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Thomas de Waal, among the most able observers of the anxious politics and bitter conflicts that have brewed at the base of the Caucasus range since the Soviet Union broke apart, calls the soaring mountains “a magnificent arc” that “are both a colossal landmark and a powerful barrier.”
It is a well-put thought. The snow-capped peaks that rise from Russia’s south and fall toward Turkey, Iran and the Black and Caspian Seas present barriers in almost every sense: to traffic, to trade, to development, to military action, to rapprochement and to smooth integration with the outside world. In the diversity of the mountains’ people and their pasts, with the deep wells of grievances and grudges that reach far back in time, stoked by the contest for resources and stature, they present barriers to understanding as well.
This is where Mr. de Waal steps in with “The Caucasus: An Introduction,” a compact but rich book examining the southern side of the range, where combustible difficulties afflict three small post-Soviet countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
These are countries beset by the so-called “frozen conflicts,” the legacies of three wars for territory and ethnic self-determination that erupted as the Soviet Union collapsed, gave way to shaky standoffs, and as yet remain unresolved. (For the purposes of this discussion, the Chechen wars, largely fought on the northern face of the mountains but at times with tentacles into the south, are excluded.) In the summer of 2008, when President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia ordered an attack on the Russian-supported enclave of South Ossetia, which started a Russian military incursion that approached Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, the world saw just how quickly these frozen conflicts might turn hot.
The nations of the South Caucasus are not only a source of ethnic, religious, separatist or even foolish violence. They are also astride an energy corridor for moving hydrocarbons to markets, and atop an unfortunate chessboard for post-cold-war gamesmanship. And, as Mr. De Waal knows well, they are richly interesting in their own right — parts of a region far more fascinating than even its politics.
If ever there was a place that needed a competent and even-tempered guide, this was it. Mr. de Waal provides one. Currently an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he has traveled through and written of the Caucasus more than most any outsider since the Kremlin’s grip over the region loosened during the Soviet collapse.
Travel is not enough. Many people enter the Caucasus and return with a narrow view; Caucasian hospitality almost ensures this. To take up with one group is to gain an intimate understanding with the group’s point of view. To understand the Caucasus more fully, all sides need to be heard. This is one of Mr. de Waal’s strengths. He is a listener and a calm questioner, and his journeys and his long study of the region have put him the company of many camps, equipping him with a ground-level sensibility that embraces Caucasian complexities and counsels patience and local solutions over the seduction of a quick fix.
His book contains history and knowing flair:
“Armenians say, with a little exaggeration, that the end of the Soviet Union began in a small provincial town in the South Caucasus on February 20, 1988. That was the day the regional soviet in Stepanakert, the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, voted to ask for borders to be redrawn and for their territory to be transferred from Soviet Azerbaijan to Armenia. The vote turned out to be the first stone in an avalanche that would sweep away the entire multinational construction of the Soviet Union.”
The vote also led, in short order, to war between Armenians and Azeris.
The Caucasus has never lacked intense messengers presenting conflicting ways of seeing the region and ambitions for its future. Mr. de Waal is not on any of regional power-brokers’ payrolls, wedded to any of the region’s sides, or trying to champion a particular program or plan — NATO integration, new pipelines for either Russia or the West, the electoral prospects of any of the region’s struggling opposition movements. It is refreshing — almost startling — to read a book of the Caucasus with such a cool, dispassionate take.
For this reason, “The Caucasus: An Introduction” will likely have many lives. Why? The wars that broke out in the 1990s are not over. Mr. De Waal’s book is welcome now, and most useful. If one of the wars flares up again, it will be essential.
This article by C.J. Chivers originally published by The New York Times.