In June this year I went on holiday to Georgia, a country with diverse cultural and geographic influences; its links with Europe to the west and Asia to the east made it a perfect corridor for silk route traders. Along the north of Georgia run the High Caucasus, a thousand-kilometre range of mountains that border Russia, and Azerbaijan. The mountains are an almost impenetrable barrier, few roads link Russia and Georgia, the military highway in the Kazbegi region, the Ossetian military road, and Transcaucasian highway; in Georgia there are two disputed territories that are effectively governed by Russia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and two of these highways run through South Ossetia. After a short but brutal conflict in 2008, thick rolls of barbed wire were placed along the disputed areas in a process known to Georgians as borderisation; siblings, family, and friends were cut off from each other, many haven’t seen each other since. Occasionally, overnight, the barbed wire will be moved further onto Georgian land as a provocative move, a way of unsettling Georgians. Georgian people are nervous of the future; political moves and Russian rhetoric make them so. When you talk to them, they are fiercely patriotic. They want to cling on to what they have, and what they have is beautiful. (more…)
By Andy Winfield