Translated material
Back to the USSR
Akhalgori and Kodori returned home
The focus of today's negotiations in Switzerland will be the situation in the Kodori Gorge of Abkhazia and the Akhalgori region of South Ossetia. Tbilisi insists that Russian peacekeepers leave both areas, since they were not there before the August conflict. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said at the end of last week during a visit to Georgia that at the next stage of implementation of the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan , “it is necessary to withdraw Russian troops from the Akhalgori and Sachkhere regions, the Kodori Gorge, return all refugees there and ensure the work of the mission there EU observers."However, the other day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that such demands from Georgia and “some European representatives” “completely contradict the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan.” The document states that Russia is withdrawing only from “the areas adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.” Moscow considers both territories to be located inside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and EU observers who began monitoring in Georgia on October 1 are denied access there.
In Soviet times, when South Ossetia was an autonomous region in Georgia, it included the Akhalgori (then called Leningorsky) district. It is located approximately 60 km west of Tbilisi, its population was dominated by Georgians (according to the latest data - 6.8 thousand Georgians and 700 Ossetians). Against the background of the confrontation between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali, which broke out under the first president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in December 1990, the Georgian Supreme Council abolished the autonomy of South Ossetia. Its territory was divided into six districts, including Akhalgori, which was included in the Georgian region of Mtskheta-Mtianeti. The rest of the territory of South Ossetia remained Georgian only on paper.
For a decade and a half, Tskhinvali did not insist on the return of the Akhalgori region to the self-proclaimed republic; the Georgian population living there even elected their own deputy to the Georgian parliament. The opportunity to return the area to South Ossetia arose after the end of the August conflict. The Georgian authorities created a legal basis for this with their own hands: when the pro-Georgian administration of South Ossetia was created in 2006, headed by the “defector” (former South Ossetian Prime Minister) Dmitry Sanakoev, Tbilisi transferred Akhalgori to its jurisdiction. This administration was located in the Georgian-controlled village of Kurta, located in South Ossetia, six kilometers from Tskhinvali. After the conflict, she had to move to the center of Tbilisi to the Chess Palace.
Russian troops entered Akhalgori on August 16, four days after the end of the armed phase of the conflict. According to the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, up to 400 Russian soldiers and at least 15 armored vehicles are stationed in the Akhalgori region. Ossetian armed forces are also present there. South Ossetia also lays claim to the territory of the village of Perevi in the adjacent Sachkhere region of Georgia, where Russian military personnel are now also stationed.
Something similar happened with the Kodori Gorge, which was part of the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic inside Soviet Georgia. Tbilisi controlled this territory for 15 years after the Georgian-Abkhaz armed conflict. In 23 villages of the Kodori Gorge, 2 thousand people lived, mainly Svans - a Georgian people. Most of them left the region in August along with Georgian security forces, but now, according to the Tbilisi newspaper Kvela Siakhle (All News), they are gradually returning. A resident of Kodori told this publication that the situation in the region is “stable” and the Abkhazians, who have taken control of the gorge with their armed forces, “respect” the Georgians in the gorge.
Until the summer of 2006, Kodori was ruled by the representative of the President of Georgia, Emzar Kvitsiani, who concluded a gentleman’s non-aggression agreement with the Abkhazians. Local Svan men united in the “Monadire” (“Hunter”) detachment, which guarded the gorge. This Georgian enclave was separated from the territories under the control of the self-proclaimed Abkhaz Republic by two posts of Russian peacekeepers. According to agreements concluded in Moscow in 1994, Georgian military personnel were prohibited from entering Kodori.
But in 2006, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, under the pretext of Mr. Kvitsiani’s disobedience to the central authorities, carried out an operation against the “hunters.” They were disarmed, and the commissioner had to flee. After this, several hundred representatives of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs were brought into the region, renamed it Upper Abkhazia and a “government in exile” was installed there. After this, Sukhumi withdrew from negotiations with Tbilisi, declaring that the Georgians were creating a military bridgehead in a gorge 70 km from the Abkhaz capital. During the August conflict, Georgian units left Kodori without a fight, after which Abkhaz troops took control of it.
In 2006, Tbilisi used both territories as a tool of pressure on Sukhumi and Tskhinvali as part of a strategy to create loyal controlled administrations that could one day replace the “separatist regimes.” However, after the August conflict, South Ossetia and Abkhazia regained these lands, lost in the early 1990s during interethnic conflicts. The opposition assures that it will never forgive President Mikheil Saakashvili for this. “Now we have lost both the Kodori Gorge and the Akhalgori region. We ourselves complicated the situation and brought the border of uncontrolled territories closer to the capital,” former Georgian Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua told Vremya Novostey.
After Russia recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's chances of immediately restoring control over Kodori and Akhalgori became illusory. Tbilisi political scientist Paata Zakareishvili noted to VN that, subject to a well-thought-out policy and calculated actions, this could be done only in five to six years: “Now neither Moscow, nor Sukhumi, nor Tskhinvali will agree to divide the territories that were included to the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug. The maximum that Georgia can count on at this stage is the admission of EU observers to the Akhalgori region and the Kodori Gorge.”