DEVELOPMENT AID CAN BE GEARED TOWARD CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN ABKHAZIA
Monday, July 17, 2006
By Vladimir Socor
Georgia is preparing to exercise its sovereign right to demand the
termination of Russian "peacekeeping" operations on its territory and
their replacement with genuine international peacekeeping missions.
Concurrently, Tbilisi is redoubling efforts to unfreeze not the
conflicts as such (these are not and never were "frozen") but rather
to unfreeze the frozen negotiations toward political settlements
in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Within this context, the role of
international donor agencies and the functions of development aid in
the secessionist enclaves requires some overall political rethinking
and adjustment of goals on the ground.
Until now, those agencies and aid programs have basically aimed
to bring at least minimal improvements to living conditions in
the conflict-torn enclaves. Rarely, if ever, was Western-funded
development assistance conceived as a tool for advancing political
resolution of the conflicts, let alone resolution on terms consistent
with Western interests. This approach should and can now begin to
change by correlating development aid programs more directly with
the goals of conflict resolution. Free from Russian influence on
their decisions, donor agencies are potentially valuable vehicles
for promoting those goals.
A new approach along these lines can now be tested in Abkhazia. For
example, international development aid can contribute significantly
to the rebuilding and resumption of operations of the railroad
section between the Psou and Inguri Rivers. A linchpin in the pre-1991
Trans-Caucasus railroad, that section was destroyed in the 1992-93 war
and awaits reconstruction in a package deal that would also provide
for the Georgian refugees’ safe and orderly return to the Gali
district. Russia’s state railways company lays claim to operating
that section once it is restored.
To ensure politically neutral operation of that section, donor
agencies could facilitate the formation of a Georgian-Abkhaz joint
technical group. Georgian managers and personnel who ran that railroad
prior to 1992 were turned into refugees as a result of the conflict,
and the relevant technical documentation is in Tbilisi since those
events. Having the railroad operated by a joint Georgian-Abkhaz
group is clearly preferable to a Russian takeover that would advance
Abkhazia’s de facto incorporation into Russia. Moreover, Russian
operation of that railroad would probably involve deployment of
railway troops — a specifically Russian institution that handles
many aspects of civilian transport — to Abkhazia on the excuse of
protecting that railroad. Meanwhile, an example of Georgian-Abkhaz
technical cooperation exists at the Inguri hydroelectric power plant,
jointly and continuously operated since 1994.
Donor agencies’ strategy to promote small-scale private-sector
projects particularly in farming can also be adjusted to advance the
resolution of this conflict. In the Ochamchire district, for example,
such assistance can be channeled to joint farming projects that would
be undertaken by local Abkhaz residents and Georgian refugees who
would be returning to their homes in that district. Such projects
can promote the goal of reversing the ethnic cleansing of Georgians
— a goal that can be achieved gradually and with proper economic
incentives to both sides and is central to a political resolution
of the conflict. Also in the Ochamchire district there is need for
an inventory of Georgian-owned houses, preparatory to their eventual
rebuilding to accommodate any returning refugees.
In the Gali district, Georgian refugees have returned in fairly
large numbers to their homes in an unorganized movement that the
Abkhaz authorities could not stop. However, Abkhaz authorities
are subjecting those Georgians to various forms of discrimination
and intimidation. Those problems — as well as organized crime
in the Gali and Ochamchire districts — can best be handled by
an international police force of several hundred, not by military
peacekeeping troops, let alone by Russian Army "peacekeepers." For
their part, donor agencies are well placed to support the provision
of Georgian-language education in Gali for the returnees’ children,
whom the Abkhaz authorities currently deprive of that right. It
is also clearly necessary at this stage to support the creation of
community representation of refugees who returned to Gali.
Ongoing demographic trends in Abkhazia would also seem to warrant an
adjustment in the aid focus and a more direct correlation of assistance
programs to conflict-resolution goals. According to broadly convergent
estimates by all sides involved, the number of resident ethnic Abkhaz
has dropped to between 50,000 and 60,000 (from an estimated 90,000
a decade ago) through social hardships and emigration; the number of
resident Armenians has slowly but steadily increased to some 55,000
and may rise further, mainly through immigration from Russia’s nearby
Krasnodar krai, where the authorities condone harassment of Armenians;
and the number of returning Georgians in Abkhazia has reached some
55,000, most of them in the Gali district.
These numbers and these proportions suggest that the political as
well as the aid dimensions of conflict resolution and post-conflict
reconstruction are eminently manageable at the local level. By
the same token they underscore the need to face up to the Russian
challenge at the international level, first and foremost by pressing
for withdrawal of Russian troops to clear the way for local processes
toward political settlement.