Holiday in Caucasus (1): introduction
I am about to go on a holiday to the Caucasus with the company Voyages Jules Verne. I will be away two and half weeks and, in that time, I will visit three countries – two of them for the first time – which will bring the total number of countries that I have visited to 88.
The Caucasus is a region between the Black Sea on the west and the Caspian Sea on the east, mainly comprising Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and parts of southern Russia. The area is regarded geographically as where Eastern Europe meets Western Asia and historically as where Christianity meets Islam.
The origin of the name Caucasus goes back to Pliny the Elder who, in his book “Natural History” (77-79 AD) derived the term from a Scythian name Croucasis which supposedly means ‘shimming with snow’.
Around two centuries ago, starting with theTreaty of Geogievsk in 1783, the region gradually came under Russian control. A significant number of Armenians remained in the Ottoman Empire, however, until in 1915 they were expelled in a process lasting until 1922 widely regarded as a genocide of some 1.5 million.
The three Caucasian countries escaped Russian control when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In the run up to and shortly after this independence, there were bitter ethnic conflicts in the region.
In Georgia, the areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away with Russian assistance. In 2008, Georgia attempted to take back control of South Ossetia by military force which proved disastrous as Russian forces took full control of this break-away territory plus the other break-away territory Abkhazia.
Violence and ethnic cleansing in Armenia and Azerbaijan led to a civil war between 1990-1994 in which control of the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh was at the heart of the conflict and Karabakh Armenia forces were the victors. Some 40,000 lives were lost and around one million were displaced.
A second war of six weeks in 2020 saw Azerbaijan retaking much of the break-away region from Armenian control but more than 6,600 died. The latest flare-ups were as recently as September 2022 when around 100 troops were killed and April 2023 when another seven soldiers died.
Nagorno-Karabakh – an area of about 150,000 people – has a majority Armenian population but geographically the region is totally surrounded by Azerbaijan and it is recognised internationally as Azerbaijan’s territory. In conflicts over the region, Armenia has the support of Russia, while Azerbaijan has the backing of Turkey.