Dispatch from Pankisi Valley In the aftermath of a controversial election, frustration and fear on Georgia’s rural fringe
This story first appeared in The Beet, a monthly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
As the sun sets over Tbilisi’s parliament building, the fireworks, chanting, tear gas, flags, and water cannons take up their positions on Rustaveli Avenue in what has become a nightly ritual. Resistance to the government’s decision to suspend Georgia’s E.U. bid was expected in the capital, but the modest shows of defiance in other cities and even small towns across the country came as a surprise.
Telavi, the administrative center of the predominantly rural Kakheti region, saw protests in early December — an unusual development for a region where alienation from national politics is relatively commonplace.
“So many [people here] don’t really see Georgia as their homeland,” says Mariam, a 23-year-old ethnic Kist from Kakheti’s Pankisi Valley. For many older inhabitants especially, the concept of homeland is exclusively tied to the settlements dotted along the gravel track that stretches northwards before being swallowed up by the Greater Caucasus mountains that complicate the path to Chechnya, the Kists’ home until the 19th century.
The sheer physical distance between the Pankisi Valley and Georgia’s capital also contributes to this psychological disconnect; the journey from Tbilisi to Pankisi takes two or three hours at best, regardless of whether any navigation app tells you otherwise. “When we used to go to Tbilisi, to some camp or a meeting, young Georgians usually asked us, ‘Will we need a passport to cross the border to Pankisi?’” Mariam recalls.
According to Shalva Dzebisashvili, a politics professor at the University of Georgia, Tbilisi and the country’s rural areas are like two different worlds. “One is the capital, which is liberal, more globalized, more modern, and then the rural areas are still kind of underdeveloped and lack infrastructure,” he explains.
Georgia’s political system only reinforces this mutual alienation. The intense centralization left over from the Soviet era makes local government dependent on the capital, while the complete lack of representation for ethnic minorities, who tend to live in rural areas, leaves their voices unheard in Tbilisi. There has never been a Kist member of parliament, and one pollster from the capital (who asked to remain anonymous) described the group, which makes up 0.2 percent of the population, as “electorally irrelevant.”
As a result, regional authorities are either unable, unmotivated, or unwilling to solve the problems that are either invisible or unconcerning to officials in Tbilisi, who consequently offer neither carrot nor stick to their local counterparts to affect change. Instead, residents have taken matters into their own hands.
Transforming the valley
Some of the Pankisi Valley’s problems can be found in rural communities the world over — youth emigration, a lack of job opportunities, and basic infrastructure failings. Other issues are more specific to the region — the influence of radical Salafi Islam, a lack of integration between Georgian Christians and Muslim Kists, women’s disempowerment, the list goes on.
And yet, according to residents, the region has been “transformed” over the last decade, largely owing to the work of one small NGO. Since its founding in 2008, the Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (KRDF) has offered extensive instruction and mentorship for local women and girls, helping them pursue entrepreneurship and higher education.
According to Mariam, women from her mother’s generation got married and had children immediately after finishing school. Growing up, she herself “couldn’t believe that women could be financially independent.” But with the KRDF’s support, she attended university, while older women in her community began launching their own businesses.
This network of entrepreneurs forms the backbone of the valley’s nascent tourism industry. At the center are the guesthouses, where you can buy homemade cheese and honey, join a hike through the mountains or cultural tour with a young guide keen to practice their English, or catch a performance of traditional Chechen singing.
The KRDF has also trained these women in how to hold meetings to decide on which issues matter most to their community and taught them how to navigate local bureaucracy and take petitions to the authorities. Recent initiatives include bids to refurbish the dilapidated recreation center and build a new park.
The newly constructed crisis center for victims of sexual and domestic violence was also a KRDF-backed initiative, providing a necessary refuge for women and children who remain vulnerable in a society where patriarchal dominance can express itself in terrible ways. Despite playing an active role in their community, Kist women are not allowed to sit on the Elder Council, an informal governance body used to solve local disputes. “More men support the women than don’t,” Mariam says, though she points out that local women can’t participate in the KRDF’s programs without their male relatives’ consent.
Locals are also tackling the problems facing the younger generation. Luka (name changed), a 23-year-old Georgian, says he was among the first young people from his community to start engaging with Kists back in 2015. “We lived in the same valley, but young people didn’t have any connection, because we were afraid,” he explains. “We [Georgians] thought that the Kist people were dangerous, even though we’re neighbors, because of stereotypes from the 1990s.”
The Chechen Wars in the 1990s and early 2000s led to an influx of several thousand refugees from across the Caucasus Mountains into Georgia, a small number of whom had been guerilla fighters. Kist customs meant that all the new arrivals were brought into residents’ homes, even if they were complete strangers, leading to the stereotype that the valley is a haven for terrorists. Prejudices only worsened in the 2010s as an estimated 200 Pankisi residents went to Syria to join the Islamic State.
“It was a completely closed place,” Mariam recalls. “Even Georgian people didn’t come to our valley.”
When a distant family friend urged Luka’s parents to send him to the KRDF-run youth center in the Kist village of Duisi in 2015, he was initially afraid. “But something in my heart told me to go there,” he says. Luka ended up falling in love with the mission of community integration and, after finishing university in Tbilisi, he returned to the valley and founded his own NGO focused on building interfaith relations.
Pankisi’s blossoming tourism industry is primarily propelled by international rather than Georgian visitors, who still tend to view the area with a certain nervousness. Nonetheless, with the community becoming more integrated, more engaged politically, and more active in the formal economy, there’s a sense that the valley is beginning to forge a relationship with the outside world. “We face so many problems, but still, we are doing our best,” Luka says.
‘They do not care’
Originally from Pankisi, Nata started working for the KRDF after finishing university. Like many young people from rural Georgia, she was encouraged to study in Tbilisi or abroad, but Nata ultimately decided to return home after getting her degree. “I wanted to contribute to improving our community,” she recalls.
But Georgian Dream’s recently enacted “foreign agent law,” which requires civil society organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as working “in the interest of a foreign power,” has cast a shadow over the KRDF’s success, throwing its future into doubt. “I don’t know what will become of us,” Nata admits.
The Georgian parliament approved the controversial law in May, triggering renewed street protests in the capital that set the tone for the October parliamentary elections, which the opposition cast as a referendum on Georgia’s geopolitical orientation. But while the choice between a “Western” or “Russian” path may have galvanized urban voters, it appeared less pressing to those living in rural areas.
The pollster who spoke to The Beet said the opposition parties offered good policies for rural regions in the run-up to the vote but didn’t communicate them effectively. Professor Dzebisashvili disagrees. “Even sitting in my university [office] in Tbilisi, it was clear to me that the opposition parties didn’t do the [bare] minimum in the regions to convince people and bring them over to their side,” he explains.
Luka’s assessment of the opposition’s campaign strategy in the regions was even more stark. “I will tell you very simply, they do not care,” he says, recalling a meeting with opposition politicians and regional activists he attended ahead of the vote. “We were talking about some problems we have in our region, [and] they didn’t even listen to us,” he explains. “And that was when I saw what’s [really] going on in Georgia.”
In fact, none of the parties offered much in terms of concrete policies for the regions, aside from proposals that largely equated rural areas with wine production — failing to take into account the country’s Muslims, who have no ties to the viticulture industry.
According to Mariam, some people planned to vote for Georgian Dream for fear of losing their social security benefits, while Luka warned that speaking openly about one’s intention to vote for the opposition could cost relatives working in the public sector their jobs. “They could be fired,” he explains. (Reports from international observers corroborate these claims.)
According to Dzebisashvili, electoral fraud in the regions began “weeks before” the vote, thanks to the ruling party’s capacity to identify “dependent groups” and “pressure them with the fear of losing something — whether this is financial support, a job, […] a bridge not being built in their village, or the roads not being paved.”
On voting day, international monitors reported groups of “strongmen” intimidating voters outside polling stations, particularly in rural areas, and noted the presence of security cameras installed by the ruling party that violated the principle of ballot secrecy. “Rural areas were significantly more manipulated, [and] the election process was significantly less fair,” Dzebisashvili says.
‘I thought we had built a democracy’
In the end, the Akhmeta district, which includes Pankisi, officially posted 56 percent support for Georgian Dream, consistent with the other districts in the country’s northeast. By comparison, in southern rural areas, the ruling party received upwards of 70 or even 80 percent of the vote share in some districts.
Luka felt “crushed” by the ruling party’s victory. “I thought we had built a democracy that could ensure rightful elections,” he says. “Now I know we don’t have democracy in our country.”
Despite feeble protests in Tbilisi, the new parliament reopened on November 25 with only the 88 Georgian Dream deputies present, as the other 62 opposition lawmakers refused to take their seats. Then, three days later, the real protests began, after Georgian Dream announced that it was pausing accession talks with the European Union. Protesters have rallied outside of the parliament in Tbilisi every night since, waving E.U. and Georgian flags, and blocking Rustaveli Avenue, the main road through the capital.
Law enforcement initially responded with water cannons and tear gas, with police and men in balaclavas violently beating up protestors and allegedly targeting members of the press. But this didn’t stop the protests from spreading to cities, towns, and even villages across the country.
In Tbilisi and other cities, the protests have continued into the New Year, with demonstrators calling for new elections. But rather than backing down, Georgian Dream is maneuvering to cement its rule. Though outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili joined the protesters and refused to step down, ruling party lawmakers inaugurated former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili as her replacement in a disputed swearing-in ceremony on December 29.
“I was 12 when [Georgian Dream] came to power,” says Luka. “Just imagine that there has been no chance since that time.”
As an NGO founder, Luka now feels torn between the desire to stay and help his community and the fear of the “moral shame” that would come with his organization being labeled a “foreign agent.” He’s even considering emigration: “I don’t know what I would do in another country, but at least I’ll be free, and I won’t be afraid.”
According to Dzebisashvili, the controversial NGO law is specifically designed to target organizations that push for the autonomy and empowerment of rural communities and local governments. Despite receiving funding for its projects from the European Union, USAID, and other international donors, the KRDF has refused to register as a “foreign agent,” deeming the legislation contrary to its operational principles and values, Nata says. “We are, of course, still working and will do [so as long as] we can, [as long as] the government permits us,” she adds.
It’s difficult to overstate what the suffocation of organizations like Luka’s and the KRDF would do to a region like Pankisi. It would mean the closure of the crisis center for women and girls. The end of youth camps that bridge previously segregated communities and prepare young people for higher education. The loss of employment opportunities. The end of effective lobbying of local authorities. An indefinite pause on infrastructure projects. A spike in outward migration. And the potential rise of radical religious fundamentalism.
For the moment, the distance between Pankisi and Tbilisi seems too great for the valley’s residents to overcome, forcing them to wait and see what happens next as protests continue in the capital and other cities. “After the [‘foreign agent’] law, our lives split in two — before and after the elections,” Mariam says, describing the feeling of living in limbo ahead of the parliamentary vote.
The elections have come and gone, but many Georgians have yet to shake this liminal feeling.
Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers once a month. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
Story by Sofia Johanson for The Beet
Edited by Eilish Hart