Volunteers Vow to Fight in Abkhazia
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer,
August 2, 2006
The leaders of several ethnic organizations in the North Caucasus vowed
Tuesday to send thousands of volunteers to defend Abkhazia if Tbilisi
launched a military operation against the breakaway republic.
"The Abkhaz people are our brothers and it is our duty to stand by them in
the case of war," Uali Yevgamukov, head of the Abazin ethnic movement in
Karachayevo- Cherkessia, said by telephone Tuesday from the Abkhaz capital,
Sukhumi.
Yevgamukov is also the head of the Abazin district administration in
Karachayevo- Cherkessia.
The leaders said their promise to send fighters into Abkhazia had not been
sanctioned by Moscow, and that they would defend Abkhazia against federal
Georgian troops even if the Kremlin tried to stop them.
Yevgamukov led a delegation of 15 leaders on a visit to Abkhazia on Monday
and Tuesday. On Monday, the delegation met with Abkhaz President Sergei
Bagapsh and announced its readiness to mobilize volunteers in the republics
it represented.
Most of the leaders represent ethnic Adygs living in the Russian regions of
Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo- Cherkessia.
The Adygs are ethnic cousins of the Abkhaz people. Hundreds of Adygs fought
alongside the Abkhaz against Georgia during the 1992-93 war. Other fighters
from the North Caucasus also fought with the Abkhaz in that war, including
Chechens led by a little-known fighter named Shamil Basayev.
Bagapsh thanked the delegation, but assured them that Abkhazia had
sufficient resources to fend off any Georgian offensive.
"Your visit here confirms that in the case of an armed conflict Abkhazia
will not be alone," Bagapsh said, according to his press secretary Alkhas
Cholokua. "We pin our hopes on Russia, on the fraternal peoples of the North
Caucasus and on Cossacks who are prepared to come to our aid."
Cholokua said Bagapsh's office had received offers of support from Cossack
communities in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, and from groups in the
self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic, a pro-Russian province of Moldova.
"God forbid that war break out between Abkhazia and Georgia. It would be a
catastrophe for Georgia, because volunteers will come in the thousands,"
Ruslan Tokov said during the meeting with Bagapsh, according to Cholokua.
Tokov heads a branch of the Union of Abkhaz Volunteers in Kabardino-Balkaria.
Bagapsh warned Monday that volunteers would not be allowed to act
independently as they did in the 1992-93 conflict. They would be assigned to
regular Abkhaz military units, he said.
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the
possible mobilization of volunteers in the North Caucasus, saying the issue
was "hypothetical. "
Yevgamukov said Moscow had neither discouraged nor encouraged the leader's
offer of volunteers. "We have received no support from Moscow," he said. "In
fact, we were never contacted by government officials in this regard."
Valery Kurgov, deputy head of the Karachayevo- Cherkessia branch of Adyge
Khase, an umbrella organization for Adyg ethnic organizations in the North
Caucasus, declined to comment on the issue of Kremlin support for the Adyg
leaders.
"Do you think anyone is going to tell you the truth?" he said.
Yevgamukov said volunteers from the North Caucasus were motivated not only
by fraternal sentiment, but also because they would be defending Russian
interests in Abkhazia.
"The Abkhaz are Russian citizens, after all," Yevgamukov said. Some 80
percent of the residents of Abkhazia are believed to hold Russian
citizenship.
The Russian government has been actively granting citizenship to people in
Abkhazia for the last five years, although the region remains a part of
Georgia. Russia, which seeks to maintain its influence in the South Caucasus
by backing the separatist regime, has repeatedly vowed not to allow armed
conflict.
This summer, the pro-Western leadership of Georgia won support from
Washington for its efforts to restore control over Abkhazia and another
separatist province, South Ossetia.
On Monday, the military commanders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia agreed to
coordinate their responses to any Georgian offensive.
Tensions between Tbilisi and Sukhumi continued to escalate Tuesday as Abkhaz
officials accused the Georgian military of increasing its troop presence in
the Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia that remains under Georgian
control.
The Georgian government insisted Tuesday that it was conducting nothing more
than a police operation in the gorge, and rejected an Abkhaz call for
international monitors.
Last week, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced that the Abkhaz
government-in- exile would be moved into the Kodori Gorge.
Russia's deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, condemned Georgian
actions in the gorge Tuesday, saying they threatened to scuttle diplomatic
efforts to resolve the crisis.
Experts on the Caucasus said Tuesday that a large-scale volunteer force in
Abkhazia was unlikely.
"There probably won't be more than a few dozen young idealists, because
nationalism is currently on the wane in the North Caucasus after a
resurgence following the collapse of the Soviet Union," said Nikolai Silayev,
an expert with the Center for Caucasian Studies at the Moscow State
Institute for Foreign Relations.
Akhmed Yarlykapov, an analyst with the Institute of Ethnology and
Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the Adyg leaders'
offer to defend Abkhazia was designed primarily to boost their popularity
and influence back home.
"The real nationalists who might go fight in Abkhazia don't care about
Russia's interests," Yarlykapov said. "The memory of the mass murder and
forced exile of the Adyg people carried out by the tsarist government in the
19th century is still too fresh."
Source: The Moscow Times
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