Twenty years after the end of the Soviet Union, Ireland is seeking ways of bringing peace to the jagged edges of the old empire, writes DANIEL MCLAUGHLIN
IN GEORGIA, Azerbaijan and Moldova, rebel regions have run their own affairs since fighting free of government control in the early 1990s, but they are still locked in “frozen conflicts” that trap their people in political limbo, insecurity and poverty.
Senior Irish officials say they intend to draw on experiences in Northern Ireland to help tackle these complex disputes when Ireland takes the chair of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on January 1st.
The 56-nation group is a key player in talks aimed at ending the conflicts, rebuilding trust between communities and ensuring the “frozen” disputes do not erupt into fighting – such as when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 to stop Tbilisi reclaiming South Ossetia.
South Ossetia shrugged off Tbilisi’s control in a 1991-1992 war that claimed about 1,000 lives. In 1992-1993 the Black Sea region of Abkhazia also took up arms to break with Georgia, and some 10,000 people died in the ensuing violence. After flooding the regions with troops in 2008, Russia – which had propped up both areas since the early 1990s – recognised them as sovereign states.
Moscow accused OSCE monitors along the de-facto border between Georgia and South Ossetia of keeping secret Tbilisi’s preparations to attack the breakaway region in 2008. The following year, Moscow refused to allow the OSCE mission to continue working in Georgia.
But the OSCE is a co-chair of regular talks between Russia and Georgia in Geneva, and the US and EU are pressing Moscow to allow a full OSCE mission to return to Georgia.
Pádraig Murphy, former Irish ambassador to Moscow, will next year co-chair the Geneva talks as a special representative for the South Caucasus. “Ireland’s chairmanship faces a lot of challenges,” warned Georgia’s foreign minister Grigol Vashadze.
“Russia is constantly increasing its forces . . . There are more than 10,000 occupying troops in both regions and a range of missile systems, tanks and all their other toys,” he said.
“The main tasks now are to de-occupy Georgia and have Russia respect the ceasefire agreement of August 2008, and to return internally displaced persons and refugees in safety and dignity to their birthplaces and residences.”
Mr Murphy’s brief will also cover Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic-Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that was at the centre of a 1988-1994 conflict that killed about 25,000 people.
Fierce fighting between the neighbouring states also displaced about one million people and shooting incidents on the ceasefire line still claim lives each year. The issue stirs intense passions in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and no leader of either country has been willing to make the concessions necessary to agree even on the principles of a final peace deal.
Armenia suspects that Azerbaijan might try to use force to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, meanwhile, accuses Yerevan of prolonging the stalemate by refusing to withdraw troops from Azeri territory.
Both sides blame each other for the repeated failure of talks spearheaded by the OSCE’s so-called Minsk Group of countries, which is chaired jointly by Russia, the US and France.
And the search for a solution is not getting any easier. Ankara and close ally Azerbaijan are furious over a bid by French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s party to make it illegal to deny that Turkey’s mass killing of Armenians in 1915 was genocide. Turkish officials suggest Mr Sarkozy is wooing France’s large Armenian diaspora before next year’s elections, and Azeri politicians have accused Paris of bias towards Yerevan on Nagorno-Karabakh issues.
“An arms race, escalating front-line clashes, vitriolic war rhetoric and a virtual breakdown in peace talks are increasing the chance Armenia and Azerbaijan will go back to war over Nagorno-Karabakh,” the International Crisis Group warned this year.
Experienced diplomat Erwan Fouéré will be the Irish chairmanship’s special representative to Moldova, where the OSCE is seeking a negotiated settlement over the separatist region of Transdniestria.
This sliver of land beside the Dniestr River, wedged between the rest of Moldova and Ukraine, broke away from Chisinau’s control in a 1992 war that killed about 1,000 people.
This Russian-backed region has just elected a successor to its president of 20 years, Igor Smirnov, who was widely accused of allowing Transdniestria to become a haven for organised crime. Its new leader, Yevgeny Shevchuk, has already dashed Chisinau’s hopes of major change by ruling out reunification with the rest of Moldova.