Refugees in Caucasus Trapped in Misery

Washed up in the flood of refugees from ethnic fighting across the Caucasus region, Chichiko Daniela lives in a hotel room draped in wet laundry and despair.

“People in the street or in the subway ask why I’m still here, why I don’t go to my own home,” said Daniela, who fled to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, when war erupted in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in 1992.

International relief workers said the refugee crisis in southern Russia and the tangle of former Soviet republics stretching across the Caucasus Mountains is on the scale of Bosnia and Rwanda.

But for the most part, the more than 1.5 million refugees from fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Chechnya--the most brutal war of them all--rarely seem to make international headlines.

George Weber, the secretary-general of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said he wanted to put the Caucasus “back in the spotlight” during a recent tour of the region.

After Bosnia and Rwanda, Weber said, “our Caucasus operations are our third largest and we consider these operations . . . in need of support by the international community.”

About 250,000 ethnic Georgians fled Abkhazia during the 13-month conflict between government and secessionist forces. Many found their way to Tbilisi.

The refugees have few ways to support themselves and they are routinely blamed for the crime that is endemic in Georgia’s capital.

“You feel the discrimination all the time,” said Daniela, a retired Soviet army colonel, who fled fighting in Gagra, a resort town in Abkhazia.

The monthly allowance of 2.40 lari, about $2, from the Georgian government is barely enough to buy a few days’ worth of bread, and Daniela is running out of personal possessions to sell. His army pension is only 7 lari a month, about $5.

His hotel room is often without water or electricity, and the secret he keeps from his bedridden wife--that their only son was killed while fighting in Abkhazia--weighs heavily on his heart.

Daniela’s story is typical of the refugees displaced by the wars in little-known places with hard-to-pronounce names that erupted across the Caucasus as the Soviet Union collapsed.

As a result of the lack of attention, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees almost pulled out of Azerbaijan last year after money temporarily ran out.

About a million people were displaced by Azerbaijan’s war with neighboring Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, making Azerbaijan’s refugee crisis the Caucasus region’s largest.

“That the refugees are suffering is certain,” said Kaiser Zaman, head of the UNHCR mission in Azerbaijan. “But there are no great epidemics or famines to pull in television, which is vital in raising interest with the donors.”

Just north of Azerbaijan, another refugee crisis is smoldering in southern Russia. About 600,000 people were displaced in Chechnya during nearly 14 months of war between Russian government forces and Chechen separatists.

Many of them are still living in desperate conditions, short of food and clothing, and uncertain of when they will be able to return home.

“My home is completely destroyed,” said Zulaya Yakubova, 32, who fled Grozny, the Chechen capital.

Yakubova, with her two toddlers, now lives at her sister’s house. Her husband, Musa, was arrested almost a year ago when he went to check on their bombed-out home and has not been seen since.

With many of the regions’ conflicts stalemated, refugees are in limbo.

For Kahkha Kakubava, 27, who wants to raise a family with his girlfriend, the dream of returning home to Abkhazia outweighs the urge to make a new life in Tbilisi.

“I can’t raise a family in such conditions,” he said, waving his hand around his cramped hotel room. “I will only raise a family when I return to Abkhazia.”

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Refugee Movements

Refugee movements in ethnic conflicts in Caucasus:

Nagorno-Karabakh: 360,000 Armenians fled other parts of Azerbaijan; 1 million Azerbaijanis left Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories.

Abkhazia: 250,000 Georgians fled into Georgia proper.

South Ossetia: 42,000 Georgians and Ossetians moved to Georgia or Russian region of North Ossetia.

North Ossetia: 28,000 Ingush left Prigorodny district for Russian region of Ingushetia.

Chechnya: 400,000 Chechens fled to Russian region of Dagestan, Ingushetia and southern Chechen mountains at height of fighting; now 35,000 in Dagestan, 35,000 in Ingushetia.

Associated Press

Sources: International Committee of the Red Cross

International Federation of the Red Cross