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In the Caucasus, a Glass Half-Full
Brainstorming and innovation might not bring peace to the Caucasus, but at
least they bring dialogue.
by TOL
30 April 2010
When it comes to relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, optimism is a
rare commodity after 16 years of stalled diplomacy in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.
Even a positive ripple, like the call this week from the two countries’
religious leaders for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, was swamped by
the tide of gloom following Armenia’s earlier move to suspend ratification
of its rapprochement with Turkey, which, under pressure from Baku, belatedly
linked the deal to Karabakh.
As this depressingly familiar drama plays out, it’s tempting to grab at any
glimmer of progress in Armenian/Azerbaijani relations – especially when it
comes lit with the glow of social media, about which there is as much
optimism as there is pessimism in Caucasian politics. It’s generally wise to
have some grains of salt at the ready.
Still, it’s difficult not to be encouraged by the recent wavelets of
cross-border communication and even cooperation among independent-minded,
techno-literate, and mostly young Azeris and Armenians, on display lately at
twin events held this month in Tbilisi.
The Social Media for Social Change conference, hosted by PH International, a
U.S. organization doing community- and schools-based development work in the
Caucasus, focused on using the new online tools to foster civic engagement
and multicultural communication in the region. The concurrent Social
Innovation Camp Caucasus was essentially a social-entrepreneurship drill:
about 40 bloggers, journalists, activists, developers, and designers –
mostly twentysomethings from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – were split
into multinational teams and given two days to build digital startups to
address specific social issues. (TOL was one of several co-sponsors of the
camp.)
Both events were structured to bring people together across the frozen
cease-fire line, albeit sometimes implicitly. A Social Innovation Camp `is
not about making peace, it’s about making projects,’ Dan McQuillan, the
British co-creator of the SICamp concept, said during the event’s closing
ceremony. But he also noted that, particularly in the Caucasus, such events
can have an important community-building component. Azeris worked to bring
Armenian peers’ ideas to fruition, and vice versa.
The social-media conference prominently featured the teenage participants in
DOTCOM, a PH International project backed by the U.S. State Department in
which American, Armenian, and Azerbaijani students were trained together in
new-media skills, notably blogging and video. British-Armenian journalist
(and TOL contributor) Onnik Krikorian, co-presenting at the event with
political analyst and blogger Arzu Geybullaeva, openly marveled that he
could be sharing a stage with an Azeri, let alone forge a working
relationship with one, facilitated by Facebook and Skype.
They and other speakers talked about grass-roots conflict-resolution efforts
sprouting up outside the stalled diplomatic process, and the growth of youth
activism throughout the Caucasus, crystallized by the media-savvy campaign
to free jailed Azeri bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. A tweet may not
be worth a thousand words, but one cited by Krikorian from an Armenian
expressing solidarity with Azeri activists shows those 140 characters can
matter.
`I see huge potential,’ said Philip Gamaghelyan of the Imagine Center for
Conflict Transformation, who also spoke at the conference. The center has
just launched Caucasus Edition, an online forum for writing and discussion
about Karabakh.
`So far it has been very controlled, very polarizing, very nationalist, very
anti the other – this pretty much was the mainstream media [in Armenia and
Azerbaijan]. Everything more moderate was marginalized or almost
nonexistent. So the Internet really is opening a new possibility now to
bring alternative voices out. =85 There should be a way of translating all
this into political action, into change.’
Even in a setting where simply showing up might imply a predisposition for
change, it was clear how fraught and laborious achieving it will be.
Geybullaeva wrote in her blog that after she spoke critically about Baku’s
heavy-handed response to activism, she was berated by a group of young Azeri
attendees for airing the country’s dirty laundry. And Karabakh remained the
elephant in the room – rarely brought up, and then usually in the context of
explaining why it’s best left alone for now.
It’s easy to see why. Even at forums like these, many participants might
share their countrymen’s polarized view of that conflict. Unlike many of
their countrymen, though, they’ve met, talked to, and worked side by side
with members of the other tribe. They’ve learned they can use new digital
tools to leap the communication barrier between their countries. They’ve
learned they share many problems – cowed media, environmental degradation,
dysfunctional institutions – and that there might be regional, cooperative
responses. That’s a big step.
Ultimately, conflict transformation in the south Caucasus rests on
confronting Karabakh. As long as nationalism and stereotyping dominate the
discourse in their nations, officials in Baku and Yerevan can keep playing a
zero-sum game, rejecting compromise and retreating into absolutist rhetoric.
That stance might get harder to maintain as thousands of young, educated
Armenians and Azeris become steeped in new ways to talk to and think about
one another. At the SI Camp project presentations, an Azeri journalism
student, standing near his Armenian group leader, grabbed the microphone and
made an impromptu comment about the need for the different nationalities to
come together and face common problems. It was almost enough to make one
optimistic.