Awaiting a trumpeted pull-back of Russian troops, the Georgian policemen guarding a watery sliver of land in front of the Abkhaz rebel border seem more cowed than optimistic.
“They can come from any direction. If someone comes and seizes us there’s nothing we can do,” said a police sergeant, Zurab, scanning the foliage by the Inguri River where a Sept. 21 firefight left one policemen dead, two injured and blew a hole in the metal wagon that is their only shelter.
Villages south of Abkhazia, a lush rebel region on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, are preoccupying experts and officials who say a European-brokered pull-back of Russian troops from last month’s war may prove difficult and leaves questions unanswered.
That tensions remain high after Georgia’s brief war with Russia is clear from the jumpiness of the police and locals who use horse and cart to travel to and from Abkhazia, partly, they say, because Abkhaz forces tend to seize the cars of ethnic Georgians.
Russian forces are due to leave undisputed areas to positions within Georgia’s two Moscow-backed rebel regions 10 days after the launch of an EU observer mission on Wednesday.
PRETEXTS
Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia’s security council, says a series of attacks by Abkhaz militia since the end of full-scale fighting has been aimed at creating pretexts for Russia to slow the pull-out — a claim Abkhazia denies.
“It’s a stage of provocations, trying to provoke us and delay, postpone or threaten the withdrawal process ... A number of shootings have taken place at least tolerated by the Russians,” Lomaia said.
Abkhazia’s separatist foreign minister, Sergei Shamba, denied any attempt to derail the withdrawal or extend Abkhazia’s borders, alluding to Abkhaz claims that Georgia was behind a bomb blast in the rebel capital last week that caused no injuries but extensive damage.
“It’s the Georgian leadership’s style to turn everything upside down. We don’t need destabilization,” Shamba told reporters.
DEFINING BOUNDARIES
But some suspect Abkhazia aims to eventually take in a narrow strip of villages including Khurcha that lies between Abkhazia’s Soviet-era border and the Inguri River, an obvious geographical boundary to the south.
Alexander Akhvlediani, deputy governor of the Georgian coastal region neighboring Abkhazia, said that defensively “it’s much easier if they have territory up to the river ... They’ll try to raise this question.”
Among the Russian military posts dotted along the Abkhaz border there were some signs that soldiers were preparing to leave, with a young lieutenant at one of the larger posts predicting a pull-out before Oct. 10.
“We’re separating the warring parties,” said a lieutenant at the Inguri Bridge river crossing, insisting Russia’s military presence was beneficial.
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