Georgia’s troubled history

Why is Georgia conflict-prone?

Because it's a living fault-line of history, geography and ethnicity. Stretching most of the way across the vital strip of land between the Black and Caspian seas, stuck between Europe and Asia, Islam and Christianity, its mountains and pastures have been fought over for 4,000 years. Buffeted by the great empires of Persia, Turkey and Russia, the country has clung to a cherished identity: a language, warrior culture and distinct Christian tradition hundreds of years older than its enormous neighbour to the north. And since the accession of a pro-Western government in 2004, this nationalist tradition has seen Georgia angle for a minor but pivotal role in international affairs.

And how has it gained such leverage?

Defying Moscow, the country has reinvented itself as a pro-Nato outpost on Russia's southern borders, a democratic pipeline route to the oil fields of Central Asia and the third-largest contributor of troops in Iraq. Such willingness does not go unnoticed - Georgia is the second-largest recipient of US aid per capita after Israel - or, as the world saw last week, unpunished.

Has Georgia always been a country?

It declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 but it dates its history to the kingdoms of Kartli and Colchis, immortalised by Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece. (Archaeologists claim that ancient tribes used to pan for gold using sheep's fleeces.) Conquered by the Romans, the kingdom of Kartli converted to Christianity and in the fifth century Byzantium let it appoint its own bishops, 300 years before the Russian Slavs joined the Orthodox Church. But it has rarely had its own way. With the exception of its "Golden Age" – from the 11th to 13th century – it has been more or less constantly invaded. Religious and ethnic minorities have swept in and out again, leaving a rich junk of tribal identities behind. Hundreds of medieval towers, built for war, line the ridges and mountain passes. Fearful of conquest from the south, King Erekle II sought protection from Russia in 1783 and Georgia was swallowed up shortly afterward. Russia held it together, and when it next enjoyed a brief independence after the Russian Revolution more than a century later, the entire region splintered along its complex ethnic lines.

How is Georgia divided?

The North Caucasus is a crazy quilt of Chechens, Ingushetians, Ossetians, Abkhazis, Ajars, Dagestanis, Kubans (not to be confused with Kabarians), Mingrelians and Svanetians, and that's before you get to better-known nationalities like Azeris, Georgians and Armenians. According to the Foreign Office, about 70 per cent of Georgia's 4.5 million citizens are ethnic Georgians. Of the country's minorities, several have their own enclaves: the Armenians and Ajars in the south, and the two groups at the heart of the current conflict, the Ossetians and Abkhazis. Abkhazia, lying on Georgia's Black Sea coast, has never resolved its differences with Tbilisi since the two sides failed to agree on a constitution in 1925.

And what of the Ossetians?

A people divided by the border drawn between Russia and Georgia in 1922, they claim to be descended from the Samartians – nomads who rolled into Europe from modern-day Iran in the seventh and eighth centuries and then retreated to the gorges of the Caucasus. Today they number around 600,000, 75 per cent of whom live in the autonomous region of North Ossetia in Russia. The remainder live in South Ossetia, in Georgia. To give an idea of the complexity of the region: the Ossetians between them have three languages and two religions, Christianity and Islam, and the Georgians are not their only enemy. Brutally treated under the USSR, they are frequently at odds with the Ingushetians and Chechens to their east. The Beslan school siege of 2004, in which 331 people died, occurred in North Ossetia and was widely interpreted as a Chechen attack on the Ossetian people.

What happened under Soviet rule?

Like the rest of the Caucasus, Georgia was forcibly assimilated into the USSR during the civil war of 1918 to 1921. The borders of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic were later drawn up by its most famous son: Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, later known as Stalin, who was born in Gori, the strategic town in the present war. Over the next 70 years, the region's ethnic and religious differences were ignored or brutally dealt with. In 1944, for instance, Stalin deported 400,000 Chechens and Ingushetians to Central Asia for their perceived disloyalty. Georgian uprisings took place in 1924 and 1956 and were bloodily suppressed each time. When independence finally came, in 1991, the circumstances echoed those in 1918: freed from a weakened Moscow, Georgians had a fierce national identity to assert, but so did everyone else.

And were Georgia's leaders prepared to negotiate?

No. Georgia's first post-Soviet leader was Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a literary scholar known for his translations of Shakespeare, TS Eliot, and his work on the 12th century Georgian epic poem The Man in the Panther’s Skin. His erratic government lasted seven months, but it was long enough to set Georgia on a path against its separatists. In 1992, his more stable successor, the ex-Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, adopted a policy of "Georgia for the Georgians" and launched attacks on both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. More than 1,000 died in brutal, gorge-to-gorge fighting that ended in ceasefi res in both regions, but which were to be monitored by Russian peacekeepers.

Where did that leave Georgia?

The nationalist cause was subdued as Georgia stagnated and suffered during the financial crisis that hit Russia in the late 1990s. Then, in late 2003, came the Rose Revolution, which launched the young Western-educated lawyer, Mikheil Saakashvili, as Georgia's saviour. The problem was that he found himself up against a Kremlin no longer distracted and weak. The circle of power had turned again. As Shevardnadze once said: "The destiny of Russia is reflected in the Caucasus like the rays of the sun are reflected in a drop of water."

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