Abkhazians celebrate Georgia’s humiliation

In Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, people are getting ready to party. The palm-lined pedestrian walkway along the seafront has been repaved, buildings have been given a new lick of paint, and green-white-red Abkhazian flags flutter from almost every car. Tuesday is Independence Day, the day the Abkhazians celebrate the routing of the Georgian army in the 1993 war and the freeing of their territory from Georgian control.

This year, the celebrations are extra special. After last month's war in South Ossetia, Russia recognised the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. For the first time, the Abkhazians are able to celebrate recognition - by some, at least - as a real country. So far only Nicaragua has followed Russia's lead, though there is hope that Belarus, Venezuela and Syria might follow.
 
It is Moscow's recognition, however, that is most important for Abkhazia, because it comes with a security guarantee: Russia promises to defend Abkhazia against future Georgian aggression. "For the first time in our lives, we feel secure," says Irakli Khintba, a local political analyst. This security, it is hoped, will lure back some of the millions of Russian tourists who used to relax along Abkhazia's idyllic Black Sea coast (Josef Stalin's favourite holiday dacha was at Gagra, up the coast from Sukhumi). It also throws open possibilities of huge economic progress, with Russian business set to flood Abkhazia.

"Russia has come out of this looking just and fair, while the West has proved how hypocritical it is," says Sergei Shamba, the Abkhazian foreign minister. "All the West talks about is Russia intimidating Georgia, they don't want to see that Georgia has been doing the same to us for years. The Americans first stated the right of peoples to self-determination, and now they're cynically going back on it."

When I last visited Abkhazia for The First Post in May 2007, I found a mood of cautious optimism. Buildings in Sukhumi were being slowly renovated after the period of war and economic blockade that followed. But now, with Russia's announcement of recognition, a positively buoyant atmosphere has developed; there is a feeling that the war-ravaged strip of coastline could genuinely become a "real country".

"It was amazing, people here suddenly started smiling," said a foreign NGO worker based in Abkhazia. "It was like a weight had been lifted off people's shoulders."

The rumour going round Sukhumi is that Vladimir Putin himself may turn up for the festivities today, which will involve a military parade of Abkhazian forces, with captured Georgian military vehicles and other war trophies in tow.

The majority of residents can be counted on to don their best outfits, spray celebratory gunshots into the air and drink themselves into oblivion. Many of these gunshots will this year be fired from American M4 rifles, captured from a Georgian stash in the Kodori Gorge. The Georgians took control of Kodori, a mountainous part of Abkhazia, back in 2006. Earlier this year the Georgian government ran media trips to show foreign journalists the progress that had been made – shiny new buildings, a school, hospital and even an ATM machine.

Now it's all gone. The gorge was bombed by Russian and Abkhazian aviation and the Abkhazians are back in control. The Abkhazians say the discovery of a military stash there – when the Georgians claimed it was unmilitarised – shows once and for all that Tbilisi can't be trusted.

What will happen to tens of thousands of Georgian refugees, driven out of their homes in the 1993 conflict, is hard to say. Some have returned to Gali Region, adjacent to the border with Georgia, but a wholesale return to other parts of Abkhazia seems unlikely.

Despite this huge issue, it's hard to begrudge the Abkhazians their day of celebration. After two decades of war and economic hardship, they finally have a reason to smile. "It's clear to everyone now that there is no return to the past," said Shamba. ·