SEEKING INDEPENDENCE, ABKHAZ GET CLOSER TO RUSSIA

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 TBILISI 000712 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR DAS BRYZA & EUR/CARC E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/23/2018 TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM GG SUBJECT: SEEKING INDEPENDENCE, ABKHAZ GET CLOSER TO RUSSIA REF: TBILISI 658 Classified By: Ambassador John F. Tefft for reasons 1.4(b&d). Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) During an April 18-20 visit to Abkhazia, we found Abkhaz de facto officials in an uncompromising mood, reiterating that they will never agree to be reintegrated into the Georgian state nor permit return of Georgian internally displaced persons (IDPs) under current conditions. They were pleased by recent Russian decisions to end sanctions and to expand interaction, but they also frankly admitted to fears of being dominated and annexed by Russia. They blamed the West for giving them "no choice" but a closer alliance with Russia and predicted that, if Russia annexes them, they will fight the Russians as they did the Georgians. There are scattered signs of new investment in Abkhazia, but the Abkhaz expect much greater growth in the coming years, leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi, Russia. The pressure on the ethnic Georgian population of Abkhazia's Gali district remains palpable, as we observed on a UN patrol, and the Abkhaz have just begun a campaign to require public employees in Gali to accept Abkhaz "passports" and to sign statements renouncing their Georgian citizenship. The de facto authorities have prevented UN human rights officers from using the new NGO-run Human Rights Center in Gali for meetings with local residents. Nevertheless, the increasing capacity of Gali NGOs is one bright spot in Gali, together with reports of Georgian workers being employed by local businesses throughout Abkhazia. End Summary. Shamba: No Interest in Georgian Proposals -------------- ¶2. (C) In a meeting with visiting EUR/CARC Conflict Resolution Advisor Michael Carpenter and Poloff April 18, Abkhaz de facto foreign minister Sergei Shamba rejected out of hand Georgian President Saakashvili's recent proposals to give the Abkhaz wide autonomy in a united Georgia. Shamba also rejected talk of federation or confederation, and said the time had passed when the Abkhaz would accept a solution based on anything short of independence. Shamba repeated the Abkhaz line that they will not talk with the Georgians until they agree to pull out of the Upper Kodori Gorge, although at other points in the conversation he suggested he would be willing to talk to the Georgians. ¶3. (C) Carpenter told Shamba that the recent unilateral Russian steps were destabilizing and should be reversed to avoid precipitating a crisis. Shamba countered that the CIS sanctions had been starving the Abkhaz people, and he was very upset that the Europeans had condemned Russia's withdrawal from the sanctions. Carpenter said we were most concerned with the military portion of the sanctions, noting that Russia's withdrawal undermined military transparency in the region and was destabilizing. He added that if Abkhazia continued to allow itself to be integrated with Russia, it could soon find itself a part of Russia. Shamba paused and said "You're giving us no alternative; who else can we turn to?" Pressed further on Russian penetration of Abkhazia, Shamba said that if the Russians ever tried to overtly annex the region the Abkhaz would take up arms against them, joined by allies from the North Caucasus. Shamba said Russia had decided not to recognize Abkhazia after Kosovo's independence because the Abkhaz did not give in to the Russian leadership's insistence that they agree immediately to absorption into Russia. In a separate meeting, Shamba's deputy Maxim Gunjia confided to us that Shamba had genuinely expected Russia to recognize Abkhazia's independence after Kosovo, and had been very disappointed when it did not. ¶4. (C) Carpenter suggested to Shamba that the Abkhaz should at minimum agree to resume a dialogue with the Georgians on some of the economic confidence-building measures (CBMs) discussed at the Geneva meeting of the UN, Group of Friends of the Secretary General, and Georgian and Abkhaz sides in February, including the maritime connection between Sukhumi and Trabzon, Turkey. Shamba said he was interested in the Trabzon link and would consider the idea of Georgian immigration/customs officials checking the ships in Trabzon if Georgia accepted CIS, UN, and Abkhaz inspection in Sukhumi. Shamba expressed some skepticism that Turkey would agree to such an arrangement, and Carpenter replied that the idea should be given a chance to work. ¶5. (C) Pressed on the issue of IDPs, Shamba said the Abkhaz population would never welcome the Georgians back to most parts of Abkhazia because of what happened in the war. He claimed that all the IDPs who wanted to return to Gali had already done so. Carpenter objected that the Abkhaz were keeping the security situation in Gali intentionally TBILISI 00000712 002 OF 004 unstable, depriving the Georgian residents of basic civil rights, and forcing the Georgians to become stateless persons by requiring them to renounce their Georgian citizenship in order to receive Abkhaz "passports." Shamba agreed that the citizenship issue was a concern, and said the Abkhaz were in the process of developing a residency permit that could be distributed in lieu of an Abkhaz passport. Carpenter told Shamba that the international community would never accept his rejection of multi-ethnic coexistence, at which point Shamba changed course and said that all Georgian IDPs could return, but only after enough of the Abkhaz diaspora had returned from Turkey to protect the Abkhaz from being demographically overwhelmed by the Georgians. (Note: The UN estimates that, despite years of Abkhaz lobbying, only 600-700 diaspora families have come to Abkhazia from Turkey, and most of those do not reside in Abkhazia full-time. End Note.) Gunjia Envisions a Western Future, but Not a Georgian One -------------- -------------- ¶6. (C) De facto deputy foreign minister Maxim Gunjia reiterated in separate conversations with us that Abkhaz society would never accept re-joining Georgia, but added that he hoped Abkhazia could imitate some of the impressive reforms Georgia has made in recent years in throwing off the legacy of communism, including building democratic institutions, uprooting low-level corruption, and establishing closer relations with Europe. He showed us new hotels and businesses built with Turkish and Russian investment, and predicted much more would come. (Note: UN officials agreed that construction was picking up in Sukhumi, so much so that companies had begun employing ethnic Georgians workers, leading some Abkhaz hardliners to complain publicly about the Georgian language being heard once again in the city.) On a trip to the Russian border at the Psou River (crowded with mostly private cars waiting to be processed on both sides of the line) Gunjia said he was working on new procedures to speed up processing at the border, which can currently leave visitors waiting in their cars up to twenty-four hours at the height of the tourist season. He said last year Abkhazia received 2 million tourists, and he thought there would be many more this year because much of Sochi is "closed" to tourists for pre-Olympic renovation. He stressed that Abkhazia -- and its younger generation in particular -- was eager for ties with the West and did not want to be swallowed up by Russia. ¶7. (C) Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General Ivo Petrov told us April 18 that de facto president Sergei Bagapsh had told him Russia was insisting on the elimination of customs tariffs between Russia and Abkhazia in connection with Putin's decision to expand ties. Bagapsh expressed concern that this would cause a huge loss in Abkhaz budget revenues. No Abkhaz officials raised this with us, however, and when we asked at the border neither Gunjia nor Abkhaz customs officials appeared aware of any upcoming change in customs procedures. Life in Gali Remains Difficult -------------- ¶8. (C) UN human rights officials described for us the continuing pressure on the ethnic Georgians who have returned to the ethnic Georgian Gali district in southern Abkhazia, most recently evidenced by a campaign the Abkhaz authorities initiated on March 21 to distribute so-called Abkhaz passports in Gali. At least at first the Abkhaz are focusing on distributing the passports to public sector employees -- teachers, medical workers, administrators -- and some of these employees have told the UN they have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if they do not comply. Despite the fact that having an Abkhaz passport is a requirement to vote, to buy or sell property, and to receive higher education, everyone we spoke to agreed that Gali residents are reluctant to accept them because Abkhaz law requires them to first renounce their Georgian citizenship. The UN said that passport application forms in Gali, unlike those used elsewhere in Abkhazia, contain a statement for applicants to sign renouncing Georgian citizenship. According to the UN, the Georgian government does not consider these renunciations of citizenship to be valid, but even so people are unwilling to sign them. UN officials told us it is commonly suspected that Bagapsh is pushing the passports in order to increase the number of Georgians who can vote in the Abkhaz presidential election in 2009. The Georgians supported Bagapsh by a large margin in his first election against a more hardline opponent. ¶9. (C) Nor is this the only recent example of abuses against Gali residents. UN human rights officers told us their investigation had confirmed the reports that Abkhaz security services instructed a Georgian IDP priest, Father Pimeni, to TBILISI 00000712 003 OF 004 leave Abkhazia April 10, and escorted him immediately to the cease-fire line (reftel). The security services had acted at the request of the Abkhaz Orthodox Church, which opposed the priest because he represented the Georgian Orthodox Church. We accompanied UN military monitors on a patrol in Lower Gali April 20, and many of the civilians we encountered were unwilling to answer the patrol leader's questions about the security situation. While we were speaking to one woman, another villager came up and said to us (in English, which was unlikely to be understood by other locals) that no one would tell the monitors the real situation because they did not want to cause trouble for themselves. ¶10. (C) The UN currently has one international human rights officer, Frenchwoman Melanie Gingue, based in Gali, and a second position is currently unfilled. Gingue works out of the UN military base because the Abkhaz authorities recently refused her permission to use Gali's new Human Rights Center (run by a consortium of Gali, Sukhumi, and Ochamchira NGOs) for confidential meetings with Gali residents to discuss human rights abuses. The UN intends to push again in a few months for permission to use the Center in this way. (Comment: We have always seen this as a particularly important role for the Center, absent an Abkhaz agreement to set up a full-fledged UN-OSCE human rights office in Gali as called for in UN Security Council resolutions.) The UN human rights operation in Abkhazia is also constrained by its own rules against issuing public reports. Carpenter asked UN Human Rights Officer Ryszard Komenda if he would consider sending his reports to the Group of Friends, and Komenda said he would look into it. Despite these obstacles to UN activities, civil society is showing signs of progress in Gali, as was evidenced by the two NGOs we met, Democracy Institute (which has the lead in running the Human Rights Center) and Alert. Both organizations appear to have grown in capacity over the last year, and have promising projects underway in areas such as legal assistance to Gali residents and exchanges between ethnic Georgian and Abkhaz youth. ¶11. (C) We raised human rights concerns with the Abkhaz de facto presidential representative in Gali, Ruslan Kishmaria, April 20. He gave little ground, claiming that no government would employ people who did not accept its citizenship. When Carpenter noted this in effect made people stateless -- requiring them to renounce a recognized citizenship for an unrecognized one -- Kishmaria claimed that residence permits were already available for those who preferred them. This contradicted what we were told by other Abkhaz officials and the UN, who told us the idea of residence permits was only under consideration. Kishmaria said the security situation in Gali had improved in recent years because the security services had become professional. Like Shamba, Kishmaria said the West had given Abkhazia no alternative to its relationship with Russia, even though this relationship was not the "best option." Comment -------------- ¶12. (C) In many ways, the Abkhaz message was similar to what we have heard on previous visits. Even with the downing of a Georgian UAV in Gali while we were there, the overall attitude of de facto officials and UN staff we met in Abkhazia seemed generally business-as-usual. This contrasts with Tbilisi, where recent Russian actions have left the Georgians deeply concerned that Russia is in the process of taking Abkhazia out of their reach forever. The Abkhaz did, however, put a notably greater emphasis during this visit on their fears of getting so close to Russia that they are subsumed and lose their identity. Repeatedly we heard predictions that the Abkhaz would be willing to fight the Russians if it came to that. Unwilling to engage seriously with Georgia or to protect human rights in the territory they control, the Abkhaz authorities have put themselves on a path toward greater domination by Russia. This is not the outcome they want, but they seem unable to change course. ¶13. (C) The Georgian policy of isolating Abkhazia through sanctions and political pressure has clearly pushed the Abkhaz further into the Russian orbit. However, there appears to be at least limited potential for fostering economic, social, and cultural ties between Georgians and Abkhaz, perhaps initially in Gali and then eventually in the rest of Abkhazia. A policy of engagement would also garner greater political support from the Friends and could therefore give the GOG greater diplomatic leverage to pressure the de facto authorities on key issues like IDP returns. Exposing the closed Abkhaz society to Georgia's economic success and fostering business and social contacts across the ceasefire line would be difficult to reverse, and could act as a long-term catalyst of Abkhazia's reintegration into the Georgian state. TBILISI 00000712 004 OF 004 TEFFT