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The countries
of the Transcaucasian region – Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan –
represent the second big group of states that have emerged from the
ruins of the Communist state. This is the most troublesome region
for Russia and a hotbed of political, ethnic, and religious
conflicts fraught with unpredictable consequences. The
Transcaucasian region is characterized by an extremely diverse
ethnic mix of population cemented by the two dominant religions of
Christianity and Islam. The Greater Caucasus range that cuts the
region from west to east is Russia’s natural boundary in the south,
serving as a geostrategic barrier that curbs the expansion of
pan-Islamism. |
Historically,
Russia and the Christian peoples of Armenia and Georgia have enjoyed
mutually beneficial and friendly relations with one another. Armenia
and Georgia’s voluntary accession to the tsarist empire preserved
their ancient national cultures from forcible assimilation by the
Islamic states of Turkey and Persia.
In the late
1980s the nationalist movements in Armenia and Georgia actively
pushed for secession from the USSR. Following the collapse of the
union and in the initial euphoria of their newly found independence,
the two republics have distanced themselves from Russia. However,
economic, cultural, geostrategic, and religious pressures will
almost certainly propel them back into Russia’s orbit.
Following the
breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia and Armenia became entangled in
bitter political and military confrontations with their Islamic
neighbors. Armenia was drawn into an all-out war with neighboring
Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Georgian
troops tried unsuccessfully to pacify two
of Georgia’s constituent parts, the autonomous republics
of Abkhaziya and South Ossetia, which want
independence from Georgia. The difficulty of the situation for
Russia in its efforts to contain or arbitrate these discords is that
it cannot be seen as taking sides in the Armenian-Azerbaijani or
Georgian-Abkhaziyan and Georgian-South Ossetian
conflicts.
Another issue
that spoils the relations between Russia and Georgia is the Georgian
leadership’s inability or unwillingness to put an end to Chechen
fighters using its territory as a safe haven and resting place
between their incursions in Chechnya. Chechen separatists have used
as their base the Pankisi Gorge, a largely lawless area of Georgia
just south of Chechnya. There were rumors in 2002 that some al-Qaeda
fighters from Afghanistan joined Chechen fighters in Pankisi.
In 2003, the so-called "Revolution of Roses" in
Georgia brought to power pro-American Mikhail Saakashvili. Since
then the relations between Russia and Georgia have been strained.
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