Last week’s clashes on the Line of Contact (LoC) separating Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in and around Nagorno Karabakh stirred up nationalism and animosity not only in Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also in neighbouring Georgia. The worst clashes in nearly 22 years, alarm bells were ringing in the capital Tbilisi — not least because of Georgia’s significant Armenian and Azeri minorities.
According to Georgia’s 2002 census, 284,761 ethnic Azeris and 248,929 ethnic Armenians live in Georgia, making up roughly 6.5% and 5.7% of the country’s overall population respectively. South of Tbilisi, in Kvemo Kartli, there are at least three villages co-inhabited by members of the two minority groups. Most of the road traffic from Armenia into Georgia passes through this region, which is home to the largest concentration of ethnic Azeris in the country.
Meanwhile, the conflict in Karabakh is far from frozen. In the two decades since the 1994 ceasefire between Georgia’s southern neighbours, as many as 3,000 people are believed to have died in skirmishes on the LoC as well as the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Propaganda and misinformation continue to play an important role in pitting the populations of both countries — and their diasporas — against each other, something that was set to escalate as the new round of fighting broke out.
