Op-Ed

This week we witnessed three consecutive events that are linked with the unexpectedly “discovered” “historic brotherhood” between the two breakaway regions of Georgia. It is planned to erect an Armenian cross, the so-called Khkachkari, in occupied Tskhinvali. Although this is a religious monument by form, its importance goes far beyond that and is a political move, as the monument will remind the Tskhinvalians and visitors about the “historic brotherhood” of the Armenian and Ossetian peoples. Apart from this, the de facto leader of occupied Tskhinvali got some guarantees from his colleagues from Karabakh on the issue of international recognition. The global Armenian diaspora will start working on the issue of recognition together with the Kremlin, they agreed; the hosts were quick to pay this kindness forward and announced the masterpiece of Georgian religious architecture from the 9th century – The Ksani Armazi Church of St. George – would become a cultural monument of Armenia, and further stated that they would welcome pilgrimages from Karabakh.

The development of events shows that the issue of historic monuments is a new ethnic weapon within the politics of the Caucasus. On January 20, a month prior to the opening of the Armenian Cross in occupied Tskhinvali, the bust of Mikheil Avakian, who participated in the War of Karabakh, was erected in Bugasheni village of the Akhalkalaki region; this date is symbolic, as it is the National Mourning Day in Azerbaijan dedicated to the bloody tragedy of Karabakh that took place in the 1990. Just as in case of Tskhinvali, the bust in Akhalkalaki is also presented under the veil of patriotism, but it is quite clearly political, serving, at the very least, the purpose of deteriorating relations between Georgia and Armenia.

The main figure in this monument building series is the separatist Karabakh and a period coinciding with the change of government in Yerevan, as, after Nikol Pashinyan came to power, the hope for regulating the conflict of Karabakh, thus bringing about the long-awaited peace in the South Caucasus, became real. The meeting of Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev during the World Economic Forum in Davos was another move in this direction. The information that spread after this meeting suggested that the world could witnessed an unprecedented breakthrough of this 10-year-old conflict. It was after these events that the issue of monuments became more popular in Caucasian politics: one in Tskhinvali, another in Akhalkalaki, and all this crowned with tenser relations between Yerevan-Tbilisi and Baku. It shouldn’t be hard to guess who is supporting and financing all of this, who would want to see the bust of a soldier in Akhalkalaki and the so-called friendship cross. As it is harder to believe that it is in the interests of official Yerevan, which has a great influence on Akhalkalaki to this day and fully controls the mountainous Karabakh, to have poorer relations with Tbilisi.

From the very moment Nikol Pashinyan came to government, he clearly stated that “The interests of large states should be ruled out from the relations of Armenia and Georgia; hence, the mutual relations between these two countries should be directed in a way that is in the interests and on the agenda of these two states, without any global political contexts”. Normalizing the relations between Georgia and Armenia is a step towards de-isolation of Armenia, and today the strategic partnership with Georgia is as important for Armenia as ever. Obviously, this fact is far from pleasant for Moscow: more confrontations in the Caucasus equals to better chances for Russia to defend and fulfill its political agenda. Thus, all this is another provocation from Moscow in an attempt to destabilize the relationship between Georgia and Armenia.

Time has proven that everything new is actually well-forgotten old. The storm of monuments within the inner politics of the Caucasus isn’t new either- you may remember the incident of 2017, when visitors from Vladikavkaz came to Kobi village to visit the graves of their ancestors. At the time, these Russian citizens were not allowed to the Georgian territory, which was followed by a statement from the Ossetian party in Geneva accusing Georgia of violating the human rights and demanding the recognition of the grave stones in Kobi as the cultural heritage of Ossetia.

By Zaza Jgarkava