ARTICLE: Georgia war was in South Ossetia, but Abkhazia's the prize. (victoriaadvocate.com)

Shashank BengaliMcClatchy Newspapers
August 25, 2008 - 4:13 p.m.

ANAKLIA, Georgia — They call themselves the hazelnut refugees.

Earlier this month, while the heaviest fighting of the Russia-Georgia war raged 150 miles away, separatists from Abkhazia, a pro-Russian enclave of Georgia on the Black Sea, burst into the Georgian farming village of Gunmuhuri and raised their flag.

More than half the village fled. But many people couldn't afford to abandon their hazelnut crops, a financial safety net. So dozens of ethnic Georgian families continue to pick nuts on their farms in the daytime — slipping carefully through the groves to avoid Abkhaz soldiers — then cross a narrow river to the Georgian-controlled village of Anaklia, where they spend the nights in the safe company of relatives.

These refugee families find themselves at the center of one of the lingering questions of the two-week conflict: the status of Abkhazia, whose self-declared government, backed by Russia, used the war to grab more territory in western Georgia, and asked Moscow last week to recognize it as an independent state.

Along with South Ossetia — Georgia's other breakaway province, where hostilities with Russia ignited Aug. 7 — Abkhazia declared itself independent nearly two decades ago. On Monday, the Russian parliament recognized the provinces' independence. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili made reintegrating the two provinces a centerpiece of his administration, but that goal appears to have gone up in the smoke of war.

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