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Failed Prevention 35 Table of Contents Foreword by the Editors 5 PART I: CONCEPTS IN CONFLICT PREVENTION 9 Concepts and Instruments in Conflict Prevention 11 Frida Möller PART II: CONFLICT DEVELOPMENT AND FAILED PREVENTION 35 The Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict 37 Sabine Fischer Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006) 59 Doris Vogl Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War 79 Oksana Antonenko PART III: VIEWS FROM THE REGION 95 Frozen Conflicts: The Missed Opportunities 97 Salomé Zourabichvili Failure to Prevent Violence – Lessons Learnt from the Georgian- Abkhazian Conflict Resolution Process 113 Liana Kvarchelia Missed Chances in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – A View from South Ossetia 131 Alan Parastaev 3 PART IV: THE INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE 139 OSCE Early Warning and the August Conflict in Georgia 141 Dov Lynch The Role of the United Nations in Abkhazia, Opportunities and Missed Opportunities between 1992 and 2009 151 Charlotte Hille United States’ and NATO’s Role in Georgia’s Territorial Conflicts August 1992-July 2008 169 Eugene Kogan Used & Missed Opportunities for Conflict Prevention in Georgia (1990-2008) – The Role of Russia 187 Markus Bernath Russia and South Ossetia: The Road to Sovereignty 207 Flemming Splidsboel Hansen PART V: CONCLUSIONS 235 Some Lessons Learnt in Conflict Prevention from the Conflicts in the Southern Caucasus 237 Predrag Jurekovi ć List of Authors and Editors 243 4 Foreword by the Editors The violent escalation of the Georgian/South Ossetian and Georgian/Abkhazian conflict in the summer of 2008 resulted in a significant deterioration of the regional security situation in this part of the Southern Caucasus. Due to the suffering of injured, expelled or killed civilians, it caused a new humanitarian catastrophe and strained the relations between Washington and Moscow. Despite the raised voices in the UN and OSCE framework starting in the early 1990ies for a proactive and preventive policy in potential crisis situations, the so called “frozen conflicts” in the Southern Caucasus seemed to have been underestimated. The issue how to close the gap between pretension and reality in regard to preventing violent conflicts has been in the centre of a research project carried out by the Institute for Peace Support and Conflict Management of the Austrian National Defence Academy since 2006. After having dealt with the instruments and concepts for conflict prevention as well as preventive strategies in regard to religious extremism in the Middle East and Western Balkans in March 2009 the case study of the Georgian/South Ossetian and the Georgian/Abkhazian conflict became the main topic of another workshop. This conference, organized in cooperation with the Austrian “International Institute for Liberal Politics” and held in Vienna, focused in particular on the lessons which can be drawn from the behaviour of international and local actors regarding conflict prevention in the Georgian/South Ossetian and Georgian/Abkhazian conflict between 1990 and 2008. The used - and much more - missed opportunities to transform these conflicts in a peaceful way were discussed by outstanding international experts on the Southern Caucasus, representatives of the OSCE and EU as well as by politicians and NGO representatives coming from the conflict region. Most of their contributions are contained in this publication. The book comprises of five parts: 5 Part I is focussed on the concepts and instruments in conflict prevention. Frida Möller, an analyst from the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at the Uppsala University in Sweden, in her contribution gives an overview about this topic with some references to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. In part II, international experts on the Southern Caucasus analyze the conflict development in regard to the (missed) opportunities for preventing an escalation. Sabine Fischer from the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris focuses on the Georgian/Abkhazian conflict. The period 2004-2006 in the aftermath of the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia is in particular the subject of the contribution by Doris Vogl who is affiliated with the University of Vienna. Beyond that she draws from a large pool of knowledge and experience due of having been engaged in different EU and OSCE missions in Georgia. Oksana Antonenko from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London analyzes the failures of conflict transformation and the root causes of the August war in her contribution. In this context she emphasizes in particular the relevance of “Track-Two-Dialogue”, a confidence-building format to which she actively contributed. Part III is dedicated to views from the region: Salomé Zourabichvili, who was Georgian Foreign Minister 2004-2005, presents a critical Georgian opinion on the missed opportunities for conflict prevention. Liana Kvarchelia from the Centre for Humanitarian Programmes in Sukhum/Sukhumi presents an Abkhazian perception of the conflict development. Finally, Alan Parastayev, who heads the Centre for Humanitarian Studies in Tskhinval/Tskhinvali, describes in his contribution the Georgian-South Ossetian relations from the angle of an NGO representative from South Ossetia. In part IV, the role of international actors in regard to the Georgian/Abkhazian and Georgian/South-Ossetian conflicts is analyzed. Dov Lynch, Senior Advisor to the the OSCE Secretary General, illuminates the OSCE’s practical experience with conflict prevention in Georgia. The role of the United Nations in Abkhazia between 1992 and 2009 is the topic of Charlotte Hille, who is Assistant Professor at the 6 University of Amsterdam. Eugene Kogan, a Senior Researcher at the Vienna based International Institute for Liberal Politics, in his contribution explores the role of the US and of NATO in the context of the conflicts in the Southern Caucasus. Russia’s policy is then analyzed in the contributions of Markus Bernath, a journalist for the Austrian daily “Der Standard”, and by Flemming Hansen, a Danish Defence College in Copenhagen. The final part V closes with some general lessons which can be drawn from the Southern Caucasus cases for conflict prevention. This is done by Predrag Jurekovi ć, co-editor of this book and researcher at the Institute for Peace Support and Conflict Management at the Austrian National Defence Academy. Some of the contributions included in this book are primarily based upon the practical experience of the authors in the examined conflicts. Another case is that authors belonging to one of the conflict parties present their personal views. In these cases, unlike in the contributions based primarily upon academic research references are used less often, respectively the articles are written without pointing to other sources. The editors want to thank Veronika Siegl and Rosalind Willi for their substantial efforts in lecturing the articles as well as Christian M. Huber for the technical realization. By publishing this book the editors want to raise the awareness on the necessity of and the challenges connected with conflict prevention, in particular regarding the lessons learnt which can be drawn from the difficult processes of conflict transformation in the region of Southern Caucasus. With the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes and the Study Group Information series published at the Austrian National Defence Academy we have deliberately chosen a framework of security political research cooperation on regional stability active in the Western Balkans and the Southern Caucasus alike. Walter Feichtinger Ernst M. Felberbauer 7 Predrag Jurekovi ć 8 PART I: CONCEPTS IN CONFLICT PREVENTION 9 Concepts and Instruments in Conflict Prevention Frida Möller A number of positive signs indicate that the world is getting more peaceful. Since the early 1990s, the overall number of armed conflicts in the world has decreased even though there has been a small increase in the last few years, illustrated in Figure 1. Another encouraging trend is that the number of full scale wars (over 1 000 battle-related deaths in one year) has decreased during the same time period. In 1991, the year with the highest number of armed conflicts since 1946, one third reached the level of war. In 2007, there were only four wars registered in the world. This is the lowest number of wars since 1957, when the number was just three 1. Fewer conflicts seem to escalate to the level of war. This in itself is encouraging. Also optimistic is that civil conflicts – the far most common type of armed conflicts – are now to a higher degree terminated through peace agreements. From the 1950s to the 1980s there were many more victories than negotiated settlements. But this pattern changed in the 1990s when the negotiated settlements grew in number and is still growing. Furthermore, negotiated settlements are more stable today than previously. In the 1990s, negotiated settlements were highly likely (44 %) to break down within five years. Today, around 12 % seem to break down. This is a dramatic decrease. 1 Harbom, Lotta/Melander, Erik/Wallensteen, Peter: Dyadic Dimensions of Armed Conflict, 1946 - 2007. In: Journal of Peace Research , 45(5)/ 2008, pp. 697-710. 11 Figure 1: Number of armed conflicts 1946-2007, by intensity Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009/02/23 These encouraging signs are often overshadowed by the brutality of some of today’s conflicts.
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