In the Soccer World Cup for Not-Quite Countries, Get Ready for Northern Cyprus vs. Abkhazia – Wall Street Journal

SUKHUMI, Georgia—Abkhazia doesn’t hold a seat in the United Nations. Its athletes can’t compete under their flag in the Olympics. But the post-Soviet separatist region is determined to get on the map as host of a world cup for would-be countries that, by most people’s reckoning, don’t exist.

Abkhazia, a stretch of Black Sea coastline that was once a Palm Beach for the Soviet elite, broke away from Georgia in bloody fighting in the…