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It is a very small part of the globe: only 8,600 square kilometers and 200,000 inhabitants. It is a mountainous area, the subsoil of which provides a little metal and coal, but hardly any oil. It is a little-known region: apart from specialists in the Caucasus, few in the West have heard of it.
However, the events that are shaking Abkhazia are being followed very closely in all the major chancelleries. Indeed, this independence republic, which has been challenging its membership of Georgia for almost fifteen years, is a nerve point for the balance of the zone: that it will obtain de jure independence, and the Georgian president – the pro-Western Mikhail Saakashvili, who came to power in 2003 following the famous “rose revolution” – will have suffered a terrible cover-up; that it will rejoin the fold of Tbilisi, and Russia – which strongly supports Abkhaz separatism – will have suffered a new affront in the “great game” that opposes it to the United States.
The stakes are high, in a particularly unstable regional context: the tension between the Kremlin and Tbilisi is more acute than ever (1); the international community is keen at all costs to preserve the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, inaugurated last May and whose route passes not far from Abkhaz territory; the Russian republics of the North Caucasus are still plagued by great unrest; not to mention that Iran, very close, is engaged in a worrying nuclear escalation…
