BRIEF

UNOMIG in Kodori Corridor

On Patrol with UNOMIG in the Kodori Corridor (November 1997)

The Georgian-Abkhazian conflict continues to drag on. This week (25 October 2006) Georgian authorities claimed that Abkhazian forces fired GRAD rockets in the vicinity of Azhara, in the Georgian controlled upper Kodori Valley. Abkhazian authorities have denied the accusations. Reports of incidents like this have plagued the Kodori Corridor since tens of thousands of retreating Georgian military personnel and civilians from Sokhumi used the Kodori to escape surging Abkhazian forces in August 1993. Consequentially Georgian and Abkhazian forces established checkpoints along the road separated by Russian peacekeepers.

United Nations Military Observers (UNMOs) began patrolling the Kodori shortly after the war’s conclusion in September 1993 and have sustained theft, been taken hostage, and even suffered casualties. The most significant attack came in October 2001 when a UN Mi-8 helicopter was downed by a rocket, killing all nine on board including five UNMOs, translators and air crew.

CFR crews have been in the Kodori Corridor but only as far as the village of Lata. On both occasions the bad condition of the road made it impossible to proceed further. But in fact, for all the talk about getting a good road running through the gorge, and although a contract was awarded to fix the road, and equipment moved into place, the road has always been a thorny issue.

In fact, the road referred to is actually the upper road. There is a lower road on the south side of the Kalasuri River, but it was mined during and after the conflict to impede movement in and out of the corridor, funneling all traffic onto the upper road. Conventional wisdom, while we were in the Kodori, was to never leave the road. A week after our patrol with UNMO Chris Payton and his team, one of the Abkhazian militiamen we met varied off the road and stepped on an anti-personnel mine losing a leg.

A good road would facilitate the very scenario both sides fear, a military assault through the gorge. In the case of the strategically important Kodori Corridor, the best defense against a military assault from either direction is a bad road.