Wed, May 13, 2009 page9

• Abkhazia gradually luring expatriates to rebuild population

  • By Ellen Barry / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  As night gathers over the Black Sea waterfront, a dozen pilgrims meet in the second-floor classroom where they are studying Abkhaz, the language of their new home.

  The neighborhood has a decrepit, post-Soviet feel and is still pockmarked with bullet holes from Abkhazia’s war to separate from Georgia. At moments of weakness, when the task of learning Russian and Abkhaz is making her head swim, Selin Katsba longs for Istanbul, where she grew up.

  Then she remembers herself. In Turkey, many ethnic Abkhaz she knows are toying with the idea of returning to the land their great-grandparents fled — especially now that it is under the protection of Russia. If she wavers, they will waver.

  “In the eyes of my peers and my family, I am like a symbol and a leader because I have returned,” said Katsba, 22, who arrived here for a 15-day visit more than two years ago and never left. “It’s important that I stay.”

  Now that Russia has recognized the territory as a sovereign nation, authorities hope ethnic Abkhaz will return from the places they fled to in the 19th century, in part to escape the expanding Russian empire. They hope that some percentage of the estimated half-million Abkhaz in Turkey will replenish Abkhazia’s Abkhaz, whose numbers have slipped below 100,000, and that entrepreneurs from the diaspora will provide new investment.

  CAUCASIAN HOMELAND

  So far, the returnees are trailing in one by one, and no one expects a sudden influx. But if Abkhaz repatriation picks up speed, it could have a long-term effect, shoring up ties with Turkey, reaffirming its split from Georgia and lessening its reliance on Russia. Officials here say plans are afoot to build a mosque in the capital, a project that has been discussed for generations, and one that would signal a welcome to settlers.

  As they try to visualize Abkhazia’s future, one concept that makes sense, they say, is that of a Caucasian homeland.

  “Can anyone condemn Jews for calling on all the Jews of the world and inviting them to Israel?” said Abkhazia’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, in an interview last week. “We may not be able to match Israel. But that is what we aspire to.”

  Nine months after celebrating independence from Georgia, Abkhazia stands with its ravishing, unspoiled coastline and a sprawling, if run-down, tourism infrastructure. What it lacks is people. When war broke out with Georgia, in 1992 and 1993, about 200,000 Georgians fled their homes, cutting the population almost in half. The most recent census, in 2003, found a population of 215,000, and much of the territory still has the eerie feeling of an abandoned resort.

  Abkhaz have been trying to increase their numbers through repatriation since the 1990s, and officials say only around 2,000 have returned. Many of those who returned soon after the war spoke neither Russian nor Abkhaz, and found their homeland plagued by shortages, travel bans, poverty and isolation. It was also Russified and predominately Orthodox.

  Gennady Matveyev, a Russian whose grandparents settled in Sukhumi, said the early resettlers never quite fit in.

  “They came in their slippers, they came from the village,” said Matveyev, 42. “They sat and sat. They didn’t like to work.”

  But Russian recognition has breathed life into the project, and Matveyev said that more recent arrivals were young and educated, “a higher level of people.” As an incentive, the state now offers repatriates citizenship, a year’s free housing and five years of financial aid.

  ENTHUSIASM

  Among the twentysomethings at the Young Abkhazia Youth Patriotic Movement, the subject arouses passionate enthusiasm. Last year, 45 members toured Turkish cities, meeting with young people from the diaspora in hopes of strengthening ties.

  Their counterparts peppered them with questions: Will there be another war? Is it scary to live there? But the most common question was whether Abkhazia was having “too much contact with Russia,” said Alias Avidzba, the group’s president.

  “That is the image from outside, but we explained that it is not true,” he said.

  Cemre Jade, a 29-year-old Turkish-born sociologist working for Abkhazia’s Center for Strategic Studies, a government-financed policy research organization, hopes that Abkhazia can model its repatriation program on Israel’s, which offers resettlers a full package of support systems and benefits. In her own outreach, she describes Abkhazia as an economy on the cusp of huge growth, which may be too prosperous to afford in a few years.

  But for members of the diaspora in Turkey, Jade said, the central pull is the idea of coming home. Recently, when someone created a Facebook page called “I’m Going to Return to Abkhazia Someday,” 600 people had joined by the second day, she said.

  “Now it’s not wrong to say you are from another country,” said Jade, whose ancestors are Adyghe, a Caucasian people related to the Abkhaz. “You can say, ‘This is my country in the Caucasus, and I’m going to be there someday. I’m going to return to Abkhazia someday.’”

  FREE LAND

  The same idea occurred to Amin Bakig, who was visiting Sukhumi from Jordan last week. Bakig runs an Amman-based travel business that caters to diaspora Circassians, a people related to the Abkhaz, who are scattered through Turkey, Jordan and Syria. As soon as Russia recognized Abkhazia as a sovereign nation, he knew it would be his next big tourist destination.

  A week in Sukhumi — now known by its Abkhaz name, Sukhum — had only stoked his enthusiasm, and he will return in August with his first group of 100 tourists. Three days into the visit, he was granted an Abkhaz passport and a plot of land near the seashore. By the end of the week, he had begun to think about recruiting investors for a major tourist attraction.

  “Who doesn’t like to be in this country?” Bakig said. “Who doesn’t like to be given free land? Who knows what they will give them later?

  Bakig has long ago adjusted to the notion that the Caucasian homeland is under Russian control. He speaks of Russians with great warmth, and was inspired by Russia’s defense of Abkhaz independence last year. His face takes on a more abstract expression, however, when he talks about the descendants of the Caucasians who left the region four generations ago and now number 5 million or more.

  “There is a big dream,” he said, “that one day they will give independence to the southern Caucasus. This is our dream. But we cooperate with Russia.”
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