Thank you for posting the url to this informative article:
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In the case of South Ossetia, a self-proclaimed independent country that is, in fact, neither independent nor a country, "nowhere" is probably the best way to describe where it's gone. It's perhaps the closest you can get today to experiencing the old Soviet Union, as well as a good place to get the flavor of a good old-fashioned, Cold-War-style proxy war between the United States and Russia. South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after a chaotic 18-month war that killed 1,000 (of a population of 60,000) between 1990 and 1992. Today, South Ossetia is propped up by Russia:
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If you want to get a complete understanding of the several hundred year old conflict, and especially to highlight the Russian claims to South Ossetia, and georgia’s claims to Abhkazia, read this 260 page dissertation. It’s taken me about 7 hours to read 2/3rds of it, and I now know more than almost every talking head in the US media.
http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/publications/0419dissertation.pdf
Autonomy and Conflict
Ethnoterritoriality and Separatism in the
South Caucasus – Cases in Georgia
ABSTRACT
Cornell, Svante E.: Autonomy and Conflict: Ethnoterritoriality and Separatism in the South Caucasus
– Cases in Georgia. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Report No. 61. 258 pp. Uppsala.
ISBN 91-506-1600-5.
Providing minority populations with autonomy is gaining appreciation as a method of solving,
managing, and even pre-empting ethnic conflict. However, in spite of the enthusiasm for autonomy
solutions among academics and practitioners alike, there is reason to argue that the provision of
autonomy for a minority may under certain circumstances increase rather than decrease the likelihood
of conflict. In certain political conditions, autonomy strengthens the separate identity of a minority; it
thereby increases its incentives to collective action against the state; and most of all its capacity to seek
separation from the central state, through the state-like institutions that autonomy entails. The
objective of this dissertation is to investigate whether territorial autonomy was a contributing factor to
the violent ethnic conflicts that have erupted in the South Caucasus since the late 1980s. It presents a
theoretical argument to explain which qualities of autonomy solutions increase the likelihood of
conflict; and then seeks to outline possible rival explanations derived from the theoretical literature.
The dissertation then examines the explanatory value of autonomy as compared to nine other possible
causal factors in a study of nine minorities in the South Caucasus. Finding that autonomy has the
highest explanatory value of any of the factors under study, it then moves on to study in depth the five
minorities existing on the territory of the republic of Georgia. Three of them, Abkhazia, Ajaria, and
South Ossetia, were autonomous, whereas two (the Armenians and Azeris in Southern Georgia) had
no autonomous status. The dissertation shows how the institution of autonomy, by promoting an
ethnic elite in control of state-like institutions, and by enhancing factors such as leadership, economic
viability, and external support, played a crucial together with these factors in the escalation to conflict
in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whereas the absence of autonomy mitigated conflict in Javaheti’s
Armenian and Kvemo Kartli’s Azeri populations.
Keywords: Autonomy, Caucasus, Ethnopolitical Conflict, Georgia (Republic), Ethnic Relations,
Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Javakheti, Ajaria, Kvemo Kartli
Svante E. Cornell, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-
75120 Uppsala, Sweden
© Svante E. Cornell 2002
ISSN 0566-8808
ISBN 91-506-1600-5
Printed in Sweden by Elanders Gotab, Stockholm 2002
Distributed by the Department of Peace and Conflict Research,
Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden
Phone +46 18 471 00 00
Fax. + 46 18 69 51 02
E-mail: info@pcr.uu.se
Website: www.pcr.uu.se
