Russia has just arrived

In Newsweek on August 18, 2010 Anna Nemtsova's article was published about FSB's past and future summers now in "Russia's newest colony", Abkhazia. Author is explaining why there always has been "special relationship" with KGB and how exactly trend is continuing.

Tsyshba, the Gagra privatization guru, proudly boasts that the city is “the best FSB resort.”

Once, when my mom was talking with me about Abkhazians and their unique culture, I decided I wanted to travel there, I wanted to be friends with these people. At the end she added somehow sadly, "But instead of their mother tongue, they speak more and more Russian these days", she looked away and switched to some other topic. I didn't think it was so bad if people spoke other rather then their own language. I didn't share sadness of my mother. But if I could understand more then I did, if she could say more then she did, I would.

After some years war erupted in Abkhazia. War and also war crimes where based on ethnicity. Some soldiers never came back, but message arrived: In Gagra football was played with heads of Georgian soldiers. Abkhazians lost their friends and family members as well.

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I kept asking myself WHY and HOW could all these tragic events take place in our beautiful country. When I think of ourselves BROTHERHOOD is the first word that comes in my mind. I couldn't explain, I had no answers, until Anna Nemtsova's article offered me some explanation. I was reading Republic of Spies and thinking, that when you have too many KGB/FSB agents in your country or region, you must be concerned, you should think that horror can happen if you are in their hands.

We can't change what has happened, but can we make a future we would like to have? Of course we can...or can we all?

“I realized that Russian security services gave us our independence in order to be able to decide what to buy and build in our cities,” Tamara Lakrba, main architect of town Gagra.

“I do not think Russians understand that we are different; we do not want to be a KGB state again. We would never give our land back to Georgia, but to be independent, we mean from Russia as well,” says Akhra Smyr, a youth community activist in Sukhumi.

I myself believe in never is too late. I wouldn't give up to work on being happy and helping other's to be happy while my lifetime. Future is in our hands, but doesn't seem to agree with me Anna. She thinks it could be already too late:

"It seems too late, though, for the Abkhaz to reconsider their pact with their powerful northern neighbor. Abkhazia’s border with Georgia is secured by a full division of Russia’s border guards, who answer to the FSB. Bright orange trucks—with the double-headed-eagle logo of the Russian Federal Construction Co.—crawl along the coastal roads, carrying sand and gravel for the seven-story buildings the FSB is building for the border guards and their families in Gali, a regional center on the border with Georgia."

Abkhazia's de facto president Bagapsh's answer shows me, that he has nothing against giving up.

“Russia has just arrived,” President Bagapsh told NEWSWEEK. The West should “stop having any illusions about what they call Russian occupiers leaving any time soon.”

I wish armies and agents who make fire among people, have to leave, but it's not really about transportation of an Army, it's about the happiness we lost. It is important to bring it back one day soon.

Update:

After publishing this post I came across Akhma Smyr's comment about the "Republic of Spies". He writes that some of his words has been twisted. You can read about it here >>