{"id":120170,"date":"2023-05-18T15:06:16","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T15:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/?p=120170"},"modified":"2023-05-18T15:06:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T15:06:16","slug":"farewell-sukhumi-georgian-protesters-unwittingly-imperil-their-nations-survival-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/farewell-sukhumi-georgian-protesters-unwittingly-imperil-their-nations-survival-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell, Sukhumi \u2013 Georgian protesters unwittingly imperil their nation\u2019s survival (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the first part<\/a> of the article<\/p>\n

In September 1993, when the fate of Sukhumi hung in the balance, it was Mingrelian militias under the control of Loti Kobalia, a Gamsakhurdia loyalist, who blocked the train carrying Georgian reinforcements to Abkhazia, disarming them, and dooming the Sukhumi garrison\u2014and the civilian population they protected\u2014to defeat.<\/p>\n

And in October 1993, after the fall of Sukhumi, tens of thousands of Georgian refugees who were fleeing for their lives had to make the journey through the mountains of Zemo Svaneti, where armed gangs of their erstwhile Svan allies set up roadblocks, robbing the desperate Georgians of whatever possessions they had managed to bring with them, before sending them on a journey over the snow-covered Kodori Gorge, where scores of women, children, and the elderly perished of exposure and starvation.<\/p>\n

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Georgian refugees from Sukhumi make their way over the mountains while fleeing from Abkhaz forces, October 1993<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sukhumi, the capitol of Abkhazia where my wife was born and raised, is no longer under Georgian control. Yes, it was the Abkhaz militias, backed by Russia, the Chechens, Armenians, and other northern Caucasus peoples who carried out the attacks that led to the slaughter of thousands of Georgian civilians and the ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 others, including my wife, her brother, and their parents.<\/p>\n

Yes, it was the policies of Soviet ideologues such as Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov that helped foster and nurture the separatist imaginations of the Abkhaz and other northern Caucasus peoples as a counter to nascent Georgian nationalism.<\/p>\n

But the origins of the Abkhazian conflict of 1992-93 can be traced to the nationalistic excesses of Georgians as well. It was the criminal gangs of Jaba Ioseliani\u2019s paramilitary Mkhedrioni (\u201cHorsemen\u201d), whom Eduard Shevardnadze unleashed on Sukhumi in August 1992, that transformed what had been a political dispute between Georgia and its Abkhaz minority into a Civil War which Georgia eventually lost.<\/p>\n

Georgians betraying Georgians is a theme, it seems, one that cost Georgia its Abkhazian territories, including the city of Sukhumi, in 1993, and which today appears hell-bent on setting up Georgia for its lemming-like effort to provoke Russia into a war that Georgia cannot win, and which, if it occurs, it will not survive as a modern, viable nation state.<\/p>\n

Yes, you brave sons and daughters of Georgia\u2014chant your slogans, eat your Khinkali<\/em> and Khachapouri<\/em>, drink your Kvanchkara<\/em>, and watch your women dance the Kartuli<\/em>, before regaling yourself with the masculine drama of the Khoroumi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But remember that the Khoroumi<\/em> is the dance of a defeated people whose ambitions of glory were, always and inevitably, crushed by the power of larger neighbors.<\/p>\n

Russia is a larger neighbor.<\/p>\n