Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London. He is co-author of Chechnya: calamity in the Caucasus (New York, 1998) and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war (New York, 2003).

Recent articles

The horror of the Beslan siege in Russia’s southern North Ossetia province highlights dangerous political instability in the immediate region, says Thomas de Waal of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting.

(This article was first published on 7 September 2004)

The documented history of the cosmopolitan Black Sea territory of Abkhazia was destroyed in war on 22 October 1992. Its Greek archivist is conserving what little remains, reports Thomas de Waal.

(This article was first published on 20 October 2006) 

In the Caucasus and the Balkans, two territories whose people broke free through war from a larger state their peoples saw as oppressive are now in constitutional limbo. What future have Kosovo Albanians and Abkhazians earned – independence, autonomy, federation? What justice is owed to their Serb and Georgian neighbours and former neighbours? Thomas de Waal and Zeyno Baran debate these issues.

Abkhazia's case for independence from Georgia has echoes of Kosovo's from Serbia, reports Thomas de Waal from the Black Sea territory.

The meteoric career of an intellectual, nationalist dissident in the north Caucasus is emblematic of the region’s troubled post-Soviet condition, writes Thomas de Waal of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.