SUMMARY

Georgia became independent in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Situated in the Caucasus, the country faced internal armed confrontations as well as external contestations coming primarily from its neighbor Russia. Since its establishment, Georgia has experienced intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.

Organized Violence in Georgia

Zviad Gamsakhurdia became the first president of independent Georgia in April 1991. However, the country was shattered by an intrastate conflict overgovernment when Gamsakhurdia was ousted in a bloody coup by an anti-government alliance in late 1991 and sought refuge abroad. He was replaced by the Military Council led by Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister, who later became Georgia's president. Subsequently, supporters of Gamsakhurdia, the Zviadists, clashed with the troops of the new government for Gamsakhurdia’s return to power until Gamsakhurdia’s death in 1993. Shevardnadze resigned in 2003 following mass protests against his rule. Mikheil Saakashvili, a leader in this “Rose Revolution,” won the 2004 presidential elections.

In the early 1990s, separatist movements emerged in various parts of the country, particularly in South Ossetia and Abkhazia located in the north, at the border to Russia. Inhabited mainly by ethnic Ossetians, in South Ossetia, an armed struggle was initiated in 1992 after the Government of Georgia rejected a public vote for the integration of South Ossetia into the Russia Federation (see the Georgia: South Ossetia conflict). In the same year, a ceasefire brought a halt to the conflict. However, the clashes reemerged in 2004 and 2008, as the new Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili made an attempt to regain control over the region. While 2004 saw only very limited fighting, the conflict claimed the lives of hundreds in August 2008, when the Georgian army that had attacked Tskhinvali was repelled by South Ossetian and Russian troops.

Following Abkhazia’s declaration of independence in July 1992, another intrastate conflict broke out (see the Georgia: Abkhazia conflict). The fighting between the proclaimed Republic of Abkhazia and the Georgian government ended in 1993, and a partial solution to the incompatibility was reached in 1994. The Georgian government lost de facto control over the region. As a result of the conflict, around 240 000 people – almost the whole pre-war ethnic Georgian majority – fled Abkhazia, and ethnic Abkhaz became the largest ethnic group in the region. In 1995, the Republic of Abkhazia resorted to one-sided violence. UNOMIG, a UN peacekeeping mission, was installed to verify the implementation of the ceasefire and to investigate violations, among other things.

Georgia has provided secondary warring support to the Government of Iraq in an intrastate conflict that started in 2004.