摘要：The
1992-93 Georgia-Abkhazia War, in which ethnic Abkhazians effectively extracted
northwestern Georgia from Tbilisi’s control, is a conflict largely forgotten in
the West, despite its high profile re-ignition in August 2008. Historical
arguments can be made both for Abkhazia’s unity and autonomy from Georgia, but
the conflict cannot be solely blamed on Soviet ‘ethno-federalism’. It must,
however, be understood within the context of Georgian independence. Ethnic
tension between Abkhazians and Georgians was a necessary but not sufficient
cause for the conflict. It took an unstable transition in Moscow, and
chaotic Russian involvement in the run-up to the conflict, to turn tension into
violence. Russia’s one-sided role in ending hostilities meant that the
conflict’s causal issues were left frozen, only to be violently thawed fifteen
years later
