The Sheila Variations

Georgia - Part V - Georgia's Breakaway Regions

I am posting these in chronological order, which, unfortunately, means that you all will see them backwards. I credit the authors who have written about Georgia and from whom I got this information.

1. So the first thing I posted was in regards to Georgia's long long history.

2. My second post was about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

3. The third post is about Shevardnadze - the return of Shevardnadze to save the former Soviet republic from civil war. (The reason I have unearthed these posts is because of the recent chaos in Georgia ... I had gone back to read through them myself and thought I would bring them over from my old blog to share.)

4. This post is about the Georgians themselves.

And my last post on Georgia (printed below) is about all of the "breakaway regions" in the country. A lot of this information may be a bit out of date - things change so fast over there - but again: it is great context.

GEORGIA'S BREAKAWAY REGIONS

Now if you look on a map, (scroll down a bit when page opens to see the map of the area) Georgia is a relatively small country. It is the size of West Virginia with 5 million people. But size does not matter (for once). The place is as complicated and as intricate and as messed-up as the entire former Russian Imperium altogether. Its location is one reason for this. It sits on the crucial land-bridge joining the Russian north with the Persian and Turkish south. Historically, this land-bridge has been marched over in countless wars, struggles, invasions, whatever. And every invasion, every war, every conqueror left its mark on the look and feel of Georgia.

There are those stories (which have nothing to do with Georgia, but bear with me) about ancient ruins in Afghanistan which, due to the almost constant state of war in that country for the last thirty years, have never been fully excavated, but amazing initial discoveries were made. For example: ancient Hellenistic coins and artifacts were found in ancient ruins all over Afghanistan, which meant that Alexander the Great actually had moved farther east than anyone had ever realized. There are also, in the ancient ruins, buildings with Hellenistic features, columns and porticoes, etc. The ancient war leaving its mark.

Georgia is filled with such conqueror's legacies. Evidence of that history in the architecture, the street names, the ancient churches. Georgia has a long and complicated history with Turkey, with Persia. Both countries have left indelible marks on what Georgia looks like. "Georgia for Georgians" is all well and good, but one cannot deny that the history here is extremely multicultural. And always has been.

One of the most complicated things about Georgia is all of the "breakaway regions" and "autonomous regions" it has. There are people basically who live in one specific TOWN who say, "We do not like Georgia. Our ancestors were originally from blankity-blank so we now call our town BlankityBlank."

Shevardnadze certainly has his work cut out for him. (Note: I wrote these when he was still there.)

There's the region called Abkhazia, in Northwestern Georgia, which has declared itself autonomous from Georgia. Again, it really doesn't matter if Abkhazia announces to the whole world: "Hi, there. We are our OWN THING now." If this autonomy is not recognized by the world at large, then nothing will change, and maps will stay the same. There are many countries out there right now who have declared themselves to the world, and the world turns away. "Nope. You are not legitimate. We won't give you the time of day." Afghanistan under the Taliban was one example. Burma (or is it Myanmar??) is another.

So Abkhazia. Abkhazia is supposedly very beautiful and the people who live there have dreams of turning the place into a resort. It is on the Black Sea so the place has a very Mediterranean feel, with a lovely climate. But as long as they are attached to Georgia, and are somehow beholden to a government (a government which has not yet completely gained control of the country), they will be stuck. Trapped. Their dream is to liberate themselves from Georgia and go on and become the "Riviera of the Caucasus".

Georgia of course recognizes the potential tourist gold mine that is Abkhazia. It could be a cash cow for the country if they ever got their act together. Right now, it is still too dangerous and chaotic, but once the problems are resolved, then Georgia can build up Abkhazia, and let the tourist dollars start rolling in.

But Abkhazia wants none of this. They want to do their OWN THING.

In 1990, 100,000 Abkhazians declared their intention to separate from Georgia and form their own state. Georgia basically said, in the midst of the civil war, "In your DREAMS. You ain't goin' NOWHERE." Russia got involved, on the side of the separatists, which made things worse. Russia backed the rebellion, supplying arms and support. Full-out war ensued, leading to 10,000 deaths.

Additionally, the Abkhazians set out to "cleanse" their region of ethnic Georgians. I hate that word in this context. Cleanse. 200,000 Georgians were killed or displaced. The country was suddenly filled with internal refugees wandering around. Gamsakhurdia was president at the time. The refugees were kept from leaving Abkhazia by the main road due to Gamsakhurdia's road blocks. He had cordoned off "Abkhazia". The thousands of people, fleeing for their lives, had to detour through the Caucasus mountains, which are not gentle rolling hills. It is a daunting mountain range. Thousands of Georgians died in this attempt.

The ethnicity of the Abkhazians is Caucasian, but their tribe is older and stronger than most. They were the last people to be conquered by the Russians. There had actually been plans before Stalin's death to exile the entire Abkhazian population to Siberia because they were such troublemakers, so hard to govern and subdue.

Then there's another small breakaway region which is known by two different names, but the official one is Ajaria. The population here is mainly Muslim, but they speak a Georgian dialect. They feel very connected to Turkey, right over the border. Lenin created Ajaria in 1921, using the whole different religion thing as the perfect opportunity to divide and conquer. The people who live here, as Muslims, do not want to be part of Orthodox Christian Georgia. They want autonomy. Turkey, right next door, with a long hostile relationship with Georgia, supports Ajaria, and undermines Georgia's conciliatory attempts.

Ajaria consists of one town and the area surrounding the town: Batumi.

Batumi has an interesting history. It sits at the point where the Anatolian (Turkish) plateau meets the Caucasus mountains. Amazing how geography determines history. In ancient times, Batumi was a port on the Black Sea. It was either a Roman, a Byzantine, or a Persian port, depending on the year. Batumi was a jewel to be captured. Whoever controlled Batumi controlled the traffic on the Black Sea. So it kept changing hands throughout history, until it fell under the Ottoman Empire, which was like night falling. A perpetual night. Batumi then goes through centuries of Ottoman rule. In 1877 the Russians captured Batumi. In 1918, the Turks retook Batumi. After the armistice, 15,000 British troops replaced the Turks. Within two years, the Bolsheviks grabbed control again, and the British left.

Batumi's border was snapped shut for decades. Incomprehensible. This once cosmopolitan seaport, host to every culture, open to the Black Sea, in the land of the Golden Fleece, closed down. Like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory: nobody every goes in, and nobody ever comes out. Batumi, a small city, was trapped between two massive regional superpowers: NATO-member Turkey on one side, and Communist Soviet Union on the other.

But in recent years, Ajaria is no longer called Ajaria, it is now called Aslanistan. Here's why (it's kind of like The Sopranos, Georgia-style). The region is now run by a warlord (a kind of cuddly benign warlord, but a warlord nonetheless) named Aslan Abashidze. Hence, "Aslanistan". This would be like Rudy Guiliani saying, "Manhattan is no longer Manhattan. It is now GuilianiLand. " Or "New York City, from this day forth, will be called RudyStan." Abashidze is a criminal. An extortionist, a bully. He has set up "customs" offices all along the border with Turkey, which bribes everybody coming in or going out. It is an openly criminal enterprise and it's how Abashidze subsidizes his power over the region.

Also, and here's where it gets dangerous and ominous: Aslan is a Muslim. He has packed his bureaucracy with Muslim officials. Batumi has a mosque on every corner, the construction of which was financed by Aslan, who wants to institutionalize the difference between Ajaria and Georgia. Georgia is a country of infidels. Aslan wants nothing to do with them.

Robert Kaplan, in his book, Eastward to Tartary says the following about Abashidze's obsession with having more mosques than churches:

In the ex-Soviet Caucasus, where religion was less a factor in ethnic identity than in the Balkans, this was a clear case of a modern politician inventing hatreds retrospectively.

Abashidze was a small man with a large ego and a noble surname: his grandfather Mehmet had played a key role in brokering the agreement between Lenin and Ataturk that settled the border here. Aslan, as he was called, liked to receive visiting dignitaries in the new tennis courts he had built, which were the pride of his warlord fiefdom ... His offices were generic Communist style: massive white-marble hallways and dark red carpets that dwarfed a metal detector and a small cheap table. Around the latter stood a group of tough-looking young Georgians, who carried cell phones and sidearms and rubbed their unshaven cheeks as they inspected my Atlantic Monthly business card. Outside the office was a militiaman, also unshaven. His shoes were worn down to the soles, his uniform was missing buttons, and he was wearing one of those grandiose visored caps favored by the Soviet military. His breath stank, and he asked me for a cigarette.

The official face of government here was uncivil, untamed.

And last but not least we have Ossetia. Ossetia is a region of north-central Georgia. Ossetes are both Muslims and Orthodox Christians. They speak a language akin to Persian. Their religious diversity helped keep them neutral in czarist Russia's campaigns and pogroms against purely Muslim people: the Chechens, the Ingush, the Dagestanis.

Ossetia is also in a very important strategic position. It straddles the north and south slopes of the High Caucasus, halfway in between the Black and the Caspian seas.

Muslim/Christian Ossetia emerged as an ally (it's amazing how these things work) to the atheistic Soviet Union.

Both Lenin and Stalin adopted the Ossetes as favored people, not to be messed with or deported or slaughtered. Good of them, huh? So kind, so generous. They were given an autonomous republic on the northern slopes of the mountains, and also an autonomous region within Georgia.

The Ingush, on the other hand, were deported, en masse, in 1944. The entire population of Ingush was killed, imprisoned, shot, etc. In 1950, the Ingush who had survived all of that came back to Ossetia, their former home, to find all of the land taken up by the Ossetes. This (as I am sure you can imagine) ended up causing enormous problems. It causes problems to this day.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed. Civil war promptly broke out in Ossetia. In North Ossetia, ethnic war exploded between Ossetes and Ingush, now bitter enemies. In 1992, the Northern Ossetes expelled thousands of Ingush, adding to the number of war refugees staggering through the country. In 1993, South Ossetia declared its intention to leave Georgia and join North Ossetia in a new "Greater Ossetia."

Any time any country wants to call itself "Greater" anything, you can be sure that ethnic cleansing will follow.

Which is just what happened. War broke out. 30,000 ethnic Georgians were expelled forcibly from Ossetia. None of this has been resolved or cleaned up, but Ossetia does declare itself independent from Georgia and to get in and out you have to pay a fee. (Which is a complete racket. Picture drunken homeless soldiers, hailing cars to stop, and then forcing the people in the cars to hand over their wallets.)

There is no economy. There is no government, there is no infrastructure.

A highly volatile situation. To be watched closely.

Posted by sheila