Abstract

This analysis offers an examination of the tumultuous history of the Caucasus region, tracing its trajectory from the Soviet Union dissolution to the contemporary era. It scrutinized the intricate web of separatist movements and nationalist sentiments that have permeated the region, probing the complex historical and socio-political dynamics underpinning the persistent conflicts. Starting with a geographical and historical overview of the Caucasus, the main conflicts shaping the area are examined, with particular focus on their origin and their motives. In the last part, the paper explores the broader context of the changing environment of the region – which accelerated with Russia's focus on Ukraine –, characterized by the growing relevance of external actors – such as Iran and Turkey.

1. Geographical background

The Caucasus region is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, encompassing Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and parts of Russia. It is mainly mountainous and plays a key geographical role as a link between Europe and Asia. Since ancient times, the Caucasus has had an unparalleled ethnic and cultural variety, with more than fifty distinct ethnic groups – speaking more than twenty-eight different languages and writing in four different alphabets.

Source: Gifex, 2009, The Caucasus Map

2. Historical background

The Caucasus region has a long and complicated history, with invasions by numerous peoples such as Scythians, Alani, Huns, Khazars, Arabs, Seljuq Turks, and Mongols, as well as distant contacts with the Mediterranean world. The most relevant external actor, however, remains Russia, with a long history of involvement in the region – going as far back as the 16th century. Russia’s control has been challenged since then and between 1817 and 1863 it has conducted the Caucasian War against coalitions of local tribes. From the Caucasian War until the present, there has been a tradition of military opposition to Russian sovereignty. Modern ethnic nationalism arose in a tsarist-controlled Caucasus, with local identities shaped by Russia's status as a cause of discontent (R. Craig Nation, 2015). Under the context of the 1917 Russian Revolutions, the peoples of the Caucasus undertook futile attempts to construct separate republics, and there were numerous local uprisings in defiance of Soviet control during the 1920s and 1930s. The Red Army conquered the three newly constituted sovereign republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan in 1921.

During the Soviet Union's control, ethnic homelands in the Caucasus were gerrymandered to suit Moscow's divide-and-rule strategy. Stalin, in fact, pursued a policy of constructing geographical divisions whose borders did not correspond to ethnic realities, frequently combining competing ethnic groups under a single governmental entity. The intention was that of drawing borders that would raise tensions to facilitate Moscow’s control. When this proved insufficient, the Soviet government resorted to large-scale population transfers, such as when Stalin deported vast numbers of North Caucasians and Abkhaz to Central Asia during WWII.

3. Post-Soviet Disputes and Crisis

The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not deliver on the promise of a new peaceful beginning. Boris Yeltsin's Russia fought the First Chechen War between 1994 and 1996 in an attempt to suppress the rebellion in the Russian North Caucasus, with disastrous repercussions. Russia had greater success in the Second Chechen War (1999-2009), but armed opposition in the region has not been extinguished. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's demise, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while Georgia lost control of the rebellious regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, resulting in protracted or "frozen" conflicts that have yet to be resolved. When the Georgian administration attempted to retake control of South Ossetia in 2008, Russia replied with a catastrophic invasion that seemed to achieve its aims.

3.1 Chechen Separatism

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2023, Chechnya

Chechnya is a Muslim republic in Southern Russia with a population of around 1.5 million people and it has been resisting Russian sovereignty for at least two centuries. The strategic role of this region relies on the oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, rebels there began to campaign for independence. After a few years of rising tension, Russia launched a military invasion defined by unrelenting airstrikes and powerful artillery attacks. Tens of thousands died as a result of both sides' atrocities, and many more were displaced before 1996, when President Boris Yeltsin's government signed a peace pact with Chechnya. They agreed on withdrawing all Russian soldiers from the province and granted Chechnya wide autonomy, but not outright independence. However, the separatist authority in Grozny soon lost control of Chechnya and feuding field commanders and foreign jihadists started commanding tiny regions with their own armies. Tensions arose again in 1999, with a Chechen warlord turning against Russia and a series of explosions in Moscow, which the latter attributed to the Chechen rebels. Soon after Putin’s presidential mandate started, Russia thus resumed its campaign against Chechnya. In 2000, Putin was able to install a Kremlin-friendly leader, Akhmad Kadyrov. Kadyrov was killed in 2004, but his son, Ramzan Kadyrov, followed him and is now currently governing Chechnya. Putin’s strategy to pacify the region is the so-called Chechenization policy, mainly based on monetary aid for reconstruction. However, this approach also included the encouragement of internal disputes in order to make the opposing sides less secure and more reliant on Moscow.

In 2009, Putin stated that "the counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya was over. Since the end of this operation, Kadyrov has managed to minimize violence to a considerable extent since the end of so-called counter-terrorist operations, but Chechnya is "still suffering from unrest and armed violence. Separatist groups have been labeled as guerrillas since they are believed to have ties to the alQaeda network with, according to some scholars, the Russian authorities trying to prove it since 2000 in order to demonstrate they are fighting international terrorism and not Chechen militants (Mairbek Vatchagaev, 2014). The separatists’ goal would be to establish an Emirate, which was listed as a terrorist organization by the Russian Federation in 2010 and by the United Nations the following year. Terrorist attacks continued even after 2009 and many law enforcement officers have been targeted ever since, even if nowadays the situation appears to have de-escalated .

3.2 Nagorno-Karabakh

Source: Khushboo Sheeth, 2016, What and Where is Nagorno-Karabakh, WorldAtlas

One of the most contentious ethno-territorial issues in the South Caucasus is the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. For Armenians, who have historically been the demographic majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, the region was one of the few parts of medieval Armenia where they enjoyed significant independence from outside powers. By the late nineteenth century, however, the region had also become a key focus of a developing ethnic Azerbaijani cultural and political nationalism. During Tsarist control, the region was economically linked to other provinces that now comprise the republic of Azerbaijan, rather than to other Armenian-inhabited territories. The socio-economic factors of this dispute were crucial in its first stage. Despite living in a largely mountainous region, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh had a slightly greater degree of social and economic development than the rest of Azerbaijan. However, the region's Armenians were aware that life was even better in neighboring Armenia – thus becoming dissatisfied – believing that their lower standard of living was the result of the Azerbaijani government's deliberate policies, which controlled their development and economy. In 1988 the region-s legislature passed a resolution to join the Republic of Armenia, but tensions and fights were still kept under control during the Soviet rule. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 though, Nagor-Karabakh declared independence and war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the region began. After thousands of deaths and Armenia's dominance, a cease-fire was reached in 1994 with the intervention of Russia. This brought a state of a de-facto independence of the region, despite its economic dependence on Armenia. This however didn't prevent tensions to remain present over the years, with casualties from both sides. In 2020, a second war broke out following months of cross-border raids. The war continued even when efforts for peace talks were made by the United Nations, the United States and Russia. After several of these tentatives faile and six weeks of war, Russia successfully mediated an agreement backed by Russian peacekeepers. Armenia only retained a part of Karabakh while Azerbaijan recaptured most of the land it had lost two decades earlier. In addition, the deal established the Lachin corridor, a narrow strip of land that would act as a transit route between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and be under the observation of Russian forces.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan began a new offensive, launching drones and missiles toward Stepanakert, the provincial capital. This marked the beginning of the third war fought for control of the province – a war which lasted one day. The president of Karabakh declared that its army was outnumbered by Azerbaijani forces and that it was forced to submit and consent to the dissolution and complete disarmament of its armed forces, by which point Azerbaijan had caused at least 200 deaths and numerous injuries (Christian Edwards, 2023). Russia mediated a ceasefire which took effect on September 20. In contrast to 2020, during the most recent offensive, Armenia's armed forces made no attempt to protect the area, partly due to fear of additional aggression from Azerbaijan. There has been a significant departure of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh following the triumph of Azerbaijan.

3.3 South Ossetia and Abkhazia

Source: Deutsche Welle, 2022, South Ossetia Shelves Plan for Referendum to join Russia

South Ossetia and Abkhazia's desire for independence stems from ethnic conflicts that resulted from not only the history of the Caucasus and its richness and differences of cultures, but also from the policies previously discussed that were followed by the Soviet Union. The Abkhaz consider themselves ethnically separate from the Georgians and claim kinship with the Circassians – a group of Turkic people who were forcibly evacuated to the Ottoman Empire by the Russians following the Crimean War. The Abkhaz feel even more cut off from the rest of the Georgian people, who are predominantly Christians, because they converted to Islam during the Ottoman era in the 17th and 18th centuries. For these reasons, the Abkhaz formally declared their independence from Georgia in 1990, however the Georgian leadership later revoked this statement causing massive protests in Tbilisi sparked by separatists in the Abkhaz region. Moscow sent Russian troops in response to these demonstrations, meanwhile Georgia moved its soldiers to the breakaway territory in 1992, sparking fierce combat. The Ossetian, on the other hand, are of Iranian origins. Despite the fact that in North Ossetia people are predominantly Christian and in the South there is a majority of Muslim, the two regions pursued a unified state following the Bolshevik revolution. However, Stalin separated them into the Autonomous Region of North Ossetia, which is part of Russia, and the Autonomous Oblast of South Ossetia, which is part of Georgia, in 1922, in accordance with the divide and rule strategies of the Soviet Union. South Ossetians once again declared their wish to join North Ossetia in 1988 – making a declaration in part in response to the growing wave of Georgian nationalism – to which the Georgian Parliament responded by eliminating South Ossetia's autonomy. After Georgia gained its independence in 1991, there was a significant exodus of South Ossetians into North Ossetia as a result of verbal disagreements that eventually escalated into deadly violence on both sides. In 1992, following three years of intermittent hostilities, Russia, South Ossetia, and Georgia concluded a ceasefire deal that resulted in the installation of a three-way peacekeeping force. Politically, South Ossetia and Abkhazia emerged as de facto states albeit somewhat weak ones, even prior to the August 2008 Georgian-Russian War. Over the course of the last years, this process has been propelled by both organized crime and individual political goals, with both continuing to be heavily reliant on Russia on a political, economic, and military level.

Tensions never ceased and in the following years Russia's deepening of ties with South Ossetia angered Georgia, while Moscow was not pleased by Tbilisi's desire to join the EU and NATO. In 2008, both were accusing the other of a military build-up by the summer. The latter ended with a five-days war; Georgia launched a coordinated air and ground campaign against Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Subsequently, under the guise of assisting its nationals, since many Ossetians possess Russian passports, Russian tanks moved into South Ossetia. In a matter of days, Russia had taken charge, driven the Georgians from South Ossetia, and even launched an attack on the Tbilisi suburbs. The Russo-Georgian war – started by Georgia but provoked by Russia, as found by a European Union's report which also condemned the disproportionality of Russia's response – resulted in 800 deaths and the recognition by Russia of independence to both regions (Chris Harris, 2018).

3.4 North Ossetia-Ingushetia

Source: BBC News, 2023, Regions and Territories: North Ossetia

This conflict – which began in 1992 –, like the other conflicts in the Caucasus, stems from the history of the area as a whole and from Soviet policies on nationalities, and from the events surrounding the fall of the Soviet Union. There was not a great deal of hostility between the Ingush and the Ossete peoples throughout the Tsarist era, despite the Christian Ossetians' better treatment than their Muslim neighbors. However, this was altered by the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian Civil War, as most Ossetes fought alongside the White Guards, while the Ingush backed the Bolsheviks because they believed the promises made by Lenin and Stalin to the Muslim citizens of the empire. Furthermore, during World War II, North Ossetia stayed faithful to the Soviet Union, but the Ingush and their Chechen relatives were charged with working with the Germans. Stalin as a result moved a sizable population of Chechens and Ingush people to Central Asia and moved the Prigorodny region, which had been an Ingush enclave, to North Ossetia, where a sizable population of Ossetians had settled. Russia was unable to respond to the crisis quickly and forcefully at the time due to the unclear nature of early post-Soviet politics. Moscow's focus was taken off the Ingush-Ossetian dispute with the start of the Chechen hostilities, severely undermining the likelihood of a long-lasting mediated settlement. Despite the dispute being mainly dormant, there have been isolated incidents of violence, including terrorist attacks.

4. Current Geopolitical Dynamics

The three South Caucasus governments were already getting closer to many of the political and economic power centers of the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf than they were to Moscow and the Ukrainian war accelerated this ongoing process. Turkey is the second-most popular destination for migrant laborers from the Caucasus, including Armenia, behind Russia. Diaspora communities, especially in Mediterranean coastal states, indicate historical ties between the Middle East and the Caucasus. A significant minority of people from the North and South Caucasus, primarily Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Circassians, and Ossetians, reside in Turkey. Given the wide-ranging geopolitical tensions, Baku has long been wary of Iranian covert actions. Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals are routinely detained by Azerbaijani security services for allegedly taking part in terrorist activities led by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Today, Azerbaijan has a variety of diplomatic, commercial, and security relations with Israel and Turkey, two of Iran's main adversaries. Where it had previously established military and political hegemony, Russia's attention on the war in Ukraine and its consequent forced passivity in the South Caucasus have left a security vacuum.

Conclusion

The history of the Caucasus is one of a mixture of cultures, either enriching the region or causing disputes. From the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the present day separatist movements have further fueled these tensions. The unresolved nature of these conflicts continues to pose challenges for stability and – more than ever under a threat after the Ukrainian war, with more external actors playing crucial roles and endogenous power struggles further exacerbating the present tensions, making it crucial for the international community to engage in efforts to address these longstading issues and promote dialogue and reconciliation among the different ethnic and national groups.

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