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SO TOURISTS CAN COME TO SPEND, REFUGEES ARE PAID TO GO
Justyna Mielnikiewicz for The New York Times
New York Times
June 6 2006
BATUMI, Georgia - Marina Gahukidze checked into the Meskheti, a
hotel in this faded resort town, in 1993, and never left. She and
her husband have raised three children in a 10th-floor room with a
balcony and a view of the beach.
A children's dance group rehearsed in a plaza near the shore.
"We didn't expect to live here so long," she said of the hotel room,
the only home her children have known.
There are reasons to stay. The hotel overlooks a gray pebble beach
on the Black Sea and rolling green hills, a picturesque scene that
resembles Northern California. It is a subtropical town with velvety
springs and mild winters. It's just that the hotel is occupied by
refugees, not tourists.
But the summer of 2006 will be the Gahukidze family's last in the
region of Ajaria, a ribbon of coastal land that includes Batumi and
was wrenched two years ago from a renegade, separatist leader, Aslan
Abashidze. The family is finally moving out, as this former resort
town and oil port built by French architects in the 19th century
embarks on a crash development program to bring back the tourists.
Mr. Abashidze, a Soviet apparatchik, seized control as the Soviet
Union crumbled in the early 1990's, and then shut Batumi off from the
world while conducting what Interpol said was a lucrative underground
trade in guns and alcohol.
He was ousted on May 5, 2004, by Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian
president who assumed power in 2003, vowing to assert control over the
country's three separatist regions - two in former beach resort areas.
The refugees in Batumi come from a still-unresolved conflict in
Abkhazia, the other resort district - and therein lies the secret of
the money now pouring into Batumi, and the effort to move Ms. Gahukidze
from her room.
Georgian officials hope to use Batumi to demonstrate to the other
breakaway regions the potential rewards that follow when a separatist
region becomes part of a recognized state.
The city, they say, is becoming a showcase of how quickly one
of the so-called "frozen conflicts" of the former Soviet Union -
Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been fought over by Armenia and Azerbaijan;
Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia; and Transnistria in Moldova -
can thaw out.
"We should communicate to them that they have a future," Mr.
Saakashvili said of residents of nearby Abkhazia, in an interview
in May over meat dumplings at a seaside cafe. "It will take two or
three years, but they will notice. When we have yachts in the harbor,
they will see."
Like Beirut on the Mediterranean Sea, a cosmopolitan seafront town
that dropped off the map because of war, Batumi on the Black Sea is
slowly shaking off its stupor.
The transformation is moving rapidly.
Two years after Mr. Abashidze, the separatist leader, fled to Moscow,
Novotel, the French hotel chain, has signed a contract to open a
hotel. A golf course is planned in place of a former Russian tank
base, which sat on an open bluff over the sea that suggests the
rolling green fairways of the Pebble Beach golf course in California.
An amusement park is going up this summer.
Batumi officials expect 300,000 tourists this season, up from almost
none through the 1990's. In the past two years workers have paved about
79 miles of streets and roads, compared to 10 in the previous 13 years.
In the largest investment to date, the TuranAlem bank of Kazakhstan
bought 21 hotels - including the Meskheti, where Ms. Gahukidze lives.
As part of the investment, the bank will pay each family $7,000 to
move out, enough for a modest apartment in an outlying district.
When the refugees are gone, the Kazakh investors will raze and rebuild
some hotels and refurbish others. The hotels are now home to 1,912
families, or about 6,000 people. So far, 1,400 people have moved out.
Ten miles south of town is a Byzantine castle with a crenelated wall,
now guarding a courtyard of citrus trees, also making a debut to the
modern world as a tourist attraction; during Soviet times, it was in
a closed border zone and off limits.
The detritus of stone Roman waterworks is scattered under a magnolia
tree; the pleasing aroma of mandarin orange trees in bloom wafts over
the old rocks.
The now abandoned castle is emblematic of the tourist potential in
Georgia, where the landscape resembles the south of France.
"It will be a key part of economic growth," Irakli Chogovadze,
Georgia's economic minister, said in an interview in May, while
attending a ribbon-cutting at the Intourist Palace hotel in Batumi.
"Wherever you put your finger on the Georgian map, you have potential."
Beside a bubbling fountain in the hotel foyer, waitresses in pressed
white shirts wove through a crowd of dignitaries with trays of
Champagne flutes and caviar canapes.
The Georgian economy grew 9 percent last year. Foreign visits were
up by 14 percent.
For now, most of the visitors are coming from the former Soviet Union,
Turkey and Iran. The Iranians began slipping over last summer for
a few days of freedom, drinking and girl-watching, none of which is
allowed in their strictly Islamic country.
Ryan V. Hale, 25, a Bible study teacher from Salem, Ore., who is taking
a vacation through Georgia after a religious exchange program, padded
recently through the lobby of another hotel, the L-Bakuri, in shorts
and tennis shoes, a true tourist pioneer. "I came because I wanted
to see the Black Sea," he said. "The architecture is also pretty."
Georgia has ambitions of joining NATO one day. Still, the new governor
here, 34-year-old Levan Varshalmoidze, brushes aside questions about
NATO, saying that it is not within his local mandate, and that it is
unlikely a military base will be built in his region.
Besides, he said, "I'll use all the flat land for hotels before they
get here."
Justyna Mielnikiewicz for The New York Times
New York Times
June 6 2006
BATUMI, Georgia - Marina Gahukidze checked into the Meskheti, a
hotel in this faded resort town, in 1993, and never left. She and
her husband have raised three children in a 10th-floor room with a
balcony and a view of the beach.
A children's dance group rehearsed in a plaza near the shore.
"We didn't expect to live here so long," she said of the hotel room,
the only home her children have known.
There are reasons to stay. The hotel overlooks a gray pebble beach
on the Black Sea and rolling green hills, a picturesque scene that
resembles Northern California. It is a subtropical town with velvety
springs and mild winters. It's just that the hotel is occupied by
refugees, not tourists.
But the summer of 2006 will be the Gahukidze family's last in the
region of Ajaria, a ribbon of coastal land that includes Batumi and
was wrenched two years ago from a renegade, separatist leader, Aslan
Abashidze. The family is finally moving out, as this former resort
town and oil port built by French architects in the 19th century
embarks on a crash development program to bring back the tourists.
Mr. Abashidze, a Soviet apparatchik, seized control as the Soviet
Union crumbled in the early 1990's, and then shut Batumi off from the
world while conducting what Interpol said was a lucrative underground
trade in guns and alcohol.
He was ousted on May 5, 2004, by Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian
president who assumed power in 2003, vowing to assert control over the
country's three separatist regions - two in former beach resort areas.
The refugees in Batumi come from a still-unresolved conflict in
Abkhazia, the other resort district - and therein lies the secret of
the money now pouring into Batumi, and the effort to move Ms. Gahukidze
from her room.
Georgian officials hope to use Batumi to demonstrate to the other
breakaway regions the potential rewards that follow when a separatist
region becomes part of a recognized state.
The city, they say, is becoming a showcase of how quickly one
of the so-called "frozen conflicts" of the former Soviet Union -
Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been fought over by Armenia and Azerbaijan;
Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia; and Transnistria in Moldova -
can thaw out.
"We should communicate to them that they have a future," Mr.
Saakashvili said of residents of nearby Abkhazia, in an interview
in May over meat dumplings at a seaside cafe. "It will take two or
three years, but they will notice. When we have yachts in the harbor,
they will see."
Like Beirut on the Mediterranean Sea, a cosmopolitan seafront town
that dropped off the map because of war, Batumi on the Black Sea is
slowly shaking off its stupor.
The transformation is moving rapidly.
Two years after Mr. Abashidze, the separatist leader, fled to Moscow,
Novotel, the French hotel chain, has signed a contract to open a
hotel. A golf course is planned in place of a former Russian tank
base, which sat on an open bluff over the sea that suggests the
rolling green fairways of the Pebble Beach golf course in California.
An amusement park is going up this summer.
Batumi officials expect 300,000 tourists this season, up from almost
none through the 1990's. In the past two years workers have paved about
79 miles of streets and roads, compared to 10 in the previous 13 years.
In the largest investment to date, the TuranAlem bank of Kazakhstan
bought 21 hotels - including the Meskheti, where Ms. Gahukidze lives.
As part of the investment, the bank will pay each family $7,000 to
move out, enough for a modest apartment in an outlying district.
When the refugees are gone, the Kazakh investors will raze and rebuild
some hotels and refurbish others. The hotels are now home to 1,912
families, or about 6,000 people. So far, 1,400 people have moved out.
Ten miles south of town is a Byzantine castle with a crenelated wall,
now guarding a courtyard of citrus trees, also making a debut to the
modern world as a tourist attraction; during Soviet times, it was in
a closed border zone and off limits.
The detritus of stone Roman waterworks is scattered under a magnolia
tree; the pleasing aroma of mandarin orange trees in bloom wafts over
the old rocks.
The now abandoned castle is emblematic of the tourist potential in
Georgia, where the landscape resembles the south of France.
"It will be a key part of economic growth," Irakli Chogovadze,
Georgia's economic minister, said in an interview in May, while
attending a ribbon-cutting at the Intourist Palace hotel in Batumi.
"Wherever you put your finger on the Georgian map, you have potential."
Beside a bubbling fountain in the hotel foyer, waitresses in pressed
white shirts wove through a crowd of dignitaries with trays of
Champagne flutes and caviar canapes.
The Georgian economy grew 9 percent last year. Foreign visits were
up by 14 percent.
For now, most of the visitors are coming from the former Soviet Union,
Turkey and Iran. The Iranians began slipping over last summer for
a few days of freedom, drinking and girl-watching, none of which is
allowed in their strictly Islamic country.
Ryan V. Hale, 25, a Bible study teacher from Salem, Ore., who is taking
a vacation through Georgia after a religious exchange program, padded
recently through the lobby of another hotel, the L-Bakuri, in shorts
and tennis shoes, a true tourist pioneer. "I came because I wanted
to see the Black Sea," he said. "The architecture is also pretty."
Georgia has ambitions of joining NATO one day. Still, the new governor
here, 34-year-old Levan Varshalmoidze, brushes aside questions about
NATO, saying that it is not within his local mandate, and that it is
unlikely a military base will be built in his region.
Besides, he said, "I'll use all the flat land for hotels before they
get here."