Thomas de Waal: Narrative of Peace necessary in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict

Thomas de Waal: Narrative of Peace necessary in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict

by | May 12, 2011 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh

Caucasus Conflict Voices is a voluntary grassroots initiative to amplify alternative views on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Today marks the 17th anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire, but both sides are as far away as ever from signing a permanent peace deal. Marking the anniversary, the second edition of Caucasus Conflict Voices is now available for browsing online or downloading below. 

It also features an introduction by Thomas de Waal, senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, calling for a third narrative in the conflict – a narrative of peace.

Caucasus Conflict Voices — May 2011

Introduction by Thomas de Waal

 

Anyone who works with the conflicts of the Caucasus learns to live with contradiction. If you watch state media in Armenia or Azerbaijan or hear some politicians speak, you could believe that these two nations are implacable enemies on the verge of war. One Azerbaijani friend told me that nowadays whenever he hears the word “fascist” he expects to hear the word “Armenian” attached to it. In many ways the modern identities of independent Armenia and Azerbaijan and of the small statelet of Nagorny Karabakh are defined by rejection and hatred of the other.

 

Yet as soon as you probe deeper strange things start to happen and this picture begins to blur. A long conversation with an Azerbaijani about how terrible the Armenians are ends with the admission that his grandmother was actually…Armenian. A Karabakh Armenian talks about the crimes of the Azerbaijanis and then casually lets slip that he had Azeri friends at school and still remembers a lot of the language.

 

Move outside the conflict zone and these hidden signs of compatibility come out into the open. In the territory of Georgia, Armenian and Azeri villagers live side by side. There is trade and even inter-marriage. Armenians and Azerbaijanis often prefer to do business with each other than with Georgians.

 

We hear far too little of what I call this “third narrative” of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, a narrative of peace. It spins the idea that the two peoples are capable of getting along fine, have lived together in the past and, if politicians are able to overcome differences on the Karabakh conflict, can live together in the future. International mediators are too timid to speak this narrative or feel that it is not their business. The media in both countries suppresses it.

 

This is why I congratulate Onnik Krikorian for the work he has done over the past few years, both in print and in images, and which is published here. He has given a voice to these alternative points of view and given a vivid picture of the different and much more positive Armenian-Azerbaijani reality that still exists in ordinary people and in Georgia.

 

Look at these pictures and descriptions of villages such as Tekali and you see that the problem there is not ethnic incompatibility or historical injustice, but poverty — poverty that will have a much better chance of being fixed if the Karabakh conflict can be overcome and money can be diverted from buying expensive weapons. It is a totally different and refreshing approach and he has done it pretty much by himself.

 

Send this collection to anyone who thinks they understand the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and be pleasantly surprised by their reaction.

Thomas de Waal is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. he is also the author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. You can download Caucasus Conflict Voices below: 

 

CONFLICT VOICES e-BOOKS

 

Conflict Voices – December 2010

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian

 

Conflict Voices – May 2011

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian

Armenia: An Online Revolution in the making?

Armenia: An Online Revolution in the making?

by | Feb 19, 2011 | Armenia, Social Media

Pro-Levon Ter-Petrossian demonstration, Yerevan, Armenia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2007

Recent events in Tunisia and Egypt have captured the attention of the world’s media and also encouraged and inspired other movements elsewhere, albeit in much bloodier ways as this week has shown in Bahrain and Libya. Not to be outdone, opposition groups in the South Caucasus are also looking to replicate similar events at home, and particularly in Armenia and Azerbaijan. But, while the continuing debate between the cyber-utopians and cyber-sceptics continues as to the precise role of social media in uprisings in the Arab world, opposition groups here most definitely believe it holds the key to succesful regime change. 

In Armenia, blogs played an important role in the post-election standoff between the opposition and government in February 2008 and particularly for 20 days during the State of Emergency declared after clashes with security forces on 1 March 2008 left 10 people dead. Nothing changed, of course, with the newly elected president, Serge Sargsyan, still in power today, but many referred to new media as having become the new Samizdat, the Soviet-era practice of disseminating alternative information in an environment of significant censorship. Now, nearly three years later, the opposition says it believes an Egypt-style uprising will occur in Armenia, and social media will play an important role.

PanARMENIAN.Net – Coordinator of the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) Levon Zurabyan said that monitoring of Facebook shows that ANC supporters make majority of this social network users in Armenia.

 

“It means that, first, ANC enjoys great support among Armenia’s population. Second, ANC is basically supported by educated people, who are familiar with internet and social networks technologies,” Zurabyan told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

 

He added that “social networks provide with a great opportunity for overcoming the information blockade imposed by the authorities, specifically, through controlling the entire television.”

Many, however, are not so convinced, with one local blogger pointing out that Zurabian himself does not apparently have an account. And although the Armenian government claims Internet penetration stands at nearly 50 percent, the real figure is more likely to be around 10-12 percent according to some IT specialists. An indication of that can already be seen simply by examining how popular some of the most accessed sites are. Facebook, for example, is second only to Google in Armenia according to Alexa, but there are only 132,000 registered users of the social networking site at present. Moreover, some analysts argue, it is unlikely that a high level of support exists online and even more unlikely that it would take to the streets.

Though promoting the development of civil society in Armenia, Facebook cannot be turned into a tool for implementing a revolution in the country, according to information security expert.

 

As Samvel Martirosyan told a news conference in Yerevan, social networks helped to organised civil actions in Armenia, however only 1-1,5% of the users supporting the action online are ready to defend their position in real life.

In fact, while there are some opposition activists on Facebook, there are also government supporters and they too would become just as active, even if they are not at present, as one of the most well-known nationalist bloggers in Armenia recently remarked at a press conference in the capital, Yerevan.

Organization of a ‘Twitter revolution’ will not be an easy task, according to Tigran Kocharyan. Although major fundings for popularization of social networks like Twitter and Facebook in Armenia suggest the possibility of organizing opposition revolts, both Armenian authorities’ awareness of the methods of operating in social networks and anti-opposition Armenian blogger groups might prevent them, he believes.

But it’s more than just that, others believe. Although tens of thousands turned out for opposition rallies following the bitterly disputed presidential election in 2008, no critical mass was reached. Although there was deep resentment towards the authorities, the opposition failed to gain the trust of others. In an opinion piece, the editor of one online publication also notes that Armenians are simply unable to think for themselves.

[…] there is the answer to why such a revolt will not (even if some think it should) occur in Armenia. 

 

Here, there is no “people power”. There are 10s of thousands – as proved in 2008 – who are willing to follow a leader, but none who are willing to lead themselves. There are no grass-roots movements here, where the soil of democratic will remains infertile even two decades after the toxic waste of communism should have been cleaned.

 

When a man, sadly and quite literally, sparked a social movement in Tunisia, his countrymen recognized themselves in his tortured desperation.

 

In Armenia, those who have valid grievance are waiting for an authority figure to voice it for them. That a populist, Tigran Karapetyan, with a message no deeper than bumper sticker slogans, could rally 6,000 or more followers – as many, in fact, as the major opposition bloc – indicates how low the bar has dropped on social movement in Armenia.

[…]

And, into any discussion of whether things in Armenia are getting better or worse under this leadership – and there’s some of each – arises the phrase that is on protest placards in Cairo: “illegitimate government”. Sadly for Armenia’s hopes of becoming democratic, this “illegitimate government” may very well be better than the alternative that would have emerged had elections three years ago been held fairly.

 

Lacking a movement that grew organically, Armenians at both political polarities were willing to follow dubious leaders in that ill-fated election. 

 

“There is no political group leading the people,” a human rights activist in Cairo told media. “There is no one leading the people. People are just doing it.”

Of course, with or without Egypt and Tunisia, the opposition would still have held mass rallies in the capital given that today marks the third anniversary of the disputed 2008 presidential vote and 1 March is traditionally the day to mark the bloody post-election clashes. But with, or most likely without, the use of social media combined with traditional means of public outreach, the opposition failed to attract significant numbers onto the streets yesterday. Radio Free Europe might have estimated the number in attendance as being at least 10,000, but other media outlets such as Reuters and AFP did not, instead putting the number at half that.

YEREVAN – Around 5,000 opposition supporters rallied in the Armenian capital on Friday, calling for the government’s resignation and an Egyptian-style uprising in the former Soviet republic.

 

“The movement to change governments which started in Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia and Egypt is continuing, and sooner or later it will reach us because the situation in Armenia is no better and hatred of the authorities is no less,” said opposition leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosian.

 

Supporters of Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress bloc demonstrated against alleged political injustice, difficult social conditions and rising inflation in the landlocked country.

 

But turnout at the rally was not large by local standards and did not suggest that political unrest was imminent.

Yet, despite low Internet penetration in the country, social media could have been used. However, there was no sign of any real activity. A Facebook support page for the opposition has just 915 members at time of writing and a group set up to invite Armenians to attend managed to attract 430 people while more than double that said they would not participate. Even today, following yesterday’s rally, Facebook remains quiet while Twitter doesn’t bring up much at all, with what little there is mainly coming from news sites in Azerbaijan, Armenia’s main foe in the region. And on YouTube, video coverage of the opposition rally in Yerevan from the main online opposition media outlet isn’t attracting much interest at all.

At time of writing, one video was viewed 1,411 times and a second 2,208 times. Naturally, there was at least a spike in traffic on the A1 Plus main site, but not by much.  With the population of Armenia put at around 3.2 million, A1 Plus received 21,467 visits across its entire site yesterday and 27 percent of that was from outside Armenia. Of course, Internet penetration remains low, but it’s more than simply that. Instead of the opposition telling everyone that they have huge support among the population, online and offline, they need to develop an outreach strategy instead. Certainly, if there is an Egypt-style uprising in Armenia, which most analysts doubt, social media doesn’t look as though it will play any significant role for now at least. 

Instead, perhaps the opposition in Armenia should follow the example of activists in neighboring Azerbaijan who are very social media savvy in comparison. For now, though, any strategy seems to be simply setting up one or two Facebook pages and assuming that people will naturally be interested in sharing the information among their own peer-to-peer networks. Yesterday’s rally, however, showed that to be very far from the truth. But, with new Wikileaks cables released this week showing that there’s plenty of things wrong in the country, there’s certainly enough information to use in such a campaign.

If only they knew how. 

International Crisis Group: Fears of a new Armenia-Azerbaijan war

International Crisis Group: Fears of a new Armenia-Azerbaijan war

by | Feb 10, 2011 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh

16.7 kilometres south of Lachin © Onnik James Krikorian 2006

While it didn’t come as much of a surprise, the latest report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) makes depressing reading. Locked in a bitter stalemate since the war over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh during which around 25,000 were killed and a million forced to flee their homes, a final peace deal remains as elusive as ever. More alarmingly, perhaps, last year was one of the worst in recent history with skirmishes on the front line claiming dozens of lives. Moreover, if talk since the 1994 ceasefire agreement, which effectively put the conflict on hold, had been of conflict resolution, 2011 looks to be more defined by increasing talk of the need for conflict prevention.

An arms race, escalating front-line clashes, vitriolic war rhetoric and a virtual breakdown in peace talks are increasing the chance Armenia and Azerbaijan will go back to war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Preventing this is urgent. Increased military capabilities on both sides would make a new armed conflict in the South Caucasus far more deadly than the 1992-1994 one that ended with a shaky truce. Neither side would be likely to win easily or quickly. Regional alliances could pull in Russia, Turkey and Iran. Vital oil and gas pipelines near the front lines would be threatened, as would the cooperation between Russia and Turkey that is central to regional stability. Another refugee crisis would be likely. To start reversing this dangerous downward trend, the opposing sides should sign a document on basic principles for resolving the conflict peacefully and undertake confidence-building steps to reduce tensions and avert a resumption of fighting.

 

There has been significant deterioration over the past year. Neither government is planning an all-out offensive in the near term, but skirmishes that already kill 30 people a year could easily spiral out of control. It is unclear if the leaders in Yerevan and Baku thoroughly calculate the potential consequences of a new round of tit-for-tat attacks. Ambiguity and lack of transparency about operations along the line of contact, arms deals and other military expenditures and even the state of the peace talks all contribute to a precarious situation. Monitoring mechanisms should be strengthened and confidence-building steps implemented to decrease the chance of an accidental war.

 

At the same time, more has to be done to change a status quo that is deeply damaging to Azerbaijan; 586,000 Azeris are internally displaced (IDPs) from Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas, and some 16 per cent of the country’s territory is occupied. Otherwise, Azerbaijan public opinion and leadership will feel justified to use the military assets Baku has been accumulating at an increased rate: the already substantial defence budget is slated to rise by some 45 per cent between 2010 and 2011, to $3.1 billion out of a total $15.9 billion state budget.

The report, available for download in PDF format here, includes some sensible recommendations such as the need to endorse the basic principles which would form the basis for a later peace agreement, the implementation of confidence building measures such as the withdrawal of snipers from the front line, compliance with arms limitations treaties and agreements, but particularly a change in policy which only aggravates the situation. Unfortunately, though, the task will not be simple, especially in an environment where most Armenians and Azerbaijanis are unwilling or unable to communicate with each other.

A recent household survey by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC), for example, revealed that 70 percent of Armenians were against friendship with Azerbaijanis, while 97 percent of Azerbaijanis were against friendship with Armenians. Meanwhile, town hall meetings in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh showed that over 50 percent of Armenians prefer the current situation of ‘no war, no peace’ rather than compromise and release territories surrounding Karabakh currently under Armenian control for a referendum to determine the territory’s status. Only 0.3 percent of Azerbaijanis support such an option.

The media in both countries plays a less than constructive role by perpetuating negative stereotypes of the enemy too, and the outlook in general looks bleak. Indeed, some analysts and regional experts preempted the ICG report by wondering if a new war in the near future was now inevitable. Nevertheless, there are some alternative voices starting to emerge although they remain a tiny minority in both countries. It might even be appropriate to call them insignificant, but as they were never heard before, and their existence in an environment hardly conducive to any talk of peace somewhat unprecedented, that’s probably unfair.

In fact, they’re very significant indeed simply because they exist at all, although there is an urgent need to increase their numbers and make alternative views on the conflict more widely available. Although this should be through the mass media, that is next to impossible for now, although social media offers an albeit limited alternative. This is what my personal project, Conflict Voices, and special coverage on Global Voices is trying to achieve. Recently, for example, Marianna Karapetyan, an Armenian now living in Russia, wrote about her close friendship with an Azerbaijani. Such views and realities are rarely if ever heard in the local Armenian and Azerbaijani media.

[…] we made an agreement promising never to discuss the situation between our countries because we knew that, as we’d been told different things, the discussion would never be constructive and only just harm our friendship. This was perfectly convenient for me because, unlike Leyla, I knew next to nothing and I wouldn’t really be able to argue. But realizing this, I was always amazed that she came to meet me first, despite all that true or false information she had been told about Armenia back home. Over time, I started researching the conflict and asking around to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and to understand what had happened. But, as I was learning and discovering more, I never felt my feelings towards Leyla changing. Instead, we became even closer as friends.

 

Not only that, but I also learned that during the incidents in Baku, her family helped many Armenians in different ways. They traded their apartment in Moscow for one owned
by Armenians in Baku, and even though the Moscow one was way more valuable, so that they could move. Her grandma’s passport was also used to transfer around 50 Armenian women across the border and her neighbor continues to help people sneak through customs in Georgia to see their abandoned homes. In fact, there are many more such stories which I would never have allowed myself to believe before.

And yesterday, in a powerful and spontaneous post for the project, Nigar Hacizade, an Azerbaijani now living in Turkey, made an impassioned plea for peace.

I don’t want to be from a country that is permanently occupied, that is permanently grieving, that has miserable refugees with forever ruined lives. Neither do I want to be from a country that is constantly considering aggression. I don’t want to be from a country where the news accumulates around the enemy, what the enemy does, what the enemy says. I don’t want to be from a country where the word describing the people living next door carries a negative meaning no matter what the topic is. I would like Azerbaijan to free itself from its post-war identification based on Armenia as the enemy.

 

[…]

 

I have no concrete answers, certainly not for this piece, but I will end with one thought. I know Armenians think about these questions just like we think about them. They think about peace, justice, their lands, and their legitimate grievances. Believe it or not, they think that they are in the right; isn’t that crazy? Well, it’s not. Neither are we crazy. It’s such a basic idea, yet such a hard nut to crack. But I believe it’s the key to get out of this windowless cell we have locked ourselves in.

 

I know there are Armenians who want the things that I want, and I know that we have no other choice but to find ourselves a middle ground. We don’t have to meet each other exactly in the middle; we just have to start walking towards each other. We have to do it for ourselves, for our legacy, for our collective dignity.

More of these alternative opinions can be read on the project site and also in the form of two free e-books in English and Russian for viewing online or download.

 

Budgetary cuts cast shadow over landmine clearance in Nagorno Karabakh

Budgetary cuts cast shadow over landmine clearance in Nagorno Karabakh

by | Feb 1, 2011 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Balcani Caucaso, Nagorno Karabakh

Controlled detonation of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) by the HALO Trust in Askeran, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 2010

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso has just published my latest piece on landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in and around Nagorno Karabakh. It is part of my coverage of the problem for a decade now, including the risk that they will also pose to returning IDPs once a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is eventually signed.

When Artur Khudatyan found a metal object close to his village of Hin Taghlar in the Hadrut region of the unrecognized and self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, the 13-year-old was unaware of the danger it posed. Although the teenager had received Mine Risk Education (MRE) at school, he nevertheless failed to recognize the object as a cluster bomb. Attempting to open it with an axe in the yard of his house, the bomb exploded. Fortunately for Khudatyan, however, its full load of lethal bomblets failed to detonate. If it had, he might well have been killed.

 

In the nearly 17 years since the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan brought a relative calm to Nagorno Karabakh, a tiny area covering just 4,400 square kilometers, as many as 328 civilians have been killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). At least six accidents, such as the one involving Khudatyan, occurred in 2010. In total, the British HALO Trust Charity, the only mine and UXO clearance organization operating in the the self-declared but unrecognized republic, puts the total area covered by minefields at 5,093 hectares, with over 30,000 hectares affected by cluster bombs.

 

The HALO Trust started operating in Nagorno Karabakh in 2000 and has since cleared most of those areas. According to its own data, over 80 percent of minefields and 70 percent of areas affected by UXO have been cleared. In total, over 10,000 landmines have been located and destroyed along with over 50,000 items of UXO. Operations are also not just confined to the territory of Nagorno Karabakh either, with the HALO Trust also clearing mines from areas around Lachin and other locations in the surrounding buffer zone currently under Armenian control.

 

Known as ‘green areas,’ these locations were once inhabited by Azerbaijanis before they fled during the war, and in the event of a breakthrough in negotiations will likely be resettled again. “A peace deal will be signed one day,” Simon Porter, former program manager for the HALO Trust in Nagorno-Karabakh, told this reporter in 2001, “and we are in the perfect situation to tackle the problem sooner rather than later. Otherwise, there will be significant problems when [Armenian] villagers attempt to farm their land, or when [Azerbaijani] refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) return to their homes.”

 

“There aren’t mines everywhere, but it’s obvious that there are likely to be many in areas where fighting took place,” added Shane Pritchard, Porter’s successor, the following year during UXO clearance in Fizuli, an Azerbaijani town now razed to the ground and situated well outside of Nagorno Karabakh proper. “There are mines in a number of ‘green areas’ that were formerly Azeri villages in between Karabakh and the front line and that are now being resettled [by Armenians]. We can remove the threat before people hurt themselves.”

 

As testimony to that, according to Armenian press reports quoting Ministry of Defense sources last week, two Armenian soldiers were injured after inadvertently entering a minefield in Kelbajar, a region sandwiched between Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh on the last day of December 2010.

 

[…]

 

Nevertheless, despite the cut in funding from the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), the British Embassy in Yerevan did host an event for the HALO Trust early last month. Ironically, the meeting was coincidentally held on the same day that Artur Khudatyan was injured. Marking 10 years of its work in Nagorno Karabakh, the local media was invited in the hope of attracting increased attention to the problem and perhaps interest from potential donors. In particular, one possible source of additional support could be the large Armenian Diaspora. However, Clarke says, that is not proving as easy as it first might sound.

 

“We tried very hard to raise money from the Diaspora in America in 2007, and then last year, but with limited success,” he explains. “HALO USA which has two offices in Washington and San Francisco approached all the major Armenian organizations last year. An appeal signed by the current president of Nagorno Karabakh, as well as his predecessor, was sent out to a Diaspora mailing list provided by his representative in Washington, the media was contacted, but very little money was raised – a few thousand perhaps. Also, the Hayastan All Armenia Fund was approached in 2007, but that again failed to raise any money for HALO as well.”

The full article can be read in English and also translated into Italian.

 

 

CONFLICT VOICES e-BOOKS

 

Conflict Voices – December 2010

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian

 

Conflict Voices – May 2011

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian

NGOs and Grassroots Movements: Partners or Rivals?

NGOs and Grassroots Movements: Partners or Rivals?

by | Jan 20, 2011 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Nagorno Karabakh, Social Media

In an opinion piece looking at the media and peace building in 2010 and prospects for 2011, Sheldon Himelfarb, Associate Vice-President at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), noticed some interesting developments, especially in the area of how new online tools can empower individuals. In a sense, this has been precisely what my own personal project has been about, although Himelfarb also raises the possibility of some concerns which might emerge as a result.

[…] we could well see a big jump in citizen to citizen diplomacy across this next year, as universities and even high schools step up their efforts to integrate international awareness into their curriculum. We are seeing all sorts of interesting uses of Skype, iChat, and other online video platforms to connect students around the world in meaningful international experiences.

 

[…]

 

Will we become the best informed societies thanks to the information available, or the most polarized societies as we gravitate to the networks (media and social) that share our biases? […]

Berkman’s Ethan Zuckerman also shares similar concerns with regards to polarization, and as I pointed out recently, such problems could emerge in the area of Armenia and Azerbaijan cross-border communication and cooperation unless they are factored into a forward-thinking strategy. However, my main concern for now relates to the recent appearance of NGOs on the scene. Failing to innovate, they are now starting to replicate, often poorly, already established grassroots efforts in this area.

Ironically, of course, despite an initial reluctance and even refusal to adopt new tools, that might at least mark some kind of progress. Even then, however, it was only after my own long discussions with the British Embassy’s Conflict Pool which saw funding made available for such projects. Unfortunately, donors drove the move into such areas even if the understanding of how these new tools could be used had been absent, as one social media watcher, Micael Bogar, recently explained.

“A significant amount of civil society work within the South Caucasus reinforces status quo policies where governments profit from war and exacerbate cultural differences to their advantage,” says Micael Bogar, Projects Manager at the American University Center for Social Media. “Surprisingly, a notable portion of the non-profit sector plays a role in this corrupt practice. New media tools, with their powerful and cheap ability to communicate across borders, threaten [their] wasteful practices.”

 

[…]

 

”While there is an elite element within civil society with access, but no interest, there is an even larger pool of citizens within the South Caucasus who may have the desire to work towards peace but lack any real long term ability to use these tools towards that end,” she says.

But, even if some NGOs are starting to use those tools, they’re not being used particularly effectively. The recent adoption of Skype by one NGO in Yerevan for connecting Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh, for example, was a step in the right direction, but their use of social media to attract participants outside of their existing circle was non-existent, thus limiting the potential of the project at a time when proving to the wider public that communication is possible is more important than ever.

Unfortunately, donors just seem content that some kind of activity has occurred at all, even if the results are significantly less than they could be. The problem, of course, also extends throughout the former Soviet space, as Primož Šporar explains.

The many millions of NGOs imply millions of raisons d’être, but we are united by one factor – almost all of us think our work is in the public interest, that we are needed and effective. We complain that it is the political, legal and fiscal environment that is not enabling us to play the role we would like to, but is that the real reason for our ineffectiveness?

 

We have to face some facts. The managerial skills of people working in the NGO sector are hardly comparable to those evident among their counterparts in the business world. Many NGOs are less democratic then public institutions, sometimes they are even autocratic and above reproach. It’s also rare that NGO experts possess a similar level of knowledge as experts from universities. NGO breakthroughs are limited compared to research institutions. […] They are also often top-down organizations largely driven by donors. …] Can NGOs claim to be using advanced management techniques, e‑NGO systems, participatory foresight exercises, social responsibility standards, benchmarking techniques and open coordination scoreboards? No, largely they can’t.

And that’s pretty much the same for most initiatives in the area of new and social media in cross-border communication and cooperation with simply creating a blog or a user account and group on Facebook the most that many do. Issues such as privacy and security, or even assessing the viability of tools over time, analyzing obstacles and working out ways to circumvent them, are never factored in. But perhaps most importantly, most show no inclination to spread the net wider than their own immediate social or political circle.

Again, Primož Šporar sums up the situation.

We seem to be deserting and abandoning our roles. The sector’s energies are being spent on finding our role in the world of capitalism and neo-liberalism, instead of on creating a vision for the ultimate open society. Maybe that’s no coincidence. Filling out forms to create statistics about how good we are is slowly undermining our human face. Implementation is conquering innovation. And I can imagine that many people are not displeased with us for doing the paperwork instead of living in the real world and being the annoyance we used to be. […]

 

[…] if you listen to NGO representatives […] you almost get the impression that […] there is a fear that our work could result in citizens who are so active that they no longer need NGOs. […] Is social dialogue replacing a civil one? The bottom line is that in an era of information technology, globalization and the financial crisis, NGOs, compared to other sectors, do not seem to be overly concerned about coming up with new approaches. They have no real idea about where to go.

 

The cult of laziness and abundance is also influencing our work. How else can we explain the evolution of new, local initiatives, organized by citizens themselves targeting concrete problems? They are informal, ad-hoc and problem-oriented. […] Unfortunately, not many NGOs are interested in such projects. […]

Such issues are particularly relevant in the South Caucasus where, as Arpine Porsughyan, a former researcher for the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC), wrote in a recent paper published by UNDP, NGOs are among the least trusted institutions in the South Caucasus region despite the significance placed upon them by international donors and diplomatic missions.

According to Howard, three factors contribute to the weakness of civil society in the post-communist countries: citizen distrust towards formal institutions; general dissatisfaction with economic and political conditions; and the persistence of strong pre-transition social networks. By applying Howard’s argument to the South Caucasus, this paper shows that serious obstacles to civil engagement remain, that these obstacles pose critical problems, and that quality data are critical for understanding the situation after 20 years of transition.

 

Howard argues that citizens in post-communist countries do not distinguish new voluntary organizations from the mass organizations of the past–both are regarded with distrust. […] Lacking the impetus of voluntary associations, private engagement in these organizations was limited, and in many cases membership was perfunctory. Today, despite the more democratic setting, citizens of the post-Soviet bloc continue to view public organizations with scepticism. 

Civil engagement, therefore, remains very low: only 7 percent of Armenians reported involvement in volunteer work in 2007; 8 percent of Georgians contributed to charity; and 1 percent of Azerbaijanis attended meetings of a club or civic organization six months prior to the survey.

Moreover, as Porsughyan explains, actual social networks, outside of the confines of somewhat closed NGO circles which are usually based on ‘elitist’ social and political connections, are far larger and therefore far more influential.

Howard’s arguments and public opinion data show that increasing the quantity of civil society organizations and providing them with more assistance will not resolve problems of weak civil societies in the South Caucasus. These countries continue to have sceptical attitudes towards all types of formal organizations and are generally apathetic about the economic and political conditions facing them. Traditional social networks are therefore trusted and valued over state and public institutions. 

Of course, for community specific and non-politicized groups such as NGOs working in the area of gender and LGBT rights, this is not so much a problem, but for those working in other areas, and especially peace building, it’s a significant one. And, as mentioned in a previous post, it’s probably why most projects in this area do not attract the attention of nationalists or the authorities. In a sense, they are tolerated because they are arguably ineffective.

Nevertheless, what does become apparent is quite simple. In the 16 years since the ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan in their conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, civil society has failed to initiate proper open discussion in the societies of either country. Yet, donors continue to spend exorbitant amounts of money on their projects while ignoring genuine grassroots movements.

In a recent Twitter exchange, and commenting specifically on Himelfarb’s reference to a growth in citizen-citizen dialogue, one international aid worker with experience in the South Caucasus agreed.

 

NGOs are important, of course, but not in an environment of their choosing, especially when they consider, as Šporar says, that they have the ‘monopoly’ on problem solving. Instead, the two need to work together, and in a region as volatile as the South Caucasus, where talk of a new war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is increasing, the consequences of not doing so are very grave indeed.

Unfortunately, however, the international donor community appears to have become as complacent as the handful of NGOs they continue to fund, often to the tune of millions of dollars. In a sense, it has to be asked, does the international community’s obsession with pumping money into a largely ineffective civil society in the Caucasus contribute to change or merely frustrate and delay it? 

Or should they simply re-evaluate the situation and place stronger demand on NGOs to work with wider circles of participants and partners than the few they do so with at present? They might also want to examine whether grassroots initiatives are not only innovating more than NGOs, but also have the potential to reach a wider group of people for significantly less, something that has been very evident in recent years.

Isn’t it about time this situation changed, with the objective taking center stage rather than the division and duplication of efforts in this area because of the inherent desire from most NGOs to monopolize the scene? Meanwhile, grassroots initiatives have so much more to offer, especially in terms of ideas and approaches,  and can reach an arguably larger and different target group, as social media guru Dan McQuillan says.

There’s a strong interest in developing an online civic space where there can be level-headed discussion of controversial topics across communities. […] 

 

But like most other places the existing NGO sector seems poorly prepared to make the most of the digital opportunities: “many throughout the civil society and NGO sector are unfamiliar with these new technologies, do not understand how to use them effectively, or lack tools for their particular setting. Despite the growth of new media in recent years, NGOs have yet to adjust their outreach strategies, ignoring the possibility of using platforms such as blogging and social networking sites to promote their activities and research, in the process attracting members of the younger generation”.

 

Although online campaigning is of interest to both journalists and NGOs, the real innovations will come from people thinking outside of those disciplines. If the web is going to catalyse in Georgia then people need to to think differently and feel more empowered.

Well, the possibility of creating a collaborative and wider-reaching approach, even without funding, is something that I’ll be examining at a meeting in just a few hours.  

 

CONFLICT VOICES e-BOOKS

 

Conflict Voices – December 2010

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian

 

Conflict Voices – May 2011

Short essays on the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict
Download in English | Russian