Anyone taking the road from Goris to Stepanakert has passed through Lachin, the strategic main artery in the lifeline between Armenia and the self-declared Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. Few actually visit the town now of course, perhaps unsurprisingly given the destruction evident throughout. The only interest for many passing through is that Lachin lies not in Karabakh, but within what the international community considers sovereign Azerbaijani territory.

Published by Transitions Online 2001

A few kilometers from the border of the officially unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, a shepherd sits with his grazing cattle in the lush pastures of Armenian-controlled Azerbaijan. The scene could grace the front of any postcard from the scenic Caucasus.

The twisted carcasses of rusting vehicles along the roadside tell a different story, though. The shepherd is sitting in a minefield.

Published 2004

The local residents of Suarassy seem oblivious to the hidden danger as they herd cattle down a road known to have been mined during the Armenian-Azerbaijani war of the early Nineties. Despite the mangled military lorry rusting in a ditch to one side, none of their cows have so far detonated seven anti-tank mines still believed to be buried underneath, so they reckon the road is safe.

Published by Eurasianet 2006

An Azeri teahouse, and naturally Azerbaijani can be heard spoken inside. A dozen men, identical in appearance, sit at tables, chain smoking and drinking cups of çay (tea). “Salam,” we say, before approaching the waitress. The owners of another Azeri teahouse, ironically run by ethnic Armenians just around the corner, directed us here, saying that the waitress too is Armenian. She is, even though the teahouse is owned by an ethnic Azeri. We take our seats at a table with the intention of once again exploring the reality of peaceful coexistence in at least one part of the South Caucasus.

Published 2010

At just eight months of age, Tiesa and her two sisters were abandoned by a roadside. They survived by eating roadkill — frogs, in fact — and drinking water from puddles before being discovered. The children, two of them with learning disabilities, were placed in Tbilisi’s Infant House, an orphanage by any other name.

According to EveryChild, a British children’s charity with a country office in Georgia, very little was known about them. 

Published 2014

Children jump over puddles on the pock-marked street outside the mosque in Duisi, a small village situated in Georgia’s scenic Pankisi Valley. Inhabited by 8,000 ethnic Kists, a minority group related to the Chechens of the North Caucasus, Pankisi is also home to refugees from Chechnya who fled during the wars of the 1990s and 2000s.

Women dressed in in colourful chadors circumvent the water-filled holes caused by years of neglect while others have their heads uncovered or simply obscured by traditional Kist head scarves. 

Published by 2015

Two sizeable communities of Armenians and Azeris live – mostly separate – in Georgia. The current conflict has exacerbated the spirits of the two minorities, particularly on social media, arousing the concern of analysts

Published by Osservatorio Balcani e Caucasus, October 2020

With authorities often turning a blind eye to far-right and neo-Nazi activities and an increasingly unpopular government opening the way for more ultraconservative groupings to enter Parliament and spread their views, Georgia stands on the verge of a shift much further to the right.

Published by Stratfor, August 2019

At around 7 p.m. on May 29, Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani activist and journalist living in self-imposed exile in Tbilisi, rang his wife, Leyla Mustafayeva. Mukhtarli said he was on his way home after meeting a friend at a cafe in the Georgian capital. He never showed up.

Published by Stratfor, November 2017

Published by Stratfor, May 2017