Translated material
First Blood
Four people died in another explosion in Abkhazia
Mutual accusations between Georgia and Abkhazia regarding their involvement in Sunday’s explosions of four charges in a row at the side of the road near the bridge over the border river Inguri had not yet been heard when a new explosion in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict claimed the lives of four people.The explosive device was detonated late on Sunday evening in the city cafe of Gali, the administrative center of the Abkhaz region, close to the actual border with Georgia. Mostly Georgian-speaking Mingrelians live here, and from here information periodically comes about the Russian military exceeding the quantitative quota of peacekeeping forces. The explosion in the cafe, against the backdrop of previous terrorist attacks in the region, could have been considered a completely ordinary occurrence if, like the previous ones, there were no casualties. But by morning it became known that four had died from their wounds - thus, the first blood was shed in this undeclared war.
Among the dead are acting the head of the Gali branch of the State Security Service of Abkhazia Dzhansukh Muratia, the Abkhaz border guard Sukhran Gumba, the translator of the Gali sector of the UN Mission Anzor Lagvilava and the girl who worked in the cafe, Ivetta Toria. There are six more victims in hospitals - ordinary local residents, and this casts doubt on whether the explosion was directed personally at a state security officer or a member of the UN mission: it simply thundered where people had gathered on Sunday evening.
Let us remind you that before four charges exploded on the Georgian-Abkhaz de facto border on Sunday morning, explosive devices went off in Sukhumi, near the central market, and in Gagra, at construction sites. In two cases - in Sukhumi and in Gagra - a total of 12 people were wounded, and most of them went home almost immediately. True, one of the victims of the explosion in Gagra was hospitalized in Sochi with a dangerous eye injury, but there have been no deaths in the conflict zone for quite a long time. Even machine-gun fire on buses carrying Mingrelian voters traveling to Zugdidi to elect the Georgian parliament ended in the injury of one woman. The newly opened count of the dead takes the current aggravation of the situation in Abkhazia to a fundamentally different plane.
Naturally, Sukhumi, represented by President Sergei Bagapsh and Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba, reacted in the only way for a republic seeking independence from its mother country: Georgian “state terrorism” was blamed for all incidents. The Georgian side, also naturally, immediately called the claims of the Abkhaz authorities about their involvement in the explosions absurd. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev again spoke about the danger of escalating violence in the conflict zone and called for negotiations.
It is characteristic that, unlike the “blank” explosions on Sunday, the explosion that claimed human lives did not raise any hints of Georgian involvement on the part of the Russian law enforcement agencies.
Every explosion in the area of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers, regardless of its authorship, is a stone in the garden of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces, which, contrary to their name, consist exclusively of Russian military personnel and which Georgia would like to at least rid of such a monopoly. Therefore, there is a great temptation to assume that it is the Georgian side that is behind the explosions. However, the ground is knocked out from under this hypothesis by the fact that Georgia categorically and at all international levels denies its intention to use force to solve the Abkhaz problem. Of course, you can say anything you want, but in recent weeks Georgia has also been trying to put forward a whole set of quite meaningful negotiation proposals on Abkhazia, the addressees of which are Sukhumi and Moscow. Offering serious negotiations and at the same time exploding bombs is at least not entirely logical.
As we hear, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would also like to conduct negotiations. And with each new terrorist attack in Abkhazia, the impression grows that with his cautious remarks he is admonishing one of his overly militant subordinates, who do not at all like the idea of negotiations. In the light of day, these subordinates say that they are sensitively guarding peace in Abkhazia, which is “threatened by aggressive Tbilisi.” The President of Abkhazia, a republic to which each explosion brings not only wounds and death, but also material damage in the form of Russian tourists returning their travel packages, having met with Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, refuses to comment on the content of the conversation until he returns to Sukhumi. And in Sukhumi, finding himself in close proximity to those who care so much for peace, he declares that no discussion of the status of Abkhazia is possible.
An explosion, especially with human casualties, is a very clear evidence. And yesterday Sergei Bagapsh announced a complete severance of Georgian-Abkhaz contacts. A little earlier, he announced the closure of the Georgian-Abkhaz border. The border, in fact, was already closed, and contacts were largely interrupted back in 2006 - but after these statements, everyone who does not want serious negotiations, be they in Georgia, Russia or Abkhazia, can feel more confident. The question of how to bring the Abkhaz problem into line with the Sochi Olympic plans without negotiations does not seem to worry them. Not to mention the life of the girl from the Gali cafe, whom no one will call her beautiful name Yvette, about the three men who died with her, about the six wounded and everyone who suffered and will suffer in this thawing “frozen conflict.”