2000-12-28 13:58:56
ОБЩЕСТВЕННОСТЬ Дато, зачем стираешь? Я помню эту прекрасную передачу Сенкевича. Абхазия была показана очень тепло, с душой. После этой передачи сразу увеличилось число отдыхающих из России на абхазских курортах. Юрий Сенкевич - ИТАБУП!
Кстати, это написал не Михаил. Меня с раннего детства зовут Сергеем.


НЕСЧАСТНЫЕ ВАША ГОСТЕВАЯ В ПОМОЙКУ ПРЕВРАТИЛАСЬ.
УМА У ВАС НЕ ХВАТАЕТ САМИ ЖЕ ЕЕ ЗАСОРЯЕТЕ, САМИ И ПОДТИРАЕТЕ.
ПОДТИРАЙТЕ ДРУГОЕ МЕСТО!

У дато и датообразных жополиздзоидов опять началась истерика. Видимо начались "критические дни". Но если пасть закрыть памперсом или прокладкой с крылышками, то будет тихо. И сухо.

ОБЩЕСТВЕННОСТЬ Дато, зачем стираешь? Я помню эту прекрасную передачу Сенкевича. Абхазия была показана очень тепло, с душой. После этой передачи сразу увеличилось число отдыхающих из России на абхазских курортах. Юрий Сенкевич - ИТАБУП!
Кстати, это написал не Михаил. Меня с раннего детства зовут Сергеем.

2000-12-28 13:44:16
Миклохо-Маклай (энтомолог) Мумба-юмба, твои дурные соплеменники-людоеды уже однажды пробовали повоевать в Абхазии. Если хочешь узнать результат, спроси у них сам, а то ты видимо не знаешь. Если хочешь сократить население Грузии еще тысяч на 15-20, заходите, милости просим в Абхазию

Тимур (а может быть правильнее Тимури?), зачем ты подписываешься под чужой статьей? Не по мужски как-то получается. ВОРОВАТЬ НЕ ХОРОШО.

Интересно - зачем грызуны скопировали статью THE DYNAMICS AND CHALLENGES OF ETHNIC CLEANSING: THE GEORGIA-ABKHAZIA CASE Катерины Дэйл от августа 1997 года? Да еще зачем-то под чужой фамилией? А потом еще и от этого виртуального плагиатора постинги посылают.
Больные люди.

Силы МВД Северной Осетии переведены на усиленный вариант несения службы




Личный состав МВД Северной Осетии сегодня переведен на усиленный вариант несения службы. В таком же режиме работают и сотрудники Управления по борьбе с организованной преступностью МВД России по Северной Осетии. Силовики не исключают, что экстремистские организации религиозного толка могут напомнить о себе в Новый год.

Дополнительное внимание требует в эти дни и ситуация на осетинском участке российско-грузинской границы. Как сообщает ИТАР-ТАСС, с начала введения здесь визового режима, в декабре задержаны 20 человек, находившихся в федеральном розыске, возбуждено 100 уголовных дел по правонарушениям различного толпа, изъято 20 единиц огнестрельного оружия, около 3 тысяч боеприпасов, предотвращены попытки контрабандного ввоза различных товаров.

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Good luck

Россия не брала на себя обязательств урегулировать конфликт между Тбилиси и Сухуми
27.12.00. 20:40

Россия "не брала на себя обязательств урегулировать конфликт между Тбилиси и Сухуми". Об этом заявил сегодня официальный представитель МИД РФ Александр Яковенко, отвечая на вопрос журналистов, правомочно ли увязывать проблему пребывания на территории Грузии российских военных баз в Батуми и Ахалкалаки с выполнением Россией своих обязательств по урегулированию абхазской проблемы, передает ИТАР-ТАСС.

Дипломат отметил, что Россия "изъявила готовность содействовать выработке сторонами в конфликте развязок по разделившим их проблемам в рамках сохранения территориальной целостности Грузии, и именно в таком контексте взяла на себя определенные обязательства". Они зафиксированы в резолюциях Совета Безопасности ООН и решениях Совета глав государств СНГ. Россия "соблюдает положения этих документов и намерена и далее активно содействовать улаживанию грузино-абхазского конфликта. Но, естественно, не подменяя стороны в конфликте и не навязывая им те решения, которые в конечном счете должны принимать сами грузины и абхазы", подчеркнул Александр Яковенко.

Попытка же увязать вопрос о дальнейшем функционировании на территории Грузии российских военных баз в Ахалкалаки и Батуми с ситуацией в урегулировании грузино-абхазского конфликта, по мнению официального представителя МИД РФ, "некорректна", поскольку предметом продолжающихся российско- грузинских переговоров является выполнение Российской Федерацией и Грузией достигнутых в ходе прошлогоднего саммита ОБСЕ в Стамбуле двусторонних договоренностей, содержащихся в совместном заявлении РФ и Грузии от 17 ноября 1999 года, а также обязательств, принятых ими по Договору об обычных вооруженных силах в Европе /ДОВСЕ/. "Но ни ДОВСЕ, ни российско-грузинское заявление не содержат никаких упоминаний об абхазском урегулировании", - отметил дипломат. "Если и есть какая-либо взаимосвязь между двумя вопросами, то ее следует рассматривать в плане того, насколько неурегулированность абхазского конфликта затрудняет выполнение обязательств сторон по реализации стамбульских договоренностей", - сказал Александр Яковенко.

Frequent contact with local populations can help clarify what organizations are trying to do, especially since information travels quickly through local channels.

The most stubborn challenge, however, remains: how to acknowledge that brutal ethnically-directed violence took place, while claiming the right to address practical humanitarian concerns rather than pass ultimate judgement.

9. CONCLUSION

What lessons does the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict teach? Firstly, prolonged displacement itself is not neutral. Daily practices over time have worked to create a "permanently temporary", bounded, self-conscious IDP population. Secondly, wartime violence may be "ethnic" in different ways. In this case, many specific violent acts during the war were directed at victims of a certain official nationality. But after the war, and perhaps more importantly, popular understandings of violence have been both made more concrete through association with daily hardships, and generalized through shared retellings. The result is a widespread and materially grounded popular understanding among Georgian IDPs that what happened to them during the war was ethnic cleansing. The implications for a return are not encouraging, since it is clear an agreement on paper cannot provide an immediate solution. But local level research that explores how self-conscious displaced populations are constructed, and how ethnicity and violence become incorporated into identity, may indicate what governments, international organizations, and local citizens need to do to find real, lasting solutions.

5. THE EFFECTS OF DISPLACEMENT

Flight itself, whatever terrors may have prompted it, is not the only important part of forced migration. Displacement is not only a process but a condition, in this case an ongoing one, and we must now consider what impact it has on the thousands of Georgians affected and what new patterns it creates.

5.1 Patterns of Settlement

As a result of the war most Georgians have left Abkhazia for other parts of Georgia. By remaining within the borders of the Georgian state, they are considered internally displaced persons (IDPs), a category typically problematic for international organizations more used to operating within the system of sovereign states recognized by the UN. But conversely, by staying within Georgia they remain visible, easy to identify and target as aid recipients.

As we have already indicated the IDP situation is analogous in Azerbaijan, where hundreds of thousands of IDPs from Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian-occupied regions of Azerbaijan around it have almost all relocated within Azerbaijan. In contrast, hundreds of Armenians fled Azerbaijan in the last years of Soviet rule, but rather than settle in Armenia most moved on, or never came to Armenia in the first place. Since those Armenians have dispersed around the world, they are not visible and identifiable as a single refugee population or problem that demands attention.

The displaced in Georgia are compactly settled in several senses. Not only have they almost all stayed in Georgia, there are particularly large IDP populations in Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Zugdidi. In addition, within the districts where they have settled, they tend to live in clearly bounded spaces in close proximity to one another. This is particularly true for the 40-50 per cent of the IDP population living in collective centres, rather than in the private flats of friends or relatives.53 Collective centres include empty administrative buildings, schools, kindergartens, hotels, and tourist camps, among other buildings. In Zugdidi, just across the border from Abkhazia and therefore the easiest safe place to reach, the proportion in such centres is higher, with about two-thirds of the displaced settled in collective centres.54

Flight from Abkhazia was chaotic, and whole villages seldom made the journey and settled together. Instead, the IDP residents of most collective centres come from various districts of Abkhazia and were not acquainted before the war. Nevertheless, some patterns are clear. Zugdidi has a disproportionately large IDP population from the adjacent Gali district. And Kutaisi has a high concentration from Ochamchire district, primarily because transportation between the two places was made available during the war, and because the word went out among IDPs that Kutaisi, while farther away, had a lot of living space available.

Thus the patterns of settlement of IDPs throughout Georgia work to create a relatively bounded and identifiable population.

5.2 Patterns of Mobility

There are two exceptions to this pattern of compactness and stability. The first is the population of displaced ethnic Swans. Before the war, Swans lived in Abkhazia both in the mountains in the upper Kodori river valley, and in scattered usually compact populations in villages and in Sukhumi. During the war virtually all Swans from the lowlands fled up to the Kodori valley, which Swans held throughout the war, and most continued on through a mountain pass into the rest of Georgia. Many of those Swan families from Abkhazia who stayed in the Kodori valley now spend part of their time in other parts of Georgia, since Kodori is effectively cut off from its former primary economic outlet in Sukhumi, and since de facto isolation makes living conditions in the winter extraordinarily difficult.55 Thus many Swans are effectively doubly displaced.

The second exception is the substantial return of Georgians to date to the Gali district in south Abkhazia, a definite and reverse population shift since the end of the war. Though all agree that some movement has taken place, the numbers involved have become a political issue. Abkhaz officials tend to stress the overwhelming magnitude of the return. Abkhaz Speaker of Parliament Sokrat Jinjolia and Head of the Presidential Commission for Refugees and Missing Persons Otar Kakalia argue that about 60,000 Georgians, from a prewar population of about 75,000, have returned and permanently resettled in Gali.56 This claim is essentially a political move, suggesting that the Abkhaz have been tolerant in permitting a return. Georgians on the other hand play down the magnitude of return. Presidential Adviser Irakli Machavariani argues that about 35,000 Georgians have returned, and that only the elderly remain continuously in Gali while others cross the Inguri river from Zugdidi on a regular basis.57 And Georgian regional authorities rate the return to Gali at only 25-30 per cent of the prewar population.58 This too is a political move, intending to suggest that the injustice of displacement, for which the Abkhaz are responsible, continues, and that the problem is still so serious that only the Georgian Government can address it effectively.

Rather than joining the political debate concerning the number of Georgians repatriated, it would be more useful to consider the question of the nature of the "return". A first indication is the sharp difference in repatriation rate between lower Gali, just across the Inguri river from Zugdidi, and upper Gali, which is far less accessible.59 People have returned to, and only to, places from which they could flee quickly should fighting begin again. Secondly, as the 31 July 1997 expiration date of the Russian peacekeepers’ mandate approached, bringing with it fears of renewed violence, IDPs poured back across the Inguri into Zugdidi and the surrounding area. Thirdly, many Gali residents who have returned note that their children remain behind in Zugdidi, "where it is safe". Also, as a young Georgian man on a brief visit home to his family in Gali noted, young men cannot stay for very long in Gali because they fear that they will be forcibly drafted by the Abkhaz army.60 And finally, representatives of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia note that the Gali militia is untrained and undersupplied, and some of its members plunder villages in search of sustenance.61 There is no effective authority in Gali district but rather a total lack of contact between Georgian village heads of administration and the Abkhaz officials in Gali city; no monopoly on the legitimate use of violence but rather undisciplined, marauding Abkhaz militia members. The "return" to Gali is thus partial and highly contingent, and nominally repatriated Georgians live in a constant state of fear and readiness to decamp at the first sign of trouble. This condition resembles less a real return than an additional layer of displacement.

5.3 Patterns of Organization

For displaced Georgians partially resident in Kodori valley or Gali district, displacement is an ongoing condition of physical dislocation. But for the rest of the Georgian IDP population as well, displacement is not a contentless pause in the normal course of events, but rather years of daily life that create new patterns and perspectives. For the Georgian IDP population, three new sets of relationships have emerged: interaction between IDPs and local populations; interaction among IDPs themselves; and ties between IDPs and Georgian political structures. Together, the practices involved in these three sets of relationships work to construct a distinct Georgian IDP population.

Firstly, IDPs in many ways are separate from local populations. This is especially true for those who live in compact bounded spaces such as former tourist camps, sanatoria, or hotels. Furthermore, unemployment tends to be higher among IDPs than among locals, and poverty in some cases prevents school attendance when families cannot afford sufficient clothing and shoes for their children. When collective centres are located in or near cities, the IDP population becomes distinctly visible. The most vivid example is the towering Iveriia hotel in the centre of Tbilisi, now home to hundreds of IDPs who stand in small groups in the square below, and whose laundry adorns the balconies on all floors. The hotel stood strikingly in the immediate backdrop during the 26 May 1997 unveiling in the square below of a dramatic new statue of Georgian historical hero David the Builder. IDPs are also visible economically, as many have set up impromptu fruit and vegetable markets throughout Tbilisi. The widespread perception among the local population is that they undersell market prices, and that many of their products are of substandard quality. Thus members of both local and displaced populations share the idea of fundamental IDP separateness.

Secondly, while most IDPs living now in any given collective centre did not know one another before the war, an array of daily practices during displacement have worked to create self-referential populations. In some cases, the need for housing itself has catalyzed organization. In Zugdidi for example, 16 previously unacquainted IDP families were living in a government administrative building, but local officials who needed to work in that space evicted them. The IDPs organized and staged a protest, which drew the attention of the authorities and humanitarian organizations, which in turn financed and constructed shelters nearby for the families.62

Even without such drama, daily practices draw IDPs together. Daily life is simply very difficult. Few IDPs have found work, and the wholly insufficient government IDP pension is only 8.5 lari, less than 7 dollars, per month. Those who do work are often engaged in small-scale trade, for example selling cheap Russian cigarettes in the market in Zugdidi, whose profits are meagre and undependable.63 Very few IDPs are dying of hunger, but almost all struggle to find enough food to feed and clothe their families, and they face the psychological strain of not knowing how or when things will improve.

In most collective centres, resources are limited, so residents meet daily at the central water pump in former camps, or in the only kitchen on the floor in hotels. Further, IDPs in settings not designed for permanent residence have organized and assigned daily tasks to make life more manageable. In a former tourist camp near Kutaisi for example, IDPs have their own schedule for garbage collection and clean-up of common areas.64 In many cases, separate schools have been established for IDP children, complete with IDP teachers, for example the First Secondary School in Zugdidi, with 400 children, and the Sixth Secondary School in Kutaisi. This arrangement works to limit contact between displaced and local children, to keep them separate. What is more, in some cases this is done intentionally. As the Kutaisi representative of the Abkhaz Council of Ministers in exile states, "We cannot allow the younger generation to blend in. We have to prepare them to return to Abkhazia. Otherwise, it would be a national tragedy."65

Locked into constant interaction with one another, IDPs tell and retell one another stories of their wartime experiences. One result is the move from individual experiences of violence in which they, the victims, happened to be Georgian, to a sea of stories of ethnic violence in which all the victims are Georgian and all the perpetrators Abkhaz. Here, prolonged displacement works to create a compelling and widely shared narrative of ethnic cleansing.

Another result is the clarification of a shared Mingrelian identity.66 Most of the displaced are in fact Mingrelian, with ancestors originally from Samegrelo in western Georgia. Mingrelians as an official nationality category were deleted from the Soviet census after 1926, but nevertheless they speak their own language or dialect. Furthermore, the first post-Soviet Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was Mingrelian, and in the civil war that accompanied his ouster by the junta that later included Eduard Shevardnadze, Mingrelians tended to support Gamsakhurdia. Many Mingrelians remain highly skeptical of Shevardnadze’s rule, and the difficult conditions of displacement and the Georgian Government’s failure to resolve the conflict and effect a return, make Shevardnadze an easy target and catalyze the notion of Mingrelian separateness.67 In both narratives, of ethnic violence and Mingrelian identity, the identity of those responsible is closely tied rhetorically with the deprivations of the concrete conditions of displacement. The challenges and mortifications of daily life during prolonged displacement are thus constant reminders of the experience of forced displacement and the Abkhaz responsible for it and the IDPs’ own shared and renewed Mingrelian ethnic identity.

Thirdly, new ties join the fragments of the IDP population to an official political structure. The Abkhaz Government in Exile removed to Tbilisi at the end of the war and has continued to function. Chair of the Supreme Council of Abkhazia in Exile Tamaz Nadareishvili provides a list of the varied activities and functions of this structure: planes between Tbilisi and Moscow, boats on the Black Sea, two state and five private institutes with 12,000 tuition-paying students, theatres, cultural events and a children’s symphony orchestra, TV and radio services, thirteen journals and newspapers, three factories in Kutaisi and Tbilisi, small enterprises throughout Georgia, thirteen schools, seven hospitals, tax inspection, customs, and all former ministries.68

Local IDPs are connected to this structure through a functioning hierarchy. As IDPs in Zugdidi, Anaklia, and Kutaisi state, in each collective centre IDPs elect their own representatives.69 These representatives are often new to political life, and are experiencing the devastations of displacement without benefit of particular privilege. The representatives travel regularly to major urban centres to meet with one another, with local authorities with responsibility for IDP issues, and with representatives of both the Georgian Ministry for Refugees and the Abkhaz Government in Exile structure. In Kutaisi for example these weekly meetings take place on Mondays at 4pm. Furthermore, in separate accounts local IDPs elected in collective centres easily name the officials to whom they take questions and problems. In the isolated Kodori valley, local Swans note that the Chair of the Georgian Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Zurab Erkvania, comes frequently to Kodori by helicopter, and the local police force, consisting in part of Swan IDPs from Abkhazia, was trained and organized in Tbilisi before being sent back to serve in Kodori.70 In Zugdidi, in addition to weekly meetings of IDP leaders from around Zugdidi, every Monday at noon the Georgian heads of administration from almost all the villages in Gali district gather in Zugdidi and meet with both local authorities and representatives of the Government in Exile structure.

Organizationally, Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Zugdidi have become focal points for molding politically organized IDP populations linked to the Government in Exile. These relations are furthered by the roles these cities play as new economic centres for the displaced. Swans from Kodori, who formerly relied on resources in Sukhumi, now utilize the Government in Exile structure and transportation to carry out business in Kutaisi or Zugdidi.71 Both IDPs in Zugdidi and those who have gone back to Gali district trade almost exclusively in the markets in Zugdidi.72 These political and economic patterns further solidify the boundaries of the IDPs as a group, and the linkages with Georgian authorities work to politicize and geographically reorient the population.

Thus, not just the physical moment of dislocation four years ago, but also the daily social, economic and political practices of the displaced work to structure a bounded, visible and mobilized population, for whom temporariness is a permanent condition.

3.2 Russians, Armenians, Greeks

Caught in the middle of the madness were members of other official nationalities. In the earliest days of the war, Greece arranged an orderly and thorough evacuation for Abkhazia’s Greek population of about 15,000 people. Many of these long-term residents of Abkhazia have found it difficult to adjust and some have attempted to return home.

Abkhazia’s Russian and Armenian populations, each about 75,000 strong, were not temporary visitors who could simply return "home" when the fighting began. Most Armenians could trace their Abkhaz roots to the beginning of the century, and many came as a direct result of persecution in 1915. By the start of the war, Armenians in Abkhazia were Soviet cultural constructs, speaking Russian and even Turkish, living in compact Armenian villages but in a multinational society, with few or no ties to Soviet Armenia. When the war began, Armenians found themselves directly in the line of fire, but "returning" to Armenia was a nonsensical option. Instead, the most natural option for many, especially women and children, was to flee to friends or distant relatives in Russia until the end of the war. In a frequent pattern, many young people stayed on in Russia, studying or earning money to send remittances back to Abkhazia.27

Abkhaz Russians, despite cultural affinity with the Russian Federation, were also longtime residents. Like the Armenians, many Russians who had the necessary personal ties left their homes for Russia for the duration of the war, and many, particularly young people, have stayed on in Russia to work or study.28 In this way, the war scattered members of some nationalities and in some cases removed them altogether.

3.3 Abkhaz

Unlike Georgians, Russians and Armenians, most Abkhaz did not leave the territory of Abkhazia. But Abkhaz experienced substantial internal displacement both during and after the war.29 As sources on all sides report, in Sukhumi the first days of the war were accompanied by looting and physical violence against the local population.30 While Abkhaz authorities retreated to Gudauta, Abkhaz who were not engaged in fighting left Sukhumi for Gagra or Gudauta to the north for the duration of the war. Similarly, Abkhaz residents of villages to the south found themselves in the middle of confused criss-crossing front lines. Some also fled north, while others sought safety to the east in Tkvarcheli. But as the war progressed, Georgians effected a blockade against that mountainous city, and local residents as well as the newly displaced sought in turn to flee from Tkvarcheli. Indeed, it was the downing by Georgian forces in December 1992 of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter evacuating women and children from that city that raised the level of general malevolence in the war and catalyzed more concerted Russian military intervention on the Abkhaz side.

After the war ended, many Abkhaz returned home, but many others entered a phase of more permanent dislocation, due to the destruction of both living space and economic infrastructure. Some Georgian authorities claim that all of post-war Abkhazia is simply depopulated. This is true in some places, for example in industrial Tkvarcheli, whose prewar population of 22,000 has been reduced to about 8,000 due to the complete collapse of industry and communication and transportation networks.31 But in other cases the claims are exaggerated, for example Georgian Presidential Adviser Irakli Machavariani’s statement that the present population of Ochamchire district is only about 3,000 people, when more than twice that number live in Ochamchire city alone.32

Instead, postwar Abkhaz migration is complicated and multidirectional. Where homes in villages have been destroyed, Abkhaz have migrated either into the cities, or into former Georgian houses and flats in other villages. Even in villages with limited destruction, many youths have left their family homes to seek an income of some kind in Abkhaz cities or even in Russia, from where they send back remittances. Meanwhile, many other families have left economically devastated urban areas with no access to food-producing land, for the countryside. Thus many city dwellers have rapidly "ruralized". This pattern stands in sharp contrast, for example, to the displaced Azeris in Azerbaijan from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding Armenian-occupied regions of Azerbaijan, two-thirds of whom were rural before displacement and two-thirds of whom now live in urban areas. On the other hand the pattern is similar to the choice faced by many Armenian refugees fleeing Azerbaijan. Given the devastation brought about by the earthquake in 1988 and the Soviet collapse, Armenia did not have the resources to resettle all of the hundreds of thousands of refugees in urban settings. Many faced a choice between accepting a new rural life and migrating further to some other country.

The key characteristic of most postwar Abkhaz migration is its partial and unfinished nature. Most of the pragmatic solutions Abkhaz have found in order to survive in the postwar setting involve subsistence agriculture, not sustainable incomes, and temporarily occupied housing, not reconstruction.

4. THE REASONS FOR DISPLACEMENT

Given the general contours of displacement during and after the war, we will now focus on seeking explanations for these patterns of migration. In particular we will consider to what extent people were displaced for "ethnic" reasons, and whether it is appropriate to use the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe the results.

One approach to this question would be to seek to determine whether there existed on either side at the highest levels a clearly formulated intention to eradicate an ethnic group. But such an intention might have existed without manifesting itself in any way during the war, while at the same time, even without a clear policy, wartime practices might be ethnically directed. In fact, the ways that people individually experienced the war, and their subjective understandings of what happened, far more directly determine future behaviour and thus the chances for a lasting settlement on the ground, than the existence or not of some official policy formulation. Therefore, the approach of this essay is to base the analysis on personal accounts of wartime experience by Georgian IDPs and current residents of Abkhazia. While over time personal understandings of what happened may be reworked and revised through ongoing conversations with others, these new collective understandings play a critical role in the search for a lasting settlement.

4.1 Abkhaz

Many accounts suggest that Abkhaz migration during the war was prompted by the threat of personal violence against the civilian Abkhaz population for reasons of ethnicity.33 In Sukhumi, certainly much thievery was perpetrated for its own sake, for economic gain. But residents relate that would-be perpetrators often first asked the nationality of the intended victim. Further, many accounts suggest that the best defence for Abkhaz was to seek shelter with Georgian friends. Georgian friends at first could turn away thieves by saying the Abkhaz in their flat were relatives, but several months into the war even this ploy ceased to work.34

Among those who fled from their homes in Sukhumi, many knew immediately, through friends and acquaintances, that Georgians had moved into their flats. A young woman now living in Adziubja relates that she previously lived in her own flat in Sukhumi, but it was taken over during the war by Georgians, who apparently stole everything when they left, since nothing of any value remains.35 While in fact it is not necessarily the Georgian occupants who later looted the flat, this story pattern in which Georgians are blamed, is quite widespread.

Among those who lived in the countryside, many understand that Georgians intentionally burned down Abkhaz homes during the war. An Abkhaz man in Adziubja relates that Georgians intentionally destroyed 32 of 35 Abkhaz homes in upper Adziubja, and also the local Abkhaz language school.36 And a Mingrelian woman in the market in Ochamchire tells how Georgians burned down Abkhaz homes in her own village and others nearby, in Ochamchire district.37

Theft and property destruction were not the only apparent threats. Both Natella Akaba’s parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, and Otar Kakalia’s former NGO, Askarial, have publicized information about many cases of physical threat, torture, and murder directed against ethnic Abkhaz civilians.38 All of these practices, to they extent they occurred, certainly constitute ethnically directed violence, even it if it was not centralized and coordinated, and the belief that such violence took place is widespread among Abkhaz. Much Abkhaz migration during the war can be attributed to fear of ethnic violence, and at least some postwar migration is attributable to intentional destruction of Abkhaz homes.

In addition, much of the Abkhaz leadership argues that anti-Abkhaz ethnic violence was intentional and planned. In evidence many point to the thorough destruction of the Abkhaz State Archives in the first days of the war, and the Abkhaz State Security Service produces what it claims is a Georgian military map left behind during the war, indicating plans for the complete annihilation of Abkhaz villages in Ochamchire district.39 This official Abkhaz rhetoric of ethnic violence may serve to frame popular beliefs, but it is not the only source. Instead, local level experiences during the war also work directly to generate widespread popular understanding of wartime violence.

4.2 Georgians

In order to assess whether Georgian migration out of Abkhazia was ethnically driven it is necessary to consider two key parts to the claim of ethnic cleansing: that people were driven out by the threat of physical violence, and that Georgian homes and property were destroyed during and after the war to make return less likely.

Almost all displaced Georgians state clearly that they left because their lives were in danger precisely because they were Georgian. As evidence they recite stories of atrocities committed by Abkhaz forces against civilians during the war. Some of the stories are highly personal. For example a displaced Georgian in the market in Zugdidi, who is from Gali district, tells how Abkhaz forces killed her husband, and then killed her parents for good measure "just because they were Georgian".40 Another woman now living in Zugdidi tells how Abkhaz forces came to their home in Pitsunda and gave them a choice: either take an Abkhaz surname and fight on the Abkhaz side, or leave your home now.41 An older Georgian returnee to Gali district tells how after the war he witnessed Abkhaz approach a Georgian peasant neighbour and ask his surname. Hearing it was Mingrelian they proceeded to burn him.41 The role a victim’s surname plays in these stories gives the violence a distinctly ethnic character.

These personal experiences are very often augmented by stories of things that happened to other Georgians, stories of almost unspeakable horror. In a pattern that mirrors Liisa Malkki’s findings from her work on Hutu refugees in Tanzania,42 certain particularly vivid stories are told by displaced people who did not know one another in Abkhazia. In a former tourist camp in Kutaisi, a large gathering of displaced people tell of the "common practice" called the "Italian necktie", in which the tongue is cut out of the throat and tied around the neck. A woman tells of a man being forced to rape his teenage daughter, and of Abkhaz soldiers having sex with dead bodies. A man tells how in Gudauta, Abkhaz killed small children and then cut off their heads to play football with them.43 These themes are repeated in many separate accounts.

Other residents who have stayed in Abkhazia substantiate the basic claim that Georgians left in fear. Russians in Nizhnaia Eshera, for example, note that in their five-story building, in which the neighbours were all acquainted, all the Georgians are gone because Abkhaz came during the war and told them to leave.44 In Shaumianovka, Armenians note they had good relations with their former Georgian neighbours. The Georgians lived along the road up from Dranda, the only way out of Shaumianovka, and they let their Armenian neighbours pass through freely during the war. But those Georgians left because they were afraid, even if only one of their distant relatives had fought during the war.45

The question then arises of what should be concluded about the reasons for Georgian flight. In order to substantiate that Georgian mass migration was forced by ethnic violence, do we need to document that all displaced people were personally threatened at gunpoint, forced to hear of the horrors that would soon be practiced on their bodies, and given a choice whether to stay or not? Or, is it sufficient to ascertain that some unquestionably ethnically directed atrocities did take place, that people had reasonable opportunities to hear the tellings and retellings of these events, and that they fled in fear on this basis?

Concerning the second element of Georgian forced migration, many or most displaced Georgians say that their homes have been destroyed, or are now occupied by others. This knowledge comes through friends or even distant acquaintances, whom they have asked to check on the fate of their homes. In the market in Zugdidi, five displaced people say their houses in Gali district were burned after the war had ended.46 Armenians still living in Abkhazia note that Georgian homes in Dranda were intentionally attacked, and Abkhaz say the same thing about Georgian homes in Tamysh.47 Even Abkhaz authorities in Ochamchire city note that in the first days after the Abkhaz took back Sukhumi and then returned to Ochamchire, it was very difficult to control looting of the homes of people who had fled.48 Looting may be an exercise primarily for economic gain, but when people of a given official nationality are disproportionately selected as victims, the crimes take on an ethnic character.

Georgian authorities at all levels, like Abkhaz officials, tend to draw together the various accounts of violence and label it "ethnic cleansing".50 One head of administration from Gali district, in a conversation in Zugdidi, recited a list of murders and lootings directed against Georgians in Gali district since the war, and asked, "Is this not genocide?" The Vice Mayor of Zugdidi agrees, noting that 5,000 Georgian houses were burned intentionally by the Abkhaz.51 The Kutaisi representative of the Abkhaz Council of Ministers in exile, echoing the words of Tamaz Nadareishvili and Zurab Erkvania, states that what happened after the war in Abkhazia was "ethnic cleansing and genocide". And he adds the personal account of his brother, who after returning to his village Otobaia in lower Gali district was attacked by the Abkhaz police and left paralyzed as a result.52

Even if it is accepted that application of the label "ethnic cleansing" to the violence enacted upon either the Abkhaz or the Georgians would require demonstrating the existence of a concerted policy on the part of the leadership, what happened in practice may be much more important than what may or may not have been intended by some political entrepreneurs. The de facto conduct of this highly local war was superlatively ethnic in character. The best evidence is less the absolute horror of some observers’ accounts than the fact that ethnicity is the primary trait of each key player in each of the accounts. Whatever role ethnicity per se may have played in producing the conflict, it has become the primary category with which people on the ground narrate and comprehend the war’s violence. In practical terms, much of the Abkhaz population, and most of the Georgian population, have been displaced; property throughout Abkhazia has been destroyed, narrowing significantly the options for reconstruction and return in the near future; and among all former residents of Abkhazia the belief prevails that the best term for characterizing what happened to them is "ethnic cleansing".

Понял

Роман, срочно к Вахо. Жду через 45 минут на нашем месте.

Алекс, сейчас меня обвинят, что я - это ты. Или все мы - это Михаил. Или вообще нас всех придумал Черчиль в 18 году.