SECURITY, INTEGRATION AND THE CAUCASUS
ZAUR SHIRIYEV
Today’s Zaman
March 28 2012
Turkey
It is often said that security is still the dominant issue for the
Caucasus region and that its “frozen and unfrozen conflicts” remain
the critical obstacle to the development of a regional security
architecture.
The problem, of course, is that, while there is available terminology
to discuss security issues at a regional level, history indicates that
an understanding of country-based security is both more pertinent and
more productive. Currently, countries in the Caucasus think about
security through the question “How safe do we feel?” rather than
considering how the region could be safer.
Nonetheless, fragile stability is the region’s only security
achievement. What is clear is that peace and security in the Caucasus
only seem possible in a situation whereby each country perceives any
threat to a neighbor as a threat to itself and protects the interests
of its neighbors as it would protect its own. On this topic, last
week’s Wilton Park conference on “Security of the South Caucasus”
in Tbilisi shed some light on the region’s security-related questions.
Discussion was wide-ranging, but the region’s unresolved conflicts
and integration into EU and NATO were key focal points.
During the discussions on the conflicts in Georgia, most experts agreed
that in the short term, it will be difficult to achieve resolution,
but in the long term, Georgia could “win the hearts and minds”
of the Abkhaz and Ossetians by continuing to pursue democracy and
economic reform. In this matter, Georgians see Russia’s attitude as
an obstacle to conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia;
although dialogues is open and ongoing, there have been no concrete
achievements. The situation is best described as a “manageable
stalemate,” rather than genuine conflict resolution. The Georgian
government only has one chance to take back its territories via
the “State Strategy on Occupied Territories: Engagement through
Cooperation,” which has full support from the West. Georgia’s
commitment is positive and sounds convincing, but will the de facto
authorities and population truly be able to commit to these proposals?
Indeed, the very designation of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia as
occupied territories is likely to trigger anger and resentment insofar
as it implicitly denies that the local populations have any say over
how and by whom the regions are administered.
For that reason, some conference participants argued that the strategy
is hardly conducive to promoting engagement, given that the populations
have different perceptions of the conflict. Moreover, EU integration
and conflict resolution are seen as somehow interlinked, not only
by experts but also locally. For example, the Caucasus Research
Resource Center’s 2009 poll on knowledge and attitudes towards the
EU in Georgia showed that for Georgians, the two biggest issues were
territorial integrity and jobs. By 2011, following five years of
failed conflict resolution, it seems that people have given up hope —
only 42 percent deemed territorial integrity a national priority. In
both years, the survey revealed that more than 50 percent of people
believe that the conflicts are an obstacle to EU integration. The
other argument was that the peace process was internationalized as
a result of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war; an EU presence on
the ground had been out of the question before that.
It took a war to get the EU monitoring mission out there.
On the other side of the region, debates on resolution of
Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict seemed to pivot on the
idea that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The most
interesting aspect of the debates on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
is Armenian officials’ references to their constructive role in the
resolution process, and their practice of blaming the other side,
which one Azerbaijani speaker correctly identified as their “need to
name the aggressor; i.e. whose forces are on whose territory?” There
is a belief among Azerbaijani experts and officials that the OSCE
Minsk Group exists to continue the conflict rather than to solve it;
in support of this point one Armenian expert argued, “The Minsk Group
is more Minsk than Group.” Another Azerbaijani expert argues that the
Minsk process has been delegated to the Kremlin, thereby opening the
gates for Russian resurgence in the region, with the West unable or
unwilling to restore international law on the ground.
Armenian representatives spoke about recurring violence along the
“line of contact,” while the Azerbaijani side declared its readiness
for “contact without lines.” The major concern among most experts was
that prospects for a lasting solution presently seem as remote as they
were a decade ago, while the risk of a renewed conflict now appears
to be growing appreciably, with some analysts arguing if hostilities
continue, they may accelerate, leaving the region in the grip of a
“short, accidental war” that will destroy the current negotiation
mechanisms.
An additional matter that was raised was the forgotten side of the
conflict: the refugees and IDPs. Last year, the Brookings Institution
and London School of Economics published a joint report, “Projection
Internal Displacement,” which argued that 20 years of living in
displacement has shaken the confidence of many that they will be able
to return any time soon, but at the same time military rhetoric has
increased; “Can you be an IDP for 20 years?” was a recurrent question
heard from IDPs in Baku and in remote rural areas. Unfortunately,
refugees and IDPs remain largely forgotten, and new generations on
either side of the divide are growing up without a real grasp of
their roots, and with an increasingly angry resentment and hatred
for the other side.
Ultimately, better security and more integration westwards remains
for the most part on paper. Despite documents on the region’s security
issues, and the “reset button” between Russia and the United States,
and regional countries’ move towards integration into EU/NATO, there
is little serious commitment in Moscow or Washington or Brussels
to properly address security in the Caucasus. The Russian saying
“Mnoqo shuma, iz nicheqo” translates as “Much ado about nothing.” It
sounds better in the original, but its pertinence transcends the
language barrier.