Old Azeri Music presentation.

From Central Europe, the South Caucasian capitals can be reached by aircraft within about four hours, but comparing patterns of thought one could guess that he came to another planet. Western categories of democracy, human rights, civil society, integration of ethnically and religiously diverse societies, political thinking and political culture (leaving out political correctness), conflict resolution attempts, dispositions to use force for the achievement of political goals, perceptions of friend and foe and so on hardly fit for the Caucasus. This background of the following analysis has always to be kept in mind.

The South Caucasian region is, unfortunately, of only very limited interest to the Western public. However, this does not mean that events there have no supra-regional relevance. On the one hand, the ethnically and religiously highly heterogeneous South Caucasus is itself the scene of a number of crises; on the other, it is close to other trouble spots such as Chechnya, the Kurdish areas of eastern Turkey and Iraq. The South Caucasus is a kind of “hinge” between Europe and Asia, orient and occident. The zones of interest of several great powers also overlap here, not least of all due to the region’s role as a transport corridor, in particular for oil and gas.

The most important challenges for the internal and external security of the South Caucasus are: Unresolved political and ethno-territorial conflicts, refugee movements, the continuing economic and social crisis, the weakness and ineffectiveness of state institutions (especially in Georgia), crime and corruption and the modest quality of democracy. These six problem areas are so self-evidently linked that it hardly appears possible to tackle and solve them individually.

The main players

The main security policy players in the South Caucasus are:

- The independent and recognised states Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan;

- the states bordering the region – Russia, Turkey and Iran;

- the United States;

- international organisations such as the UN, OSCE, the Commonwealth of Independent States or CIS, GUAM(Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldowa) and NATO;

- international oil and gas companies.

One could also include the unrecognised, but de facto existing states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan among the players. However, Azerbaijan denies that Karabakh is an independent, i.e. separate factor from Armenia and it is a widely held belief not only in Georgia that Abkhazia and South Ossetia owe their position solely to Russian support. ...more