Pulverised by power play

Fifteen years since its bloody war with Georgia, the breakaway republic of Abkhazia is a surreal spot where Soviet isolation lingers, the Cold War never ended and people cling to façades of statehood. It is a half-abandoned place of rusting ports and skeleton homes in a land that is recognised by nobody.

Now, with Russia and the United States engaged in a high-stakes power grab in the former Soviet Union, this forlorn sliver of lush beaches and snowy Caucasus mountains touching the Black Sea, wedged between Russia and Georgia, has emerged as a hub of new tensions between the Cold War enemies.

The ethnic-religious conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia was brutal on both sides. In the end, as ethnic Abkhazians emerged as victors, ethnic Georgians were driven out in an orgy of torture and looting.

For Georgia, Abkhazia is an open wound. Thousands of refugees from the region linger in limbo in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. The Georgian government has vowed to bring Abkhazia back within its borders.

Abkhazians swear it will never happen. “God forbid!'' said Tamara Ezugbaya, the mother of five sons, four of whom died fighting Georgia in the early 1990s war. She is a slight woman with a house in an orange grove, her grey hair pulled back into a bun, wearing black all these years.
Her mother was paralysed with shock; her husband grieved to death. “I don't think any Abkhazian will allow this,'' she said.

But Georgia is furious over Russian interference. Leaders have called for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi if Abkhaz goods are used to build the sports facilities, and have also warned that any more Russian peacekeepers posted to Abkhazia would be seen as “an act of aggression against the Georgian state with all ensuing consequences,'' a Foreign Ministry statement said.

Abkhazia has a flag, visas, licence plates, border guards and the government. There is also a quixotic campaign to distribute Abkhaz passports. “They are not recognised elsewhere in the world but inside the country they are in effect,'' says a government official.

Abkhazia is a vast junkyard of collapsed structures and resurgent nature. Roads are dotted with the shells of homes. Staircases to nowhere rise from tangles of vine.
In Sukhumi, the once-thriving port is a ship graveyard, with rusted craft wedged into the sand. At the airport, out past the destroyed hotels and crushed Pepsi-Cola plant, abandoned helicopters and aeroplanes litter the runways.

No international flights run in or out of Abkhazia these days; the only things taking off now are a United Nations helicopter, crop aeroplanes and the occasional flight to the mountains to drop off scientists or skiers.

The factories are blighted, offices shut down. Families have turned to their gardens to survive; to their milk cows and chickens. The economy is broken but the people don't starve.

The government says that more than 200,000 people live in Abkhazia; most independent analysts believe the real number is lower. In any case, the official figure is less than half of the more than 500,000 people who lived in this then-thriving resort and citrus farming belt before the war erupted.

To the dismay of US-backed Georgia, which still considers Abkhazia to be part of it, Moscow has already distributed passports to nearly all the people and encouraged them to vote in Russian elections. Tensions have ramped up in recent weeks after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a traditional Russian ally. Moscow objected, warning that Kosovo's example would embolden other breakaway regions and destabilise Europe.

Russia turned to Abkhazia to drive its point home. Moscow suddenly freed this place from sanctions and hinted that it might recognise Abkhazian independence.

Recently, Russia said it planned to establish “special relations'' with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze said his country would regard such a move as annexation of its territory and “a gross violation of international rules on ... territorial integrity,'' the Interfax news agency reported.

The Russian parliament has been pushing to beef up the number of Russian peacekeepers stationed in Abkhazia and suggested that Moscow might fight on the side of the breakaway republic in the event of Georgian military aggression.

“For us, the main thing is not to be in between two superpowers at a complicated time of dividing zones of influence,'' said Sergei Bagapsh, the president of Abkhazia's self-declared government. “We're watching the situation very carefully.''

“I am personally worried about losing sovereignty,'' said Vyacheslav Eshba, the chief of aviation. “But if they say, ‘You Abkhazians can't be independent, you have to be a part of something,' then Abkhazians would rather be a part of Russia, where our fraternal people live.''

Outside, a handful of idle men in camouflage showed off the private aeroplane of former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who had to flee Abkhazia during the war. A faded Soviet flag was still visible on its wing. The Abkhazians flew the aeroplane at first, the men said, but then fuel became too expensive.

It is a relic from another time and nobody knows quite what to do with it.