Soldiers check the sights on their Kalashnikovs, military cadets dig trenches and a crane moves a maze of concrete barriers into position at the entrance to Georgia's autonomous Black Sea region of Adzharia -- where any euphoria over this country's "rose revolution" comes to a swift end.
As thousands of demonstrators were partying in the streets of the capital Tbilisi over the bloodless overthrow of President Eduard Shevardnadze last month, the strongman leader here declared a state of emergency and labeled the revolution a coup.
Now, Adzharia says it won't participate in the Jan. 4 vote to replace Shevardnadze and is refusing to recognize the country's interim leadership or parliament. That raises the question of whether the region -- whose leaders claim they want to remain part of Georgia -- will become another separatist headache for this Caucasus nation.
Interim president Nino Burdzhanadze was to travel to Adzharia yesterday to meet Aslan Abashidze, the 65-year-old former Soviet bureaucrat who has ruled here since Georgia's 1991 independence, and press for the region to take part in next month's election.
In contrast to the freewheeling Georgian capital, Adzharia exhibits a distinctly Soviet mood -- complete with omnipresent men in long, black leather jackets looking sideways at outsiders.
Officials insist the bolstered security and suspension of basic rights here under the state of emergency are justified, claiming they have evidence of plots to sow disorder here by the new leaders drawing cheers in Tbilisi.
"They say they will open a second front in Adzharia, the people who took power," alleged Jemal Gogitidze, deputy head of the Adzharia-based Democratic Revival party that backed Shevardnadze. Gogitidze said the state of emergency, set to expire Dec. 23, would be extended "as long as necessary."
Each night on Adzharia's TV news, groups of locals are herded together to say they agree the state of emergency is necessary to protect peace and democracy. Meanwhile, reception of the Tbilisi-based pro-opposition Rustavi-2 channel has been cut off, supposedly because of financial problems.
Abashidze rules the region of about 400,000 people like a fiefdom, doling out jobs and favors to privileged relatives and friends who maneuver their shiny German cars around potholed streets of the regional capital Batumi and build villas on the lush hills rising from the shore.
Batumi is a city of contrasts. Decaying Soviet apartment blocks and pre-revolutionary buildings are reflected in the glass facades of new banks. Cargo containers are unloaded at the bustling port and Azerbaijani oil tanker cars wait on railroad tracks lined with palm trees, while in the city center beggars plead for money.
On the stony beach leading to the Black Sea, Nino Chubernidze walked her dog Charlie and collected driftwood for the stove that heats her apartment, where the gas doesn't work, the water is dirty and electricity erratic. She left her university teaching job because her salary was the equivalent of just US$14 a month.
"These old Communists should go and let the young people who know what a free market means run things," said Chubernidze, 57. All Adzharia's autonomy stands for now is that Abashidze can "sit here like a dictator," she said.
Others back Abashidze's stand.
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