User:Alaexis/Abkhazia losses

Originally from Talk:War_in_Abkhazia_(1992–1993)

Losses
The losses are all over the place and I hope to sort it out. I'll start checking the provided references here, please let me know if I miss something. I will be marking the numbers I can confirm by ✅ and the ones I cannot by ❌.

Sources that do not report casualties

 * The Human Rights Field Operation: Law, Theory and Practice, Abkhazia Case, Michael O'Flaherty. I've looked at the pages where Abkhazia is mentioned (49–50, 54, 93, 94, 96, 130–1) and haven't found any casualties or refugee numbers.
 * On Ruins of Empire: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Former Soviet Union Georgiy I. Mirsky, p. 72 No mention of casualties on pages 70-75.
 * Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties by Roger Kaplan, p 564. Freedom House release their reports annually and frustratingly, the year of the report is not specified. I've checked reports from 1993 to 1999 and none of them has anything related to Abkhazia on page 564. The 1994 report says this "At least 500 Georgian soldiers were killed during the two-week siege and more than 2,000 wounded. Scores of Georgian officials, policemen and citizens were executed, thousands more were evacuated by Russian ships,  while tens of thousands fled toward Tbilisi through rugged, snow-covered mountains" which doesn't help with total casualty figures.
 * Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, p 174. No mention of casualties on pages 174-181.
 * Anatol Lieven, "Victorious Abkhazian Army Settles Old Scores in An Orgy of Looting, The Times, 4 October 1993 . No casualty figures.
 * The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia p. 237–238. No casualty figures.

Sources I couldn't verify

 * Chervonnaia, Svetlana Mikhailovna. Conflict in the Caucasus: Georgia, Abkhazia, and the Russian Shadow. Gothic Image Publications, 1994. Can't get my hands on it. However I did check her book Abkhazia. 1992. The Post-Communist Vendee and it does not contain casualty figures. Also there are some concerns about her bias: she is criticised for treating "Abkhaz movement as blind adherent of and champion of the Soviet system."

Suggestions
The two numbers I wasn't able to confirm are Georgian military and civilian losses (2,600 and 20,000-30,000 respectively). The HRW report gives a total of 4,000 based on Georgian sources but does not provide a break-down. Out of 10 (!) sources which were supposed to back up the 20-30 thousand figure, I've been able to check 9 and none of them contains these numbers - or any other casualty numbers, for that matter.

Derluguian says that the total number of casualties was 25-30 thousand in The Myth of “ethnic conflict” politics, economics, and “cultural” violence by Beverly Crawford, Ronnie D. Lipschutz (eds), p. 263 but he does not provide military/civilian or Georgian/Abkhaz breakdowns.

I managed to find one source that gives the 30,000 Georgian killed number:. It looks like a self-published and therefore unreliable data source per WP:RS even though the person behind it is a real scholar. The about us page says "this project was founded in 2002 as a support resource for my political science students enrolled in various courses that covered international security and politics in Eastern Europe and Asia. It has developed later into what it is right now involving the expertise of a number of other experienced specialists including but not limited to political and computer scientists, criminologists, geographers, translators and journalists."

Therefore my suggestions are:
 * 1) Remove sources which do not mention casualties at all (see above for the list)
 * 2) Add  tag to Svetlana Chervonnaya's book considering that she has been criticised for her bias.
 * 3) Change the Georgian losses estimate to 4,000 per the HRW report and add the 30,000 total casualties figure separately. Alaexis¿question? 14:26, 28 January 2021 (UTC)