independence.
Before Vladislav Ardzinba died on March 4, the academic who led Abkhazia to freedom from Georgia surely reflected on his life’s work with great satisfaction.
Russia recognised this little Black Sea
statelet as independent in 2008, after it intervened in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, a second republic considered a rebel province by
Georgia. It was a dramatic step – being the first time Russia had
recognised one of the Caucasus’ mountain nations as independent since
the 18th century – and was rejected in Georgia and the West, where
Abkhazia is often seen as little more than a Russian colony. In the
face of Western opposition, only three countries have followed Russia’s
lead and dealt directly with the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi, leaving Moscow
as unrivalled in its influence. This now threatens to undermine the
very independence Abkhazia fought for. The Abkhaz beat their Georgian
enemies, many locals ask, but can they resist their Russian friends?
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Map of Abkhazia
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Russian tourist numbers have soared.
Russian companies have resurfaced the main roads. Visitors sit in new
restaurants, with gaudy decorations and surly waitresses in the best
Russian style. New high-end hotels gleam in central Sukhumi, and
ordinary residents are charging higher prices for their spare rooms.
And it is not all tourism. New Russian investment is going into the
railway that runs along the coast, a Russian oil company is prospecting
in the waters off Abkhazia’s Black Sea coast, and the coal-laden trucks
are rumbling through Tkuarchal.
In the face of such new prosperity, why are many Abkhaz so unhappy?
"If we’re agreeing to a joint venture,
the controlling stake must belong to the republic. I am pro-Russian
myself. Russia guarantees our safety, so we can make concessions, but
not to this extent”, Gennady Alamia, a tough-looking opposition leader and veteran of the national movement, grumbled to IWPR last week.
Alamia was Ardzinba’s deputy in
Abkhazia’s Supreme Soviet. Elected in 1990, he was one of the intimates
present in the nationalist leader’s office when he first heard Georgian
tanks had crossed the bridge into Abkhazia in 1992. As far as he is concerned, Sergei Bagapsh,
who succeeded Ardzinba as president, is handing the country over to the
Russians, and sacrificing the very gains that Ardzinba won from the war.
"Vladislav Ardzinba knew that you had
to make concessions to resolve something, but he also knew that endless
concessions could only lead to destruction, just like making no
concessions”.
Alamia, who arranged arms supplies from
Chechnya during the war, would not be pleased to hear it but in this
viewpoint he has a lot in common with many Georgians, who have long
argued that Abkhazia is not independent at all, but has been stolen
from Georgia by Russia.
Under Georgian law, Abkhazia is
referred to as "occupied territory” and Gia Baramia, chairman of the
Georgia-backed Abkhazian government-in-exile, which is housed in an
ageing office block in Tbilisi, said Moscow invented the Abkhaz
national movement to undermine Georgia’s own desire for independence.
"Georgia was one of the first republics
that wanted to move out of the USSR and the head of the KGB openly said
that if Georgia moved to independence, they would play the Abkhazian
card”, Baramia, a smooth 44-year-old ex-diplomat, said.
"This myth of independence is nothing. It was invented by Russia to serve their interests”.
Such arguments are common among
Georgians from Abkhazia. They made up half of the Abkhazian population
before the war, but they fled the vengeful Abkhaz when their own forces
collapsed, and their share of the Abkhazian population has fallen from
quarter of a million to around 100,000. Many of the refugees have never
shaken off what happened to them, and still live in old schools or
kindergartens.
They are bitter about losing their
homes, about losing their savings and, above all, about losing their
status and becoming just another refugee.
One floor below Gia Baramia’s office,
old men who were elected to the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet alongside
Ardzinba, are still called deputies, since Georgia has not been able to
hold elections to replace them or supplement their numbers. They seem
underemployed and will happily sit for hours to talk to visitors about
how Abkhazia is a Russian invention, and how they were tricked out of
their homes and lands.
Both sides are armed with facts and
figures to make their case. They use different census figures to argue
about the extent of Georgian immigration into Abkhazia, and different
historical sources to argue over who was there first: the Georgians or
the Abkhaz.
Back in Abkhazia, the most persuasive
argument for Abkhaz predominance is that of the pagan religious
leaders. Zaur Chichba, keeper of the holy grove above Achandara, can
point to a network of sacred sites that spans the whole territory of
Abkhazia. They are, he says, proof that this land was Abkhaz before it
was Georgian. But anyone who tries to visit all seven of the sites is
confronted by an eloquent counter-argument in the Georgians’ favour:
the mute horrors of scores of empty villages.
For mile after mile in eastern
Abkhazia, once-flourishing agricultural settlements which produced tea,
mandarins or hazelnuts for the Soviet market, are deserted. The fruit
trees are choked with creepers and the houses are rotting away. Often,
their concrete staircases are all that survive.
Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili
offers sometimes absurd statistics about the number of Georgians forced
to flee these homes in Abkhazia, but there is no doubt of the tragedy
implicit in the abandoned houses and fields. Tbilisi insists these
refugees be allowed home before any deal on Abkhazia’s status can be
reached, and their votes are an important consideration in any Georgian
election.
There is a danger, however, that the
continued importance of the past, and the debates over who does or does
not have a right to live in Abkhazia, blinds us to what has happened
since the war. Abkhazia, like Georgia and Russia, has changed since
Soviet times and has built a political culture of its own.
In 2004, when Bagapsh was elected to
succeed Ardzinba, he did so in defiance of Russia. Abkhaz friends of
mine like to boast that the elections were the first "Orange
Revolution”, since they predated the upheavals in Ukraine.
Despite heavy support from the Kremlin
for Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba, Bagapsh won the poll and,
eventually, Russia was forced to accept him as leader of the little
state. The result was close, but it was a humiliation for Russia, since
Putin had been careful to personally sponsor Khadzhimba’s candidacy. It
was a strong sign that, whatever the Georgians said, Abkhazia is not
Russia, where the Kremlin’s candidate always wins.
Perhaps the self-confidence and
independence of the Abkhazian politicians stemmed from their victory in
1993. Ardzinba was not a man likely to take being lectured by a
foreigner about how to run his country. He had after all led the
out-numbered Abkhaz – just 90,000 of them in 1992, as against
Abkhazia’s 250,000 Georgians – to a total victory.
But, under Bagapsh, there are already signs that Abkhazia’s distinct political culture is being chipped away. Before seeking re-election
last year, he set up a political party called United Abkhazia which,
like Putin’s United Russia, served less as an ideological grouping than
as a stairway to power. His election result – victory over Khadzhimba,
in the first round, with 61 percent of the vote -- was also distinctly
reminiscent (?) to anyone who has lived in Russia.
So far, there has been none of the
violence that has marred the political scene in Moscow, but journalists
have felt the breeze from the north. Inal Khashig, editor of Abkhazia’s
only really independent newspaper, Chegemskaya Pravda, was taken down
to a deserted beach and threatened by two of Bagapsh’s relatives after
they felt he had been disrespectful.
In the small world of Abkhazian
journalism, it made a big splash, but not perhaps as much as the fate
of Anton Krivenyuk. Krivenyuk, a passionate and confident young
opposition journalist, enraged the government with criticism on a
Russian web site of Bagapsh’s policy towards Russia.
His strong hints that the government
was corrupt brought first a furious call from Bagapsh’s spokesman, then
a summons from the prosecutor, then a criminal case against him, then a
conviction for libelling the president.
"I cannot understand why it was
necessary. They made this big noise, and now my name is known
everywhere. People stop their cars and shake my hand. I only wrote an
article on segodnya.ru and a few people read it. Now everyone knows
it”, he said as we sat on one of the promenade benches looking over the
Black Sea.
"The press is currently free from the
government, and you have to say that the mentality is different here to
Russia. They are copying the Russian model, but they do not seem to
understand we live in a different country, and it will not work here”.
His optimism only ran a little way,
however. Abkhazia’s only real friend is Russia since the other
countries that have recognised its independence – Venezuela, Nicaragua
and tiny Nauru – are all so far away. That means the Russian influence
can only grow, and the institutions created since 1993 may struggle to
stand up to it.
"Bagapsh works with Soviet methods. And this is a poor society, you can buy someone with a 1998 Mercedes”, he said.
"If no competition appears in Abkhazia
to make us more like the West then there will no way to create more
open courts, a more open society, and that it is bad. It is not good
that only one border is open”.
Many Abkhaz are frustrated that Western
countries refuse to take their claim to independence seriously. They
all know the historical arguments supporting their claim to statehood –
how Abkhazia joined both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as its
own unit, not as part of Georgia – and are baffled as to why they are
not listened to.
A friend of mine called Dima Palba, with weary humour, unveiled his own plan one evening over drinks.
"We should declare war on Britain, then
immediately surrender. Then we would become part of the British
Empire”, he said, with a sort of twisted logic. "But of course, you’d
probably ignore us even if we did, and we will become more and more
like Russia”.
Once Dima started showing me parallels
with Russia, his argument became obvious. Abkhazia is not a
more-or-less mono-ethnic state like Armenia or, indeed, Georgia. More
non-Abkhaz than Abkhaz live in Abkhazia, and that makes it resemble
nothing so much as one of Russia’s autonomous republics.
The only ethnic kin of the Abkhaz – the
Circassians – are scattered in three autonomous regions in southern
Russia. In two of them, Adygea and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, they are a
minority, as are the Abkhaz in Abkhazia. It does not take too much
imagination to see Bagapsh taking his place alongside these regional
leaders at a Kremlin banquet.
The Circassians of the third of those
regions – Kabardino-Balkaria – were the last highlander nation that
Russia recognised as independent, back in 1739. The Abkhaz might be
wise to reflect on those Circassians’ fate, before acquiescing too
readily to Bagapsh’s embrace of Putin and his government.
Russia moved troops into Kabarda
despite pledging to respect its freedoms, and crushed all opposition.
Today, 90 percent of the world’s Circassians live in the Middle East,
where their ancestors fled after total defeat, and an independent
Kabarda has been swept out of memory. Official histories, banners and
television claim Kabarda has been a contented part of Russia for 450
years.
Western powers should wonder if their
unachievable demand for a Georgian Abkhazia is not counterproductive.
Perhaps an independent Abkhazia might be better than a Russian one.
Oliver Bullough
is Caucasus editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. His
book Let Our Fame be Great, journeys among the defiant people of the
Caucasus is published in the UK by Allen Lane, and will be published by
Basic Books in the United States.
Source: openDemocracy |