In 2001, Kvitsiani allegedly cooperated with Chechen field commander Ruslan Gelayev in an attempt to bring Abkhazia back under Georgian control.
He fled to North Caucasus, but, in 2014, he was arrested on his return to Georgia, initially sentenced to 16 years in jail, and then released under a plea bargain in early 2015.
[6] A detailed academic study claims he developed contacts to Soviet organized crime while in jail, and that after his release he was involved in running illegal casinos in Abkhazia.
[7] After the secessionist war broke out in Abkhazia in 1992, Kvitsiani organized a militia force of several hundred fighters named Monadire ("the Hunter") in the upper Kodori valley in order to fend off the Abkhaz threat.
According to his own claims, Abkhaz representatives occasionally tried to persuade him to sign a four-sided treaty that would effectively transfer control of the valley over to the Sukhumi administration.
[8][5] In 2004 on behalf of the Georgian government Emzar Kvitsiani was also engaged and partially responsible in convincing the Abkhazians to clear minefields that were deployed during the war.
[5][4] During the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003, he was in Tbilisi and supported Shevardnadze, after whose abdication, Kvitsiani was removed from his official position by the new President Mikheil Saakashvili in December 2004, while his unit was declared disbanded in April 2005.
[11] Georgia set up a local administration of the valley under the aegis of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, but lost control over it during the August 2008 Russia–Georgia war.
[4][12] Kvitsiani has repeatedly stressed and maintains to this date that the former Georgian leadership under grip of powerful outside influence has purposefully worked towards handing over the Kodori valley and that it was their plan all along.
After his ouster from the Kodori valley, Kvitsiani eventually fled to the Russian North Caucasus, from where he issued threats of guerrilla warfare to the Georgian government.