From frozen conflicts to unrecognized republics: The de facto states in the emergent region of the post-Soviet states of the South Caucasus

The end of the Cold War in 1989, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to birth of a number of new countries. These historic changes amounted to political tectonic shifts of global scale. In the aftermath of these drastic transformations, the newly independent republics, in the periphery of the former Soviet Union, in particular, faced new challenges, both systemic and organic. The euphoria generated among millions from the Balkans to the vast expanses of Central Asia was soon marred with striking rise of resurgent ethnic nationalism and mobilization worldwide. Perhaps nowhere the threat of a number of ethnonational conflicts has been as serious as those in the South Caucasus in the periphery of the former Soviet Union.The intent of this study is to present an argument that the ethnonational conflicts within an ethnically defined territory will under certain political conditions evolve into statehood. The three cases selected for this study, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia in Georgia and Azerbaijan, in existence for over a decade, have been transformed into "frozen" conflicts. The conflict management and resolution, plagues mainly by the ever-changing dynamics of an emerging new sub-region of the South Caucasus, inadvertently contributed to the strengthening and solidification of the de facto states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia. Drastic changes on the ground have forged a new identity and recast a new brand of nationalism and national identity. These developments and advances, it is argued in this study that are undeniable realities and irreversible processes, which if successful might serve as models for other similar ethnonational and ethno-territorial cases in other parts of the world with unforeseeable consequences.