Ethnic Conflict and Pipeline Politics in THE CAUCASUS.

AuthorBLACK, JAN KNIPPERS

THE YOUNG language instructor took on an expression of hurt bewilderment when the topic of conversation turned to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, the former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea. Ancient hatreds? "Nothing of the sort. Armenians have always lived among us and been our friends. But why," she asked, "are they doing this to us?," referring to the fighting that has been ongoing since the Soviet Union broke up in late 1991.

Among Azeris, one encounters little real anger directed against Armenians, but a pervasive and individually internalized sense of injury. Foreign visitors to Azerbaijan are routinely urged to visit Azeri refugees in the United Nations High Commissioners Office for Refugees camps around the country and, in the capital, Baku, a once popular resort on the Caspian Sea, to visit the tombs of the martyrs of the struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh.

Throughout the Caucasus, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, governments and peoples were casting a wary eye on Kosovo at the end of the 20th century. As in the Balkans, ethnic friction was more often the result than the cause of the conflicts which wracked the region earlier in the decade and are now suppressed, but not resolved.

It is not surprising that the Azeris, having the greater number of refugees and having lost territory to their adversary, would support in principle external intervention to enforce a return of territory and resettlement of refugees. Nor is it surprising that the Armenians, having the upper hand with respect to occupation of territory, would oppose such intervention. However, Azeri support for NATO's initiative in Kosovo and Armenian opposition are also manifestations of a geopolitical game and of economic interests more encompassing than any ethnic conflict in the region. Nevertheless, national accommodation and ethnic reconciliation must be at the core of any long-term resolution and, for good or ill, the lessons to be learned from Kosovo will have a great impact on this region.

As if to reconfirm that security strategists live in a world of their own making, some appear to be upping the ante in a power game at the blind crossing where old U.S. and Russian spheres of influence intersect with new Muslim militancy along a now oil-slickened Silk Road. Alexander Rondeli, a political scientist advising Georgia's Foreign Ministry, fears that lines drawn in shifting sands are being hardened in ways that most of the players can ill afford. The lineup pits the U.S., its long-term ally Turkey, and its newer allies Georgia and Azerbaijan against Russia, Iran, and Armenia. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as well are tilting away from Russian markets and toward Western oil industry investors. The game is further complicated by the 1996 security agreement between Israel and Turkey, which arouses Israeli interest in Azeri oil and puts distance between Israeli and Armenian lobbies on Capitol Hill.

It is hard to see how the interests of any of these countries are served by a hardening of the lines of division, but Georgia, which is pivotal to any regional solution, is rendered particularly vulnerable by it. Companions on a hike in the foothills of...

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