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Commentary, current affairs and book reviews from Abkhazia and the wider Caucasus

21 February 2012 • 5:34 pm 0

Book review: Improbable Abkhazie by Leon Colm

Improbable Abkhazia – Récits d’un État-fiction
Leon Colm (Illustrations: Francesca Devalier)
Éditions Autrement, Paris
January 2009
88 pages
ISBN: 978-2-7467-1237-9

When Leon Colm first came to Abkhazia in 2000, he was already a seasoned academic. His initial aim was to investigate a state that was not meant to exist, and accordingly, he started out by interviewing government officials. However, the canonical narrative did not satisfy Colm — he felt it had been shaped to justify the state of Abkhazia under the pressure of a largely hostile outside world. Thus Colm changed his approach, seeking out contact with ordinary Abkhazians instead. He returned to Abkhazia the next year and before long he found himself travelling to Abkhazia every year. Improbable Abkhazie is the account of some of Colm’s encounters and his quest to discover the sense of Abkhazia.

Among the people featured in the book are the poet Liana and her violin playing daughter Ezma. Liana starts out as English Professor at University but is reduced to running a kiosk after she is ‘gently’ lain off by the Rector.

There is Vladimir, whose acquaintance Colm first makes when he needs a driver, but who grows into a proper guide. Vladimir shows Colm the ruins of the beautiful Gulripsh Sanatorium, spared during the 1992-1993 war but subsequently sacked by Abkhazian looters.

Daour, the governmnent’s youngest official, whose pilot father became a Soviet hero after safely landing a plane whose engines had all failed.

Kolya, son of a decorated WWII paratrooper and younger brother of a famous Abkhazian general, who is himself fighting to ban anti-personel mines and has otherwise resigned himself to speleology. In one episode, he shows Colm the sacred mountain of Dydrypsh, which is said to multiply a hundred times one’s thoughts.

And there is the interpreter Natella, who judges every newcomer by their opinion of Le Petit Prince.

Colm admits that these people are not necessarily representative of Abkhazia. And he concludes that he has not found an answer to the impossible question what Abkhazia ‘is’. But he has managed to give Abkhazia human faces. Improbable Abkhazie, humble though it may be, is a pleasure to read. It is recommended reading for anyone who is in any way involved in Abkhazia, and for anybody who would like to be.

Filed under: Abkhazia, Book reviews, ,

26 December 2011 • 1:27 pm 0

Book review: Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase by Jean Radvanyi and Nicolas Beroutchachvili

Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase: Russie, Géorgie, Arménie, Azerbaïdjan: un Avenir Commun Possible?
Jean Radvanyi and Nicolas Beroutchachvili (Cartography: Manana Kourtoubadzé and Philippe Rekacewicz)
Éditions Autrement, Paris
January 2010
80 pages
ISBN: 978-2-7467-1296-6

Many a book designated ‘atlas’ is not in fact that, but rather a glossy reference work with an occasional map thrown in. Not so the Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase. To be sure, it contains a fair share of running text, but it has maps on most pages, and these form the core of the book.

The Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase is divided into four chapters. The first contains some historical and geographical maps, the second is devoted to the inhabitants of the Caucasus, the third to its economies and the fourth to its conflicts. Apart from the standard political, physical and ethnolinguistic maps, there are plenty of maps not readily available elsewhere. These include a map showing where Europe might end and where Asia start according to various definitions, a map indicating what parts of the Caucasus were vassals of respectively the Turkish, Persian and Russian empires in 1783 and maps comparing the competing Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani territorial claims in 1919 and 1920. There are two maps showing the largest and second largest ethnicities per district, thus highlighting the distribution of minorities, such as the widespread Armenian presence in Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais, and the growing Dargin presence in the latter. There are maps indicating the presence of industries, various forms of agriculture, natural parks, tourism and infrastructure. There is even a map indicating Georgian and Armenian pollution along the river Kura and its tributaries.

Some maps stand out for showing different divides within the Caucasus. One map shows that between 1989 and 2002 the Russian population did not just (strongly) decrease in the Non-Russian South Caucasus, but also in Dagestan, Chechnya and to a lesser extend the other North Caucasian Republics except Adygea. Birth rates are high in the east (Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia) and low in the west (especially Georgia). Mortality rates are especially high in Krasnodar, Stavropol, Adygea, North Ossetia and Ingushetia (no figures for Chechnya). The result is that population growth is strongly positive in Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Ajara and negative in Krasnodar, Stavropol, Adygea, North and South Ossetia and large parts of Georgia (outside Ajara).

The book is not perfect. The texts in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflict sections lack depth, failing to mention the ‘little wars’ of 1998 and 2001 in Abkhazia and 2004 in South Ossetia. The chronologies that accompany these and the Nagorno Karabakh sections completely omit the brutal 1918-1920 Georgian-Ossetian war, the 1918 Baku and 1920 Shushi massacres and Stalins terror in Abkhazia, instead devoting space to legal acts.

Overall, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh form a problem for the Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase. It is understandable, although still regrettable that on a number of maps, some of these states (or Chechnya) turn up grey, there being no figures available. More generally, they don’t fit the narrative of many sections, where Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Russian Caucasus are compared to one another. In the introduction, the authors indicate that they have decided to ignore their independence, given that they have no international recognition, which is of course patently false, in fact by their own admission elsewhere in the book. More importantly, it would have been useful to pay more attention to Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh, as they can be expected to score differently on many of the indicators compared to Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The sensible thing would have been to include these as independent states, along with indicators that the legality of this independence is widely contested. To be sure, the indicators are still present at the bottom of each map, which feels rather obsessive: Abkhazia is presented no differently from Ajara, and still every map explicitly says that Georgia does not recognise its independence.

That said, these issues don’t detract from the fact that the Atlas Géopolitique du Caucase contains many useful and interesting maps. On top of that, it is almost mistake-free and it is designed very elegantly. To name but one detail, every section includes a black disk with Russian, Georgian, Armenian and Azeri translations of its topic. Perhaps it could have been bigger, but as it stands, it is a bargain at a mere €17,–.

Filed under: Book reviews, Cartography, Wider Region, , , ,

15 November 2011 • 12:20 am 0

Book review: Contested States in World Politics by Deon Geldenhuys

Contested States in World Politics
Deon Geldenhuys
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke
April 2009
305 pages
ISBN: 978-0-230-57552-3

A commonly heard argument against recognition of Kosovo or Abkhazia is that it would create an immense precedent, given that there are hundreds of separatist movements in the world. If Kosovo or Abkhazia, then why not also Kurdistan or Euskal Herria? This reasoning is partially correct, in that the decision to recognise a state should be based upon a due evaluation of the arguments pro and contra, and that surely a similar set of arguments in a different part of the world should lead to the same outcome. But mostly, this argument is unnecessarily alarmist, since it ignores the fact that as separatist causes go, Kosovo and Abkhazia are rather special.

Kosovars and Abkhazians control a delineated chunk of land with a permanent population (a state) whose independence may be recognised or not, whereas Basques nor Kurds have a sovereign polity that could be recognised. If some states are considering recognition of Kosovo or Abkhazia partially because this presents a mere coming to terms with reality, then this in itself is simply not a precedent for the Basques or the Kurds, or for that matter for the vast majority of the world’s separatist movements.

Contested States in World Politics by Deon Geldenhuys is about those ten cases which are somewhat similar to Kosovo and Abkhazia. Geldenhuys’s choice to designate these states contested over the more common de facto and unrecognised is a nice find. Many of the states in question enjoy some recognition, and contested captures much better than de facto that it is the legality (de jure) rather than the empirical existence (de facto) of their independence that is at stake.

Geldenhuys’s book is divided into two parts. The first is conceptual, the second summarises the background of each of the ten contested states.

Geldenhuys’s set of ten states still shows a lot of pluriformity. The core set of prototypical secessions is formed by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Somaliland, Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) and Nagorno Karabakh. Of these, the last four came about between 1989 and 1993 through the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While they recognise each other’s independence, only Abkhazia and South Ossetia enjoy some recognition by uncontested states. Kosovo is a late product of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, after it declared independence in 2008 it is now recognised by more than 80 states. Northern Cyprus seceded from Cyprus in 1983 following the 1974 invasion by Turkey, which is the only state to recognise its independence. Finally, Somaliland seceded in 1991 from its union with Somalia originally established in 1960 following their decolonisation. It remains completely unrecognised despite some diplomatic contact with neighbouring countries.

The remaining three cases are less straight-forward. The State of Palestine is the oddest one out among the ten contested states, as it is the only one that does not enjoy any de facto independence — it is almost as hypothetical as Kurdistan. It does not control any land or people — all it has is a nominal government, which doubles as the government of the autonomous Palestinian National Authority in Israel. Still, it has managed to obtain recognition by more than 120 states, which justifies its inclusion as a contested state. In addition, even Israel and the United States, in some sense its most ardent opponents, grudgingly recognise that a Palestinian State should come about at some point in the future. It thus serves as a much more relevant precedent for separatist Basques or Kurds than Kosovo and Abkhazia.

Next, the Republic of China, more commonly known as Taiwan, is also very special in that it has undergone a reverse development. It has been independent since 1912, its independence was previously uncontroversial and it used to control vastly more land and people than it does now. However, after its civil war with the communist counter-government, it was driven back to the island of Taiwan, and the great majority of states chose to recognise the communist state as the state of all China. The Republic of China is in the curious position that of all contested states, it provokes the least controversy, and is commonly identified as an independent country by non-state publications, despite being formally recognised as such by a mere 23 states.

Finally, the lot of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic somewhat resembles that of the Republic of China in that its fortunes have declined over the years, and that of Palestine, in that it has much more diplomatic support than empirical presence on the ground. It declared its independence in 1976, following the departure of the Spanish colonial administration, but its control of the Western Sahara is severely limited due to the Moroccan invasion in 1975 and the ensuing civil war. It now only governs the thin sliver of desert called the Free Zone, home to few people, and its government sits in Algerian exile. Nevertheless it is still recognised by more than 50 countries and is a member of the African Union.

The summaries in the book of these 10 cases are sufficiently detailed for an introduction to the particularities of each, and they are overall quite well-informed. Being summaries, the information is also readily available on the internet and in other literature, but it’s nice to have it all in one place. All ten owe their independence to unique historical crises, like the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and this ought to put at ease fears that their recognition would cause other secessionist regions to frivolously break away as well.

In particular, the section on Somaliland manages well to convey the absurdity of the fact that the international community refuses to recognise its independence, even though it is a well-governed state even by continent-wide standards, let alone the train wreck that is Somalia, for which it should be held up as a shining example. Instead, the international position amounts to demanding that Somaliland cease its rebellion and loyally return under the fold of a government that literally didn’t exist for much of the nineties and which since then has been unable to control even the entirety of its capital (Mogadishu).

The first, conceptual part of the book comprises three chapters. Of these, the third investigates some arrangements that can constitute an alternative to secession. As such, it is not very relevant in a book devoted to states that exist by virtue of the fact that they refuse to have their secession be undone. Some, like Northern Cyprus and perhaps the PMR may eventually give in, but the particular arrangements proposed for them are much better described in the dedicated sections of the book’s second part.

The first chapter discusses the definition of an independent state and recognition in international law and what makes a contested state contested. The second traces throughout history the status of the principle of self-determination in international law and the legality of secession. These two chapters are the intellectual core of the book, but the succession of often conflicting statements from international treaties and scholars in international law leaves one with the impression that at best, international law is merely descriptive in nature, and at worst, that it doesn’t really mean very much.

For example, the book describes one common view in international law (the declaratory theory of statehood) which holds that an independent state is formed by a government which considers itself independent, governing a certain permanently inhabited territory and its population. This definition is perfectly sensible, it is an apt empirical definition of what a state is. But then we don’t really need international law to tell us this — de jure independence turns out to be the same as de facto independence. Even worse, one might naively expect states to recognise other states as legally (de jure) independent based on a straight-forward evaluation of these criteria. But then none of the states under review would be contested. The fact of the matter is that states don’t seem to care about the international legal definition of a state. And why should they? After all, by their nature states are sovereign and can (within bounds) pretty damn well do as they please. It serves states’ interests much better to base state recognition on political considerations. But that pretty much obliterates the notion that there is universally valid international law. Instead, at best there are as many international legal realities as there are sovereign states (at worst, as many as there are people).

Geldenhuys notes that there is a competing view in international law on what constitutes an independent state, the constitutive theory. This holds that a state becomes independent by virtue of being recognised. Now, this makes de jure independence usefully different from de facto independence. But it reinforces the view that international law is completely in the eye of the beholder, since recognition is something states decide individually. And secondly, if legal independence is a consequence of recognition, it becomes inherently impossible for recognition to take into account the legal definition of independence. If international law fails to be prescriptive, can we still call it law, or does it simply reduce to international politics?

Of course, the author is not responsible for the general failings of the discipline. But in the end, he insufficiently manages to make sense of the conflicting opinions and practices in regards to statehood for the reader to be left much the wiser. The second half of the book presents a nice overview of the ten contested states, but this may only justify its rather steep price for a handful of people particularly interested in the topic.

Filed under: Abkhazia, Book reviews, Kosovo, Nagorno Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Pridnestrovie, Sahrawi Republic, Somaliland, South Ossetia, Taiwan, The Great Recognition Game, , , , ,

29 May 2011 • 12:19 am 0

Book review: The Caucasus by Frederik Coene

The Caucasus – An Introduction
Frederik Coene
Routledge, London
October 2009
240 pages
ISBN: 978-0-415-48660-6

“There are two important Meshketian movements, and each has its own view on the nationality issue. Vatan (Homeland) is a pro-Turkish organization, while Khsna is aware of its Georgian conciousness.” (page 160)

“Six months after the rose revolution demonstrations took place in Batumi, and on 6 May 2004, following a second rose revolution, Abashidze was forced to step down and leave for Moscow.” (page 163)

“Until recently the concept of geopolitics has been at the centre of the foreign policy-making of modern states. However, this idea has become outdated and been replaced by the notion of geo-economics, where the emphasis is on the combination of geographical location and economic opportunities.” (page 169, which does not otherwise contain a general exposition on either geopolitics or geo-economics)

Perhaps it is unfair to take a book of 240 pages and highlight three poorly written passages. But then, the publisher explicitly describes it as “clear” and “written throughout in an accessible style”. And all things considered, the unclear, inelegant and even inaccurate passages are one of the most frustrating things about The Caucasus, especially since it is said (again by the publisher) not to require “prior knowledge of the Caucasus”. Individually, they are insignificant, but they add up.

In the very first sentence on the first page of the book it is claimed that the term ‘Caucasian Studies’ should not be confused with the term ‘Caucasiology’ “which deals only with the Caucasian language family”. The International Caucasological Research Institute and the International Caucasology Congress would certainly disagree with that assessment. It is also false in that to the best of modern linguistic knowledge, there is no single Caucasian language family, since despite countless efforts, South and North Caucasian languages have not been shown to be related. This is in fact acknowledged on page 70, in the section devoted to languages. But there instead the author errs on the side of caution when he suggests that the division into North-west, North-east and South Caucasian languages is based more on geography than on linguistics, “as it is often questionable how much they are related to one another”. Indeed, it is uncontroversial that the North-west, North-east and South Caucasian languages form genetic language families. Finally, on page 71 the Caucasian languages are once again presented as constituting one family in a diagram that is labelled an “ethnogenetic tree”. It also lists without comment the Hurrian-Urartian languages as a branch of the North-east Caucasian family, a claim that is far more speculative than the genetic association between Northwest and Northwest Caucasian languages, which is not even mentioned in the text.

On page 165 the author writes that is has “been suggested that Cossacks have assisted the pro-Russian factions in Abkhazia, Transdniestra and the former Yugoslavia”, which is a funny understatement when one considers the fact that Cossack units proudly participate in Abkhazia’s and Transdiestra’s respective annual independence parades. On page 180 it is claimed that after 9/11, Iran has sought to strengthen its ties with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, “in order to counter their support for the global war against terrorism”. And when the author writes on page 185 that before the August 2008 war “all the signs were that Georgia would join [NATO] in 2009″ he confuses membership with the conclusion of a membership action plan (MAP).

The Caucasus is presented as filling a lacuna, there not being any introductory book to the region to date. One could argue whether this is really true, but more importantly, The Caucasus doesn’t read much like an introduction. Instead, it is much more a comprehensive reference work which systematically describes the Caucasus in all its facets, and as such it could also present a valuable addition to the existing literature. Unfortunately, its performance is somewhat uneven.

The book is divided into chapters detailing the region’s geography, its administrations, its population and societies, its history, its conflicts, its international politics, its economy and its culture. The most valuable chapters are probably those on geography, population and history.

Happily, the history chapter starts out in the Stone Age and systematically works its way through the ages up to the present day, although at times it devotes more attention to the region’s surrounding empires than the Caucasus itself. Also, the description of the Caucasus’s late- and post-Soviet history and conflicts is not as detailed as one might have whished, but existing literature already covers those adequately.

The population chapter discusses in different sections all the ethnicities that populate the Caucasus, the languages spoken by them and their religions. It ends with two sections on Russian and Soviet nationality policies and on social structure, but these would have been much more useful had they been longer. There is some overlap between the sections, which is perhaps inevitable, although curiously the massive Jewish emigration from the 1970s onwards is only mentioned in the section on religion. The subsection on Islam is especially well-informed, and there are even subsection on Yezidism and Zoroastrianism, although the latter claims that there is still a Zoroastrian temple in existence in Suraxanı near Baku which may in fact rather be a Hindu temple.

Regrettably, as in many descriptions of the Caucasus, the disputed states of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh are a problem for The Caucasus. In his introduction, the author states that he has chosen to follow the UN in not considering them sovereign. This is dubious, since it is not clear that the UN as a body can be said to have a stance on the normative sovereignty of these states, and even if so, whether this should really trump the empirical sovereignty which these states most certainly enjoy in a book which according to the same introduction “tries merely to give the latest factual stance”. But even if one accepts this, it is inexplicable why these states are blind spots for some parts of the book.

The chapter on geography is otherwise very good and detailed, but it misses out on the fact that as many as four of the world’s ten deepest caves are located in Abkhazia, among which the two very deepest. It discusses airports, but omits the airports near Sukhum and Stepanakert, despite the fact that the former has the longest runway of the Caucasus. It discusses seaports, but doesn’t mention Ochamchira in Abkhazia, which is about the only port deep enough to potentially host Russia’s Black Sea fleet, should it ever be forced to move from Sevastopol. Even if these states are eventually integrated into Georgia and Azerbaijan, these caves, airports and seaports will not go away.

Remarkably, in some cases Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh (and also autonomies in the South Caucasus like Adjara and Nakhchevan) receive less attention than the various Russian administrative units. For example, the latter are treated separately in the economy chapter, whereas the former are not, even though their economies function more independently. Inexplicably, the same holds true for the maps throughout the book. In general, the maps are very rudimentary, and present a big missed opportunity given the wealth of geographical data in the running text.

It is clear that a lot of effort has gone into The Caucasus, and indeed the wide variety of topics it dwells upon must have demanded extensive research. But, regrettably, the end-result is nevertheless uneven, and there are too many places where it feels half-finished. A thoroughly updated second edition could turn this into a truly valuable reference work.

Filed under: Book reviews, Wider Region, ,

15 February 2011 • 12:10 am 0

Book review: Empty land Promised land Forbidden land by Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen

Empty land Promised land Forbidden land
Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen
The Sochi Project
November 2010
272 pages

This is an unusual book. It is a book about Abkhazia, which in itself is rare enough. What is more, it is not academic conflict literature. Still more remarkable, it attempts to combine two genres, being a travel book on the one hand and a flashy photo book on the other. And it was published without a traditional publisher.

Its authors are Rob Hornstra, who did the photography, and Arnold van Bruggen, who was responsible for the text. Together they form The Sochi Project. Theirs is an ambitious project. In the run-up to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games, Hornstra and van Bruggen are reporting from the region, financed by private donors, and every year they are releasing a book about a specific topic — this year Abkhazia.

With such an innovative concept, a lot might have gone wrong. But Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is a success. There are occasional typos, of the kind not detectable by a spell check (e.g. Cold Wall for Cold War on page 55). And some of the background information is mistaken, like when it is said on page 30 that the National Archive of Abkhazia was burned by Georgian soldiers while they were retreating, when instead it was an organised act perpetrated shortly after the beginning of the Georgian occupation of Sukhum. But these are minor irritants, and the book comes out better in this respect than some others, conventionally published yet poorly edited. The overall presentation of Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is very good, and the book itself is a marvel to behold, with the title embossed into its cover.

So how does it hold up as a photo book on the one hand and a travel book on the other?

The book’s photos are of two types. Most prominently, there are big page-filling photos grouped together at the beginning and end of each chapter. The quality of these photos is invariably very high, and my only complaint is that their subject-matter predominantly gloomy — there are many photos of ruins, photos of lost loved ones and serious people in offices. Decay can be very beautiful, and there is a lot of decay in Abkhazia, so there is a definite place for these topics in any photo documentary of Abkhazia. But from the photos in this book, one could get the impression that Abkhazia is a war-ravaged Soviet holdout where time has stood still over the past 15 years. And while that is of course partially true, the photos insufficiently reflect the fact that at least a part of Abkhazia has moved on. There are no photos which show the hordes of Russian tourists (for better or worse), the beautiful nature that attracts them or the parts of Sukhum’s city centre which have been very attractively restored.

There are also smaller black-and-white photos within the text, whose major purpose is to illustrate the narrative. Regrettably, some of these photos are very difficult to make out due their small size and their black-and-white nature.

Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is not an academic treatise, but a travel book. Consequently, it does not approach its subject matter from the ‘outside’. It is not an exposé written by an expert, guided by a set of research questions and equipped with a clear structure geared towards answering these questions, starting with a historical background section. Rather, it is written from ‘within’, by two travellers who share their experiences as they discover Abkhazia, taking the reader with them on their journey, not knowing themselves where exactly this journey will take them. The reporting is straightforward: calling spades spades and refreshingly apolitical. This format is exactly right for introducing readers to the people behind the conflict, and for showing that Abkhazia is a society with its own voices, desires and troubles. While the claim — made at the book presentation — that Empty land Promised land Forbidden land leaves no aspect of Abkhazia undiscussed was an exaggeration, the book does cover a wealth of topics and viewpoints. Especially recommendable in this regard are the sections where the authors visit the Georgian refugees, the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey and the Abazins in Russia. There are also some hilarious highlights, including a visit to the dentist for root canal treatment.

Another claim made at the book presentation was that Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is rare for being such a successful fusion of photo book and travel book, integrating both halves without making either subservient to the other. I am not in a position to judge how Empty land Promised land Forbidden land compares with other efforts in this genre, but its two halves are indeed well-balanced and well-integrated. The photos can stand on their own, but they also illustrate passages from the running text, via an efficient referencing system. (Regrettably though, the photos do not refer back to the text, which would have been useful given that photos and text are sometimes quite far apart.)

Since Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is not being published conventionally, it may be a bit difficult to acquire. But it can be ordered through the website of The Sochi Project, or bought at a number of book stores (across the world) listed there. Empty land Promised land Forbidden land is well worth its price (€49,–). Its print run is only 1000 — but hopefully it reaches a second print run.

Filed under: Abkhazia, Book reviews, , , , , , ,

28 December 2010 • 9:16 pm 1

Book review: Uncertain Democracy by Lincoln A. Mitchell

Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution
Lincoln A. Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
December 2008
192 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8122-4127-3

Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution has been a popular subject for articles, analyses and opinion pieces. Most of these appear well timed for the yearly November anniversary, and many feature a title with some play on the word rose. Probably more so than Serbia’s Plum, Abkhazia’s Tangerine, Ukraine’s Orange and Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip revolution, the Rose Revolution stands out as a significant historical event, as truly revolutionary, perhaps because it most strongly gives off the impression that things are not as they were before. Given this state of affairs, it is quite welcome that there is now also a book, written by someone who witnessed events from close by, without being directly involved himself: Lincoln A. Mitchell. Mitchell was chief of party for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Georgia from 2002 until 2004. Aware of the Rose Revolution literature’s cliché-ridden headlining tradition, Mitchell named his book Uncertain Democracy.

Mitchell’s angle for Uncertain Democracy is the democracy assistance Georgia has received throughout the years. The Rose Revolution has been subject to a lot of oversimplification and misrepresentation. In the most naive variants, it is cast as a transition from dictatorship to democracy, brought about either by a people fed up with oppression, and/or by benign/nefarious (depending on one’s perspective) United States plotting. The truth of course, is much more complicated, and the caveats go far beyond the now often heard observation that Saakashvili’s post-Rose Revolution government is not as democratic as it once was. Mitchell gives a fine analysis of how the Rose Revolution came about. Few of his observations will be surprising or completely new in themselves, but together they paint a picture markedly more subtle than the received narrative. Some of the highlights are listed below:

  • Shevardnadze’s pre-Rose Revolution government wasn’t the dictatorship it is sometimes made out to be. It was not a legitimate democracy, but there was a considerable amount of civil liberties. Without this relatively free environment, the events leading up to the Rose Revolution would never have been possible.
  • At the same time, Saakashvili’s Georgia isn’t a full democracy either, and, this is not merely a recent development, but something which was true right from the start. While the Rose Revolution has probably made Georgia more democratic overall, with markedly improved elections and reduced corruption, certain other areas like media freedom and the quality of party politics have deteriorated since before the Rose Revolution.
  • The Rose Revolution was much less a transformation from dictatorship to democracy than a transformation from a very weak and dysfunctional to a strong and effective state. And this is not accidental — state failure is what motivated people to rise up in protest against Shevardnadze, and effective government was perhaps a more widely professed goal of the Rose Revolution than democracy, with Saakashvili notably expressing the hope to emulate David the Builder, Atatürk, Ben-Gurion and De Gaulle.
  • The Rose Revolution was triggered by the fraudulent 3 November 2003 parliamentary election, but Shevardnadze did not actually rig that election to the extend that previous elections had been rigged. Pre-election manipulations apart, Shevardnadze’s For a New Georgia bloc received only 2 seats more than it should have according to exit polls and parallel vote tabulation. Most of the fraud took place in Ajara, in favour of Abashidze’s Revival party (allied to Shevardnadze). Interestingly, even according to the official results, the opposition had won a majority in parliament, and half of the opposition parties were content with the result. Crucially though, Saakashvili’s National Movement-United Front did get shortchanged significantly, and he did not accept the results.
  • In 2003, few opposition leaders were new faces in Georgian politics. Zhvania, Saakashvili, Gamkrelidze and Burjanadze had previously been prominent members of Shevardnadze’s Citizens Union of Georgia, Burjanadze right up until August 2003. Zhvania had lead the Citizens Union’s very fraudulent 1999 parliamentary election campaign. The only major opposition politician who had not previously been part of the Citizens Union was Natalashvili, whose Labour Party had been cheated out of parliament in 1999. The Labour Party was the second largest opposition party in 2003 and was the only other party to suffer as much from the election fraud as the National Movement-United Front. But Natalashvili committed the mistake of not joining the subsequent protests even as his supporters did, and was thus politically marginalised following the Rose Revolution.
  • The Rose Revolution did not, at least initially, attract huge masses of protesters. It started off with only a couple of thousand of people, and did not reach 100,000 until its climax on the 22nd. For the largest part, it featured less people than the failed protests in 2007 and 2009. The Rose revolution only succeeded because Shevardnadze’s government was so weak, and mishandled the situation so completely.
  • From Shevardnadze’s position, the Rose Revolution was wholly unnecessary. This was not a presidential election, so his position was not directly at stake. Furthermore, he had said repeatedly hat he wanted to step down anyway at the end of his term, so the composition of parliament should not have been so important as to risk his political legacy over. Finally, the Citizens Union of Georgia was in shambles, so he could have allowed his protégés to step into his political footsteps, even if they were now the leaders of the opposition.
  • The Rose Revolution was not in any way ‘engineered’ by American funded NGOs. But it was made possible by democracy assistance, which educated many of its key actors, and which made available the necessary tools to expose election fraud, such as parallel vote tabulation.
  • The Rose Revolution was also not directly wanted by the United States. Despite considerable disappointment in Shevardnadze, he was still seen as pro-Western and to some degree as a ‘reformer’. It was hoped that someone more committed to reforms would succeed him in the next presidential election. But in November 2003, Shevardnadze was one of the few world leaders who unambiguously supported the United States war in Iraq, so engineering a revolution against him would not have made much sense.

The account in Uncertain Democracy shows that the Rose Revolution was a significant, albeit only relative step towards democracy. But it has been oversimplified in the minds of policy makers, and Mitchell argues that this has actually impeded democracy assistance in Georgia. After all, if Georgia is now a democracy, then democracy assistance is no longer necessary, and if the defenders of democracy are now in power in Georgia, then any democratic shortcoming must be due to inexperience, and cannot really be the government’s fault. Indeed, American democracy funding for Georgia has been cut back after the Rose Revolution, while civil society has also been weakened by the outflow of many activists who took up posts in Saakashvili’s government.

Uncertain Democracy stands out for its nuanced, informed, comprehensive and fair content. Sadly, its writing is at times unsatisfactory. Especially in the sections on democracy assistance, the prose is sometimes cumbersome and verbose. This is compounded by a number of misspellings and other small errors, as well as foreshadowings which remain unfulfilled. These flaws mean that Uncertain Democracy will not become the definite book about the Rose Revolution. Such a book would also require more than 5 years of hindsight and more access to confidential sources, which, to his credit, Mitchell acknowledges. However, Mitchell has succeeded in exploiting his unique experience as an outsider who witnessed the Rose Revolution form close by in crafting a book that, at least for the time being, is the principal English language reference on the subject.

—

Note: Uncertain Democracy is rather critical of Georgia’s post Rose Revolution government, but to Saakashvili’s credit, he recommends the book on its back as “essential reading”.

Filed under: Book reviews, Elections, Georgia, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

18 November 2010 • 3:59 am 3

Book review: Under Siege by Tom Trier, Hedvig Lohm and David Szakonyi

Under Siege: Inter-Ethnic Relations in Abkhazia
Tom Trier, Hedvig Lohm, and David Szakonyi
Hurst & Company, London
September 2010
160 pages
ISBN: 978-1-84904-020-4
(co-published by Columbia University Press, ISBN: 978-0-231-70130-3)

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that after the exodus of much of Abkhazia’s Georgian community in September 1993, Abkhazia is now mainly populated by Abkhaz. But the truth is that Abkhazia is still very much a multi-ethnic society, and that Abkhaz only form the largest minority, not a majority of the total population. The Georgian-Abkhazian conflict has generated a steady trickle of publications over the years, but there has been a dearth of literature on the development of Abkhazia’s society since independence and how this has worked out for the various ethnic communities. Under Siege, by Tom Trier, Hedvig Lohm and David Szakonyi was conceived to fill that gap.

Under Siege starts out with a chapter with background information on Abkhazia, which is followed by two useful chapters on the demography of Abkhazia now and throughout recent history and on the specific situation in the Gali district, where Abkhazia’s Georgian population is now concentrated. Then comes the core chapter of the book, which discusses the ethnic dimension of a number of different topics, ranging from language policy and the media to property rights and the economy. This is followed by a conclusion and two appendices. The first appendix could just as well have been part of the main text, it gives individual portraits of the Abkhaz, Georgian, Armenian, Russian, Greek, Estonian, German, Polish, Turkish, Jewish, North Caucasian and Rom communities. The second appendix contains a number of tables concerning the ethnic make-up of Abkhazia’s population.

Is Under Siege a good book? Well, at its core, yes, but there are also three ways in which it disappoints.

Firstly, Under Siege struggles with its stance vis-à-vis the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. In its introduction on page 4, it acknowledges that many issues are contested, and it takes that consideration into account in its use of place names. This in itself is sensible, but the solution is not reader-friendly: forms like Gal/i and Ochamchira/e are ok, forms like Sukhum/Sokhumi and Tkuarchal/Tkvarcheli diminish readability. The book could instead have stuck to the names used in Soviet times, or to the locally used variants (seeing as it aims to describe the situation on the ground) in combination with a disclaimer that this choice is a practical one, and does not entail taking a side in the political conflict. (Similar disclaimers are already in place in the introduction.)

Contrasting sharply with the sensibility displayed in relation to place names, the book straight-out sides with Georgia when it comes to the legal status of Abkhazia, as if this were not the most hotly disputed issue of all. It claims as fact the (widely, though certainly not universally held) opinion that Abkhazia is de jure part of Georgia and that “it is not entitled to have a legislative complex of its own according to international norms” (page 74). Even with that opinion in mind, the practice of modifying every second (the implementation is inconsistent) instance of ‘Abkhazia’, ‘authorities’ and related terms (‘legislation’, ‘law enforcement officers’, ‘ministry’, ‘law-makers’, ‘constitution’, ‘borders’, ‘armed forces’) with the qualifier de facto is enormously annoying — over a course of 150 pages, the term ‘de facto’ appears some 300 times. It claims that this ‘nomination’ is “in line with international law” — even if one agrees with that notion, when has international law ever restricted editorial liberties? All this is all the more annoying since this being a book that aims to describe the situation on the ground, the broader issue of the legitimacy of Abkhazia’s independence is not really relevant, and a short disclaimer in the introduction that the authors do not in any way mean to imply the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the Abkhazian state or any of its institutions would have sufficed to put the issue aside.

The book’s apparent failure to uphold neutrality in its presentation is especially regrettable because it distracts from the fact that its observations, assessments and conclusions turn out to be rather well-balanced. The book seeks to answer a number of questions (on page 3), like “Do the non-Abkhaz population groups in Abkhazia support the drive for independence?” and “Is Abkhazia an ‘ethnocracy’, where a minority group imposes its rules over the majority of the population, or are other ethnic groups involved in the decision-making processes?” The answers reached are not straightforward. Except for the Georgian population, the non-Abkhaz communities do support Abkhazian independence, but only tacitly. And the Abkhaz struggle for survival as a nation has developed into a system of “practice-formalised social exclusion”, by which the interests of ethnic Abkhaz are put above other ethnicities’ interests. But this is partially due to “the loyalty and passivity” of the non-Abkhaz communities themselves. And it “has not led to a clear-cut ethnocentrism”, and Non-Abkhaz do enjoy limited representation in government, especially lower government. While the Abkhaz won the 1992–1993 war, since they still only constitute a minority of the total population, they simply cannot afford to ignore the other minorities.

Secondly, while it is not completely unorthodox that the book should start with ‘Acknowledgements’ in which the people responsible for copy-editing and proof-reading are thanked, there are some shortcomings in these departments. Some mistakes are mere slip-ups, like the occasional misspellings and attributing the 2003 census results on the ethnic composition of Abkhazia’s population in the second appendix to the government in exile’s statistical department. Other mistakes are in essence minor as well, but they convey the unfortunate impression that the person responsible didn’t know better. For the interested reader, a list of problematic passages has been appended to the end of this text.

While these shortcomings are superficial in nature, they have the very regrettable effect of diminishing the authority of the text. They don’t do justice to the extensive field-work carried out by the authors, who interviewed over 90 people between February and December 2007. It is this research which makes the book really valuable.

Thirdly, at 150 pages, the book is not very long. It focusses mostly on the Abkhaz, Armenian, Georgian and Russian communities, which is understandable, because these are the largest. But the profiles of the smaller ethnic groups in the first appendix leave the reader wanting to learn more. The authors could perhaps also have addressed in more detail the interesting phenomenon of gastarbeiter coming to Abkhazia in recent years, mostly from Russia and Central Asia.

A comparison with other societies could also have formed a useful addition to the book. For example, the authors point out on page 82 that Abkhazian citizenship law discriminates in favour of Abkhaz, Abaza and Circassian ethnicities, any member of which can obtain Abkhazian citizenship. It would have been very interesting to compare this with similar arrangements for Israeli and Armenian citizenship. Likewise, on page 11 it is said that “Abkhazia does not qualify as a democratic entity and elections cannot be classified as free and fair, particularly as … about 200.000 displaced Georgians cannot vote.” This immediately invites comparison with the situations in Estonia and Latvia, where large parts of the Russian populations are stateless, and therefore cannot participate in elections. (There is definitely a democratic deficit here, but to claim that these societies therefore do not have free and fair elections is not very useful, and is somewhat akin to claiming that there were no Western democracies before the introduction of women’s suffrage. To be sure, there are other issues with the free- and fairness of Abkhazian elections.)

It is also a shame that while published only now, in September 2010, the book does not seem to have incorporated any events subsequent to the recognition of Abkhazia by Russia and Nicaragua in August and September 2008, which gives it a slightly outdated feel. This includes the frequent references to UNOMIG, which came to an end in June 2009, the autumn 2009 citizenship debate and the December 2009 presidential election, in which due to a change in election rules far less Georgian were allowed to participate than during the last presidential election.

Under Siege is not a perfect book, but its shortcomings are not so great that they couldn’t be fixed in a second edition. As it stands, they somewhat distract from the authors’ good field work and sensible considerations. In any case, the book is a very useful addition to the existing literature on Abkhazia.

List of Errata

  • Note 44 on page 40 reads:

    “According to linguists and ethnographers, the main feature that differentiates the Abkhaz from the Abaza is the letter `kh’ (`x’ in Cyrillic), which was added by Tsarist authorities, who were interested in severing the close connections between the sub-groups on either side of the Caucasian mountain ridge.”

    This phrasing is so unfortunate, it actually constitutes a direct insult to ‘linguists and ethnographers’. Reducing the differences between the Abkhaz and the Abaza people (or any two communities for that matter) to a minor orthographic detail is ludicrous, the idea that a minor orthographic difference should have the potential to contribute significantly to a split between two communities is fantastic, the claim that the Tsarist authorities designed the orthographies of the Abkhaz and Abaza languages is false and the idea that the linguists who did did so in order to sow dissent is a serious accusation that should be backed-up by a credible source. It so happens that Abkhaz and Abaza are indeed closely related people, and it would not have taken a lot of trouble to find out that the Abaza were probably formed through two distinct episodes of out-migration from Abkhazia.

  • On page 56, it is said that the period between 1910 and 1917 witnessed a “realignment with North Caucasian people” — which leads one to wonder: a re-alignment where from?, when the Abkhaz had just spent the better part of the 19th century fighting the Russian Empire along-side the North Caucasian people.
  • Page 74 claims that Abkhazia declared independence on 12 October 1999, but overlooks the fact that the ‘declaration’ which was passed on that date merely states that Abkhazia has been independent (de facto and de jure) since 30 September 1993. This oversimplification then leads to the observation that the constitution had ‘however’ already been adopted in 1994, and the mistaken suggestion that its first article describes Abkhazia as a “sovereign, democratic, legal state” only after amendments passed in conjunction with the 1999 ‘independence’ declaration. (The relevant amendments concerned the appointment of judges.)
  • Page 100 introduces ‘the editor of Chegemskaya Pravda’, while a footnote two pages later mentions ‘a prominent newspaper editor, Inal Khashig’, whereas these are of course one and the same person.
  • On page 101 the state news agency Apsny Press is confused with its weekly publication Apsny.
  • On page 114 it is said that while more than two centuries of Ottoman rule led many people to identify as Muslims, Orthodox Christianity “seems to have gained more ground among Abkhazians”, which is a rather wry thing to say given that in the 19th century, the Muslim majority of Abkhazia fled the Russian conquest (which is discussed on several other occasions throughout the book.)

Filed under: Abkhazia, Book reviews, Human Rights, , , , , , ,

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