“Twenty years after the end of the Soviet Union, news from the South Caucasus is bleak. The region's two longest borders, which stretch between Armenia and Azerbaijan and between Georgia and Russia, remain wholly or partially shut. Corrupt bureaucrats make even the nominally open borders closed to free trade. Three de facto statelets -Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh- exist in a twilight zone, separate from their Soviet-era "parents," Georgia and Azerbaijan, but not quite sovereign states either. Hundreds of thousands of refugees remain displaced by war. Poverty and unemployment are endemic. Millions work away from home as migrant workers, mainly in Russia. Both locals and outsiders share the blame for creating this miserable picture,” Thomas de Waal, a British journalist, writer and an expert on the Caucasus says in his article “Call off the Great Game” published in the “Foreign Policy” magazine.

According to him, the region is a "Great Chessboard" where the world powers push the locals around like pawns to serve their own goals. “That is not what actually happens. In actual fact, however the geopolitical weather changes, the locals always manage to manipulate the outside powers at least as much as the other way round. In the 21st century the Caucasus is still the Caucasus, in all its complexity and variety-not an assimilated province of Russia, Turkey, or Iran,” Voice of Russia reports referring to the source.

“Over the course of history, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians, as well as the region's other smaller ethnic groups, have all persistently survived invasion and resisted assimilation. It's true the price of survival has come in the form of Faustian pacts with other Great Powers, in which the Azerbaijanis allied themselves with Turks and British; Georgians with Germans and British; Armenians, Abkhaz and Ossetians with Russians,” the source reads.

The author stresses the second mirage is that of the Russian bear looming over this region ready to maul the relatively defenseless Caucasian peoples, even today. To be sure, Russia is still the most powerful outside actor in the region.

“A third mirage is the perception of the South Caucasus as an area of great Western strategic interest-an approach, paradoxically, that actually does more harm than good,” the source reports.

“As for Western policy-makers, I believe they should ask themselves two questions every time they contemplate an intervention in the South Caucasus: "Is my action helping to open borders and free up a blocked region?" and "Does it empower ordinary people and not just governments?” the author concludes.