Self-Determination Crisis Watch: Abkhazia
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Self-Determination Crisis Watch: Abkhazia
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Self-Determination Crisis Watch
26 October 2001
Vol. 1, No. 18
Editor: Tom Barry
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Self-Determination Crisis Watch is an electronic journal sponsored by
Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the
Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies.
FPIF, a "think tank without walls," is dedicated to "making the U.S. a
more responsible global leader and partner." The project has received
a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to advance new approaches to
self-determination conflicts through web-based research and analysis.
Crisis Watch presents the latest analysis about self-determination
from our international network of experts. For more information,
please visit our Self-Determination In Focus webpage at
http://www.fpif.org/selfdetermination/index.html. We encourage readers
to respond to opinions expressed in Crisis Watch as well as to send in
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Table of Contents
*** FPIF CONFLICT PROFILE: MEXICO/INDIGENOUS ***
By Laura Carlsen
*** ISLAMIC MILITANCY: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? ***
By Robert M. Cutler
*** ABKHAZIA AGAIN: THE UN HELICOPTER SHOOTDOWN ***
By Robert M. Cutler
...............
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*** ABKHAZIA AGAIN: THE UN HELICOPTER SHOOTDOWN ***
By Robert M. Cutler
(Editor's Note: Excerpted below, the entire commentary is available at
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0110abkhaz.html.)
Earlier this month, a helicopter carrying members of the United
Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was shot down after
taking off from Sukhumi, capital of the secessionist region of
Abkhazia. It crashed, killing all nine on board. At first glance, it
might seem that some party to the secessionist conflict - whether
Georgian, Russian, or Abkhaz - was trying to take advantage of the
world's attention being focused on Afghanistan, in order to pursue
tactical, strategic, or political aims in Georgia. However, the
situation is more complicated than that.
The firing came from near the Kodori Gorge, a river valley that is the
de facto boundary between the part of Abkhazia that Georgia controls
and the part that the rebels control. To get a sense of the distances
involved, it is worth noting that Kodori Gorge is about forty miles
inside the old, official administrative boundary of Abkhazia with the
rest of Georgia. It is about twelve miles down the coast from
Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi, which is in turn about twenty miles down
the coast from Gudauta. Gudauta is home to a Soviet-era air force base
that Russians agreed to evacuate this summer but have not yet done.
There are about 500 Chechen and Georgian fighters in Kodori Gorge. The
Chechens in all likelihood came from Pankisi Gorge, a region to the
northeast on the Russian border populated by Georgians of Chechen
descent (a separate group called Kists in Georgia), where Chechens
fleeing the Russian military operations have been confined since 1999.
They have been there ever since, because the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe patrols the Georgian-Russian border,
blocking their return (as well as blocking Russian incursions into
Georgia). Russia has cranked up pressure lately to be allowed to go
over the Georgia border into Pankisi Gorge in "hot pursuit" after
them.
So probably these Chechens, with a Georgian military escort, were
trying to take a long way around (like a buttonhook play), to re-enter
Russia through the North Caucasus west of Chechnya and then make their
way back. Some of the Georgians could also be partisan forces
originally from Abkhazia itself. The Abkhaz insurrection in 1992-1993
chased thousands of Georgians, as well as ethnic Armenians and others,
out of Abkhazia, creating a massive refugee problem that still hobbles
the Georgian social-services system and has important ramifications
for the country's politics.
About 1,300 Russian troops are in Abkhazia as peacekeepers from the
Commonwealth of Independent States, under the terms of a
Georgian-Abkhazian agreement from 1994 that helped to end the
fighting. Planes bombed Kodori Gorge on October 9, but the Russian
command says these were not their planes. Russian peace-keepers now
say that they will let humanitarian supplies such as food into Kodori
Gorge, where the Chechens and Georgians appear to be confined without
a clear way out, but that they will not allow other supplies such as
munitions to pass. Most recently, it is reported that Georgian
partisan forces (but not Chechens) have been skirmishing with Abkhaz
forces in Kelasuri, a suburban railway station only a few miles from
the city center of Sukhumi.
(Robert M. Cutler <[email protected]> <http://www.robertcutler.org/> is
Research Fellow, Institute of European and Russian Studies, Carleton
University.)
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