Last week, Caucasus Edition, a publication of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation, held another Zoom webinar, this time entitled “Rethinking Peacebuilding in the South Caucasus in Relation to the War in Ukraine.” Recently, there have been many commenting on what the Russian invasion might have on this region, but framing it in terms of reconsidering peacebuilding strategies in the South Caucasus is an especially relevant one.
Before summarizing some key points from the webinar, I’d agree with this for three reasons.
First, peacebuilding projects here have been lackluster at best and ineffective at worst. Second, the war in Ukraine is already having an effect on the countries of the South Caucasus and will continue to do so. Third, if a war was to break out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, rather than solely over Nagorno Karabakh, or between Georgia and Russia, it will likely be far more devastating than previous conflicts.
And yet, as one of the panelists, Sevil Huseynova, noted:
Now again, all interest will be directed towards Ukraine, [and] the South Caucasus with its conflicts will again find itself in the shadow of a bigger, more important, and a more relevant conflict for the EU. This doesn’t mean that that there will no longer be any support for peace building in the South Caucasus, but a decline in interest and a change in priorities is likely to happen.
Sevil Huseynova, Caucasus Edition Symposium, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2022
Joining Huseynova were her fellow Caucasus Edition co-editors, Assistant Professor Philip Gamaghelyan and Lecturer Vadim Romashov, while the webinar was moderated by another, Christina Soloyan, who introduced the online discussion quite eloquently and succinctly.
The second Karabakh war created a humanitarian crisis and deepened the grievances and mistrust in our societies towards each other. It has also created a major existential crisis within the peace building community, locally and internationally, that required major reconsideration of peace building methods and goals […] and now the war in Ukraine is changing our understanding of conflicts in the region, in the post-Soviet space, and beyond.
Incidentally, kudos to the organisers for making the discussion public. Soloyan also explained that it was first intended as an internal and closed editorial discussion, but the Caucasus Edition team instead decided to make it open, going as far to allow members of the audience to make audio-visual interventions in the Q&A session that followed the main discussion, in addition to the more regular questions via the chat box.
The discussion, of course, focused on both the Karabakh conflict and Ukraine, but the focus of this post will be on what was said with regard to the former. Nonetheless, the latter does validate Gameghlyan’s long standing concern that another war risks resembling what we’re seeing in Ukraine and before it, Syria. Indeed, this has led some to consider what could be called the Syria-isation of conflict in the South Caucasus, a term that can now also be aptly applied to the war in Ukraine:
It is not an accident that Azerbaijan stopped in 2020 at the border of the border of Armenia, because it was not seen as a legitimate target. I’m not sure that this will be the case if we continue this trajectory.
[…]
Any war now, any conflict in the post-Soviet space, opens up then a possibility of turning that region, that has an open conflict, into an area of proxy war and that puts a tremendous responsibility, I would say, on Armenia and Azerbaijan to solve their conflict as soon as possible because yes, in the short term, one or the other, probably Azerbaijan first of all, could benefit from another round of war. but in the longer term, none of us are going to benefit because, again, simply, looking at what is happening in Ukraine, we are likely to become an area of proxy war.
Yet, it should not have taken 16 months since the November 2020 ceasefire for a sense of urgency to materialize in the sphere of Armenia-Azerbaijan peacebuilding. While Gamagehlyan expressed his concerns soon after the trilateral statement, most others remained silent, inactive, or held secretive and closed meetings in hotels abroad with nothing to present to a concerned public afterwards. Most are also still in the dark ages when it comes to utilizing tech and social media for strategic communications, a basic minimum these days.
As Gamaghelyan stated:
The challenge was that once the war hit, [and] the second Karabakh war specifically, we saw that almost the entire peacebuilding field fell apart. Almost no NGO, I would say, stood out [as] pro-peace or anti-war. Even those that were involved for years just disappeared in one day.
Since then, a few notable exceptions – LINKS, which is quite active through its Commonspace platform while Caucasus Edition also held an event in Tbilisi in January, though has sadly yet to publicise or produce a summary of the discussion. That said, and to their credit, they did widen the selection of participants and also allowed others to highlight that it had been held. There really needs to be more publicity surrounding such meetings so that they can effectively be normalised.
Phil Gamaghelyan, Caucasus Edition Symposium, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2022
Moreover, Gamaghelyan was quite open in terms of the failure of more than a decade of international donor funded projects in the region, considering them to rely too much on technocratic solutions limited by short-term funding. And from my point of view, it should be also pointed out that the bulk of this funding went not to local organisations or actors on the ground, but to international organisations based outside the region.
Regardless, Romashov also noted the importance of utilising media in conflict resolution more seriously, something that has also been sorely lacking to date. This topic, incidentally, was the subject of another Caucasus Edition webinar on the role of the media in September last year and I also think lessons could be learned from the world of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE), especially when it comes to countering dominant narratives.
Key to successful P/CVE initiatives, incidentally, is the utilization of credible messengers, effective messaging, and targeting alternative narratives to specific demographic audiences through a diverse variety of mediums, from the traditional to the modern, something that Huseynova effectively acknowledged in her estimation of what needs to change in traditional peacebuilding approaches and initiatives.
We have few very well known public intellectuals involved in the peace movement. There are few public and famous people in general […] people who have access to the public field with a large audience. People whose position is difficult to marginalize. So we need to create the conditions for such names to emerge, we need to seriously work on access to the public field, create new radio, TV, support bloggers, musicians, artists, anyone who can help involve as many people as possible.
[…]
Do they teach peace in our schools and how to achieve it? No.
Returning to P/CVE for just a minute, one solution here could be the use of comic books, something a friend, the late Suleiman Bakhit, pioneered and implemented in his native Jordan to counter extremist narratives in schools. Meanwhile, cross-border cultural projects such as One Caucasus, Caucasus Jazz Festival, Caucasus Music Awards, and even the Wacken Metal Battle Caucasus could be ideal spaces for organizations to explore in order to reach youth.
It was encouraging to hear Romashov agree:
Since the second Karabakh war and when I encountered these horrible nationalistic songs coming from both sides, and when at the same time I managed to find with the help of some of my colleagues, songs from Armenia and Azerbaijan with very human, anti-war, pro-peace songs […] I realized how important it is to bring these artists together.
Romashov also highlighted another failure of peacebuilding in the region – the need to look at what he termed the micro-dynamics of peace:
I think this is the time that we need to reconsider that peacebuilding is not only about NGOs speaking about peace and creating platforms for dialogue. This is also about work on the ground with people directly affected by the wars, by the conflicts, by the trauma. […] There is always a danger that without providing certain platforms, these voices will disappear – so networking is important too.
[…]
Let’s forget about dialogue platforms of experts. This is a very exclusive, elitist approach to talk about peace and to talk about how to deal with conflicts and violence. The people on the ground in their daily lives also have very important knowledge that should be taken into account.
Gamaghelyan also expanded on this:
Where are these voices? Why are we only hearing pro-war sentiment […] this is where the issue of platforms comes because the voices are there. They have been continually marginalized. So, the voices are there. In private conversations they come out, some people stand out, and put themselves at risk.
Is there a platform, a space for public discussion about this? Very rarely. Basically no.
[…]
When you go to the regions there is no pro-war sentiment. The closer to the border you get, the more peace people want.
[…]
Those voices are not channeled and absolutely not heard.
None of the above, of course, invalidates the need for academic research, conferences, and especially the sort of work Imagine has been conducting in bringing young Armenians and Azerbaijanis together to discuss some very serious topics indeed, but it is clear that these initiatives on their own have failed to have an impact on either society. That said, lacking any political will on either side to find a solution to the conflict prior to 2020, the task was an uphill struggle anyway.
Vadim Romashov, Caucasus Edition Symposium, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2022
Assuming that the political will now materializes, perhaps the peacebuilding sphere can become more inclusive, open, and innovative. On that, said Gamaghelyan, this has finally started to happen in Armenia as government narratives change, in turn resulting in more people now questioning what he referred to as the ‘war paradigm.’ He also said the same was true with many of his friends and colleagues in Azerbaijan, even if so far in private conversation.
In conclusion, I’ll admit I went into this webinar skeptical, but came away pleasantly surprised. Nonetheless, it’s time there was a sense of greater urgency among most other organisations in terms of resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Time was not on anyone’s side for almost 30 years before the 2020 war, and then prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is even less so now.
