By: Sergey Markedonov
The situation in Syria today, now occupying the top slot on the international agenda, is about more than just the U.S.-Russia political compromise on chemical weapons. It is also about the interethnic and sectarian tensions driving Syria’s civil war. These tensions are echoing well beyond Syria itself, into the countries of the Greater Caucasus region, where it could easily create new risks and challenges for the United States, Russia and the world.
That the civil war should reverberate so far beyond Syria’s borders might seem odd at first. The independent states of the South Caucasus, as well as the nine Russian constituencies of the North Caucasus (including the Krasnodar and Stavropol krais), have no common borders with Syria. Nevertheless many threads connect them with to the Middle East, and Syria in particular. The South Caucasus states border on Iran and Turley. Iran has a border with Armenia and Azerbaijan (including access to the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) that is more than 400 miles long. The total length of the borders of Turkey with the South Caucasus republics is more than 300 miles long, and today there are anywhere from 2.5 million to 7 million descendants of Caucasian ethnic groups living in the Turkish Republic. Besides these demographic and geographic connections, the national governments in Tehran and Ankara are both playing active roles in the Syria situation: Iran has consistently supported the Bashar al-Assad regime, while Turkey has just as forcefully advocated its overthrow and expressed its readiness to support a U.S.-led intervention—and perhaps even lead an intervention of its own.
There are complicated dynamics to bilateral relations between the South Caucasus states and their neighbors. Turkey is a strategic ally of Azerbaijan, supports Baku’s position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and has no diplomatic relations with Armenia. The process of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement, beginning with the promise of “Football Diplomacy” in September 2008 and continuing with the signing of the Zurich protocols on mutual normalization in October 2009, had stalled by the spring of 2010 and is now losing steam. The bilateral Azerbaijani-Iranian relationship is also rather fraught, despite the relatively high degree of religious solidarity between the two sides (nominally Shi‘a Muslims compose 65 percent of Azerbaijan’s population). Azerbaijani officials regularly criticize Iran for supporting radical Islamist forces inside Azerbaijan. The Iranian clergy (the key political element of the Islamic Republic) pretends to play the role of supranational spiritual leadership for all Shia Muslims. Thus, the question of Southern (Iranian) Azerbaijan has become another sore point in bilateral relations. It is no coincidence this topic was widely discussed during Azerbaijan’s presidential election earlier this year.
Tehran is extremely sensitive to foreign interference in its neighborhood. The U.S. presence in the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus is most threatening in this regard. For this reason, Iranian politicians and diplomats are skeptical of the so-called Updated Madrid Principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolutions. Tehran also dislikes the military-technical cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel, especially the possibility that Azerbaijani territory could be used for strikes on Iran or Syria.
The Greater Caucasus and Middle East are also connected by the fact of U.S. military cooperation with many states in the region. In particular, the strategic partnership between Georgia and the United States is worth noting here. Nowadays the Georgian military contingent in Afghanistan, which is slightly more than 1,500 personnel, is the largest force contribution by a non-NATO ally. Tbilisi was also materially involved in operations in Iraq. By 2008, 10 percent of Georgia’s military personnel were involved in supporting U.S./NATO operations abroad.
The role of Azerbaijan in Afghanistan, though slightly different from Georgia’s, is also important. According to James Appathurai, NATO’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia, Azerbaijan provides a third of all Alliance cargo from Europe to Afghanistan. In December 2011, Azerbaijan replaced the Georgian airline, Sky Georgia, as a supplier of NATO’s transportation needs. Although Armenia has positioned itself as a strategic ally of Russia (it is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and has pledged to join the Russia-led Customs Union), it still tries to maintain equilibrium with the West by participating in several partnership programs with NATO.
While the Caucasus countries have reached their second decade as independent states, the general situation in this region is far from stable and predictable. Of the eight ethno-political conflicts in the former Soviet Union, six have occurred in the region. Further, three of the four de facto entities that emerged from the fall of the USSR exist in this region. These turbulent conditions provoke the interest and engagement of both regional and global actors. Though the geopolitical situation in the Caucasus already receives significant attention by scholars, it is mostly viewed through the prism of the U.S.-Russia rivalry. This approach is too reminiscent of a Cold War-style analysis no longer appropriate for the 21st century. Today Caucasian connections to neighboring areas like the Middle East loom largest in the geopolitics of the region.
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