Conflict in Abkhazia - 19th June

June 19th - It is a rather complex situation that we encounter in Georgia in these days. Almost daily the news-agencies (I refer to RIA Novosti) report the unreportable. Timid moves and delicate choreography of armies and governments ebb and flow over a strip of land that is as little populated as Jersey Island (round the hundred thousand). It is now on the verge of a burst since the Georgian government is facing the Abkhaz stubborn intention to host a Russian military base. The Russians are seen as the only strategic partners, both in military than in economic terms. The factual pretext to call in the Russian army was engineered in recent days as a railroad reparation. In doing so, Russian army effectively penetrated in Abkhazian territory, which is Georgian disputed territory. A few explosions are reported to have burst yesterday, with no victim, but bearing the message that the move will be somehow matched, if not withstood.

Escalation in the Caucasian republic has been building since 1991. The war within the newborn Georgian republic (waged by the Grusians and their ethnic minorities) left down 10.000 to 30.000 casualties and a considerable number of displaced people. The conflict froze in 1994 to a unstable solution of non-interference in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia province, in so resembling the statute of Transdnistria and Republika Srpska. These lands were informally declared indipendent, only to come handy in NATO-Russia confrontation.

Recently, since Kosovo´s indipendence declaration, the dormient conflict flared up due to regained confidence on georgian side of an US informal backing. Georgian president committed his credibility to the quest for the re-unification of the mothercountry and the establishment of the sovereignity over every stretch of land. This came at odds with the non-written norms of the Caucasus, according to which its better never to break the spell of stability in the name of factual governability.