Georgian IDPs Complain: You Can't Go Home Again

Inside the so-called buffer zone, a narrow strip of Georgian-controlled villages that separate Georgia proper from the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, life is finally regaining some sense of normalcy. In Tkviavi, a village near the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali that was hit hard by the fighting and subsequent looting while under Russian-Ossetian control, men calmly stand outside in groups, watching the occasional car negotiate the snowy road.

The jagged outlines of burnt homes still scar the horizon, but villagers say they do not live in fear of another attack. For Lali Gigulashvili, the more pressing concern is how to survive the winter without her house.

According to government estimates, just over 400 homes in the border villages were destroyed during the fighting. Although Gigulashvili received nearly 25,000 lari ($14,923) as compensation for her two-story home, she says the money is not nearly enough to build anything comparable to what was lost.

Holding her granddaughter, Gigulashvili dismisses the government payout as insufficient. "What can we do with that money?" she asked, noting that Georgia's fluctuating exchange rate against the dollar means that it is worth less now than it was just a few weeks ago.

Shota Utiashvili, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversaw the housing compensation, conceded that the sum is not enough to build a large house, but stressed that it is comparable to the construction cost for the 60-square-meter cottages that the government is building for Georgians who cannot return to their villages. The government's goal, Utiashvili added, is to treat each displaced person "equally."

Right now, all 11 members of Gigulashvili's family are living in a two-room converted barn on the edge of their property. Filling the yard between their new "home" and the charred remains of their former house are two one-room cottages built by the United Nations Development Programme that the family will move into this spring.

What is most needed, according to Gigulashvili and other villagers, is a stable source of income, a rarity, especially in Tkviavi. Like most villages in the region, Tkviavi's late summer fruit harvests were disrupted by the war. While there has been "talk" of economic programs for the village, Gigulashvili notes that officials have not yet told them anything.

Other villagers echo her frustration. While everyone is "grateful" for the aid that has been provided, pasta and porridge handouts are missing the mark, said Merab Okrobidze, a middle-aged farmer. "People need [financial] help," Okrobidze insisted. For families like his that did not lose their home during the war, government assistance has amounted to free firewood. Okrobidze and his neighbors stressed that instead of handouts, villagers want the ability to farm and to take care of their families. While poverty was rampant in the village even before the war, the conflict robbed most villagers of their fruit harvest, their sole source of income.

Government assistance to families affected by the conflict has been multi-pronged, with the biggest allotment going to build new houses for the estimated 23,000 people who cannot return home. The Interior Ministry reports that over 242 million lari ($145 million) has been spent to date on new housing for internally displaced people (IDPs), housing repairs, road work and other infrastructure projects aimed at easing the war's impact on civilians.

The ministry says that the funds have been used to build 3,963 new houses, repair 1,500 apartments and buy 453 houses for IDPs throughout Georgia. The ministry claims that it has also built approximately 585,000 square meters of new secondary roads and spent nearly 5 million lari ($3 million) for new gas lines and metering.

In 2009, 138 million lari (approximately $83 million) will be spent on IDP housing as part of an overall stimulus plan worth 2.2 billion lari ($1.32 billion), according to Deputy Finance Minister Kakha Baindurashvili.

In October, the government received international pledges totaling $4.5 billion to finance reconstruction projects over the next three years. According to unofficial versions of the agreement reached between Tbilisi, the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations, nearly $800 million of that aid will go to building new housing for IDPs.

During a briefing last December, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili reported that nearly 4,000 new homes had been completed at a cost of nearly 28,000 lari each ($16,787.00).

Vazha Mediashvili, an IDP from the village of Tamarasheni, lives in one of those houses with his wife. Nestled alongside the highway leading into Gori, a Georgian city not far from the South Ossetian conflict zone, his two-room cottage is one of dozens of identical square houses that form a neat block in an otherwise undeveloped field on the outskirts of town. Mediashvili says that his wife and he chose to move to the house rather than take a government check for $10,000. They received a one time 200-lari (approximately $120) stipend each and some furniture, plus free utilities.

While he notes the government assistance has been limited, he had enough money to set up a small auto parts stand in his front yard two weeks ago.

A few doors down, Mediashvili's new neighbor Vasiko Melanishvili, an IDP from Kekhvi, north of Tskhinvali, is still getting used to the idea of his new house. The wooden floor planks, he says, don't bother him, and one relative likes the new furniture, but dreams of returning back to his own village still haunt him.

"We want to return home," he said.