The North Caucasus factor in the Abkhazia-Georgia conflict by Natella Akaba

1.      Introduction

The 1992-93 Georgia-Abkhazia war is a perfect example of former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Gali’s definition of a ‘new era conflict’. This type of armed conflict affects civilians as much as the armies of the hostile parties. In this case, the conflict has now spread beyond the South Caucasus and into the wider region, drawing in the citizens not only of Abkhazia and Georgia but also other countries – Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Syria and others, mainly the Abkhaz’ ethnic cousins the Adyghes, Kabardinians and Circassians, the Abaza, and members of the Abkhaz and Circassian diaspora. In fact, representatives from almost all the peoples living in the North Caucasus and the South Russian Cossacks have fought in Abkhazia. At the same time, Ukrainian citizens (members of the radical rightwing party UNA-UNSO) and, according to unverified reports, citizens of the Baltic countries have taken part in the war on the Georgian side. This reflects the significance of the concept of ‘Caucasian brotherhood’ for the overwhelming majority of Abkhaz on the one hand and Georgia’s commitment to a policy of Euro-Atlanticism on the other.

Views are divided, not to say diametrically opposed, over the participation of volunteers from the North Caucasus in the 1992-93 Georgian-Abkhaz war and the role they played in it, no more so than when their motives are concerned. Those who witnessed and were directly involved in the events on the Abkhaz side have no doubt that they were motivated by the desire to come to the assistance of a brotherly people, outnumbered and facing a deadly threat. In Georgia, however, public opinion and the expert community are convinced that they were simply hired mercenaries fighting for reward. This article attempts to identify the motives of the people who came to help the people of Abkhazia.

2. The start of the war: the role of public organisations and leaders in the North Caucasus

In the first few days following the Georgian military’s incursion into Abkhazia in August 1992, which resulted in mass looting, killing on the basis of ethnicity and acts of repression initially aimed at the Abkhaz, but later extended to include the entire non-Georgian populace within the republic, many people believed that a Georgian victory was a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the Abkhaz military, greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the Georgian forces, appeared to be confined to a small patch of territory extending from the river Gumista to the village of Kolkhida. However a partisan movement was developing within the besieged city of Tkvarchal and some villages in Ochamchira district. Moscow’s policy, which was opaque and highly contradictory, was hardly designed to reassure the non-Georgian population and they felt, with good reason, that governments all around the world were backing Shevardnadze. For their part, the leaders and activists of the Abkhaz national movement and those leaders from the Armenian, Slav and Greek communities that supported them hoped – rightly, as it turned out - that their North Caucasus cousins would not simply stand by and watch Abkhazia being brought to its knees.

The policy of perestroika and democratisation had given the Abkhaz the opportunity to ‘re-discover’ for themselves their ethnically and culturally close relatives the Adyghes as well as other peoples living in the North Caucasus. Not, of course, that there had been no contact at all between the Abkhaz and Adyghe during the ‘era of stagnation’, but generally Moscow and Tbilisi had tried to steer clear of encouraging too much rapprochement, given the ‘problems’ that the Abkhaz were already causing the central authorities from time to time[1].

Exchange visits between Abkhaz and Adyghes, arts festivals and youth campaigns combined to have an enormous moral and political impact on both Abkhazia and the North Caucasus. As these peoples rediscovered each other and became increasingly aware of how much linked them – common origins, a shared history and culture – they began to wonder about a Caucasian identity. This rapprochement had been instigated by national movements: the Popular Front ‘Aydgylara’ in Abkhazia and the International Circassian Association, the Kabardinian National Congress, the Adyghe Khase etc. in the republics of the North Caucasus. In August 1989 these and other public organisations met in Sukhum and created the Assembly of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus which proclaimed itself the historical successor to the Republic of the North Caucasus2. This happened, significantly, shortly after the tragic events of July 1989 in Abkhazia, the first time a Georgian-Abkhaz clash led to blood being shed. It made it clear that further escalation of violence in Abkhazia was a distinct possibility, and the Abkhaz started to look around for potential allies. On 1-2 November 1991 the Third Assembly of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus held in Sukhum proclaimed the launch of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (KGNK). The assembly was attended by 211 representatives of the Abaza, Abkhaz, Avar, Agin, Aukhov-Chechen, Adyghe, Balkarian, Circassian, Darghin, Kabarda, Karachaev, Lak, North-Ossetian, Shapsug and South Ossetian peoples. (These founder-members joined the KGNK in the capacity of ‘peoples’ rather than ‘republics’). Sukhum was proclaimed the headquarters of the KGNK and Mussa (Yuriy) Shanibov, a Kabardinian, and Yusup Soslambekov, a Chechen, were elected as leaders. The assembly passed an Appeal to all ‘peoples and parliaments of the Caucasus’ calling on them ‘to support the idea of a Confederative Union of the peoples of the Caucasus – the only Union capable of forming the basis for inter-ethnic agreement in the region and resolving socio-economic problems’3.

The KGNK’s initial objectives were ethnic and cultural but it later turned its attention to political demands such as raising the political status of the ethnic groupings who had joined the association and restoring the unified Mountain Republic within the Russian Confederation. In response to instability in the North Caucasus and armed conflicts in the South Caucasus the KGNK set up its own armed forces which, as Yuriy Shanibov expressed it, could have functioned rather like the UN ‘blue helmets’ and helped to support peace and stability in the North Caucasus.

The KGNK’s objectives and slogans were, understandably, radicalised following the start of the Georgian-Abkhaz war. In the very first days of the war Vladislav Ardzinba, the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Abkhazia, appealed to the administrations and peoples of the republics of the North Caucasus to provide immediate assistance to Abkhazia. Calling on the administration and peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria he stated: ‘In its hour of deadly peril the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Abkhazia appeals to the President of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic and the fraternal peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria to provide assistance with all the means at their disposal’4.

Ardzinba’s call did not go unheeded. Following emergency meetings held in the evening of 14 August the Kabardinian public organisations ‘Adyghe Khase’, the ‘Kabardinian National Congress’ (KNC) and others passed declarations and appeals criticising the aggression of troops under the Georgian State Council against the people of Abkhazia and demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Georgian State Council troops from Abkhazia. An appeal was also made to the Russian administration to take concrete measures to resolve the situation in Abkhazia. The International Circassian Association (ICA) also appealed to the Adyghe and Abaza peoples and the South Russian Cossacks, saying, ‘We shall not abandon Abkhazia in its hour of need! The International Circassian Association issues an urgent call for volunteers to defend our cousins the Abkhaz people’. On 17 August 1992 a session of the KGNK’s parliament was convened in Grozny under the political slogan: ‘Hands off Abkhazia!’. Similar demands were seen at large public demonstrations in Kabardino-Balkaria, Daghestan and Adygheya.

The KGNK was thus a firm ally for Abkhazia as it entered into war with Georgia. As rightly pointed out by Aleksandr Krylov, ‘these actions by the Georgian administration appeared blatantly unjust to the people of the former USSR, leading to the influx into Abkhazia of many volunteers who came to fight for the Abkhaz against the Georgian army (Ossetians, Transnistrians, Russians, Chechens etc.). These volunteers fought within international divisions, although the South Russia Cossacks fought under their own separate military units’5. One of the first to respond to the call was Aleksandr Bardodum, a talented 25-year-old Moscow poet who had studied under the Abkhaz Translation Group at the Literary Institute, who fought under Shamil’ Basayev. It may come as a surprise to some that the volunteer fighters in these divisions came from a very wide range of peoples, mainly from the North Caucasus and Southern Russia, both Muslim and Christian. Abkhazia was defended by Chechens and Cossacks, Kabardinians and Balkarians, Circassians and Karachaevans, Ossetians and Ingush, with no ethnic or religious conflicts or tension arising between them.

3. The position of the various political forces in relation to Abkhazia

Since the Abkhaz armed forces, along with the majority of the civilian population, were concentrated in the Gudauta district and were completely encircled by State Council troops on the Sukhum and Gagra sides, it was very difficult for the first groups of volunteers to enter Abkhazia. They included Kabardinians (Ibragim Yaganov, Aleksey Bekshokov and others), the Chechen Shamil Basayev and many others. Only a few of the volunteers were armed, with most hoping to pick up weapons on the spot in Abkhazia. Since Georgian assault troops already controlled all major routes, they could only enter Abkhazia via mountain passes. On the basis of memoirs written by generals Gennady Troshev and Anatoly Kulikov, the Russian researcher Oleg Lukin states that the Russian police attempted to detain a group of Chechen volunteers heading for Abkhazia in the Pyatigorsk area. The Chechens took some bus passengers hostage and used them as a ‘human shield’ to break through the border into Abkhazia. Kulikov goes on to say that Russian special forces set up an ambush in the mountains aimed at freeing the hostages and disarming the militants, but a command came ‘from higher up’ to allow them to proceed 6.

So why did Moscow decide to allow volunteers from the North Caucasus to come to the assistance of the Abkhaz? To answer this question we need to go back to the events which were occurring at the time in both Moscow and the North Caucasus. President Yeltsin’s protracted conflict with the Supreme Soviet headed by Ruslan Khasbulatov meant in practice that there was a dual administration, as a result of which the situation in the Russian capital explosive. Yeltsin’s position on the incursion of Georgian troops into Abkhazia was diametrically opposed to that of the overwhelming majority of deputies in the Russian Supreme Soviet. Whereas Yeltsin was willing to try anything to maintain good relations with Shevardnadze, principally to secure Georgia’s membership of the CIS, even if it was against Abkhazia’s interests, the Russian Supreme Soviet had on more than one occasion publicly criticised Georgia’s actions and demanded the withdrawal of Georgian troops.

Naturally, the development of the situation in the North Caucasus in connection with the events in Abkhazia was bound to worry the Russian administration and at the end of August 1992 the Russian Vice-President Aleksander Rutskoy met the leaders of the North Caucasus republics to discuss what was happening. Here it is important to remember that perestroika and glasnost, as well as reviving hopes of an ethnic and cultural revival by the peoples of the North Caucasus, had also allowed radicalist and separatist movements to emerge (particularly clearly in Chechnya). This was bound to be of concern to Moscow. The dramatic events in Abkhazia, as mentioned earlier, were also fomenting unrest across the whole of the North Caucasus. Georgia’s actions and Moscow’s failure to act particularly alarmed Abkhazia’s cousins, the Circassians, Adyghe and Abaza. Protests at the actions of the Georgian ‘imperialists’ were, quite logically, extended to encompass Moscow’s at times erratic Caucasus policy which was met in the North Caucasus (and primarily in Chechnya) with growing alarm over the potential for repressive measures by Federal authorities. This combined to increase destabilisation in this ethnically and religiously complex region.

On the other hand subjective factors also played a role, in particular the negative attitude of many in the Russian military to Shevardnadze, whom as former head of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs they blamed for the rapid withdrawal, not to say rout, of the Russian military from Germany. This had led to soldiers having to be accommodated in tents, virtually in the open countryside.

The Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, then, did not just threaten the stability of the North Caucasus but also drew the attention of ethnic nationalist zealots  in the North Caucasus republics to what had happened in Abkhazia. And the Russian administration, along with the regional leaders, were nevertheless just as concerned that the situation around Abkhazia might develop and quite justifiably feared that the Georgian-Abkhaz armed conflict might spill over into Russian territory. Thus on 20 August 1992 an extraordinary meeting of leaders of the republics, territories and oblasts of the North Caucasus was convened in the city of Armavir in Krasnodar Territory to discuss the situation in the North Caucasus that had arisen as a result of the military action in Abkhazia. A delegation was formed at the meeting to hold negotiations with the President of the Russian Federation on how to resolve the emergency situation in the North Caucasus. The participants of the meeting issued an Appeal to the President of the Russian Federation BorisYeltsin and the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation Ruslan Khasbulatov which noted that ‘the events in Abkhazia could spread to the North Caucasus region and lead to civil war in Southern Russia’. The appeal also referred to ‘the need for a rapid political resolution of the military conflict in Abkhazia and the withdrawal of troops from its territory. ‘To resolve this humanitarian problem the Russian administration must undertake a peacebuilding mission and employ all its international authority to this end’7.

However, the response of the Russian administration was to completely ignore the view of the leaders of the republics of the North Caucasus and the majority of deputies in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. It continued its handover of Soviet arms held in the arsenals of the Transcaucasian Military District to the Georgian State Council despite the Council’s flagrant violation of its commitment not to use these arms against the civilian population which Georgia, along with the other former Soviet republics, had undertaken in Tashkent when the former Soviet Army’s weaponry was redistributed. On 21 September, Vladislav Ardzinba, Chair of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Abkhazia, sent a letter to the Russian President Boris Yeltsin stating: ‘The administration of Georgia, in contravention of all the articles of the Moscow Agreement, is building up its military power. Just a few days ago Georgia again received a large contingent of arms from the arsenals of the Russian Combined Forces. There is every reason to believe that Defence Minister Kitovani’s threat to move to decisive action in the near future is entirely feasible. Georgia is preparing a strike with SU-27 fighter aircraft equipped with bombs and air-to-ground missiles in the Gudauta district where the Abkhaz population resides and a significant number of refugees is concentrated, as well as in the Ochamchira district and the city of Tkvarchal. The fighter crews, bombs and missiles have already arrived at Sukhum airport. If the Georgian administration proceeds this will lead to large numbers of civilian victims and make the situation ungovernable. I appeal to you for assistance in bringing about the immediate withdrawal of State Council troops from the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia’8. Russia’s response was to complete the transfer of the Akhaltsikhe motorised infantry division to Georgia on 22 September.

The Russian administration’s position is clearly demonstrated by the statement issued by the Russian government regarding the legality of the KGNK’s participation in the Georgia-Abkhazia war. On 25 August the Russian Ministry of Justice declared that the actions of the Confederation were illegal and in flagrant violation of the Constitution. On 27 August the Russian Public Prosecutor’s Office instituted criminal proceedings against the KGNK on charges of inciting inter-ethnic hatred, committing acts of terrorism and sabotage and hostage-taking. ‘Tbilisi viewed with satisfaction the statement of the Russian Minister of Justice Fedorov that the Conference of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus was an illegal organisation and that criminal proceedings were being instituted against it. In response to this, rather bizarrely, it was reported in the press that the KGNK had announced that it would initiate criminal proceedings against the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and the Justice Minister B. Fedorov for ‘inciting inter-ethnic hatred between peoples’. However an official denial was quickly issued by the KGNK’9 .

The events in Abkhazia also presented the leaders of the North Caucasus republics with a difficult choice. They clearly had to take account of public opinion and calls from the more politicised groupings in their societies to rush to Abkhazia’s aid immediately. However, announcing an initiative to provide assistance to Abkhazia or for that matter simply failing to prevent volunteers arriving from their republics would seriously damage their careers. Sergei Markedonov, analysing the behaviour of presidents from the different North Caucasus republics, notes that they responded in different ways. The President of Kabardino-Balkaria, Valery Kokov, adopted a very cautious position and did not respond to the KGNK’s demand that he support the people of Abkhazia in its fight with Georgia. The actions of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office which led to the KGNK’s leader Yuriy Shanibov being arrested on 23 September 1992 in Nalchik sparked a serious political crisis in the republic with clashes between the police and the Kabardinian National Congress and the KGNK. In September 1992 the KNC was bandying slogans on Kabardiya’s secession from Russia and the withdrawal of Russian troops and special forces units from its territory. On 27 September 1992 a state of emergency was decreed in the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria. The republic’s president Valery Kokov spoke out strongly against the demonstrators and appealed to the Russian administration to send Russian internal troops to Nalchik. In October 1992 the demonstrations were dispersed.

At the same time the Adygheyan president Aslan Dzharimov came out more or less openly in support of Ardzinba and responded to his call to send volunteers to Abkhazia. The Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, despite providing military assistance, criticised the Abkhaz as too pro-Russian. The other leaders of the republics, Vladimir Khubiyev, an ethnic Karachayevan  (Karachaevo-Cherkessia) and Akhsarbek Galazov (North Ossetia) made no response to the call, although a number of volunteers from these republics arrived at their own initiative in Abkhazia. Sergei Markedonov, referring to this diversity of responses by leaders of the republics calls it ‘a situation caused by Russia’s multiplicity of interests and its policy of keeping its options open during the open phase of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict’10.

These differences surfaced most publicly at a meeting in Moscow on 3 September 1992 which was televised and followed very closely in Abkhazia and whose ‘Final Document’ was widely discussed in the territories controlled by the Abkhaz side. It was obvious that unprecedented pressure had been brought to bear on Vladislav Ardzinba by Yeltsin and his entourage, whose position was openly pro-Georgia. The Abkhaz delegation at the Moscow meeting and indeed Abkhaz society as a whole objected to provisions in the document that included a demand that ‘illegal military formations and groups’ be disbanded and withdrawn from Abkhazia and prevented from returning in future (Art. 1). This was clearly a reference to the volunteer divisions. Moreover, Art. 11 stated that ‘the authorities and administrations of the republics, territories and oblasts of the North Caucasus within the Russian Federation will take effective measures to prevent any acts from their territories that contravene the provisions of this agreement’. If it had signed this document, the Abkhaz side would have dealt a blow to those people who had come to the assistance of the people of Abkhazia, something that was completely unacceptable from a moral point of view. Consequently the head of the Abkhaz delegation Vladislav Ardzinba announced at the meeting that he would not agree to these provisions: ‘I will insert my own view in the margin, since I cannot, either from a moral or legal standpoint, criticise people who came to Abkhazia to sacrifice their lives for the Abkhaz people, for all the peoples of Abkhazia…I will insert my own view regarding Article 11 when I sign the document’11. 

4. The significance of the volunteer movement

In Abkhazia today the support provided by the peoples of the North Caucasus and the Cossacks of South Russia in its hour of need is seen as highly significant. The Abkhaz philosopher and expert Oleg Damenia says ‘without such powerful support from the North Caucasus peoples and members of our diaspora, I am not sure what the outcome of this war would have been. I am not at all sure we could have withstood the onslaught. I don’t just mean the military reinforcements that came from the North Caucasus, though these were significant. I also have in mind the moral and particularly the political components of this support. And I am referring here not just the people who came here to fight on the Abkhaz side but also all the peoples of the North Caucasus region who gave their unqualified support to Abkhazia. This was an extremely important factor. The political administration in Russia, whatever its view of the events occurring at the time in the Caucasus, had to consider the political mood in the North Caucasus region. That political mood was created by those people who stood side by side with our warriors’ 12.

This assistance is valued just as highly by the Abkhaz historian Stanislav Lakoba who remarked that ‘when all the borders around Abkhazia were closed and our enemies said that even a bird could not fly through them, and Shevardnadze was announcing that the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus was simply a paper fiction, representatives of the North Caucasus came to Abkhazia by all conceivable and inconceivable routes. They stood alongside us, fought, perished, became heroes of our war. All this played a role since they became increasingly active after ’89, after the July events. I am referring to the Constituent Assembly in the early days of the Assembly of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, which later went on to become a serious political force. For Abkhazia, particular in the first days of the war, this represented enormous moral and psychological support – people came on foot from all the republics of the Caucasus through mountain passes, and what is more they were genuine volunteers, not mercenaries as people have tried to make them out to be. Throughout the war the volunteers accounted for no more than 10% of our army, but their contribution to our victory cannot be overstated. They included Sultan Sosnaliyev, Mokhammed Kilba, Gamzat Khankarov, Yusup Soslanbekov, Mussa Shanibov and indeed Shamil Basayev and his group. They all played a very big part, they are all people on whom we counted. Without this North Caucasus factor, which the Georgians underestimated, I think that it would have been very difficult for us to hold out. As it turned out, the Abkhaz were quite right to create the Confederation, and the fact that on the eve of the war Sukhum was proclaimed the Confederation’s capital is also highly significant’13.

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An analysis of these events preceding the war: the contacts made between the Abkhaz, Adyghe and other peoples of the North Caucasus; the movement for Caucasian unity which arose in the early ’90s; the creation of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (later renamed the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus), is compelling evidence that the volunteers were in fact motivated by ideology rather than profit. Significantly, many of those who took part in or witnessed these events recalled the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. The Abkhaz writer Dzhuma Akhuba, addressing his call to the Russian intelligentsia, writes: ‘Remember the heroic deeds… of Hemingway, Ehrenburg and Koltsov, who fought with the pen and the sword for the freedom and independence of other peoples, who fought fascism in foreign countries!’. An analogy with the Spanish War is also drawn by Anna Broydo, who worked in Abkhazia during the war as a war journalist. She writes: ‘…The volunteers were always quick to emphasise that their actions were not motivated by profit and for them there was no insult worse than ‘mercenary’14.

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[1] I am referring here to a number of mass popular protests in Abkhazia at Georgia’s assimilationist policy.

2 This consisted in 1918 of 7 ‘autonomous states’ – Daghestan, Chechen-Ingushetia, Ossetia, Karachaevo-Balkariya, Kabarda, Adygheya and Abkhazia. However the Republic did not last long. It was replaced in 1920 by the Autonomous Mountain Republic, which only extended from Kabarda to Chechnya, but this also turned out to be infeasible and was abolished in 1924. (For more details, see V. Berozovsky and V. Chervyakov, ‘Konfederatsiya gorskikh narodov Kavkaza’ [The Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus] mhtml:file://E:/3_06_HTM.mht.)

3 Ibid.

4 The newspaper ‘Respublika’, Nalchik. 22. 08. 1992.

5 A. Krylov, Uroki gruzino-abkhazskoy voiny. Rol’ Moskvy i Tbilisi, [The lessons of the Georgian-Abkhaz war. The role of Moscow and Tbilisi] in the internet journal ‘Novaya politika’, 17 May 2005

6 O. Lukin, Chechensky factor v gruzino-abkhazskoy voyne 1992 -1993 [The Chechen factor in the 1992-1993Georgian-Abkhaz war], http://voinenet.ru/voina/istoriya-voiny/844.html

7 Quoted from A.V. Kushkhabiev,  Kabardino-Balkariya i gruzino-abkhazsky vooruzhenny konflikt [Kabardino-Balkaria and the Georgian-Abkhaz armed conflict], Nal’chik, 2006 No..3, pp. 344-370

8 More details can be found in K. Myalo, Rossiya i poslyednye voyny XX veka, [Russia and the last wars of the 20th century], www.patriotica.ru/actual/myalo_wars_.html 

9 Quoted from: V. Berozovsky and V. Chervyakov, in ‘Konfederatsiya gorskikh narodov Kavkaza’ [The Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus] mhtml:file://E:/3_06_HTM.mht.)

10 Sergey Markedonov, Interesy Rossii v Abkhazii i Gruzii i puti ikh osushchestvleniya [Russian interests in Abkhazia and Georgia and how they are realised] in Aspekty gruzino-abkhazskogo konflikta [Aspects of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict], edition 12, Irvine, 2006, pp. 25 – 26.

11 Russia-Georgia. Concluding document from the Moscow meeting on 3 September 1992, russia.bestpravo.ru/fed1992/data02/tex12083.htm

12 Interview conducted with O. Dameniya in Sukhum in September 2011

13 Interview conducted with St. Lakoba in Sukhum in September 2011

14 A.I. Broido, Proyavlenie etnopsyikhologicheskikh osobennostey abkhazov v khode Otechestvennoy voyny naroda Abkhazii 1992-1993 [The emergence of the ethno-psychological characteristics of Abkhaz during the 1992-1993 Patriotic War of the people of Abkhazia ]. Moscow 2008, p. 148. 

The article was written in the framework of International Alert’s ‘Dialogue through Research’ project on the theme of the ‘The North-Caucasus Factor in the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict Dynamic’