Agence France Presse — English
June 4, 2006 Sunday 2:48 AM GMT

Business against all odds at a Caucasus mountains market

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, June 4 2006

At the ramshackle market in this Caucasus mountains town, Zaira sells
green prunes and peppers from her native South Ossetia — a breakaway
Georgian republic just to the south of the snowy peaks.

“They are better than the few that grow here because the climate is
drier there,” said Zaira, a former accountant who fled to Russia when
a war between Ossetians and Georgians broke out in her homeland in
the early 1990s.

Here in Vladikavkaz, a Russian town of 350,000 people, stallholders
from the Caucasus region’s many ethnic groups mix peacefully but the
trade bans that characterise these borderlands make business tough.

In the Caucasus, Armenians and Azerbaijanis have fought over
Nagorny-Karabakh, Georgians and Ossetians over South Ossetia,
Georgians and Abkhaz over Abkhazia and Chechen separatists have
fought for independence from Russia since the collapase of the Soviet
Union in 1991.

“I stopped bringing in fruit from Georgia, it’s hell now. I buy my
stuff in Azerbaijan,” said Zaor, a 29-year-old Georgian who has lived
in Vladikavkaz for the past five years, pointing to a truck filled
with sacks of garlic from Azerbaijan.

“There used to be a big wholesale market for Georgian fruit in South
Ossetia. But for many months now Russian border guards and Ossetian
customs have not been letting us through,” he added.

Relations between Russia and Georgia have cooled since President
Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader, came to power in 2004
after a wave of popular protests in 2004.

Russia has banned major Georgian imports, including wine and mineral
water, and Tbilisi accuses Moscow of supporting the Georgian
separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which lie
on key Caucasus transport routes.

Like many at the market, where Georgians rub shoulders with Ossetians
and Armenians with Azerbaijanis, Zaor blames the region’s politicians
for stirring up ethnic tensions.

Smiling at Nana, the ethnic Georgian who runs the stall next to hers,
Zaira said there was no hatred between ordinary people — “It’s the
politicians who came up with it all.”

South Ossetia fought for independence from Tbilisi in a 1990-1992
conflict that killed hundreds of people and the rebel province is now
seeking to join up with Russia.

Every day, trucks laden with fresh produce snake 100 kilometres (60
miles) through the mountains from South Ossetia to Vladikavkaz. But
Nana complains that fruit from Georgia is harder to come by.

“This will have to be resolved from above,” said Zaor, expressing the
long-cherished hope of merchants in this impoverished region that
governments will ease conditions for business.

“They close roads, but it’s the people who suffer. Officials couldn’t
care less, they can take a helicopter.”