Splashed across the mesas in southern Georgia is an isolated town, lying next to one of Russia's two remaining army bases in the former Soviet republic, that threatens to become a new front in the fragmented nation's struggle against further disintegration.
The tranquil setting of Akhalkalaki, nestled amid jagged Caucasus peaks, belies tensions that president Eduard Shevardnadze's overthrow last weekend only accerbated, residents say.
"All you need is a spark," Ararat Esoyan, head of a local non-governmental organization told AFP. "The local youth organization has already demanded autonomy."
Akhalkalaki is an Armenian enclave that is suspicious of Georgia's new leadership, distrusts the central government and is furiously opposed to the removal of the Russian base, as dictated by international agreements.
Local passions are driven by the town's location, ethnic makeup, and the dismal living conditions of its people.
Practically cut off from the rest of Georgia by a mountain range, the town lies near the Turkish and Armenian border in the south.
It is a place of breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking poverty. A place where rivers tumble down chiseled alpine valleys and cars crawl up rock-strewn, pot-holed roads. A place where ancient wood stoves struggle to keep the cool mountain air out of cafes, offices and homes.
Armenians are one of tiny Georgia's ethnic minorities, but in Akhalkalaki they make up more than 96 percent of the town's 12,000 residents. They noted with alarm the nationalist overtones of the protests that followed November's disputed parliamentary election that eventually forced Shevardnadze from power.
Most of all they are wary of Mikhail Saakashvili, the firebrand populist who spearheaded the protests and is widely expected to win the new presidential election scheduled for January 4.
"We haven't forgotten (the civil wars of) 1991 and 1994 when ethnic problems flared and we became the bones of contention in our country," Esoyan said. "That's what we're afraid of, these ethnic tensions."
Locals are worried that the US-educated Saakashvili and the rest of the Western-oriented new leadership will pressure Russia to remove the army base, as required under a 1999 international treaty signed in Istanbul.
In line with the agreement, Russia has shut down two of its Georgian bases, but Shevardnadze turned a blind eye on the withdrawal of two others, including the one near Akhalkalaki.
Many of the town's Armenians are decendants of people who fled to southern Georgia from the Ottoman Empire's pogroms against Armenians at the start of the 20th century. They still fear Turkey, whose northern border is a mere 35 kilometers (20 miles) away and trust the Russian garrison to defend them.
"This base is our security," said Davit Rstakyan, who heads Vyrg, an Armenian political party. "It has always been considered as the guarantor of our security from the Turks."
"Saakashvili is a man of the West," Esoyan said. "He can create a situation so the Russians leave."
Such a scenario, residents warn darkly, would mean war -- Armenians would either take up arms left by the Russians or procure them from Armenia, 80 kilometers away.
Further fueling the tension is the locals' fear that the so-called Meskhetian Turks, deported from their home in the region by Stalin, will be invited to resettle there by the Georgian government, displacing the Armenians.
Akhalkalaki's residents viscerally distrust Georgia's central government and it's easy to see why.
Roads in town are a mixture of dirt, slush and gaping holes. People huddle from the winter chill for nearly eight months out of the year.
With no local industry, the Russian base is the largest employer and traders in the local bazaar accept the Russian rubles and US dollars alongside the Georgian lari.
Isolation, poverty and history melt together in a brew of an almost paranoid distrust of Tbilisi.
"We think that the Georgian central government is intentionally doing everything it can so Armenians don't develop and prosper," Esoyan said.
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