Article on Abkhazia

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Subject: Article on Abkhazia

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Article on Abkhazia


From: Paata Zakareishvili <[email protected]>
 
Why the President's promise that Georgia will celebrate the year 2000
together with Abkhazia is not kept
 
"I can declare with full responsibility: by 2000 Georgia will be a
unified, strong, democratic country on the way of prosperity. I will
assist solving the problems of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region by means
of peaceful negotiations in every possible way (this is my credo). I
will also assist decisive eradication of results of genocide and
ethnic cleansing, return of the refugees and displaced people -
Georgians, Abkhazians, Russians, Armenians, Ossetians, Jews and others
- to their places. If the regime of Abkhazian separatists, which has
already committed the gravest crimes against humanity with prompting
and direct, crucial intervention of outer forces, does not bethink
itself and if it cannot be avoided, I could conceivably let military
forces to be used, of course, taking into consideration norms of
international Law and principles of the UN and European security
organizations. We are victims of aggression and we have right to do
everything we can to protect the State sovereignty. It is our
constitutional right and, at the same time, our duty".
(From an electoral speech of the President of Georgia).
 
The war in Abkhazia was a logical result of the policy carried out
towards Abkhazia for years. The ideology of bolshcheviks was always
aimed to make people see the cause of their trouble in others. Before
they came to power, they had already cultivated the image of an enemy:
that of imperialists or the Russian tsarism. After they did came to
power, they managed it very successfully to create the image of a new
enemy � this time that of the Georgians. The Soviet authorities tried
hard to create the image of Georgians as enemies for Abkhazians. The
attempt of Beria to turn the Abkhaz into Georgians with a single wave
of his hand should be considered as a part of this policy. This was
the reason why the "Cyrillic", used by the Abkhazians before, was
replaced by the Georgian alphabet, and Abkhazian schools by Georgian
ones. Afterwards, during the Khruschev times, the Georgian-Abkhazian
relations became even more tensed. The problem has never been settled
since that. The tenseness re always remained and everybody felt it.

During the period when Eduard Shevardnadze the First Secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, a policy of
"hiding" the Georgian-Abkhazian problem was carried out. Everybody
remembers very well that it was the current President of Georgia, who
was the author of the idea of pompous "Rukhi meetings", or meetings of
Georgian and Abkhazian representatives of the same families, and who
realized this idea. It clearly appeared afterwards that those meetings
were only the usual hypocrisy of communist celebrations, not a real
demonstration of good relationship of the two neighboring nations. The
Abkhazian war proved this best of all.

The policy of "not seeing" the problem and "hiding" it was continued
after the "second advent" of Eduard Shevardnadze to Georgia. If even
an ordinary citizen, who went to Abkhazia for a holiday, felt that
there was a smell of war in the air, if the Georgian part of security
bodies of Abkhazia was against bringing military forces there, why
could Eduard Shevardnadze not guess that bringing the army to Abkhazia
(even on the pretext of protecting the railway) would cause war?!
Right after making this step he assured us that it was done on his own
responsibility. Afterwards he took his words back and left all the
responsibility to Kitovani. We may assume that before starting the war
he really did not know what Kitovani was, but how can we explain the
fact that after the war he himself gave Kitovani the emergency
powers... So the legend that Kitovani acted on his own is not true and
was created later in order to avoid the responsibility.

Starting the war in Abkhazia was planned in advance, although in
rather primitive way. I am also unable to understand the fact that the
Head of State was justifying himself by saying that he could not
contact the Minister of Defense for three days. We should consider
lack of knowledge, responsibility and reliability as the reasons why
Georgia was defeated in the war. These three reasons, or "values" are 
the most widely spread in Georgia nowadays. And the Abkhazian tragedy
is the result.

Today they try to "hide" everything. Everybody knew well that the war
was directed by Russia. During the war there were a lot of facts known
in the army headquarters, which proved that Russia was taking part in
the events. Those materials were passed to a general Chikovani, the
military adviser of the Head of State. He was gathering the
information with great enthusiasm. After the war, when Georgia became
a CIS member, Chikovani was appointed an officer of the CIS military
headquarters. He took the materials with him... Now, when talking of
Russia agents' participation of the Abkhazian war, nobody remembers
Chikovani...

Not only these materials were hidden during the war. Everybody tried
to avoid any anti-Russian propaganda. An example can prove this:
everybody knew that there were Cossacks fighting on the Abkhazian
side. In the days before Sukhumi was taken, when everybody was in
panic, one of the Cossack leaders made a statement, denying the fact
of participation of Cossacks in the war. Shevardnadze charged the head
of his press service to pass this statement to mass media to be
published. The Head of the Press-service did not manage it and
deserved the anger of the Head of State. When there were few hours
left before the fall of Sukhumi, was it so very important whether
Cossacks were participating in the war? But it seems that these were
such "global" issues, which were important for the Head of State...

Today the attitude of Georgian authorities towards Abkhazia is
following: if negotiations bring no results, then we shall have to use
force. This is the greatest mistake. We will never achieve a success
until the Georgian politicians refuse to use force methods against
their own population. The Georgian authorities should officially
declare that they exclude using any force. Only then they should sit
down and start negotiations. As long as it can be assumed that we may
take Abkhazia back by war, no peaceful steps will work.

Unfortunately no one speaks of the fact that we must bring back not
the territory of Abkhazia, but its people, who had become strangers to
us even before the war. It was this estrangement that caused the war,
and the war has deepened the estrangement. The fact that we have not
overcome it is one of the reasons why the conflict has not been
settled. As long as the government is not able to find a common
language with its own population because of its own wrong policy, it
will never achieve a success.
 
The population of Abkhazia is small. If we try to "settle" our
relations with them by force methods, we can have two kinds of
results: either Georgia will be finally defeated, or if we win, there
will be no population at all left in Abkhazia. We shall get only the
territory � and shall achieve the territorial integrity by destroying
all the Abkhazians. Being a Georgian, I do not want a territory
flooded with blood of my own people.

We should remember that no one has taken the territory of Abkhazia
from us. No one has doubted the territorial integrity of Georgia. The
Abkhaz will never be able to create their own state, even in case of
support from outside. And they do not have such support. Russia
pretends to be on their side, but in reality the Russians have their
own political goals: they need the territory and not the Abkhazians.
Both Abkhazians and we should take it into consideration. But before
we persuade the Abkhazians to believe it, we should demonstrate them
our sincerity. By making statements like "we will use force against
the Abkhazians if they do not bethink themselves" � we only lose their
confidence. 

By the way, there are a lot of people in Abkhazia who understand that
it cannot exist independently and that the only country, part of which
it can be, is Georgia. But unfortunately, at the same time they know
that Georgia is the country where they hate the Abkhaz. That is why it
depends on the attitude, which will prevail in Georgia, whether we
shall get Abkhazia back. So we should demonstrate to them that we are
the only guarantee of their existence. We should confess that starting
the military operations against Abkhazia was a great crime, that not
only the Abkhaz � we, too, have committed a crime against humanity:
against the Abkhaz civilians (according to statistics, there were more
such cases from the Abkhazian side, but the fact is that they had more
opportunities; I do not think that the Georgians would commit fewer
crimes if given an opportunity).

As to the statement of the President that we shall have Abkhazia back
by 2000, I do not find it realistic: after the war was started,
nothing has happened which could give us hope for this.
 
Paata Zakareishvili
 
The article was published in the newspaper "Akhali Shvidi Dge", 13-19
November 1998

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