Unreported World

Fighting in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia grabbed the headlines in the summer of 2008. But Unreported World reveals that in Georgia's other breakaway republic, Abkhazia, a tragedy was secretly unfolding.

Arriving in Abkhazia, reporter Aidan Hartley and director Alex Nott hear reports of fierce fighting taking place in the Kodori Gorge, high in the Caucasus mountains. After being forced back at checkpoints by militia commanders, the team talk their way onto a helicopter taking mainly Russian journalists on a government organised trip to the valley.

From the air, the destruction is quickly apparent through the landscape of ruined, abandoned villages.

Hartley and Nott manage to slip away from their minders and enter the deserted village of Ajara, where they find almost all of the houses ransacked and looted. Nearby villages have suffered the same fate, with virtually none of their inhabitants anywhere to be found.

Heading south, it's clear that the bitter ethnic conflict which led to this latest outbreak of fighting and that has cost thousands of lives over the last decade, still continues. Georgians and Abkhazians lived side-by-side for centuries, but following the break-up of the Soviet Union, ethnic conflict broke out in the Abkhazia region of Georgia, home to Abkhazians as well as Georgians.

Around 250,000 Georgians have since fled their homes. Attending one young Abkhaz soldier's funeral, a family member says they used to break bread with the Georgians - but then Georgians started attacking Abkhazians.

Moving on to the capital, Sokhumi, Hartley asks the republic's president, Sergei Bagapsh, if ethnic cleansing of the Georgian residents of the Kodori Gorge has taken place. The president blames the Georgian leadership for the current conflict and says that Abkhaz forces had given people in the gorge three days' warning before fighting started.

The team returns to the gorge to test the President's claims, driving through derelict towns that are reverting to forest.

In a ransacked village called Chkhalta, an Abkhaz militia commander tells Hartley that all the Georgian civilians have fled into the forest. The team finds one elderly civilian who says they received no warning about the fighting and while her daughter and grandchildren had fled, her husband refused to leave. He tells Hartley that there are only ten people left from a population of 3,000.

The team decides to travel back into Georgia and the town of Kutaisi, where they have heard that refugees have arrived from the Kodori Gorge. On arrival, they track down the elderly couple's granddaughter who tells them she is too afraid to return and that Georgians should not go back to Kodori Gorge.

Hartley and Nott find another refugee whose ransacked house they had seen in the village. Tserediani claims that the Russians arrived in Kodori pretending to be peacekeepers but turned out to be their enemies, and had attacked them. His wife Tariel says they had virtually no time to escape and when the Russians saw their car lights they started shooting at them.

As the Unreported World team leaves Georgia it's clear that the country has little money and no jobs to offer the refugees of Kodori. They face poverty while their rich farms turn to ruin back home. Kodori Gorge has become a frontline in the new Cold War.