Dr Viacheslav Chirikba

On 29^th January 2010, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation had the honour of welcoming Dr Viacheslav Chirikba, professor of linguistics at the State University of Abkhazia in Sukhumi, adviser to the president of the Republic of Abkhazia and head of the Abkhaz delegation at the UN sponsored talks in Geneva.  He spoke on “The Geneva talks:  prospects for stability and human rights in the Caucasus.”

Dr Chirikba began by deploring the fact that there was so little information about Abkhazia in Europe.  This was in spite of the fact that the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia was a conflict on European soil.  The current negotiations were taking place under the aegis of European organisations, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union, as well as the United Nations.

Dr Chirikba said that the conflict between Abkhazia and Georgia had not started yesterday.  Its roots lay in the forced incorporation of Abkhazia into Georgia by Stalin.  In the final days of the Soviet Union, in April 1990, the Soviet parliament adopted a law on secession which gave autonomous republics within Soviet republics the right to decide whether to secede or remain in the Union.  People often believe, wrongly, that only Soviet republics had the right to secede.

Consequently, he said, when Georgia became independent, Abkhazians woke up citizens of a state which they did not know and which they had not chosen.  Several Georgian politicians called for all autonomies to be abolished in Georgia.  The Abkhaz in return proposed a federal solution.  Unfortunately, war broke out when Georgia sent troops into Abkhazia to try to settle the problem.  It was a very bloody war and there were many refugees.  But miraculously Abkhazia secured victory.

Negotiations started under the aegis of the UN in 1993.  They produced important documents such as a ceasefire agreement and an agreement on the borders between Abkhazia and Georgia.  In spite of these successes, the negotiations quickly reached a dead end.  Abkhazia insisted on a federal solution while Georgia said there should be mere autonomy.  After long negotiations which led nowhere, Abkhazia proclaimed its independence in 1999.  The conflict thus became one of the “frozen conflicts” on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Dr Chirikba recalled that Mikheil Saakashvili took power in Georgia in 2003 and said that he immediately started to make plans for reconquering Abkhazia.  He managed to regain control of Adjaria which had enjoyed a high degree of independence under Aslan Abashidze, the regional president, and this gave him hope for success in Abkhazia too.  His entourage decided that it would be impossible to solve the problem with negotiations.  His Defence Minister, Irakli Okruashvili, who then clashed with Saakashvili and who now has refugee status in France, often called for a military invasion of South Ossetia.  In 2006, the Georgians retook the upper Kodori valley by force.  Following this invasion, Abkhazia left the negotiations.  Georgia then attacked in August 2008 but was beaten in this war.  On 26^th August 2008, Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Dr Chirikba then said a few things about Abkhazia today.  Its population is 300,000 – a little less than Cyprus.  It is a democratic republic with parliamentary and presidential elections.  These elections are genuinely contested: the opposition won in 2004, for instance.  At the presidential elections of 12^th December 2009, there were five candidates and a merciless electoral camoaign.  Over 200 observers came from 20 countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, France, Germany, the United States etc.

He then turned to the question of Abkhazia’s status in international law, saying that one can answer this question either in theory and in practice.  Theoretically, Abkhazia fulfils all the criteria for statehood: it has a defined territory, a population and a legitimate political authority.  But in addition, states are usually also recognised by other states.  Abkhazia has been recognised by four states including one which is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.  Abkhazia has had no revolutions and no coups d’état.  Dr Chirikba said that the country had considerable economic potential – tourism, agriculture, mineral and other natural resource, even oil – and that it was therefore a politically and economically viable.

Finally, he turned to the negotiations.  These are between Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Russia and they take place with the participation of the USA and under the aegis of the EU, the OSCE and the UN.  They started in October 2008, following the agreement negotiated by Presidents Medvedev and Sarkozy.  The participants are at the level of deputy foreign ministers.  The previous day, 28^th January 2010, had been the ninth round.  There are two groups, one on security and one on refuges.  The parties have put in place mechanisms for crisis prevention and crisis management.  These were big steps forward.  The negotiations are a forum in which the three sides meet face to face in the presence of observers: they discuss concrete questions and things are moving forward.

Politically, however, Dr Chirikba said they had enormous problems.  At the last session but one, the parties had decided to work towards an agreement on the non-use of force.  All parties had been ready to prepare their own draft for such an agreement.  However, at the meeting on 28^th January, Georgia unexpectedly announced that it was no longer interested in this question and that it was abandoning its own draft.  The Deputy Foreign Minister of Georgia said suddenly that only two questions interest Tbilisi:  the “de-occupation” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the replacement of the Russian forces by international ones.  This new position had been quite unexpected.   Dr Chirikba said he regretted the fact that the United States of America was supporting Georgia on this.  He said that Abkhazia believes that an agreement on the non-use of force is essential.  No problems could be solved in the Caucasus by war, he said.  The agreement would have been the first step towards establishing trust between Georgia and Abkhazia.  He said these were dramatic days and that Abkhazia was now reconsidering whether it is worth continuing with the negotiations.  The talks were the only forum, however, at which the three sides met to discuss concrete issues.  He said that Abkhazia hoped that reason would prevail and that the parties would be able to agree on the non-use of force.

Following Dr Chirikba’s talk, Dr Bernard Owen spoke.  He had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Abkhazia by IDC, along with Maurice Bonnot, which had visited the country on on the occasion of the presidential elections held on 12^th December 2009.

Bernard Owen said that it was important to bear history in mind when dealing with the breakup of political units like the USSR.  When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed, all its infrastructure routes became obsolete.  A new reality had to be invented.  Within the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union, the various republics were administrative entities, subdivisions of one state.  Had their new independence made them the pawns of other great powers?

Bernard Owen said that he thought a political agreement in the Caucasus would be extremely difficult.  The Minsk discussions on Nagorno-Karabakh have been going on for ten years.  There are discussions about the Middle East which produce no result whatever.  A meeting in Geneva could perhaps serve to help people get to know one another but, Bernard Owen said, political discussions are difficult if not impossible.  Far better, he said, to do what the Europeans did when they adopted an unpolitical method – discussing practical matters like coal and steel first  and leaving political matters to one side.  In the Caucasus, he said, it would be a good idea to start with informal discussions without the presence of observers and dedicated only to concrete matters.  The political issues could be left till later.

The last speaker was Maurice Bonnot, a retired French diplomat with wide experience in the Caucasus.  He presented his report on the fact-finding mission IDC had sent him on to Abkhazia.  He emphasised that these were the first elections to have been held in Abkhazia since the 2008 war and the international recognition which followed.  He said that the Abkhaz had been determined to make a success of their elections.  He said that the NGOs had done good work and that there had been good cooperation with the Central Electoral Commission.  The question of the use of passports to vote had been the subject of heated debates but the results spoke for themselves:  President Bagapsh was re-elected with 60% of the vote, the other candidates receiving between 15% and 2%.  Two of the candidates had offered their congratulations to the winner the day after the vote.  The election had been democratic and it showed that Abkhaz society was developed.

Maurice Bonnot then turned to the policies of President Bagapsh, whom he and Bernard Owen had interviewed.  The president had spoken of economic, demographic and security challenges.  Abkhazia had long since got rid of its Soviet economy.  The main threat to the country’s language came from Russian.  In foreign policy, Bagapsh said he wanted a “multilateral” approach, i.e. without total reliance on Russia, but that the European Union was effectively closing the door to this.  Maurice Bonnot said that the relations between Abkhazia and Russia were not as simple as people often claimed.  The Georgians, for instance, said that Abkhazia was simply occupied by Russia and that it had no autonomy whatever, but this had not been borne out by their discussions.   Many Abkhaz had spoken of their bitterness at the hostility of Tsarist Russia to the Abkhaz people, many of whom left their country to serve in the Ottoman armies.  They also resented the blockade imposed by Russia under Yeltsin.  President Bagapsh had complained to them that they wanted good relations with the EU but that the EU attacked them when all they were trying to do was survive.

Maurice Bonnot ended his talk by saying that Georgia had in the past signed peace agreements shortly before using violence.  This had been the case in 2006 when a peace agreement in June was followed by a military attack (in the upper Kodori valley) in July.  He said that he could therefore quite understand it if the Abkhaz were sceptical of such plans now.

When the debate was thrown open to the room, Mr Victor Kamyshanov took the floor to present the observers’ reports which he, as a Vice-President of the Federation for Peace and Conciliation had just presented officially to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.  He said that his organisation had come under pressure from various capitals trying to influence the reports but that it had acted in complete independence.  The observers had been unanimous that the elections were transparent and democratic.  There had been 33 international observers, the figure of 200 mentioned earlier being the number of Russian observers alone.

A lively debate followed.  In particular, two attendees gave the “Georgian” point of view on the Abkhaz question.  (IDC had invited a Georgian diplomat to speak alongside Dr Chirikba but this invitation was declined.)  In a long intervention, a Georgian historian said that Abkhazia had been part of Georgia for a long time; that the 1993 victory had not been “miraculous” but simply the result of help given by the Russian army; and that the purpose of the whole operation had been to keep Georgia under Russian influence.  A large number of Georgians had been expelled from Abkhazia.  The historian rejected claims that the election had been democratic – how could one speak of democracy when a large part of the (Georgian) population had been driven out?  The Georgians in Gali, for instance, had not had the right to vote because they did not want to take Abkhaz passports.  He said that Georgians were suspicious not of the Abkhaz but instead of Russia, which was doing all it could to prevent Georgia from fulfilling its European aspirations.  Another speaker also attacked Russia, accusing it of driving out 300.000 Georgians from Abkazia and attacking Maurice Bonnot for his lack of neutrality.  She said that it was not Georgia but Russia which was preventing the reconciliation of peoples.

In conclusion, Mr Chirikba returned to the question of recognition.  Recognition, for him, was not a necessary condition for legitimacy or statehood.  Nor can recognition legitimise a state if its own people does not.  Recognition would follow if the US decided to recognise Abkhazia, as the Kosovo example showed.  The world was still living in a Cold War.  The EU’s Tagliavini report (par 11, page 17) had erred in saying that only Soviet republics had the right to secede from the USSR. 

The debate was therefore lively but courteous.  IDC thanks not only the main speakers but also all those who made time to come and listen to them.