Ignore Abkhazia at your own risk

I think that the more important part of the story that Mr. Yglesias' commentary seems to ignore, is that while it is true that while the majority of the current inhabitants of Abkhazia want to secede, this "consensus" has been reached by driving the ethnic Georgians out of their homes, and back into the rest of Georgia as refugees. I do not think that it sets good precedent to reward this kind of ethnic cleansing.

I am not sure where you lovely gentlemen receive, read, or get your information, but the fact remains that Abkhazians had credible claims to their independence and still do.

I advise you to google Sergey Popkov.

The number that is given as an official tally of Georgians who left Abkhazia is incorrect. First, Georgia invaded Abkhazia, not the other way around. I guess you can tell me why, right?

Second, the 250,000 IDP's are made up of people who had left Abkhazia BEFORE the conflict erupted as well as those who left after. This number is highly exaggerated and can be perhaps 160,000 at the most.

Third, can someone explain how a poor, ragged team of people who were not even prepared for the Georgian invasion of their land able to come up with and execute a highly sophisticated plan to ethnically cleanse their land of Georgians? A great number of Abkhazian families are mixed. This is not logical in the least. I'm not quite sure what sort of evidence was used to bring this to the OSCE and UN's attention (as I wonder if they considered Abkhazian lives as well in that murder count), but needlessly to say, don't take everything at face value.

No offense, you two sound like you read mostly mainstream media and want to sound intelligent by commenting on this issue. Perhaps if you investigate further, you'll learn that this issue is not as simple as it seems. Nor is this Georgian land as Tblisi claims.

Abkhazia was independent before by the way. Abkhazia is comprised of a group of people who have been there for as long as Georgians have been in the area. Both groups lived side by side for centuries and even shared a kingdom together. However, much of this brotherly sentiment faded in the past few centuries. Stalin was responsible for forcibly making Abkhazia yet again a part of Georgia after it had successfully claimed freedom from the Russian Empire. I wonder if Stalin being an ethnic Georgian himself had anything to do with that.

Finally, those people left as a result of their fellow Georgian neighbors' actions, not because Abkhazians wanted them out. I'm not sure what you're reading to have reached that point.

Ethnic cleansing. Let's talk about this. Let's discuss how Russia ethnically cleansed a great majority of the Caucasus' population in the 17 and 1800's. Let's discuss how Georgians aided Russians in forcing these people and the survivors of massacres perpetuated by Russian imperialist forces in exiling these people from their ancestral homeland. That is why you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions at this point, Abkhazians living in Turkey and other countries around the world. Do these people not have priority in returning to their ancestral lands either?

You are also aware, that the majority of those Georgians who returned to Georgia were encouraged to move to Abkhazia after this forcible expulsion of the native population took place, correct?

I guess you weren't. Well, I hope now you will enlighten yourselves and do some actual research and stop reading mainstream garbage.

Abkhazia deserves independence, and hopefully the world, for ONCE, will do the right thing and choose to recognize their plight.

Thank you for your compliment Diana, I had no idea that my loveliness transcended the digital domain. I have been travelling in the Caucasus for the past month, spending time in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. I've used this experience to supplement the "mostly mainstream media" I read.

In order:
First: A statement such as "Georgia invaded Abkhazia" presupposes the element you're trying to prove, it assumes that Abkhazia is other than Georgia, rather than a part of it. I'm an American, and I know that there are some who still think the North invaded the South in our civil war, but that's not how the history books read. If you are seriously interested in the issue of sovereignty, I reccommend you check out the international law on the subject. I'm happy to summarize it for you: "an entity is a state when most of the other states says it is and treat it as such."

Second: I think that the sense of certainty you seem to have with respect to numbers, events, timing and history is a little misplaced. If you yourself have counted the number of refugees and remaining inhabitants, I suppose I'd have to defer to your judgment on the numbers. If you mean to suggest that the fact that someone leaves an area before armed conflict breaks out proves that they didn't leave out of fear for their safety, I'd have to disagree with your logic.

Third: Abkhazia is operating independent of Georgia, despite the Georgian armies best efforts, which belies a bit the "poor, ragged" decription you use. As to how a minority can intimidate a majority, lets see, it was managed in South Africa, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in fact if you look at any non-democratic regime, you'll see that a minority are controlling it, whether that minority be defined by race, or just as that bunch of 50 rich guys. Oh and I imagine something to the effect of "the Russians are coming and they're going to be on our side" could help generate some fear. Of course, I'm just guessing, I wasn't there. Additionally, intermarriage doesn't preclude ethinic cleansing. Seen any Armenians in Azerbaijan lately? Any Azeris in Armenia? Think there was no intermarriage?

Here you got to excited to keep numbering your 'points' so these are my numbers.

Fourth: If you go back far enough in time, everything was independent, and everything was Ottoman, and everything was Greek, and everything was Roman. Yes Stalin attached Abkhazia to Georgia, but I dont think he was the first. The international community has adopted a position of maintaining borders where possible, you're free to disagree.

Fifth: If you're suggesting that the IDPs within Georgia left Abkhazia of their own free will and accord, or at the urge or encouragement of Georgians, rather than out of fear for their safety from Abkhazians, it would be the first time I'd heard that notion.

Sixth: Ethnic cleansing? What makes you think that you can go back centuries in history and find any innocent parties? I mean, while Americans were killing Native Americans, the Russians and Armenians were killing Muslims, and the Turks were killing Armenians and Greeks and the Kurds were killing Armenians, and god knows who else was killing everyone else, what were the Abhazians doing, knitting? IN any case, I'm not sure what the point is here, I can observe that the Abkhazians dont seem to carry to much of a grudge against the Russians whose "peacekeepers" keep the Georgian army at bay, and whose passports they enjoy.

More to the point, I don't have a particularly strong opinion, or frankly interest, as to whether or not Abkhazia should be independent. I do have an opinion as to journalism that fails to take into account the broader context, which is why I commented.

Oh, and I googled Sergey Popkov, and I got a physicist, a football coach, and what appears to be some sort of television personality.

Thanks Glen, these are interesting reading.

First: Mr. Adzhindzhal's work is interesting, and raises some good issues. It isn't dispositive, however. It does a good job presenting the Abkhaz argument, but that doesn't make it correct. He does correctly point out that the principle of self determination exists in the same sphere as the principal of territorial integrity. He also correctly points out that the principal of self determination has been principally used for colonies, to be more specific, its really been primarily recognized for overseas colonies of the greater European powers. He fails to address the legal principles behind sovereignty and statehood alltogether, which is arguably the most important element in the discussion. As I've stated earlier, the consensus belief (though there are other minority opinions) in international law is that statehood requires recognition by the majority of other states, which Abkhazia certainly doesn't have.

The credibility of the work as an objective piece of scholarship is also hampered by the fact that a good deal of the citations for some of the more important factual issues are cites to works of the author himself, and the Abkhaz minister of security.

It’s also important to remember that international law is a set of principles by which states are supposed to act, but that there is no capacity to compel them to act so. In practice what one can hope is that, except in cases where a states vital self interest is at stake, they will generally adhere to the principals of international law. If they don’t however, that’s just your tough luck.

Second: Thanks for the graph, I'm in no position to assess the credibility of its source, but I note that according to the graph, when Stalin attached Abkhazia to Georgia in 1931 there were already more ethnic Georgians than Abkhazians, and when the graph ends it looks like Georgians outnumbered Abkhazians about 3 to 1.

The rest of your citations seem to involve descriptions of injustices performed by the Georgians, I’m not sure what the point is. Abkhaz either should or shouldn’t be an independent state, regardless of whether the Georgians persecute their war as gently as possible or as inhumanely as possible. Look at the Kurds gassed by Saddam Hussein, that didn’t get them a state. For whatever its worth, the UN mission report concludes atrocities on both sides anyway. At least now I know who Viktor Popkov is!

In any case, I’ll restate that I don’t really have a position on Abkhazian independence.