Understand
Northwestern Georgia is a very diverse region, which, due to its many languages, cultures, and even governments, can feel like several different countries. The Svans of Svaneti and the Mingrelians of Samegrelo are Christian, Georgian sub-ethnic groups who have cultures and languages distinct from, but closely related to Georgian. The Abkhaz, however, are a completely unrelated South Caucasian people, who for much of their history were predominantly Muslim, until the Russian Empire's "Muhajarism" practice in the 19th century of mass deportation of Muslim Caucasian peoples, which cleansed the region of nearly all non-Orthodox Abkhaz.
The climate of Northwestern Georgia ranges from subtropical to high alpine, and is one of Georgia's greenest, lushest, and wettest regions.
Since Georgian independence in 1991, Northwestern Georgia has been a hotbed of complicated political violence and conflict. The first president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was an ethnic Mingrelian with ties to Samegrelo. His presidency was intensely controversial within and without Georgia and sparked a civil war, which quickly resulted in a murky coup d'etat in late 1991. Conflict between pro-Gamsakhurdia and anti-Gamsakhurdia forces continued as a new separatist conflict exploded in Abkhazia in 1992. The Abkhaz military, fighting alongside paramilitaries from the North Caucasus and possibly with help from the Russian government defeated the Georgian military in September 1993, allowing the Abkhaz government to establish de facto independence. In an even more strange and convoluted twist, Gamsakhurdia then returned to Georgia from Chechnya in late 1993, set up a government-in-exile in Zugdidi, and began a full scale civil war with the central government, relying on the support of Samegrelo and Abkhazia. Gamsakhurdia's war was very successful and his forces routed the Georgian military and threatened the capital. But the resulting instability threatened Russian interests and the Russian government sent its military to the aid of the central government, resulting in a quick defeat for Gamsakhurdia's forces, the firm establishment of Georgia's Shevardnadze government, and the mysterious death of Gamsakhurdia himself. But Northwestern Georgia never really accepted the Shevardnadze victory, leaving the Samegrelo region in particular a turbulent, volatile center of unrest. Moreover, the wide-scale ethnic cleansing of Abkhazia's ethnic Georgians led to continued low-intensity warfare between Mingrelian paramilitaries and the Abkhaz military.
The most powerful force shaping the region today is the protracted separatist conflict between Abkhazia and the Georgian central government. The current situation is more or less a stalemate. Georgia's president has vowed to reintegrate Abkhazia into Georgia, but only by peaceful means. The Abkhaz government demands nothing less than full de jure independence from Georgia. And the ever important Russian government, which still has peace-keeping troops in the region, gives tacit support to its Abkhaz client government while trying to avoid renewed regional conflict.
