Walking across the Inguri bridge into Abkhazia, there is something of a Cold War feel, crossing on foot the line in a frozen conflict. I travelled by taxi from Zugdidi to the boundary line, and was dropped off just before a barrier closing the road to traffic. The taxi driver indicated that the way to Abkhazia was straight ahead. And so I walked, my backpack on my back, not really knowing what to expect. Behind me, a huge Georgian flag flew at the top of a massive flag pole. Ahead, the Georgian writ no longer ran.
The Georgian police sitting in a little cabin showed no interest in me, and so on I walked, past a couple of young Georgian soldiers and through a chicane of concrete blocks, and onwards to the bridge. The bridge is long, extending over an expanse of marshes and little streams, the main flow close to the Abkhazian side. I only saw a couple of vehicles crossing, both from international aid organisations. Others were crossing on foot, Georgians from Gali district, the first district on the Abkhazian side, who had been allowed by the Abkhazians to return to their homes, and to pass to and fro across the boundary. There were also a couple of covered wagons that ferried people backwards and forwards across the bridge at a horse trot.
Reaching the Abkhazian side, any apprehensions I had had of potential problems proved unfounded. While there was a large Russian base next to the crossing, no Russian soldiers were in sight. Just friendly Abkhazian border guards, who checked my passport and took the entry permit I had received from the Abkhazian foreign ministry by email attachment. Gaining entry to Abkhazia turned out to be straightforward for a foreign visitor. An application form sent by email to the foreign ministry, and the receipt of the permit a few days later. Then all I had to do was to go to the foreign ministry to receive a visa, at a cost of 20 dollars, once I reached the capital, Sukhum.
Arrived in Abkhazia, I took a taxi to the first town, Gali (in Georgian, Gal for the Abkhazians). Like all the taxis waiting at the boundary, it was a rickety, shaky old thing that clattered and rattled over the bumpy, pitted roads to Gali. It seemed there had been no maintenance of this road since the conflict of 1992-93.
In that war, with Russian support, the Abkhazians succeeded in breaking away from Georgia, of which Abkhazia was an autonomous republic (although it has not gained wide recognition). Abkhazia, or Apsny in the Abkhazian language, had been incorporated into imperial Russia in the 1860s. In what is remembered by Abkhaz as genocide, over the following years a large part of the Muslim Abkhaz, as well as the neighbouring Circassian, Ubykh and Abaza populations, were expelled to the Ottoman Empire, many of them dying when the ships carrying them sank, or from disease as they languished in the Ottoman ports of arrival. Abkhazia was already multi-ethnic, including, like much of the Black Sea coast, a Greek population. Georgians claim there had been Georgians there for thousands of years. What is certain is that following the depopulation caused by the Russian expulsion of much of the Abkhaz population, their place was taken by immigrants, especially Georgians (mainly Megrelians from western Georgia), as well as Armenians, Russians and north Caucasian peoples. The result was a dramatic shift in the ethnic balance, so that by the end of the 1980s Abkahz amounted to less than 20 per cent of the population of Abkhazia, and Georgians some 45 per cent.
Demographics were the key to the conflict, and remain central today. The numbers are disputed, but the wholesale expulsion of the Georgian population as the Abkhazian forces advanced in 1993 drastically reduced the population from over half a million to probably less than 200,000 now. But Abkhaz still constitute a minority, the other significant groups being Armenians and Georgians. Since the late-1990s, the Abkhazians allowed Georgians to return to Gali district. Perhaps as many as 60,000 have done so, although the number is fluid, as many keep a foot on both sides of the Inguri, crossing into Abkhazia to look after their homes and plots of land, and to tend family graves. Many avoid the Inguri crossing, and the bureaucracy and expense of being officially registered in Abkhazia. Instead, they cross by numerous unofficial paths, often by minivans, which can ford the river at some points, dodging the Russian soldiers who monitor the boundary. Sometimes they are caught, fines are imposed and minivans impounded.
As the poor state of the road to Gali and of the taxi that took me along it indicated, Gali is in a dreadful state. Many buildings are abandoned. In some derelict apartment blocks, their facades a series of gaping holes, there are occasional flats that are nevertheless occupied, laundry flapping on the balconies. The market area, with its squalid little shops with a mean little selection of goods on offer, is a depressing place. What kind of life do people have here? One answer to that question is possibly that they have a better life than the people still housed in collective centres for those displaced by the conflict, over the other side of the boundary. I saw some of these buildings in Zugdidi, decrepit and open to the elements, no doubt damp and freezing cold in winter. People have been in these places for nearly two decades. There has been international aid money to repair and improve the buildings, but the work has often been shoddily carried out. These victims of the conflict seem to be forgotten and unwanted, offered no hope or future. They are kept out of the way and left to rot on the pittance the Georgian government pays them.
Most of the people in Gali are Georgian, speakers of the Megrelian language, part of the same Kartvelian language group as Georgian, as well as Svanetian and Lazuri. They are second-class citizens. Clearly the Abkhazian government in Sukhum and its Russian paymasters have invested almost nothing in this Georgian-inhabited district since 1993. The place is run by Abkhazians. The Abkhazian flag flies there, and a memorial honours the Abkhazians who died in the conflict with Georgia, not the Georgians who were massacred and were driven from their homes. In order to hang on in Gali, the Georgians have to accept many humiliations and compromises. A few thousand of them have even taken Abkhazian citizenship.
Although most of the people of Gali speak Megrelian, the lingua franca, the language of public communication, is Russian. I witnessed a neat illustration of this travelling back by minivan from Sukhum to Gali at the end of my visit to Abkhazia. Sitting in the van in Sukhum, waiting for it to depart, people were speaking to one another in Russian. Not long after leaving Sukhum, the van stopped to pick up a woman who was obviously well-known to many of the passengers, and to the driver. She at once started speaking in Megrelian. The driver jokingly rebuked her. She should learn to speak Russian properly, and not speak ‘Georgian’. Such light rebukes continued as the journey progressed, but as we got closer to Gali, more and more people switched to Megrelian. And by the time we reached Gali, everyone was speaking Megrelian, including the driver, who was called Badri, a typical Georgian name.
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