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A Reply to Svante Cornells Daily Telegraph Article (16 June 2009), by George Hewitt

by George Hewitt

(17 June 2009)

In my review of Svante Cornells Small Nations and Great Powers. A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in

the Caucasus (Curzon Press, 2001) I included the following: [T]his volume's value is greatly reduced

by an absolute travesty of reality in the treatment afforded to Abkhazia. I have had to say this so often

over more than a decade that I am seriously tempted to suggest that any Westerner who feels the

urge to comment on this particular issue should first learn Georgian so that what Georgians say about

their relationship with the Abkhazians in their own language can be properly assessed... Only then

perhaps will there be better appreciation that, just as the meddling hand of Moscow is unnecessary in

Daghestan because the Dag[h]estani leadership and its policies are by themselves [sic GH]

sufficient to fuel widespread opposition (p.281), so in the case of the Georgian-Abkhazian dispute oneneeds to look no further than Georgian attitudes and behaviour towards this particular minority to

understand the reasons for Abkhazian suspicions. And the conflict did not start brewing (p.347) after

the troubles in South Ossetia had quietened down (July 1992) but had its proximate cause in the

events of 1989 (see Viktor Popkov's article in another Curzon volume The Abkhazians, which I edited

in 1998); these fatal clashes, moreover, arose as a direct result of the rampant Georgian chauvinism

that exploded during perestrojka under the leadership of the late Mingrelians Merab Kostava and

Zviad Gamsakhurdia, no friends to the Abkhazians. Sadly, to judge by the same authors article

(Russia Shuts Out the International Community) in The Daily Telegraph (16 June 2009), he is no better

informed today about Abkhazian affairs than he was in 2001.

South Ossetia was effectively lost to Georgian control when the war begun in the region by Georgias

first post-communist president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was ended with the Dagomys Agreement in June

1992, according to which Russia was assigned a role in ensuring that the parties to the confict

adhered to the Agreement. Though mired in civil war in Gamsakhurdias home-province of Mingrelia,

after a military junta had ousted him from the presidency, the leader of the then so-called State

Council, Eduard Shevardnadze, secured recognition for Georgia along with membership of the IMF,

World Bank and the UN for Georgia, membership of which august body Shevardnadze celebrated by

initiating his own war against the Abkhazians on 14 August 1992. His adventurism ended in humiliating

failure, and Abkhazia too was lost to Tbilisis control from 30 September 1993. Again, the

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was charged with patrolling the demilitarised zone along

the River Ingur according to the terms of the 1994 Moscow Agreement, which effectively meant that

Russian troops would take on these duties. The international community did not object to this

arrangement, nor did it object to the presence of Russian forces inside Georgia proper, as they helped

to quell the Zviadist threats to march on the Georgian capital and thus secured Shevardnadze in

office.

Contrary to various misinformed reports, Abkhazia did not declare independence from Georgia either

before, during, or upon its victory in, the war. Throughout years of negotiations, Abkhazia was willing to

contemplate making a concession and to enter confederal relations with Georgia. And let it not beforgotten that for most of the 1990s, especially when Shevardnadze-proteg Andrej Kozyrev served as

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Boris Yeltsins Foreign Minister, Russias policy was by no means pro-Abkhazian, a CIS-blockade

being imposed along Abkhazias River Psou border with Russia. But let us see what I had to say on

this matter in my earlier review: Abkhazia did not formally declare independence until 12 October

1999. And this was in large measure the result of frustration at continuing bad faith on the part of

Tbilisi in post-war negotiations. Pace Cornell (p.192), it has not been the Abkhazians who have

refused to compromise one might say that after their military victory, they were fully entitled to

declare independence at once (September 1993), and yet they continued to pursue federative

possibilities, whilst all that Georgia has offered is a return to the status quo ante bellum (some

compromise from Georgia!). After protracted talks and constant last-minute revisions by Georgia a

Protocol was ready for presidential signing in summer 1997, and yet at the last minute Tbilisi (not

Sukhum) refused (Abkhazian Foreign Ministry Document 325, 25 Dec 1997). Such petty

obstructionism continues, for in February 2001 Georgia's UN Ambassador, Petre Chkheidze, refused

to sign two draft-documents, claiming them unacceptable for the government of Georgia as the

respected commentator, Liz Fuller, noted in her Radio Liberty report (4.5, 2 Feb 2001): Chkheidze's

criticism is surprising as the versions of both drafts currently under discussion were proposed by theGeorgian side.

In 1998 Georgia undertook a further military adventure to win back Abkhazia, but it was successfully

repelled; again, this met with no condemnation from the international community. When Mikheil

Saakashvili ousted his former patron in November 2003, the support that Shevardnadze had enjoyed

from his Western friends was immediately transferred to his usurper, who promised that during his first

presidential term, secured in a ballot in spring 2004, he would return both S. Ossetia and Abkhazia to

Georgian control. Though he illegally introduced troops into the one part of Abkhazia never taken back

into Abkhazian control in 1993, the Upper Kodor Valley, and then relocated the so-called Abkhazian

Government-in-Exile there, he failed to achieve his goal. But, after NATOs questionable decision atBucharest in April 2008 to consider a Membership Action Plan for Georgia (and The Ukraine) at its

December meeting, it was always likely that something would happen with regard to the two disputed

territories before that meeting, and it was rumoured that an attack on Abkhazia was envisaged in May,

but nothing transpired. It was, however, Saakashvili, and, of course, there is no doubt about this, who

did eventually resort to military action when he sent his forces into action in S. Ossetia late on 7th

August. The results are well known. Russia responded to put an end to Georgian action inside S.

Ossetia and to rule out a further round of hostilities by destroying military equipment at the nearby-

base in Gori. In Abkhazia, the opportunity was taken to remove the troops from the Kodor Valley,

where the huge store of (US, Ukrainian and Israeli) munitions that Saakashvili had secreted there (for

what purpose has never been explained) was discovered, and the potential threat to Abkhazia was

neutralised by the sacking of the military base in Senaki and the sinking of naval vessels in the

Mingrelian port of Poti. In the wake of all this activity, which brought a wealth of international

condemnation of Russia but hardly a whisper against Saakashvilis aggression that had occasioned

the response, Russias President Medvedev recognised both Abkhazia and S. Ossetia as independent

states at 3pm Moscow time on 26 August.

Within days of this decision, a member of the Abkhazian government held a meeting with the head of

the UN Mission based at Aitar in Sukhum. He asked when the UN would be changing their title, for it

was absolutely out of the question for the Mission to remain on Abkhazian soil, if it insisted on being

styled the United Nations Observer Mission IN GEORGIA (UNOMIG). The ending on 16 June 2009 of

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the Missions 16-year mandate with the exercise of Russias veto at the UN in New York was the

logical outcome of the international communitys obstinate refusal to recognise the new political

realities and to insist on no change of name. Abkhazia has no objection to the UN base remaining at

Aitar but NOT under the rubric of a UN Mission IN GEORGIA. Because of its ill-considered recognition

of Georgia within its Soviet borders in 1992, the international community bears a huge responsibility

for the bloodshed that subsequently took place in Abkhazia from 14 August 1992 and sporadically at

various moments in S. Ossetia too. By lamely supporting Georgian territorial integrity, refusing to

condemn Georgian actions in the two regions, and pursuing a policy of political and economic isolation

for almost two decades in seeking to persuade the Abkhazians and the S. Ossetians that it is in their

interests to re-accept Georgian domination, the international community has achieved precisely the

opposite, namely deep suspicion of, and resentment towards, the West and ever closer ties with

Russia, hardly a glorious triumph for Western diplomacy.

Russias policy towards Abkhazia eventually changed under Vladimir Putin, who allowed citizens of

both regions to acquire Russian passports, a move which inter alia restored the right of local residents

to travel outside their home-territories (after the expiry of their Soviet documents and their adamant

refusal to consider applying for Georgian passports), and eventually lifted the CIS blockade. But what

is one to make of the following allegation from Cornell? Moscow may have recognized them as

independent states, but effectively treats them as its own provinces, appointing and removing

government ministers at will. Readers should be reminded that the last time Moscow tried to exercise

influence in this regard in Abkhazia, namely in the 2004 presidential elections, when Moscow clearly

favoured the then acting-president, Raoul Khadzhimba, the electorate responded by voting the present

incumbent, Sergei Bagapsh, into power.

Russia, certainly with its own interests in mind, has wisely chosen to correct the mistake it made inrecognising Georgia within its Soviet borders when the USSR disintegrated. The international

community, which has largely backed Georgias unremittingly belligerent posture (and actions) since

1992, should realise the futility of its present stance, follow Russia, and recognise Abkhazia and S.

Ossetia, which is the only way that Georgia too will be forced to stop fantasising about regaining lost

territories and accommodate itself to the facts on the ground. Only then will it be possible to start

building a prosperous future for the region. Whilst S. Ossetia might eventually merge with N. Ossetia

(inside the Russian Federation), which is the logical conclusion for such a small, land-locked piece of

land, Abkhazia has no desire for anything other than independence. With full recognition, the economy

in this republic, which is so blessed by Nature, will quickly take off it possesses the airport with the

longest runway (with no adjacent mountains) in the entire Caucasus and offers potentially the best

deep-water port (at Ochamchira) on the Black Seas eastern coast. Furthermore, it is only under such

conditions of successful independence that more of the Kartvelian (Mingrelian, Svan and Georgian)

refugees, who fled into Georgia in the final days of the war, are ever likely again to step foot there.

This is the message that should be fed into policy-making in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and

elsewhere, not the stale, Cold War-centred, opinions flowing from the pen of Cornell (and many

others).

Source: http://www.abkhazworld.com/articles/analysis/249-hewitt-reply-to-cornell.html