TBILISI: Vino Underground: Wine Heaven. By Paul Rimple / Photographies by Molly Corso (culinarybackstreets.com)

Photo by Paul Rimple

(culinarybackstreets.com) Enek poured a rosy colored splash of wine into our glasses, avidly explaining how this particular Aladasturi grape vine was meticulously cultivated in its native west Georgia. In a tasting ritual uncommon in Georgia, we swirled it, sniffed it and savored the flavor as it caressed our tongues. Here in the “cradle of wine,” the land where viticulture is believed to have originated 8,000 years ago, wine is customarily poured into a water glass and “tasted” in one long drag, until drained. But in this cozy cellar in the heart of Tbilisi’s historic Sololaki neighborhood, seven winemakers have come together to offer an alternative convention to winemaking and consumption. They call it Vino Underground, but we call it wine heaven.

“This wine is made by an 80-year-old man in Imereti,” Ènek said. “He’s only bottled 500.” 

Vino Underground offers about 100 family-produced Georgian wines, most all made much like they have been for thousands of years; in ceramic qvevris, tear-shaped vessels buried in the ground and found in nearly every basement in east Georgia’s wine region of Kakheti. But what sets this wine apart from what is normally consumed in the country is the acute care given to the vine. Vino Underground’s co-op think of themselves as grape cultivators rather than winemakers, following an intrinsic philosophy of “listening to the vines” to help them develop a resilient immune system naturally, instead of fertilizing them with chemicals. By the time the grapes get to the cellar, nothing needs to be added to help the fermentation process. You can taste the personal touch that goes into each bottle.

That night we were sampling whites, working our way to Georgia’s distinctive tannin-infused, amber colored wine, a result of the inclusion of skins, seeds and stems into the fermentation process. After sampling a straw-colored, citrusy Kisi, we settled on a bottle of Rkatsiteli, which is Georgia’s most popular white.

Ènek Peterson walked us through several wines, impressing us with a profound knowledge of the background of each bottle, all with an enthusiasm she couldn’t hide. The 21-year-old Boston native eloped with Georgia when she failed to board her flight back home seven months ago, after coming here to learn Georgian folk singing. Already a fluent Georgian speaker, she is fast becoming an expert on natural local wines, and this Rkatsiteli she selected for us was divine.

“This wine comes from Zaza Darsavelidze. He’s a soldier and security guard by profession but inherited the business from his father,” Ènek explained. “Zaza takes his four year-old son with him to the marani” – wine cellar – “and vineyards because he feels it’s so important for this tradition to be carried on.”

Vino underground isn’t the kind of place you visit if you’re hungry, which is unheard of in this Black Sea nation where wine and supper are as inseparable as salt is from the sea. But they do offer savory treats well suited to partnering with their wide selection of wines, which also includes European and Kiwi vintages. We skipped the platter of local cheeses, preferring to try that evening’s specials of fried Sulguni cheese with sorrel and Ekala with walnuts. Sulguni is best described as a kind of mozzarella, while Ekala is a spinach-like plant native to west Georgia. While both are simply outstanding, at Vino Underground it is the wine that really shines.

Address: 15 Galaktion Tabidze St., Sololaki
Tel: +995 322 30 9610
Hours: noon-midnight


(top and above photo by Molly Corso, middle photo by Paul Rimple)
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PHOTOGRAPHY: EurasiaNet's 2013 Photos of the Year (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Istanbul's city center exploded in protest during the summer, Syria's civil war continued through the year, the targeting of undocumented workers in Russia intensified, and America's use of the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan soon comes to an end. These, and hundreds of other stories, were covered by our contributing photojournalists and documentary photographers in 2013. It is through their eyes and by capturing with their cameras that EurasiaNet.org can present unique stories of people, events, and humanity in the South Caucasus, throughout Central Asia, across the Anatolian Plain, and over the rolling steppe of Mongolia.

These images are a look back at EurasiaNet's best photo coverage of news and stories from 2013. Although all of the excellent photos and hard work from our photographers cannot be featured on this select gallery of images, you can review all of our posted Photo Essays hereand our posted Audio Slideshows here.

A fence erected along the border of Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia is disrupting daily life in area villages. (Molly Corso)

Nakhshun Gasparova shows one of the few things she took with her when she fled the Nagorno Karabakh war. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

The Firuza sanatorium in Borjomi is the only operational spa left almost untouched from the Soviet era. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Women comfort each other during a Tbilisi ceremony memorializing the conflict over Abkhazia. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgian soldiers disembark at the Manas Transit Center, in Kyrgyzstan, after a charter flight from Tbilisi. (David Trilling)

A Rustavi steel factory in Georgia is among the major buyers of scrap metal, which is melted and re-used. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

Students with the Tbilisi public school for visually impaired children rehearse for an upcoming concert. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

A history of Borjomi bottles is displayed in the entrance hall of Borjomi Bottling Factory # 2. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

War vet Mnats Sarkisian fought for Armenia 25 years ago during the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

Anton Pilossian pauses behind the curtain before the start of a show of Tbilisi’s 125-year-old circus. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgia’s famous Borjomi mineral water winds it way through the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Scrap metal workers strip rebar from an abandoned factory in Rustavi, Georgia. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

DRINKING: A Modern Makeover for Georgian Chacha. By Molly Corso (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) After centuries of being looked down on as wine’s poor moonshine cousin, Georgian chacha is finally getting the chance to unveil its smoother, more urbane self.

Created by distilling the waste left over from making wine, chacha is better known for its powerful punch and “medicinal” value than its taste – making it an odd choice to showcase at the rebirth of the Mtatsminda restaurant, a former icon of Tbilisi culinary life that reopened this summer for the first time in nearly two decades. 

But its legacy as a purely Georgian beverage tempted a team of consulting drinkmasters from the United Kingdom, brought in by the GMT Group to create a tableau of Georgian cocktails for Mtatsminda’s new Funicular Lounge.

A grappa-like drink made from the grape skins and pulp left over from wine production, chacha normally clocks in at around 60 proof and is consumed neat, in 100 ml shots to fight off colds and/or catch a fast buzz by Georgians of nearly every age, sex, and economic class. Those who are too young to drink it are, in western Georgia at least, forced to rub it on their arms and legs to fight off the sting of mosquitos in the summer.

The clear, sweet smelling liquor is so popular the Saakashvili administration decided to build a tower in its honor in a bid to attract tourists to Batumi. That, and use its waste material to feed cows in hopes of producing more milk.

The GMT Group spent $20 million and six years to renovate the crumbling Mtatsminda restaurant and funicular station, originally commissioned by Lavrentiy Beria in the 1930s, when he was the head of the Communist Party in the Caucasus before he moved on to lead the NKVD, the Soviet secret police.
The restaurant soon became Tbilisi’s calling card. Mtatsminda (Holy Mountain in Georgian) is perched in the hills that tower over the city; the airy balconies that define the restaurant’s façade provide a bird eye’s view of the capital. But the restaurant fell into disrepair in the post-Soviet period.

After six years of renovation, it is easy to imagine how the Soviet elite spent their free time here, enjoying a coffee and watching city life buzz far below them. The developers took care with the details: 1930s-era craftsmanship has been dutifully replicated on the ornate carvings that adorn the arched balconies. 

A wall-size mural of the city that was vandalized was carefully retouched and restored. Expensive chandeliers add a touch of class, and Georgian marble (a quarry was reopened just to provide the materials for the renovation) keep the restaurant anchored to its roots.

There are snazzy new additions, too, including a fresh cocktail menu that pledges to use local ingredients in a new line of drinks. In addition to the Chacha Punch, there is also a Georgian brandy drink, the Tbilisi Funicular, and a mojito-inspired Georgia Julip.

After years of downing chacha shots in village houses and along the sidelines of marathon supras, however, the idea of a cocktail made from the liquor induced visions of something as appetizing as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe’s Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Actually, however, the Chacha Punch – a mixture of chacha and dry vermouth shaken with fresh peach and apricot brandy and served in a sugar rimmed glass – is more margarita than moonshine. While it was a pleasant touch to the nostalgia-meets modern atmosphere at the Funicular Lounge, Beria might have appreciated a neat, 100 ml shot. Just for old time’s sake.

PHOTO ESSAY: Georgia: Two Decades Later, Still Searching for the Missing. By Paul Rimple, Molly Corso, and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(photogallery: eurasianet.org) The last time 76-year-old Venera Oshoridze saw her son, Kakha, was September 15, 1993.

A pensive 20-year-old who loved his friends, his mother’s fried potatoes, and dreamed of going to college, Kakha volunteered to fight in the Abkhaz war just days before Tbilisi lost the battle for Sokhumi on September 27, 1993.
“He wasn’t like the others. He was a quiet boy, always thinking about something,” Oshoridze said, pointing to photo of a serious young man with solemn brown eyes. 

Both of Oshoridze’s sons went to war, but while her elder son returned, Kakha vanished without a trace. Like nearly 2,000 other men and women (most of them Georgian) from the 1992-1993 war between Tbilisi and separatist forces in Abkhazia, he has been missing for the past two decades. 

Immediately after the conflict, Oshoridze started looking for her son, as scores of Abkhaz and Georgian parents joined forces to locate, identify and, when possible, rebury their children. 

The grassroots effort, eventually led by the Georgian non-governmental organization Molodini (Expectations) and the Abkhaz NGO Mothers of Abkhazia for Peace & Social Justice, used personal connections and references from government officials to find answers. 

Georgian parents like Oshoridze traveled to Abkhazia to search, learning firsthand of their children’s deaths through scraps of clothing and body remains. Working together with the Abkhaz, they unearthed and identified bodies based on fragments -- a bandaged arm, dollars folded in a pocket, the remains of a synthetic jacket.

Eventually, the bilateral search helped return 314 bodies to Abkhaz and Georgian families, according to historian Vladimir Dobordjginidze, who, together with the current Georgian state minister for reintegration, Paata Zakareishvili, was involved in the initial project. 

Finding the missing and returning the dead, noted Dobordjginidze, whose son, Zura, disappeared during the fight for Sokhumi, is a non-political issue that provided a connection between Abkhaz and Georgians. “We had great contacts [with the Abkhaz],” he said. “My son died, but that does not mean I am mad at them. We met as ordinary people.”

The Abkhaz also emphasize the “humanitarian” nature of the initiative. “In the Caucasus, it’s important to go to your loved one’s grave. [It’s] like a birthday,” said Asida Lomaia, a project associate for the Mothers of Abkhazia for Peace & Social Justice. Her cousin, Arzamet Tarba, is among those missing. 

“It doesn't matter what nationality -- you keep hope that they may be alive.”
The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, which resulted in Moscow formally acknowledging breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, has complicated the search for the missing.

The last exchange, in 2006, involved the return of 62 bodies from a mass grave of 95 Georgians at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport. (And the return of the living as well -- two young women, said Dobordjginidze).

Another two bodies from Sokhumi were sent to Georgian families “via independent channels” this spring, according to Leonid Lakerbaia, Abkhazia’s de-facto prime minister.

The 2008 war heightened the sensitivity of these joint searches for both sides, but also provided a new urgency for finding the missing. Inspired by the success of an ICRC-organized mission in breakaway South Ossetia, the Abkhaz and Georgians agreed to a Red-Cross proposal for a similar format for identifying the missing from the 1992-1993 war.

Kakhaber Kemoklidze, head of the analytical department at the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Tbilisi, said the ministry, which keeps records on missing individuals from the Abkhaz war, is willing to help efforts to locate and identify the missing. But, Kemoklidze added, it is as much an issue of trust as it is of political will.

Cooperation with de-facto Abkhaz authorities has not always been easy, Kemoklidze noted, adding that the ICRC’s role as mediators is “really important and invaluable.”

Lakerbaia agreed that the present operation would not be possible without the Red Cross’ help. “I don’t see any straight cooperation with Georgia possible,” he said, “but we have a common goal -- to find unknown remains, identify them and return them to their relatives. That’s the main task for all of us.”

Under the ICRC’s oversight, two official representatives from each side meet once a year in neutral locations, such as Istanbul, Kyiv and Yerevan, to compare and exchange lists of names and information on gravesites. The information includes how bodies were buried, their condition, and the names of any witnesses of the death or burial. 

Agreement now has been reached to continue the search at Sokhumi’s Glory Park, where the bodies and remains of 63 unknown individuals are buried. The ICRC recently sent DNA samples from this first batch of remains, exhumed by Argentine forensic scientists, to Zagreb, Croatia for comparison with DNA from families of the missing. Russia, which has troops stationed in Abkhazia, is not involved in the process.

Meanwhile, the families wait. “The exhumation process for many mothers is a starting process of non-acceptance to acceptance. The families need some sense of closure,” said Khatuna Logua, a psychologist at the ICRC office in Sokhumi.
Psychological counselling for these families, whether in Sokhumi or Georgian-controlled territory, has not been an official priority. “Some people don’t want to believe their relatives are dead,” said Logua. “You hear people talk of fantasies of secret prisons [containing the missing] on both sides.”

So far, noted Oshonidze and other Georgian parents, time has worked against identification efforts. Surviving family members of the missing have died or moved, taking with them vital information that could help identify bodies.
For Georgian pensioner Tristin Andriadze, whose son, Konstantin, went missing in October 1993, the only hope is that families on both sides will be given another chance to find their loved ones. “After so many years, it is likely they are dead, but, in my heart, I still have hope that something will be found; at least, where they were buried,” he said. 

Editor's Note: 

Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

GEOPOLITIC: Georgia: Is Moscow Building Another Berlin Wall? By Molly Corso (isnblog.ethz.ch)

Russian soldiers pullout of Gori city 18 Aug 2008. Image by Bohan Shen/Flickr.

(isnblog.ethz.ch) Whenever Ilya Beruashvili hears his dog bark, he knows the Russians are at the gate.

For the past five years, Beruashvili, 53, who lives on the outskirts of the Georgian village of Ditsi, has watched from his windows as Russian soldiers stationed in the neighboring separatist territory of South Ossetia have patrolled the fields he used to farm.

They are coming ever closer. A few months ago, soldiers started building a fence just a stone’s throw from his shed, a structure that will leave Beruashvili’s house and fields outside of Georgian jurisdiction and inside Russian-guarded, breakaway South Ossetia.

Under the terms of the 2008 cease-fire agreement between Georgia and Russia, the area, just a few kilometers east of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, lies in territory where Russian troops should not be. But that hasn’t stopped the Russians from building a barrier there.

Zigzagging through 15 Georgian villages, the 27-kilometer-long fence has divided families and cut people off from their livelihoods, separating farmers from their fields and orchards. It cuts off access to cemeteries and water supplies for ethnic Georgians, as well as health services and pensions for some ethnic Ossetian families.

In Ditsi, the fence is made of green plastic material. In other villages, like Khurvaleti, a tiny farming hamlet about 69 kilometers west from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, it is barbed wire.

Wherever it stretches, it stands as a reminder of Russia’s failure to abide by the terms of the 2008 cease-fire – and of the inability of Tbilisi and the international community to hold Moscow to account.

The structure, though, is nothing new. In 2010, Beruashvili recounted, Russian troops tried to set up markers to extend South Ossetia’s frontier into his front yard. He was able to keep them out then – allegedly, by yelling at them that they were frightening his mother.

Russian soldiers first started putting up fences in this area, in the Georgian region of Shida Kartli, after the August 8-12, 2008 war, according to Ann Vaessen, a spokesperson for the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM), the lone international body observing the cease-fire line.

But despite protests by Tbilisi, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States that the fences constituted a violation of international law, construction is continuing.

The process has even “intensified” over the past several months, Vaessen said.
“Villages are divided, people can’t talk to each other anymore, can’t go and visit their relatives. They can’t go to the funeral of one of their close relatives,” she said.

For Hans Schneider, the German chief of the EUMM’s field office in Gori, the closest Georgian-controlled town to the conflict zone, the structure brings to mind the Berlin Wall, which divided the German city from 1961-1989.

“I saw my mother crying when she received a letter from my sister living on the other side of the barbed wire,” Schneider said, speaking in a personal capacity not intended to reflect the EUMM’s official position. “I know that we cannot completely compare the situation with Georgia. But I have seen so many mixed ethnic Ossetians and Georgian families where the mother is crying for their daughter too.”

Locals like Beruashvili see the wall as a clear restriction on freedom of movement. “They have already gated the high road. … Now they have turned back and moved in this direction and it seems they want these houses as well,” he said of houses on the outskirts of Ditsi.

Kakhaber Kemoklidze, the head of the Analytical Department at the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Tbilisi, told EurasiaNet.org that the Georgian government has repeatedly raised the topic of Russia’s fence during peace talks in Geneva and monthly meetings with Russian and South-Ossetian envoys. So far, the Kremlin has been impervious to Georgian efforts to bring about a halt in construction.
“We have to keep updating our partners and every country that has relations with Russia,” Kemoklidze said. “Russia right now does not care about the borders [between separatist South Ossetia and Tbilisi-controlled territory], but next week, next month, next year there might be an issue that they need [a] compromise on.”

In the end, he said, Georgia has to have “strategic patience.” Yet, to date, “strategic patience” has not produced any tangible benefits.

Insisting that the fence runs inside South-Ossetian territory, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin has refused to address the issue at Geneva. Georgian State Minister of Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili, the head of Tbilisi’s efforts to normalize relations with the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians, admits that the Geneva process has hit a snag.

Zakareishvili claimed that while Tbilisi has demonstrated its readiness for constructive dialogue with Moscow, the fences show that Russia is not ready to respond in kind. “But we will step over those fences,” he said, without elaboration. “The Berlin Wall was destroyed, so, fences … that is just comical.”
Georgia, he added, is betting on patience and “pragmatically looking at the situation.”

Locals living near the conflict line, however, have little reason for patience. Since the war, security concerns have prompted Beruashvili to move his three children out of his house. Alone with his mother, he tends to the few acres of orchards he can reach without risking arrest by the Russians. He waits for Georgian police to patrol the area before venturing to see his father’s grave, or to gather greens, close to land now patrolled regularly by Russian soldiers.
“The women are afraid, the elderly are afraid, we cannot bring the children here,” Beruashvili said. Russian soldiers have become more verbally aggressive of late, he claimed. “They want to take this territory,” he added.

Beruashvili, like scores of other locals, remains determined to make a stand and do everything he can to prevent his house and land from becoming, de facto, part of Russian-guarded, separatist South Ossetia. “I have set my mind to not allowing them in,” he said.

Whether such determination can succeed where international measures have failed remains to be seen.

This article was originally published by EurasiaNet.org.  Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia.

GEOPOLITIK: Russland strebt Vormachtstellung im Südkaukasus an. Von André Widmer (welt.de)

(welt.de) Seit Georgien im Jahr 2008 vergeblich versuchte, Südossetien faktisch in sein Gebiet zu integrieren, baut Russland dort seine Stellungen aus. Die Zivilbevölkerung leidet unter der neuen Grenze.

photo: Molly Corso

Kacha Dzvelaia, seine Frau Ia und die beiden Töchter Nino und Tamta warten darauf, mit dem Pferdewagen auf die andere Seite des Flusses gebracht zu werden. Hier an der Enguri-Brücke befindet sich einer von vier Checkpoints und zivilen Übergängen an der sogenannten administrativen Grenzlinie zwischen Georgien und dessen abtrünniger Provinz Abchasien.

Die Familie Dzvelaia lebt getrennt – der Vater auf der abchasischen Seite, Frau und Töchter in Georgien. Nun kommt die Familie für zehn Tage zu Besuch. Diese Verhältnisse sollen sich bald ändern. "Ich möchte das Haus in Abchasien verkaufen, aber es findet sich kein Interessent", sagt Kacha Dzvelaia. Das Leben in Georgien ist günstiger, die Zukunftschancen besser.

Abchasien hat sich 1991 im Zuge des Zusammenbruchs der Sowjetunion von Georgien losgesagt. 1992/93 wütete ein Krieg mit Georgien, der 250.000 Georgier aus Abchasien zur Flucht trieb. 2008, als Georgien und Russland um Südossetien, die andere abtrünnige Provinz, einen Kurzkrieg führten, kam es zwar um Abchasien nicht zu schweren Kämpfen, aber einige Todesopfer waren dennoch zu beklagen. Russland nutzte die Gelegenheit und verstärkte seine Präsenz in Abchasien.

Historisches Interesse

Das Interesse der Russen an der Region ist historisch gewachsen: Abchasien ist sehr fruchtbar, in der Sowjetzeit war es beliebtes Ferienziel. Der Anteil der Georgier und Russen in der Bevölkerung stieg an. Nach dem Krieg 2008 erkannte Moskau Abchasien und Südossetien als unabhängig an. International gelten die Regionen nach wie vor als integraler Bestandteil Georgiens. Das Grenzregime Abchasiens, aber auch Südossetiens, steht jetzt unter Kontrolle der "Schutzmacht" Russland.

Mit den vier Checkpoints und einem verstärkten System aus Dämmen und Gräben gelingt es der abtrünnigen Provinz immer besser, den Grenzverkehr mit Georgien effizient zu kanalisieren. Die weiteren Übergänge nach Abchasien sind geringer frequentiert als die Enguri-Brücke.

In Orsantia sind es 50 bis 70 Personen täglich, so ein georgischer Grenzpolizist: "Wir haben hier keine Vorkommnisse. Und wenn etwas passiert, sind wir angehalten, uns nicht in einzumischen und provozieren zu lassen." Nicht nur, aber auch weil die Russen auf der anderen Seite die Ruhe bewahren, bleiben an der abchasischen und der südossetischen Grenze bewaffnete Auseinandersetzungen aus.

Georgisches Desaster

Georgien wollte Südossetien vor fünf Jahren mit militärischen Mitteln auch faktisch wieder in sein Territorium integrieren. Am 8. August 2008 begann nach gegenseitigen Provokationen die georgische Armee eine Offensive, worauf auch Russland starke Verbände in die Krisenregion beorderte. Russland konnte zusammen mit südossetischen Verbänden den Kurzkrieg für sich entscheiden. 850 Menschen starben, etwa 30.000 flüchteten aus Südossetien.

Der Ausbau der Grenzbefestigungen auf südossetischer Seite durch die russischen Grenztruppen hat stark zugenommen. "Allein in diesem Jahr wurde rund die Hälfte aller Befestigungen gebaut", sagt Florentin Dumitru Dicu, Vizeleiter des Außenpostens der European Union Monitoring Mission in Gori. Auf einer Länge von 25 Kilometern stehen nun stacheldrahtbewehrte Zäune. Zchinwali, Hauptstadt Südossetiens und 2008 Zentrum der Kämpfe zwischen russischen und georgischen Truppen, wird wie ein Hochsicherheitstrakt abgeschottet.

Mit dem Ausbau der Grenzbefestigungen scheint die russische Schutzmacht Tatsachen schaffen zu wollen. Auf der nördlichen Seite Zchinwalis befindet sich der russische Armeestützpunkt. Hier wie auch in Abchasien sind je ungefähr 3500 russische Soldaten stationiert. Die Behörden beider abtrünnigen Provinzen haben 2011 Verträgen mit einer Laufzeit von 49 Jahren mit Russland für den Betrieb der Armeestützpunkte zugestimmt.

Russland stark verankert

Russland hat damit längerfristig einen Fuß im Südkaukasus stark verankert – unter Missachtung internationalen Rechts und der territorialen Integrität Georgiens. Dass bereits 2011 der Vertrag für eine Truppenbasis in Armenien bis 2044 verlängert wurde, unterstreicht die hegemonialen Absichten der früheren Großmacht in dieser Region.

2009 zogen die Vereinten Nationen (UN) und die Organisation für Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa (OSZE) ihre Beobachtermissionen ab. Nur die EU ist mit ihrer Mission noch vor Ort und darf mit ihren 200 unbewaffneten Beobachtern nur von der georgischen Seite aus die "administrativen Grenzlinien" zu Abchasien und Südossetien kontrollieren. Russland gewährt der EU-Mission keinen Zutritt zu Südossetien, wo demonstrativ die russische Flagge weht. Südossetien ist heute ein russischer Vorposten im Südkaukasus.

Dort, wo die De-facto-Grenze im Grünen verläuft, kommt es nach südossetisch-russischer Wahrnehmung immer wieder zu "illegalen" Grenzübertritten. Sergej Kolbin, Generalmajor und Kommandeur der Grenzbehörden in Südossetien, bestätigte gegenüber der Web-Seite "osinform" eine starke Zunahme solcher Vorfälle. Die Verantwortung für die Grenzsicherheit liege bei den Russen, sagte er.

Bei den Festgenommenen handelt es sich oft um georgische Bauern. Sie werden mehrere Tage in Zchinwali festgehalten und nur gegen Zahlung von 2000 bis 5000 Rubel – zwischen 50 und 125 Euro – freigelassen. Der Grenzverlauf beeinträchtigt das tägliche Leben der Zivilbevölkerung stark. Landwirtschaftlich genutzte Felder und Wiesen werden zerschnitten, Bewässerungsleitungen auf der besetzten Seite gekappt. Privater Grenzverkehr mit Südossetien ist im Gegensatz zu Abchasien kaum möglich.

Verhandlungen auf diplomatischer Ebene, die "Genfer Gespräche", haben bisher zu keinen zählbaren Ergebnissen geführt. Der europäische Einfluss auf die Konfliktparteien ist gering. Familie Dzvelaia ist froh, im weniger strikt gesicherten Grenzgebiet zwischen Georgien und Abchasien zu leben. Hier ist die Familienzusammenführung möglich. In Südossetien ist sie es nicht. 

Video: Diplomatische Eiszeit zwischen USA und Russland
Die diplomatische Eiszeit zwischen den USA und Russland in der NSA-Affäre wird weitergehen. Das vermutet zumindest der Vater des Ex-Geheimdienstmitarbeiters Erdward Snowden, Lon Snowden. 

Weiterführende Links

• Diktator: Stalins Geburtsort schwelgt in Sowjet-Nostalgie
• Georgiens Präsident: Botox auf Staatskosten – Vorwurf gegen Saakaschwili
• Russland: Putins erbarmungslose Rache an seinen Gegnern
• Wahl in Armenien: Das tragische Polittheater von Jerewan

 

GEORGIA: Orthodox Church Looks Askance at Proliferation of Yoga Studies. By Molly Corso (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) A growing number of Georgians are turning to yoga to shake off the stress of daily life. But their quest for inner calm and smaller waists is generating hostility from the powerful Georgian Orthodox Church.

Over the past two years, yoga has gone from a largely unknown Eastern tradition to a popular fitness routine in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Georgian National Yoga Federation President Giorgi Berdzenishvili, a passionate practitioner for the past 15 years, called the trend a “dynamic” process that started under former Soviet leader Mikheil Gorbachev’s glasnost’ policies in the late 1980s.

During the Soviet era, when religious beliefs were discouraged, yoga tended to be viewed as a fringe health-oriented practice, devoid of spirituality, Berdzenishvili noted. But slowly, over the past several years, amid increased Internet usage and travel abroad, yoga has moved into the mainstream in Georgian society.

Today, yoga’s popularity is at an all-time high, instructors say. Classes are full, leading to the opening of several new studios in Tbilisi over the past year. This phenomenon has some Georgian Orthodox priests worried, due to yoga’s spiritual roots in Hinduism, and its perceived association with Buddhism.

While the Patriarchy, the body that governs the Georgian Orthodox Church, did not respond to requests from EurasiaNet.org for the Church’s official position on yoga, dozens of websites devoted to the faith have published articles and blogs that are critical of the practice.

Orthodoxy.ge, a website run by priests at Sioni Cathedral, the former headquarters of the Georgian Orthodox Church, warns the faithful that yoga is full of false “charms” that lure people away from God.

In a long entry entitled “Eastern Culture,” the priests caution that even people who perform “simple yoga exercises … gradually develop some spiritual thoughts” (a broad reference to meditation) that are not compatible with Christianity.

The Church is widely viewed as the most trusted institution in Georgia, and, by extension, Georgian Orthodox priests often wield considerable influence, providing guidance on everything from family planning to purchasing a car.

Local yoga instructors told EurasiaNet.org that priests’ concerns about yoga have stopped some Georgians from taking up the discipline, and have prompted others to abandon it. Mariam Ubilava, a certified yoga teacher at Sun Yoga Tbilisi, said that newcomers often ask before class if meditation is part of the program. “Georgians don’t like meditation so much,” Ubilava said. “Georgians are very strong in their religion and they think if they start meditation, this is related to Buddha and India, and they avoid [it].”

Three years ago, when 38-year-old Nino Kokosadze decided to take up yoga, she noticed that some of the women attending her early morning yoga classes bowed out of the group after their priests “forbade” them from attending.

Kokosadze, who turned to yoga to help with chronic back pain, decided after a few lessons to check with her priest as well. “I am Orthodox, a religious person and already six years I am attending church,” she said during a break at an outdoor yoga session not far from downtown Tbilisi. But Kokosadze’s priest took a more tolerant view. “I told him that some priests prohibited it,” she recounted. “He said that those who know what is yoga won’t prohibit it.”

Many Georgians simply need more information about yoga and meditation, said yoga instructor Ubilava. “[Meditation] doesn’t mean that you become Buddhist or following [sic] the Buddhist religion. It means you forget your daily life, meditate on something.”

Nidhin Kochath Sugathan, a yoga instructor from the Indian state of Kerala, agrees, saying he’d encountered the same concern when he started teaching at Tbilisi’s Yoga Ananda studio. “Georgians had the wrong knowledge that yoga means sitting in the lotus position and chanting only,” Sugathan said.

With time, as practitioners realized that “[b]y chanting one ‘Om,’ they’re not going to change their religion,” the objections vanished, he said.

Nonetheless, after conversations with priests, National Yoga Federation President Berdzenishvili decided to develop a more culturally sensitive version of yoga practice for use in the federation’s classes; one that focuses on fitness, rather than meditation, and does not encourage participants to adopt yoga “spiritual names” or specific forms of dress.

Olga Ramer, the owner of Tbilisi Yoga Cave, one of the first yoga studios to open in the city, noted, that most Georgians today appear as interested in both the spiritual and physical aspects of yoga. “I would say there are more expats who are interested just in [the] physical part,” Ramer said. “The locals who come are actually very spiritual and they want both the physical and the spiritual.”

Those dual aspects of yoga have paid off for Kokosadze, who says that, after three years of regular yoga practice, her back is feeling better and her spiritual life has improved with the stronger powers of concentration acquired from yoga. The three-hour church services she attends each week “pass like a minute because now I am focused on what is happening.”

“[Yoga] has really helped me to concentrate on the main thing,“ she said. “You realize what is the most important in your life.”

Editor's note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia.

REPORTAGE: Georgia: War IDPs Fight Ongoing Battle with Povert. By Molly Corso (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) On the fourth anniversary of the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, many of the tens of thousands of Georgians who were displaced by the conflict are still fighting – to find a job.

Those Georgians who fled South Ossetia (and the Upper Kodori Gorge in breakaway Abkhazia) in 2008 for Georgian-controlled territory received millions of dollars’ worth of emergency and humanitarian aid in the months following the war. But that assistance dried up in 2010.

The transition to self-reliance has not been easy, said Nana Chkareuli, an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) from the South Ossetian village of Akhalgori who runs an organization for youth on both sides of the conflict.

“When you go on the street, you can see that people have built things, and they are planting things in their yard. It shows that people are living here and they can fight [to survive],” said Chkareuli, referring to Tserovani, an IDP settlement of 22,000 people. It is located about a 20-minute drive from South Ossetia.

“But it is still very hard,” Chkareuli added. “Someone is doing something, but others don’t have any work or income.”

For 39-year-old Tserovani resident Ia Ikaladze, the daily scramble to restore a semblance of normalcy has eclipsed dreams of returning home to South Ossetia. Ikaladze, her husband and two children were forced to flee Tamarasheni, an ethnic Georgian village near Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s main city, at the outbreak of the August 8-12, 2008 war. They arrived in Tbilisi with just the clothes on their back, and took refuge in a temporary shelter.

Today, Ikaladze earns 200 lari ($120.60) a month as a shop clerk. Together with her husband’s salary and a 112-lari ($67.64) monthly state allowance, the family is making ends meet, she said. “At least I work here. I have a little salary,” Ikaladze said. “There are other families that don’t even have that, and imagine [how difficult it is] during the winter.”

Finding a job is hard anywhere in Georgia; official unemployment stands at 15.1 percent, but unofficial estimates are much higher. Just over two-thirds of 6,299 respondents in a June survey for the Washington, DC-based National Democratic Institute identified themselves as unemployed.

State employment, however, has been helpful, with the government hiring IDPs to serve in a variety of capacities, including police officers, teachers, nurses, and soldiers. Data on the number of IDPs so employed is not available.

In the rural areas where the government built most of the 38 IDP settlements, agriculture offers the only real employment opportunities.

Although many IDPs are farmers by background, few have resumed working in the fields. In Tsintskaro, an IDP settlement in rural southern Georgia, families have received a one-hectare land plot with each house. But many say they lack the money for seeds, fertilizer and other basic necessities for farming.

The $477 million in aid provided by foreign donors like the US Agency for International Development and the European Union addressed agricultural development, among other projects, but one American academic who has researched the 2008 war’s IDPs says the assistance didn’t foster what displaced families really needed – a steady, living wage.

“People who were poor and destitute before now are much more poor and destitute,” said anthropologist Elizabeth Dunn, an associate professor of geography and international affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

While non-governmental organizations and the Georgian government have been “super helpful getting infrastructure in place” for the IDP settlements, it’s a salary that can “change the fortunes for a family,” Dunn said.

IDPs with easily transferable skills -- wedding singers or craftsmen, for instance -- have been better able to support their families, but farming, at best, only “supplements people’s diet,” she added.

IDP rights advocate Zurab Bendiashvili agreed, calling the NGO and government programs “a drop in the ocean” of need.

Over the next four years, the government has pledged to spend 4 billion laris ($2.4 million) on agriculture, an economic sector that employs the majority of Georgians, but accounts for less than 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

How those reforms will impact IDPs is not yet clear. Tamar Martiashvili, a deputy minister at the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons, told EurasiaNet.org that the government is creating a “new assessment program” that will set up programs to help IDPs address the pressing issues, like employment. The government’s newly established State Employment Ministry also will include IDPs in its database of job hunters, she added. Representatives of the State Employment Ministry could not be reached to elaborate on its plans for IDPs.

The lack of job opportunities adds to IDPs’ general sense of insecurity, noted Chkareuli. “We don’t know if we will be here or there… We don’t see where our place will be in five years,” she said. “I think that everything starts from [stability] … and economic development.”

For IDP Ikaladze hope for a better future persists despite the economic difficulties. “I don’t know where the hope comes from, but I still hope,” she said. “If you just think nothing will happen, you could go crazy.”

Editor's note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. 

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Foto: Millions of dollars in humanitarian aid poured in to Georgia after the 2008 war over South Ossetia, assuring housing for the displaced, but the transition to self-reliance since 2010 has been difficult. Here, a boy rides his bike in Tserovani, an IDP settlement near the South Ossetia border. (Photo: Molly Corso.)

POLITIK: Wird sich der Umzug des Parlamentes von Tbilisi nach Kutaisi auszahlen? Von Molly Corso (eurasianet.org)

Designed by Spanish architect Alberto Domingo Kabo, the new parliament uses a mixture of glass and steel.

(eurasianet.org) Wenn es um öffentliche Bauaufträge geht, dann heißt stattlich gleich verschwenderisch. Ein Beispiel dafür ist das neue georgische Parlamentsgebäude in Kutaisi, dass zwar offiziell eingeweiht am Unabhängigkeitstag aber immer noch im Bau ist. Kutaisi, eine ehemalige Industriestadt, hegt die Hoffnung, durch den Umzug des Parlamentes, seinen Rost abschütteln zu können.

Für die Beamten ist das neue Parlamentsgebäude ein modernistisches Meisterwerk, welches die Sanierung einer wirtschaftlich schwachen Region vorantreiben wird. Nach der Fertigstellung wird dieses Gebäudes aus Glas, den Gesetzgebern mit 4.200 Quadratmetern Fläche dafür genügend Spielraum geben.

Georgiens Präsident Michail Saakaschwili, der den kommunalen Gebäuden in ganz Georgien einen neuen Look verpassen will, sagte, dass das Projekt Kutaisi die Zukunft des Landes verkörpert. "Das neue Georgien [wird] modern, effektvoll und transparent sein", sagte er Teilnehmern der Gebäudepräsentation am 26. Mai.

Kritiker meinen hingegen, das Parlament käme direkt aus der klassischen Science-Fiction-Serie Star Trek, es ist ein Symbol einer überaktiven Phantasie. Unabhängig von den ästhetischen Qualitäten des Gebäudes, ist es für sie gerade ein Sinnbild für die Verschlossenheit und Eigenwilligkeit der Regierung Saakshvili. Schließlich wird der Umzug des Parlaments von Tiflis nach Kutaissi nichts anderes als eine kolossale Verschwendung von Geld bedeuten.

Der georgischen Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) kritisierte die Regierung für den totalen Mangel an Transparenz über die Kosten, die Entwicklung und die Konstruktion des neuen Parlamentes. Es dauerte zwei Jahre herauszufinden, wie viel die Regierung für das Parlament ausgibt und wo die Mittel herkommen. Der gesamte Bau wird nun auf 82,5 Mio. Dollar (ca. 133,7 Mio. Lari) geschätzt. Nino Tvaltvadze, GYLA Development Manager in Kutaisi, behauptet, dass die Regierung bislang nicht auf die Frage geantwortet hat, welche staatliche Behörde dafür zuständig ist und wer für die Aufsicht über das Projekt verantwortlich ist.

Das neue Parlament wird nicht offiziell eröffnet bis zu den Parlamentswahlen Anfang Oktober. Das alte Parlament aus der Sowjet-Ära mit seinen 540 Zimmerns soll privatisiert werden. Die Zeit wird zeigen ob die die Arbeit des Parlamentes in Kutaisi den Erwartungen der Regierung entspricht. Die Debatte darüber wird sich in den kommenden Wochen intensivieren, auch was die die Tragödie auf der Baustelle betrifft.

Eine 30-jährige Bauarbeiter wurde am 7. Juni getötet, als das Gerüst des Parlaments umstürzte. Es war der dritte Todesfall auf der Baustelle seit dem Jahr 2009. Die Baufirma hat lokale Berichte dementiert, dass 20 Menschen bei dem Vorfall am 7. Juni verletzt wurden. Saakashvili war "sehr verärgert" über die Panne, wie er im Fernsehen bemerkte. Seiner Meinung nach war Unaufmerksamkeit die Ursache, und er empfahl eine strafrechtliche Untersuchung.

Für Kutaisi, einer Stadt mit 196.800 Einwohnern - etwa zwei Autostunden westlich von Tiflis gelegen, ist das Parlament ein Zeichen für die Wiederherstellung seines verblichenen Ruhmes. Dieser Tage oft verspottet als Provinznest, war Kutaisi die georgischen Hauptstadt von 978 bis 1122, und enthält zwei UNESCO-Welterbestätten - die Bagrati-Kathedrale und in den Außenbezirken, das Kloster Gelati - beide während der Blütezeit der Stadt gebaut.

Der anstehende Umzug des Parlaments von Tbilisi nach Kutaisi hat nicht nur den Bau des Parlamentsgebäudes zur Folge, sondern auch ein neuer Flughafen mit einem 55-Meter hohen Turm der Flugsicherung soll errichtet werden. Darüber hinaus wurde ein Teil der Innenstadt, darunter die Oper, renoviert und drei neue gläserne kommunale Bürogebäude, einschließlich eines administrativen Zentrums (im futuristischen "Shopping-Mall"-Stil) erbaut.

Da Kutaisi immer im Schatten von Tbilisi, aber auch der Hafenstadt Batumi stand, begrüßen die Bewohner den Zustrom von Aufmerksamkeit und Ressourcen. "Natürlich hoffen wir, dass die Dinge besser sein werden -, dass Unternehmen besser und die Leute wieder beschäftigt sein werden", sagte Supermarkt-Filialleiter Fati Gogatishvili. Derzeit liegt die offizielle lokale Arbeitslosenquote bei 9,3 Prozent.

Viele erhoffen sich wirtschaftliche Vorteile von den 150 Parlaments-Mitgliedern und deren Familien. Um sie zu ermutigen, plant die Regierung Wohnräume für die Parlamentarier in der Nähe der Sowjet-Kurstadt Tsqaltubo zu bauen. Die Abgeordneten, die nicht aus der Region stammen, werden Reisestipendien erhalten. Ein Abgeordneter, der EurasiaNet.org kontaktierte, sagte, es sei "zu früh" darüber zu spekulieren, ob die Abgeordneten tatsächlich umziehen werden.

Bis heute wurden jedoch kaum Arbeitsplätze geschaffen - außer auf dem Bausektor beschränkt. Laut MagtiStyle, der in Tiflis sitzenden Baufirma für die Erichtung des Parlaments, haben etwa 200 lokale Arbeiter einen Job bei dem Bau des Parlaments bekommen.

Sobald das Gesetzgebungsverfahren für den Umzug abgeschlossen ist, sollen Jobs zu erwarten sein. Bisher, sagen die Einheimischen, haben sie keine Veränderungen bemerkt. Weder neue Geschäfte, Kanzleien oder gar Restaurants wurden eröffnet. Jedoch sind die Preise für Waren im Einzelhandel und für Immobilien gestiegen.

Laut Misha Tigashvili, der Generaldirektor des Kutaisi Free Zone - ein steuerfreies Investment-Projekt -, werden Investitionen und Arbeitsplätze durch das neue Kutaisi geschaffen. Tigashvili, der die ägyptische Firma Fresh im Jahr 2009 nach Kutaisi brachte, erzählte, dass sein ägyptischen Partner insgesamt bis zu 10 Millionen Dollar in ein Hotel in der Nähe des neuen Parlaments investieren will.

Solche Investitionen und wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten könnten ein entscheidender Aspekt für die Rechtfertigung des Umzuges des Parlaments sein, kommentierte Lawrence J. Vale, Professor für Städtebau und Planung am Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Denn solche Schritte können eine Vielzahl von Motiven haben - sie können einerseits produktiv und aber andererseits äußerst verdächtig sein - es ist besonders wichtig, alles genau zu beobachten, um größere politische Trends zu diagnostizieren", sagte Vale.

Von Molly Corso ... Sie ist eine freier Journalistin, und arbeitet auch als Herausgeber der Investor.ge, eine monatlich erscheinende Publikation von der American Chamber of Commerce in Georgien.