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In the post-Soviet era, four de facto independent states
borne through secessionist wars in the late 1980s and early 1990s remain
unrecognized by the “international community” (the UN, NATO,
et al.) as anything but lawless territories governed by bandits. Ironically,
these states – Transnistria (recognized internationally as part
of the ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova), Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan),
Abkhazia, and South Ossetia (Georgia) – are remarkably peaceful
and orderly, despite their reputation as “conflict zones.”
This September I decided to visit the last of these unrecognized
states I had yet to see, Abkhazia. The primary reason I never made the
trip before September was that, as an American, it’s rather difficult
to get there. Americans have to travel either by road through Georgia
or get the UN to chopper them in. Abkhazia shares a border with Russia,
but although the Abkhaz have maintained a consistently pro-Russian orientation
in their push for recognition, the Russians have cooperated with the international
blockade of Abkhazia, making sure that the border remains closed to foreigners.
Moscow has likewise refused to recognize Abkhazia as anything but a “separatist
state.”
In 1918, during the Russian Civil War, the Abkhaz appealed
to the Soviet leaders in Moscow to declare Abkhazia self-governing and
allow it to participate in the formation of the USSR as a constituent
unit. The Georgian Menshevik government quickly toppled the local Abkhaz
administration, but by May 1921 the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Mensheviks
in Tbilisi. At this time, Soviet Nationalities Commissar Joseph Stalin
tried but failed to make Abkhazia an “autonomous republic”
(ASSR) within the Georgian SSR. The new Soviet Georgian government recognized
the new Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), which became a signatory
to the USSR treaty in 1922, acting as an equal with all Soviet republics
including Georgia.
This situation lasted until 1931, by which time Stalin
had secured control of the Soviet government and began to subordinate
Abkhazia to Georgia. Five years later, Stalin had fulfilled his wish:
Abkhazia was an ASSR within the Georgian SSR. In December 1936, former
Abkhaz SSR chief Nestor Lakoba died suddenly after an evening with Georgian
leader Lavrenty Beria. Lakoba was declared an “enemy of the people,”
Beria became head of the Soviet secret police, and the “Georgianization”
of Abkhazia began in earnest. Stalin imposed a Georgian script on the
Abkhaz alphabet, removed the word “Abkhazia” from all official
correspondence, and declared everyone in Abkhazia a Georgian. He closed
Abkhaz schools and replaced them with Georgian ones. With Beria’s
help he forced a series of migrations to drastically change Abkhazia’s
demographics. This brought a rapid increase in the Georgian population
at the expense of the Abkhaz.
The anti-Abkhaz drive partially reversed with the deaths
of Stalin and Beria in 1953. A Cyrillic Abkhaz script was introduced,
Abkhaz schools opened, and local self-government returned. However, a
new Abkhaz push to secede from Georgia and unite with Russia (RSFSR) was
resisted by Moscow and in the late 1980s the leaders of Georgia’s
independence movement demanded annulment of all Soviet-created “autonomies”
on Georgian territory: the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and Adzharia
and the autonomous oblast (district) of South Ossetia. In 1990 Abkhazia
declared itself a sovereign republic, and in March 1991, Abkhazia’s
voters approved Gorbachev’s referendum on a new Union of Sovereign
States, as the USSR was imploding.
In 1992, the Abkhaz government proposed a federal arrangement
to fill the void arising from Tbilisi’s abolition of all Soviet-era
laws. But 20 days after the UN recognized independent Georgia under ex-Georgian
SSR boss Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgian forces attacked Abkhazia. The land
offensive – led by Georgian “National Guard” leader
Tengiz Kitovani and paramilitary Mkhedrioni (“Horsemen”) leader
Jaba Ioseliani – was brutal. After his troops entered Abkhazia –
amid atrocity and destruction – Kitovani said: “I cannot stop
my men; they need at least three days to satisfy themselves.” By
late 1993, Abkhaz forces had driven Georgian forces out of the territory.
The majority of Abkhazia’s 200,000-plus Georgians fled southeast
to occupy Soviet-era hotels and tower blocks, the most conspicuous eyesores
of Georgian cities for years to come. In May 1994 the UN sanctioned deployment
of a CIS peacekeeping force (CISPKF) to separate the parties. The CISPKF
now patrols the Abkhaz-Georgian border, “observed” by a UN
observer mission (UNOMIG). In May 1998 fighting erupted in Abkhazia’s
Gali region, where tens of thousands of Georgians had suddenly returned.
A few hundred were killed and thousands fled the area. A few abductions
and killings have occurred on the border since, notably the kidnapping
of UN personnel in 1999.
Today the Abkhaz government seeks international recognition
of Abkhazia as an independent republic. They want to be a Russian “protectorate”
enjoying “free association” with Russia, similar to the relationship
between the US and, say, the Mariana Islands. Unfortunately for them,
warmongering Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili enjoys huge support
in America and the West and has threatened to shoot Russians visiting
Abkhazia on holiday. This July a Georgian patrol boat even fired on a
Turkish ship off Abkhazia’s coast. Worse, if the UN is powerless
to stop US defiance of Security Council resolutions, what can it do in
the face of America siding with Tbilisi over Abkhazia? So, though Russia
has been less than steadfast in support of allies like Abkhazia, it remains
Abkhazia’s best hope of staying out of Georgia. A hopeful sign for
ordinary Abkhaz was Moscow’s recent decision to open the Russian-Abkhaz
border to rail traffic, partially breaking the embargo. And, Abkhazia
is luckier than the other unrecognized states of the ex-USSR in that has
a seaport. Still, it has suffered economically from both Georgian and
Russian policy.
Flying into Trabzon from Istanbul, I took the three-hour
car journey to Saarpi, on the Turkish-Georgian border, and from there
another three-hour ride to the Abkhaz-Georgian border. I had faxed and
called the Abkhaz foreign ministry and UNOMIG to alert them I was arriving,
since I didn’t know what to find when I got to the checkpoint at
Gali. I could have arranged for the UN to take me into Abkhazia by helicopter
or car but didn’t feel right about it. I was going on behalf of
an independent human rights group and wanted to stay as “independent”
as possible. Besides, going in by UN helicopter or SUV felt craven and
contemptible, as if I was too afraid of the natives to look them in the
eye. So I did it all on my own.
I got to Gali in mid-afternoon, showed the chief of the
Abkhaz border guard unit my passport and copies of the letters I had faxed
to the Abkhaz foreign ministry and UNOMIG, and waited to be allowed through.
It was Thursday, Sept. 30th, and elections for a new president of Abkhazia
were on Sunday. Plastered to one of the border guards’ metal shacks
was a campaign poster of Sergei Bagapsh, an ex-prime minister of Abkhazia
now heading an energy company and challenging Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba,
anointed successor of outgoing President Vladislav Ardzinba. The Abkhaz
government had decided (wisely) not to accredit international observers,
so I was going as a human rights worker and journalist, approved by the
ministry of foreign affairs.
The border guards told me they hadn’t received any information from
the foreign ministry about my arrival and they couldn’t let me past
the checkpoint until they got the go-ahead. Besides, if I wanted to proceed
I had to use their designated car and driver – at their designated
price – because it was unsafe to go in any other vehicles. The foreign
ministry had assured me I could take any of the taxis waiting at the crossing,
I said, pointing; they told me they would make some calls and hold onto
my documents in the meantime. They couldn’t let me go off on my
own. What if I got kidnapped or got my head cut off? Now I knew my chain
was being yanked, as if Abkhazia were Baghdad. They said I should have
arranged for someone to meet me at the border, as the two BBC girls had
done. I pictured Sarah Rainsford, the BBC’s Caucasus correspondent,
breezing over the border in a UN or “Halo Trust” SUV, smugly
getting into a prearranged car to be taken to her prearranged hotel to
write her prearranged report.
The chief disappeared, assuring he would return in half
an hour. He didn’t, and after an hour and a half his subordinates
told me it was a holiday, “Victory Day,” the anniversary of
the day the Abkhaz drove Georgian forces out of Abkhazia. My calls to
Sukhum, the capital, were in vain. The taxis had gone. I was stuck. After
nightfall one of the guards handed me back my documents and told me I
was free to go – back the way I came, on foot, about a mile across
a bridge to the Georgian side, past a Russian military base. What if there
were no cars or taxis waiting on the other side, I asked? He shrugged
and said I was free to stay the night with them if I wanted. I didn’t,
but I wasn’t going anywhere.
Soon several of them were carrying plates of food into
the shack with the Bagapsh poster on it. The feast consisted of a white,
pudding-looking substance – “mamaliga” – a big
maize patty like solidified grits. They also brought out the bottles and
invited me to partake. They were eating the mamaliga with their hands,
breaking off pieces and dipping it in a spicy sauce. There were no napkins,
and a cluster of bugs was buzzing around the light bulb hanging from the
ceiling. I had my first taste of goat meat, like a bland version of lamb,
each mouthful of which I sterilized with vodka from a greasy glass.
I noticed about thirty uniformed men standing in formation
in the road. A man I took to be an officer, whose uniform bore no insignia
indicating superior rank, addressed them. When he finished, the men pointed
their rifles in the air and commenced firing for about a minute. This
was the Abkhaz fireworks display. After the firing stopped, an artillery
cannon sounded off in the distance from the Georgian side. I was handed
a Kalashnikov and urged to have a go, which I did. Toast after toast from
each soldier led to a request for a few words from me. I said any nation
that paid a price in blood to secure territory deserved to determine its
own fate, and I wanted the best for them. What I really wanted was a shower.
I stumbled drunkenly off to sleep on a creaky cot with a filthy pillow
in a dirty little room.
In the morning the chief reappeared, and without a word
of apology for not having returned when he said he would the night before,
waved me across the shell-strewn ground to a waiting car. A man in camouflage
fatigues drove me to Sukhum at about a hundred miles an hour and insisted
on telling me – as he weaved through endless cows in the road –
how he loved America. He had gone to Chicago and San Francisco with a
folk dancing troupe and had even fallen in love with an American woman.
I put the odds at 50-50 I would make it to Sukhum alive. He dropped me
off at the UN hotel, which turned me away, informing me that guests were
required to have “special invitations.” I proceeded by foot
to the “Gosdacha” about a hundred yards back on the same road,
but that was full – of election observers from the CIS and other
unrecognized states. Eventually I wound up at the “Abkhazia”
rest house, a $15-a-night palace with warped floorboards in the room,
a flimsy lock on the door, and swarthy guys in tracksuits roaming the
hallways.
Sukhum pleasantly surprised me. The only postwar pictures
I had seen showed bombed-out buildings and desolate, deserted streets.
A Russian friend of mine had told me the place was “worse than South
Ossetia.” I prepared for the worst. What I found was a buzzing metropolis
in drastic contrast to cities I had passed through in western Georgia
on the way. Municipalities like Poti and Zugdidi felt dead, many of their
inhabitants having simply up and left (estimates of the number of people
that have left Georgia since the Soviet Union broke up reach as high as
fifty percent). Even Adzharia’s port capital of Batumi had transformed
for the worse since only five months earlier, when the local government
was overthrown and the region brought under direct central rule. The central
marketplace, once overflowing with food, was now an empty, closed ruin.
In a place where utilities used to be practically free, some buildings
had electricity and water only half an hour a day. Not so in Sukhum, with
its palm tree-lined streets and stunning, alpine backdrop. The buildings
ruined in 1993 by retreating Georgian troops put a bit of a damper on
things but I knew very quickly I would like it there.
Election posters were everywhere. Khadzhimba was being
branded the “candidate of power” by Bagapsh’s people
and local civil society groups (barely able to conceal their preference
for the energy company head). Rumor had it Khadzhimba had received an
endorsement from the Russian government, but I saw little sign of active
Kremlin sponsorship of Candidate Raul. The Victory Day appearance by ultra-nationalist
Russian MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky in a stadium in central Sukhum hadn’t
convinced me. Zhirinovsky’s typical black comedy performance included
a warning to the Abkhaz that if they didn’t vote for Khadzhimba,
Russia would close the border, take away their Russian passports, and
stop paying pensions. Khadzhimba just looked embarrassed.
A Russian journalist friend of mine from Moscow met me
in the morning the day before election day, outside the Russian Theater
in Sukhum, and we did the rounds with the campaign staffs. She couldn’t
conceal her enthusiasm for Bagapsh, saying she found Bagapsh’s people
more “interesting” than Khadzhimba’s. I couldn’t
figure out why. Khadzhimba, a man in his forties, was a decorated veteran
who had served on the front as an intelligence chief in the 1992-93 war.
At least his campaign had some color. The sixty-ish Bagapsh just looked
a typical gray, former “apparatchik.” An ex-Party Committee
chief of one of Abkhazia’s southern districts, he had rounded up
a bunch of cronies and put up enough cash for a takeover bid. I had seen
his type a hundred times.
My friend wanted to observe the election in Gali, close
to the border with Georgia. It was reputedly dangerous bandit country
so a journalist named Nugzar, editor-in-chief of a local newspaper with
a pro-Bagapsh editorial slant, would accompany us. In fact, the whole
day had a pro-Bagapsh slant, as we were taken around to meet Georgians
living in Abkhazia and assured that everything was going smoothly with
the voting.
Beholden to the genial Nugzar for transport, I kept my
opinions to myself. Armed paramilitaries were inside the polling stations,
casually swinging shoulder-slung AKs in the direction of unarmed bystanders.
This situation was frightening enough for me but how, I wondered, did
ordinary voters feel, casting ballots with armed guards at their backs?
One commission chairman, a woman, suddenly announced she was too nervous
to answer run-of-the-mill questions, unsurprising considering about six
armed men were crammed into a ten-by-ten room with her. Some of the polling
places had only Bagapsh campaign posters up, a clear violation of the
law. Even Khadzhimba’s campaign HQ in Gali had a Bagapsh poster
on the front door, making credible the Khadzhimba staff’s post-election
claim that the head of their observer team in Gali had been working for
Bagapsh all along. At the polling station where I watched the count, the
lights went out three minutes before the polls closed and stayed off for
twenty minutes. Electricity company head Bagapsh beat Khadzhimba in this
precinct by 257 to 47. Khadzhimba may have been a “candidate of
power” but it looked like Bagapsh controlled the switch.
The day after the election, Khadzhimba’s supporters
rallied in a big theater to protest the election. Bagapsh’s camp
was already claiming victory, even though their absolute majority hovered
around 51%, and returns from Gali were such a shambles there was no way
they could credibly claim outright triumph. The chairman of the Central
Election Commission (CEC) pleaded with journalists to report results as
only “preliminary,” since there were serious problems, especially
in Gali, where voting lists were full of identical signatures. People
were voting with a document called “Form 9,” a paper for people
who have lost their passports, but no serial numbers had been entered
as law required. Khadzhimba’s camp suspected thousands of people
may have crossed into Abkhazia from Georgia on unguarded footbridges on
polling day, then driven around in Bagapsh buses for multiple voting on
supplementary lists. All they needed was “Form 9,” issued
by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), alleged by Khadzhimba’s
staff to be controlled by Bagapsh allies. The thuggish, belligerent internal
affairs minister took offense at my questions after election day and told
me to direct all questions to the CEC.
I decided to issue a preliminary statement about what
I had seen in Gali. The Khadzhimba campaign staff had it translated into
Russian and loudly publicized it. I had opened a can of worms, for which
Khadzhimba’s supporters thanked me profusely, and soon the Bagapsh
people started resorting to desperate measures. A small bomb went off
at Bagapsh campaign HQ, conveniently causing no injury or damage to the
building but blowing out the windows next door. Bagapsh publicly proclaimed
the incident a “warning” from the “regime,” but
already Khadzhimba’s people looked like the naïve, wet-behind-the-ears
brigade, end-run by experienced older politicians.
Days later, by a vote of 11-4, the CEC declared Bagapsh
the winner by 50.08% and the CEC chairman resigned, accusing Bagapsh’s
people of coercing the commission members. Khadzhimba took his case to
the Supreme Court, saying the CEC didn’t have the authority to declare
a winner before all results were final, and the law prohibited repeat
elections in only one district. He had the law on his side, but who had
the people voted for on polling day? By now, Georgian government and media
were carping that “Russian Security Service employee” Raul
Khadzhimba had tried to steal the election from Bagapsh, even though Saakashvili
and his ministers had always insisted it made no difference who won because
the election was illegitimate. One Georgian TV station showed Georgians
in Gali saying they had voted for Bagapsh. The message: Georgians prefer
Bagapsh. Who, I wondered, would the electorate of Abkhazia vote for in
a run-off now that Bagapsh’s true colors were out?
As I was leaving Abkhazia, a group of men standing by
the road near a village approached the car as it slowed down. My driver
knew them. They said they had seen me on TV, and reached into the car
to shake my hand and thank me. Bagapsh had tried to steal the election,
they said, but he wouldn’t get away with it. As we drove on, my
driver told me the men were Khadzhimba supporters but were always arguing
with their wives, who preferred Bagapsh.
Heading back through depopulated western Georgia, I tried
to put presidential politics in Abkhazia behind me and think of America,
where international election observers would be deployed in significant
numbers for the first time. But I would never forget that a small, unrecognized
state had held a real, if untidy, election where no one could predict
a winner. It was a real competition, real “democracy,” whether
anyone recognized it or not.
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OTR Politics - December, 2004