Land Reform Problems in Southern Georgia

Polad Suleimanov, a farmer in the village of Demia-Gorarkhi about an hour's drive south of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, owns just a quarter-hectare of land on which his house, stable and garage stand.



By contrast, his neighbour Isa Isayev owns 66.5 hectares of land and a large sheep farm that employs 12 shepherds.



Such huge discrepancies – a feature of an unusual form of land ownership practiced for many years in Kvemo Kartli in southern Georgia - have caused resentment and tension locally.



Like both Suleimanov and Isayev, 70 per cent of Kvemo Kartli’s population are Azerbaijanis, the country’s second largest ethnic group after the Georgians themselves.



In this region, large swathes of state-owned farmland is held by a small number of de facto owners, who have obtained long leases at cut-price rates from the local authorities. They in turn have divided the land into smaller plots and rented it out to local residents, charging them market prices.



"I have to pay Ziyadkhan [a local landowner] so as to be able to grow my crop", said Suleimanov. "For some reason, he and a few others were allowed to acquire the land while we got nothing.”



Reforms have long been promised to remedy this situation, and a land ownership law passed by parliament last July gave rise to new hope. Under the legislation, explains Dmitry Nakhatadze, a lawyer from the Association for the Protection of Landowners' Rights in Tbilisi, every adult resident has the right to buy up to three hectares of state farmland at a fixed price set for the whole of Kvemo Kartli. Farmer have the right to buy the plot of land they currently lease, or to buy land at auction.



The Azerbaijani farmers of Kvemo Kartli greeted the new law as an act of liberation that would free them from dependence on rich landowners and the local authorities.



However, the law only started being put into practice in Kvemo Kartli several weeks ago, after months of protests by local people, it has already run into trouble. As the distribution process gets under way, many farmers have complained that they are being discriminated against.



"They are providing the population with land that’s useless", said Alibala Askerov, a local community activist. Askerov said families in his village had been given just 0.2 or 0.4 hectares of land, instead of the prescribed three hectares – and that this malpractice [?] was only occurring in ethnic Azerbaijani villages.



The head of Demia-Gorarkhi’s local government, Rasim Imanov, told IWPR that these are no more than teething problems and that many villagers have misinterpreted the new rules.



“In actual fact we haven’t yet been able to acquire plots of land because there are a lot of disputes and quarrels among the population about who has the right to what,” said Imanov. “They [the villagers] think that this is still the Soviet Union and we ought simply to confiscate the land from big landlords and parcel it out amongst everybody else.



“Many people do not even understand that in order to acquire land, you need documents. Some of them don’t even have identity documents.”



The Azerbaijani villages started negotiating with the local authorities after the law came into force last year. Unsatisfied with the results, they held large-scale protests both locally and in Tbilisi last September, saying they had not been given the plots of land they were entitled to.



The situation came to a head on February 22 this year, after a police squad used violence to break up a rally held by villagers who were trying to block the main road. According to Askerov, the police used rubber truncheons and arrested 16 protestors.



The incident attracted attention at national level, and lawyers from the Tbilisi-based landowner’s rights association took up the cases of several villagers.



Jaba Ebonoidze, a representative of the association, told IWPR that following its intervention in the region's largest village, Vakhtangisi, the law was enforced properly and locals had the stipulated land plots handed over to them by the end of March.



Not everyone agrees that the Azerbaijani minority experienced more problems than Georgians elsewhere in the country.



"I don't think the problems have anything to do with ethnic discrimination", Koba Chopliani, coordinator for ethnic minorities with the Public Defender’s Office in Tbilisi, told IWPR. "The problem of land allotment applies to all of Georgia. There are a lot of disputes among the population in all agricultural areas, as the law is being violated there too – it’s not just in Kvemo Kartli."



Zardusht Alizade, a political analyst in Baku, agrees, arguing, “This is a social problem that stems mainly from the fact that people are ignorant about their rights and are unable to solve their problems in a civilised way.”



Land distribution has not yet started in Demia-Gorarkhi. Imanov, head of the village administration, asserts there will be no further problems with the process.



"The organisers of the rallies sought to destabilise the situation, with support from some opposition groups in Tbilisi,” he said. “It's good that some of them are now in custody.”



Meanwhile, villagers who have seen a positive outcome in their own cases are delighted with the way the new law has worked.



"I'm happy to have land of my own, land that belongs to me alone," said Ismail Safarov, a resident of Vakhtangisi. "I feel now that I am a proper citizen of Georgia.”



Ramila Alieva is a reporter for Public Television of Georgia.