The 14th of August 2022 is the 30th anniversary of the start of the war between the Georgians and the Abkhazians in the decades-long dispute over ownership of the small territory known to the autochthonous Abkhazians as Apsny, to the Georgians as apxazeti, and to most of the world as Abkhazia. For much of the world, the territory remains either a thoroughly unknown or, at best, poorly known country and, for many, a disputed region… This project is the continuation of the earlier “Reflections on Abkhazia: [14 August] 1992-2012”, which was completed 10 years ago. It aims to bring together different points of view on Abkhazia and the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. The authors were given complete freedom regarding the content of their texts. The views they express in their contributions for this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the AbkhazWorld.com website. The texts have been listed alphabetically according to the names of the authors. List of authors: Aivar Jürgenson, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Humanities, Tallinn University. Estonia; Senior Research Fellow in Literature Museum, Estonia. Alexander Iskandaryan, Political scientist, the Director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute. Armenia. Aslanbek Mirzoev, Historian. Institute for Humanitarian Studies - branch of the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nalchik. He was a former Circassian volunteer from Kabarda. Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia. Beslan Kobakhia, The public and political figure of Abkhazia. During the 1992-93 Georgian - Abkhazian War, he was head of the government commission for the exchange of prisoners of war and the protection of the civilian population. Abkhazia. Cem Kumuk, Independent researcher and writer on the history of the Caucasus for about 40 years. Turkey. Charlotte Hille, Assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam. Dr Hille is specialised in State building, conflict resolution, and international mediation. Netherlands. Christopher Langton, Director of The Independent Conflict Research & Analysis (ICRA). He spent thirty-two years in the British Army. During that time he served as the Deputy Commander of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) as well as holding various attaché posts in Russia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. United Kingdom. Clayton Payne, Researcher on environmental governance in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. SOAS, University of London. United Kingdom. Dieter Boden, Ambassador (ret) Former Special Representative of the UNSG in Georgia (1999 - 2002). Germany. Dodge Billingsley, Director, Combat Films & Research and Global QRF. Editor and Contributor: OE Watch (FMSO), Author: Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian Chechen Wars 1994-2009. United Kingdom. Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University (DCU) where he lectures on post-Soviet politics, unrecognised states, Irish studies, and foreign policy. Ireland. Edward Mihalkanin, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas State University. U.S.A. Elçin Başol, Lecturer at Aydin Adnan Mendered University, PhD Candidate at Kadir Has University, International Relations Department. Turkey. Fehim Taştekin, a Turkish journalist and a columnist for Turkey Pulse who previously wrote for Radikal and Hurriyet. Tastekin specializes in Turkish foreign policy and Caucasus, the Middle East, and EU affairs. France. Giulia Prelz Oltramonti, Assistant Professor in International Relations at ESPOL, Université Catholique de Lille, France. She has written on the political economies of conflict in the Caucasus and on informality in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. France. Inal Khashig, Journalist, editor of JAMnews. Abkhazia. Jade Cemre Erciyes, Editor of the Journal of Caucasian Studies (JOCAS). Turkey. Karlos Zurutuza, Freelance correspondent specializing in the Caucasus and the Middle East regions. He has reported for numerous publications including Al Jazeera, IPS, Vice, Deutsche Welle, and The Diplomat. Basque Country. Ketevan Murusidze, Peace Researcher and Practitioner. Georgia. Kieran Pender, Writer for the Guardian. Australia. Marina Elbakidze, Project Coordinator at the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development and coordinator of the ‘Memory Project’ in Tbilisi. She is a lecturer in psychology at the Department of Organisational Psychology, Tbilisi State University. Since 1997 she has participated in a range of peacebuilding activities and has played a key role in Georgian-Abkhaz dialogue processes. Georgia. Maxim Gvindzhia, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia. Abkhazia. Natella Akaba, Historian, Chairperson of the board of the Association of Women of Abkhazia. Abkhazia. Paata Zakareishvili, Georgia’s former Minister of Reconciliation. Tbilisi, Georgia. Patrick Armstrong, Political analyst. He was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specialising in the USSR/Russia from 1984 and a Counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 1993-1996. Canada. Paula Garb, Senior Fellow at the Center for Peacemaking Practice, George Mason University. For twenty years she co-directed the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding which she co-founded at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). USA. Ramesh Ganohariti, Ph.D. Researcher, Dublin City University, Ireland. Rick Fawn, Professor of International Relations. University of St Andrews. Scotland. Stanislav Lakoba, Professor in Archeology, Ethnology and History at the Abkhazian State University. Former Secretary of the Security Council of Abkhazia. Abkhazia. Stephen Shenfield, Specialist on politics and society in Russia and the post-Soviet region. For several years he produced the Research and Analytical Supplement to Johnson’s Russia List. USA. Thomas de Waal, Senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. United Kingdom. Timothy K. Blauvelt, Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. Georgia. Ucha Nanuashvili, Founder at Democracy Research Institute DRI; Project Director at Human Rights Center; Former Public Defender of Georgia. Georgia. Uwe Klussmann, Freelance Journalist. He was a correspondent for the magazine “Der Spiegel” in Moscow from 1999 until 2009. During that time, he travelled to Abkhazia thrice. Germany. Ümit Dinçer, President, Yasemin Oral, Vice President of the Federation of the Caucasian Associations (KAFFED). Turkey. Vadim Mukhanov, Head of Caucasus Department of The Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO). Russia. Vitaly Sharia, Honoured Journalist of Abkhazia. Editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Echo of Abkhazia and author of the Ekho Kavkaza. Abkhazia. Vladislav Bugera, Philosopher, political publicist, and independent left-wing activist. Russia. Zaira Khiba, Linguist & Translator. United Kingdom. Metin Sonmez (Comp. & Ed.) & George B. Hewitt (Ed.)

How do ordinary people navigate the intense uncertainty of the onset of war? Different individuals mobilize in different ways—some flee, some pick up arms, and some support armed actors as civil war begins. Drawing on nearly two hundred in-depth interviews with participants and nonparticipants in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992–1993, Anastasia Shesterinina explores Abkhaz mobilization decisions during that conflict. Her fresh approach underscores the uncertain nature of the first days of the war when Georgian forces had a preponderance of manpower and arms. Mobilizing in Uncertainty demonstrates, in contrast to explanations that assume individuals know the risk involved in mobilization and make decisions based on that knowledge, that the Abkhaz anticipated risk in ways that were affected by their earlier experiences and by social networks at the time of mobilization. What Shesterinina uncovers is that to make sense of the violence, Abkhaz leaders, local authority figures, and others relied on shared understandings of the conflict and their roles in it—collective conflict identities—that they had developed before the war. As appeals traveled across society, people consolidated mobilization decisions within small groups of family and friends and based their actions on whom they understood to be threatened. Their decisions shaped how the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict unfolded and how people continued to mobilize during and after the war. Through this detailed analysis of Abkhaz mobilization from prewar to postwar, Mobilizing in Uncertainty sheds light on broader processes of violence, which have lasting effects on societies marked by intergroup conflict.

The 2008 Georgian-Russian war focused the world’s attention on the Caucasus. South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been de facto independent since the early 1990s. However, Russia’s granting of recognition on 26 August 2008 changed regional dynamics. The Caucasus is one of the most ethnically diverse areas on earth, and the conflicts examined here present their own complexities. This book sets the issues in their historical and political contexts and discusses potential future problems. This volume is distinguished from others devoted to the same themes by the extensive use the author (a Georgian specialist) makes of Georgian sources, inaccessible to most commentators. His translated citations thus cast a unique and revealing light on the interethnic relations that have fuelled these conflicts.

This handbook provides a ready introduction and practical guide to the Abkhazian people and language. It includes chapters written by experts in the field, covering all aspects of the people, including their history, religion, politics, economy, culture, literature and media, plus pictures, chronologies and appendices of up-to-date statistics, maps and bibliographies. This volume forms part of the Peoples of the Caucasus series which is an indispensable - and accessible - resource to all those with an interest in the Caucasus: journalists, aid workers, regional specialists in government, law, banking, accounting, as well as tourists, business people, students and academics.

Introduces the geographical, historical and ethno-linguistic framework of the Caucasus, focusing on the Russian incorporation of the region, the root most conflicts; analyses individual conflicts, from their origins to the attempts at resolving them; analyses the role of the three regional powers (Turkey, Iran and Russia); and sets out a synthesis of the Caucasian conflicts and a conclusion on the place of the Caucasus in world affairs.

This book is about the roots of one of the conflicts in what is now a strategically important area of the world - the Caucasus. It provides detailed analysis of the military, political and diplomatic struggle for Abkhazia and Sochi in 1918-1921 between Russia and Georgia (temporarily Sovietised in 1921-91) and examines the major processes that fuelled the ethnic hatred in the region. This region is one of those hot spots where polar ideologies and economic interests of major powers collide, but which somehow gets neglected by politicians and the media, leaving the small nations involved in the conflict at the mercy of their powerful and ambitious neighbour - Russia. The recent Russian-sponsored ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia is a grim reminder of how important it is to understand the volcanic forces that may explode the region, with dire consequences for the whole world. This work concentrates only on one little-known episode of regional history - the dramatic events that took place in 1918-21 in Abkhazia and the Black Sea Riviera (the Sochi district of the Black Sea province). It demonstrates that the artificial "Abkhazian separatism" had been created and exploited by outside forces (the Ottoman Empire, the Bolshevik Russia and the anti-Bolshevik Russian "White movement") that were interested in the acquisition of the territory of Abkhazia in order to gain control over the whole South Caucasus. At the same time, despite their mutual bitterness, both Red and White Russian leaders demonstrated a striking unanimity on the question of the status of Abkhazia and the Sochi district. Both Reds and Whites sought to prevent the integration of the two disputed territories into Georgia. Both parties worked hard with some elements of local population trying to exploit and develop their "anti-Georgian" sentiments. The book draws parallels between the post-WorldWar I imperialist ambitions of Russia (both communist and anticommunist) and the modern hegemonism of the Kremlin. Indeed, history repeated itself again after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the South Caucasus once again gained strategic importance. Today, it serves as a natural corridor, through which Western countries can access the vital hydrocarbon resources of Central Asia, bypassing Russia. That is why the leadership of the Russian Federation considers it crucially important to restore its political control over the recently independent states of the South Caucasus, or alternatively, to destabilize them to the extent that the newly-opened land bridge between Europe and Asia would not function. That could explain why not only reactionary Russian top brass and secret services, but also well-known "democratic" RF politicians, stood united against Georgia and her territorial integrity. Those combined efforts resulted in the wars and ethnic cleansings of 1992-93 and 2008, the occupation of Abkhazia and the breach of Georgia's territorial integrity. However, the current situation in Abkhazia became possible not only due to the military superiority of the Russian Federation, but to a large extent due to the fact that the history of Abkhazia and her legal and cultural connections with the rest of Georgia remain unknown to the decision-makers, as well as to the politically active public both in the West and in Russia. The paucity of publicly available objective information on the Abkhazian situation opens up great opportunities for ideologically-loaded and sometimes even instigative interpretations of this sensitive issue. In view of the above, this book also aims to provide a concise description and analysis of the process of integration of Abkhazia, and, in part, of the Sochi district, into the Georgian state in 1918-1921, listing the international treaties and inter-party agreements that provide legal basis for the association of Abkhazia with Georgia. The book contains 18 full-color maps and over 20 photographs and other illustrations

In secessionist crises, opposing concepts of nation-building clash, as do divergent interpretations of society and history. This book compares the intellectual responses given to the question of secession according to national contexts. The contributions to this book analyze processes of secession in terms of complex relations between political action and scientific knowledge.