A Powder Keg of a Region

November 1, 2008

By Dmitry Babich
Russia Profile

The problems in the Caucasus did not start in the 1990s, when the
region attracted attention from the Western press. Recent
destabilization began in 1988, when it became clear that Mikhail
Gorbachev’s perestroika did not lead to a strengthening of the Soviet
state, but rather to its weakening. It was then that the first protests
took place in Armenia, demanding the integration of Nagorny Karabakh, a
territory with a predominantly Armenian population belonging to
neighboring Azerbaijan. Since then, the Caucasus entered a period of
turmoil. It reached its peak between 1990 to 1994. Then a period of
relative stabilization followed, with Russia’s war in Chechnya being
the only zone of active conflict. The recent flare of violence in
Georgia worried many, as some experts view it as an omen of a new era
of `seismic activity.’ A brief overview of the region’s four main
conflicts could be a useful guide for understanding the current events.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict

In February 1987, using the freedom of assembly recently granted by
Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist leadership, demonstrators in Yerevan
demanded a `return’ of Nagorny Karabakh, an area where 75 percent of
the population was Armenian, but which since 1923 had belonged to
Azerbaijan. The reaction from Azerbaijan was predictably negative.

In March 1988, the regional authority in Karabakh voted in favor of
secession from Azerbaijan. Karabakh became a new point of contention
between conservatives and liberals in the CPSU’s top leadership in
Moscow, with liberals supporting Armenia. Searching for a `democratic
consensus,’ Gorbachev failed to act decisively on the ground’a
situation used by radicals all over the Caucasus.

September 1988’first clashes take place between Armenians and
Azerbaijanis in Nagorny Karabakh.

January’May 1989’Armenian nationalists from the `Karabakh’ committee,
headed by Armenia’s future president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, spend five
months imprisoned in Moscow, and return to Armenia as national heroes.

January 1990’a violent mob starts pogroms against the Armenian
population in Baku. The official estimate of the casualties is just 48
persons, although witnesses quote a much higher figure. Soviet troops
belatedly enter the city. Clashes between Azerbaijani activists and
Soviet troops lead to reprisals against the Russian inhabitants of
Baku, who also leave en masse.

December 1991’upon the proclamation of Azerbaijan’s independence as a
result of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Karabakh formally declares its
secession from Azerbaijan and a full-scale war between Armenia and
Azerbaijan erupts, with both sides using hundreds of tanks, airplanes
and artillery pieces. `Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’ de facto becomes a
militarized quasi-state inside Armenia. Azerbaijani civilians suffer
most and flee from the towns of Shusha, Khodjaly, Agdam and others.
Tens of thousands die and hundreds of thousands are displaced.

May 1994’a truce is signed, sealing an Armenian victory with 16 percent
of Azerbaijan’s territory under Armenian control.

December 2003’Azerbaijan’s president Heydar Aliyev dies without having
resolved the Karabakh conflict, despite his many meetings with Armenian
presidents Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharyan. As the power duly
passes to Aliyev’s son Ilham, Karabakh remains the only issue that, if
aggravated, could destabilize the regime in Baku.

Georgia versus South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Russia

At the end of the 1980s, Georgia, emerging from the seven decades of
Soviet rule, quickly proved to be not only one of the most
anti-communist, but also one of the most nationalist of the Soviet
Union’s former 15 republics. The rise of nationalists to power quickly
revealed the complexities of the country’s ethnic composition, once
arbitrarily determined by Joseph Stalin, who drew the border between
Georgia and the nations of the North Caucasus by the Caucasus ridge.
This border left several nations belonging to the North Caucasian
entity of peoples (primarily Abkhazians and Ossetians) on the territory
of Georgia, a Trans-Caucasian state with a completely different
language. Under the Soviet Union, this was a nuisance, after its
collapse it became a tragedy.

April 1989’Soviet troops violently disperse a demonstration in Tbilisi,
leading to a rise in the standing of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a former
dissident who starts campaigning under the slogan `Georgia for the
Georgians.’

July 1989’first clashes between Abkhazians and Georgians take place in
Abkhazia.

November 1989’Zviad Gamsakhurdia is elected the chairman of Georgia’s
parliament. Although minorities make up 30 percent of the population,
only nine of the parliament’s 245 members are non-Georgians.

March 1990’the Georgian parliament annuls the autonomy of South Ossetia
and Abkhazia.

December 1990’a state of emergency is declared in Tskhinvali, the
capital of South Ossetia, because of `anti-Georgian riots.’ In two
months, fighting between Georgians and Ossetians escalates leading to
the eviction of 25,000 people from the region and the creation of a
separatist Ossetian `government’ in Tskhinvali. Gamsakhurdia says the
riots are organized by Moscow in order to keep Georgia in the Soviet
Union.

March 1991’Georgia boycotts a Moscow-sponsored referendum on preserving
the Soviet Union, in which more than 70 percent of the votes cast all
over the Soviet Union root for the preservation of the unified country.
In Abkhazia, the referendum is held with the majority voting for the
Soviet Union.

March 1991’Georgia holds a referendum on seceding from the Soviet
Union, with 90 percent of the voters saying `yes’ to the
reestablishment of the Georgian independent state that existed in 1918
to 1921. Abkhazians and Ossetians boycott the referendum. The United
States and other Western countries do not recognize Georgia until
December 1991 due to `serious human rights violations’ on the part of
Gamsakhurdia.

December 1991’January 1992’Gamsakhurdia is overthrown in a violent coup
d’etat, which brings the former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze to power. A liberal in his Moscow days, he becomes a fiery
nationalist.

August 1992’Georgian troops move into Abkhazia, which by then had
become a de facto state within a state. Reinforced by `volunteers’ from
Chechnya and other regions of the North Caucasus, Abkhazians start a
counteroffensive.

September 1993’Abkhazians retake Sukhumi, their capital, after a
year-long war in which tens of thousands die and 250 thousand people
(mostly Georgians) are displaced. Under a truce signed with Russia’s
mediation, peacekeepers from the CIS states are to be stationed in the
areas of conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Because of the lack of
enthusiasm from other CIS countries, the peacekeeping contingent
happens to include mostly Russian troops. Initially favorable to
Russia’s mediation, Shevardnadze soon calls Russian peacekeepers
`biased.’

August 2004’Georgian forces, buoyed by the `rose revolution’ of
37-year-old new President Mikheil Saakashvili in December 2003, make
several incursions into South Ossetia, which lead to a number of
deaths. In a year, Georgia’s Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili
promises to `celebrate the next New Year in Tskhinvali.’

August 2008’Georgian troops attack Tskhinvali after several weeks of
tension and shootouts on the line separating them from Ossetians and
Russian peacekeepers. The same day, the Russian army moves into South
Ossetia and pushes the Georgian troops out, advancing into Georgia
proper and destroying military bases in Gori and Poti.

Russia’s squabble with Chechnya

The sudden acquisition of independence by the former republics of the
Soviet Union led to a growth of nationalist sentiment among Russia’s
minorities. The logic of their thinking was simple: the ethnic
difference between, for example, Chechens and Russians is much greater
than between Russians and Belarusians. So why shouldn’t Chechens have
their own independent country, if Belarusians had theirs? Such
considerations as the size of the nation, its economic potential and
location were not taken into account. In the turmoil of the first
post-Soviet years, Moscow did not deal with the problem, but when the
Kremlin came to its senses, the `window of opportunity’ for
separatists, wide open in 1991, closed. Only Chechnya managed to use
that window on time’much to its own demise.

The Caucasus has been in turmoil since perestroika.

October 1991’in a self-styled election in Chechnya, former Soviet
general Djokhar Dudayev is elected the president of a newly proclaimed
independent state, after evicting the old Soviet leadership of the
region in an armed coup on October 7. The federal authorities in Moscow
refuse to recognize the vote as legitimate.

November 1992’a group of paratroopers sent by Russia’s Vice President
Alexander Rutskoi to arrest Dudayev is blocked in the building of the
airport in the Chechen capital Grozny.

1993 to 1994’several hostage takings occur in Russia, with kidnappers
finding a safe haven in Chechnya, which in fact becomes a free trade
zone not controlled by Russia’s customs officials.

December 1994’after several ultimatums and eight months of economic
blockade, Russian troops move into Chechnya. A planned `easy walk’ to
Grozny degenerates into a bloody guerilla war. In 1995, Dudayev is
killed by a Russian missile.

August 1996’Chechen guerillas infiltrate Russian-controlled Grozny and
ultimately force the Russian leadership to sign a truce which would
last until 1999. During the war, in 1995 and 1996, Chechen warlords
conduct several large-scale hostage takings in neighboring Russian
regions, killing hundreds.

August 1999’the war resumes as Chechen warlords attack Dagestan, a
neighboring Russian autonomy populated by Muslims. Russian troops
retake Grozny, installing Akhmat Kadyrov as the new ruler of the
republic.

May 2004’Akhmat Kadyrov is murdered by a bomb at a stadium where he
made a speech. His son Ramzan gradually establishes control. Chechnya
becomes an almost mono-ethnic state with a high degree of independence
from Russia.

The Ossetians against the Ingush

February 1944’Stalin orders deportation of the Ingush, accused of
collaborating with Nazi Germany, to Kazakhstan. Neighboring Ossetians
move into the abandoned homes of the Ingush.

1957’the Ingush are rehabilitated by Nikita Khrushchev and start to
return to their homeland. First conflicts with the Ossetians take
place.

1991’a law on repressed peoples is passed by the Supreme Soviet of the
Soviet Union. Drafted with the best of intentions, it leads to numerous
conflicts between Ossetians and Ingush, since the Ingush are formally
entitled to own their lands, which they de facto lost in 1944.

November 1992’violent clashes between Ossetians and Ingush lead to
hundreds dead and missing. More than 300 people are still unaccounted
for. The Ingush refugees live in makeshift camps or with their
relatives. The return of refugees takes decades, as refugees do not
always believe in the security guarantees of federal and local
authorities.