Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso has published my latest update on how the 2020 Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan might affect Georgia’s two largest ethnic minorities. In 2016, OpenDemocracy published a similar piece of mine following the 4-day war. Local ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani civil society activists warn that radicalisation among some individuals in the two communities continues, but that the situation still nonetheless remains relatively calm. This is an issue that does need to be monitored, however.
“The communities remained relatively insulated from the first Karabakh war”, says Laurence Broers, Caucasus Programme Director at the UK-based Conciliation Resources, “but today anyone anywhere can participate in a toxic, radicalising social media space on this conflict. Georgia’s hard-won civic nationhood is threatened by any radicalisation of its two largest minorities”.
Others are ringing alarm bells too.
“My main concern is that co-ethnic compatriot populations within Georgia will potentially become increasingly sectarian and involved in the conflict”, says Michael Hikaeri Cecire, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute’s Frontier Europe Initiative. “Whether by volunteering to participate, but also by provoking rising tensions and threatening the generally peaceful coexistence of ethnic Azerbaijani and Armenian populations in the country”.
Arnold Stepanian, Chairperson of the Multinational Georgia public movement, agrees.
“The current situation has become highly aggressive and tense between the ethnic Armenian and Azeri communities”, he says. “Disinformation is playing an enormous role in provoking inter-ethnic hatred and aggression between the two. Russian and Turkish media are also involved”.
And it is the involvement of external actors that worries analysts the most.
“The regional implications of the current fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh are very serious”, says Irakli Sirbiladze, a Georgian international affairs analyst. “This is different from what has been before. The conflict dynamics make it clear that the implications of the fighting go well beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan”.
The full article is available here.
