6.5: Complex Geographies of Armed Conflict- Armenia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Ukraine

Learning Objective

• Examine the conditions and consequences of armed conflict in the Caucasus region, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

 

The Armenian Genocide

Ancient Armenia, located in the south Caucasus area of Eurasia, was settled in the Neolithic era but its first recorded state proper was the kingdom of Urartu from the 9th century BCE. The boundaries of the state varied considerably over the centuries but such common factors as religion and language were united by long-lasting dynastic clans, which gave Armenia its own unique identity throughout history. Armenia was the first nation to formally adopt Christianity (in the early 4th century CE). Despite periods of autonomy, over the centuries Armenia came under the sway of various empires including the Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Persian, and Ottoman. During World War I in the western portion of Armenia (beginning in 1915), the Ottoman Empire instituted a policy of forced resettlement coupled with other harsh practices that resulted in at least 1 million Armenian deaths along with tens of thousands of Christian Greeks and Assyrians in present-day Turkey. The Ottoman government’s goal was to retain and exert Muslim Turkish power.

The term genocide describes destructive actions undertaken with the purposeful intent to destroy a specific group of people based on some perceived difference – usually racial or religious. Although this definition excludes cultural and political genocide, it serves as a starting point to describe processes designed to annihilate a group of people. Employing a spatial approach, researchers identify several stages that lead to genocide (Genocide Watch):

1. Classification: People are differentiated as "us" and "them"
2. Symbolization: People are forced to identify themselves
3. Discrimination: People begin to face systematic discrimination
4. Dehumanization: People equated to animals, vermin, or disease
5. Organization: Government creates separate groups (police/military) to enforce policies
6. Polarization: Government broadcasts propaganda against the targeted group
7. Preparation: Official action to remove/relocate people begins
8. Persecution: Beginning of murders, theft of property, and trial massacres
9. Extermination: Mass extermination begins - seen as "extermination" not murder, because people have been dehumanized
10. Denial: Government denies that it has committed any crime

There are varying dates for the end of the genocide: Many of the genocidal practices ended in 1918 when World War I concluded, but deportations and discrimation continued when the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. The University of Minnesota’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies program explains that:

As the first of the modern genocides, the Armenian Genocide holds a complicated place in world history. For decades, the Armenian community, dispersed throughout the globe, struggled with recognition. Today, more than twenty countries officially acknowledge the atrocities as genocide. Uruguay was the first to officially recognize the genocide back in 1965. Several countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia and, most recently, Cyprus in early April 2015, have gone as far to make genocide denial a crime.^[1]

 

Landscapes of Memory and Trauma

How we memorialize the events of humanity's worst atrocities is a difficult yet necessary task. Holocaust survivor, novelist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel stated “To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”. Statues, monuments, murals, and other built components become part of a cultural landscape that recognizes the pain and suffering, and survival, of a people. The Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument in Los Angeles County, home to a large Armenian-American community, is dedicated to the victims of the genocide (Figure 6.5.1).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Photograph of the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Montebello, California. (CC BY-SA 3.0; Serouj via Wikimedia Commons).

Conflict in the Caucasus

Several ethnic groups that remain in Russia desire independence, particularly in the outskirts of the country in the Caucasus region along Russia’s border with Georgia and Armenia (Figure 6.5.2). Chechnya is largely comprised of Chechens, a distinct Sunni Muslim nation. The territory opposed Russian conquest of the region in the 19th century but was forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. 400,000 Chechens were deported by Stalin in the 1940s and more than 100,000 died. Although Chechnya sought independence from Russia, sometimes through violent opposition, it has remained under Russian control following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Dagestan has been the site of several Islamic insurgencies seeking separation from Russia. Ossetia remains divided between a northern portion controlled by Russia and a southern region controlled by Georgia.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Map of the Caucasus Region . (CC BYSA 3.0; Jeroenscommon via Wikimedia Commons).

In an area as large and as ethnically diverse as Russia, controlling the territory in a way that is acceptable to all of its residents has proven difficult. In many large countries, the farther away you get from the capital area and large cities, the more cultural differences you find. Some governments have embraced this cultural difference, creating autonomous regions that function largely independently though remain part of the larger state. Stalin and Russia’s czars before him tried to unify the country through the suppression of ethnic difference, but people have resisted the imposition of Russian and Soviet power and control.

Afghanistan

The ancient history of Afghanistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, is full of fascinating cultures, from early nomadic tribes to the realms of Achaemenid Persia, the Seleucids, the Mauryans, the Parthians, and Sasanians, as well as steppe people like the Kushans or the Hephthalites. All these civilizations have left their mark on the region, leading to a unique blend of cultures and religions. Afghanistan shares borders with Iran to the west, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, China to the east and northeast, and Pakistan to the southeast. The country is one of the main connectors between Central and South Asia. This fact has given the territory tremendous geopolitical importance. Throughout millennia, vital strategic invasion routes and trade ways crossed the areas of contemporary Afghanistan. Notable examples are the Silk Road and the Khyber Pass (Figure 6.5.3).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): The Khyber Pass in Pakistan links the Indian subcontinent to Central Asia. (CC BY-SA 2.5; James Mollison via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Still, passage through Afghanistan has challenges. Most of the country varies between mountainous terrain and deep, narrow valleys. The mighty Hindu Kush range separates the plains in the north and southwest. The southern part is comparably arid, and the Registan Desert covers large areas in the Kandahar province (Figure 6.5.4).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): A photograph from 1969 showing a caravan through the Registan Desert, Afghanistan. (CC BY-SA 3.0; Mouliric via Wikimedia Commons).

 

As in early times, many of the population today are modest farmers or herders, especially in northern parts of the country that provide fertile ground. Rivers and streams have always played a vital role in urban structures and early farming. Ancient cultures have developed close to waterways such as the Helmand, Kabul, and Oxus rivers.Afghanistan is also rich in minerals, and mining activities have played a pivotal role since ancient times. The mountainous and rough terrain, however, makes it challenging to reach these resources. Early inhabitants of Afghanistan, therefore, had to work hard to harvest precious ores.

Afghanistan from the Late 1800s through the Cold War

In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the “Great Game” between British India and the Russian Empire. Russia was fearful of British commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding “the jewel in the crown,” India, to the vast empire it was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and constant threat of war between the two empires. Afghanistan’s relations with Moscow became more cordial after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Soviet Union was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Afghanistan in 1919 after the Third Anglo-Afghan war and signed an Afghan-Soviet nonaggression pact in 1921, which also provided for Afghan transit rights through the Soviet Union. Early Soviet assistance included financial aid, aircraft and attendant technical personnel, and telegraph operators. At the beginning of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1953, the Soviet government had three main long-term objectives. The first was to threaten the Iranian oilfields or put themselves in a position to do so in the coming years. The second was to strengthen influence in the Indian Peninsula. The last goal was to divert western weapons to unproductive areas.

On October 31, 1979, Soviet informants to the Afghan Armed Forces, under orders from the inner circle of advisers under Soviet premier Brezhnev, relayed information for them to undergo maintenance cycles for their tanks and other crucial equipment. Meanwhile, telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul were severed, isolating the capital. With a deteriorating security situation, large numbers of Soviet Airborne Forces joined stationed ground troops and began to land in Kabul on December 25.
Foreign ministers from 34 Islamic nations adopted a resolution that condemned the Soviet intervention and demanded “the immediate, urgent and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops” from the Muslim nation of Afghanistan. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution protesting the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by a vote of 104–18. Soviet troops occupied the cities and main arteries of communication, while the mujahideen waged guerrilla war in small groups in the almost 80 percent of the country that escaped government and Soviet control. Soviets used their air power to deal harshly with both rebels and civilians, leveling villages to deny safe haven to the enemy, destroying vital irrigation ditches, and laying millions of land mines.

The Rise of the Taliban

Following the Soviet withdrawal, some of the foreign volunteers (including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda) and young Afghan refugees, went on to continue violent jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and abroad. From 1989 until 1992, the Afghan government tried to solve the ongoing civil war with economic and military aid, but without Soviet troops on the ground. The Taliban’s early victories in late 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. The Taliban attempted to capture Kabul in early 1995 but were repelled by Afghan forces. In 1996, the Taliban, with military support from Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia, seized Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The Taliban have been condemned internationally for the harsh enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, which has resulted in the brutal treatment of many Afghans, especially women. During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban and their allies committed massacres against Afghan civilians, denied UN food supplies to 160,000 starving civilians, and conducted a policy of scorched earth, burning vast areas of fertile land and destroying tens of thousands of homes. In its post-9/11 insurgency, the group has been accused of using terrorism as a specific tactic to further their ideological and political goals.

In December 2001, after the Taliban government was overthrown and the new Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai was formed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to assist the Karzai administration and provide basic security. Taliban forces also began regrouping inside Pakistan, while more coalition troops entered Afghanistan and began rebuilding the war-torn country.

The U.S. Withdrawal

Even by the standards of Afghanistan’s tumultuous history, 2021 marked a major watershed for the country. In 2021, U.S. and international forces departed after nearly two decades of operations in Afghanistan; the internationally backed Afghan government and its military forces collapsed; and the Taliban, a Sunni Islamist extremist group that formerly ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, retook power. The aftershocks of these events continue to reverberate within Afghanistan, throughout its region, and in the United States as Afghans and U.S. policymakers alike grapple with the reality of the Taliban’s renewed rule.

At the outset of 2021, the Afghan government was a close U.S. counterterrorism partner, the result of nearly 20 years of substantial U.S. and international support, including the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops and the provision of tens of billions of dollars in assistance. President Donald Trump had withdrawn all but 2,500 U.S. troops, the lowest U.S. force level since 2001, in advance of the full military withdrawal to which the United States agreed in the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement. U.S. officials committed to continue to provide financial support to Afghan forces and expressed confidence about their capabilities vis-a-vis the Taliban, while conceding that those forces remained reliant on U.S. support.

At the same time, the Taliban were arguably at their strongest since 2001, when they were driven from power by U.S., international, and U.S.-backed Afghan forces, having steadily gained territory and improved their tactical capabilities over the course of their resilient two-decade insurgency. The Afghan government against which the Taliban fought was weakened by deep internal divisions, factional infighting, and endemic corruption, and Taliban forces enjoyed certain advantages over their Afghan government counterparts, including greater cohesion and financial sustainability, according to one January 2021 outside assessment.

The Afghanistan in which the Taliban came to power in August 2021 was in many ways a different country than the one they last ruled in 2001. After 2001, women became active participants in many parts of Afghan society; protections for them, and ethnic and religious minorities, were enshrined in the country’s 2004 constitution. While some early Taliban actions suggested a possible measure of moderation from their highly oppressive 1996-2001 rule, UN Rapporteur Bachelet said in June 2022 that “what we are witnessing in Afghanistan today is the institutionalized, systematic oppression of women” and that “Afghan women are rapidly facing the worst-case scenario many-feared.”

The Taliban takeover appears to have reduced high levels of violence that characterized the conflict, a development particularly welcomed by those in rural areas, but it has increased fears of many Afghans about repression and women’s rights. The Taliban have closed the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which had been a part of the former Afghan government, and have reinstated the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which enforced the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam in the 1990s. The ministry has issued guidance that seeks to impose new restrictions on Afghan women, including by directing that women should not be allowed to travel long distances without a male guardian and that male relatives of women who do not wear a hijab that fully covers their bodies should be punished. Amnesty International reported in July 2022 that increasing numbers of women and girls have been arrested for violating these policies. Those restrictions, together with the overall economic collapse, have led to a decline in women’s participation in the workforce.

 

Invasions of Ukraine

Although Russia today is comprised mostly of people who speak Russian and identify with the Russian ethnicity, it contains 185 different ethnic groups speaking over 100 different languages. The largest minority groups in Russia are the Tatars, representing around 4 percent of the population with over 5 million people, and Ukrainians at around 1.4 percent or almost 2 million people. Other ethnic groups, like the Votes near Saint Petersburg, have only a few dozen members remaining. Because of the Soviet resettlement policies, the former Soviet republics have sizable Russian minorities. Kazakhstan and Latvia, for example, are almost one-quarter Russian. This has often led to tension within Russia as minority groups have sought independence and outside of Russia as ethnic groups have clashed over leadership.

In Ukraine in particular, tension between the Ukrainian population and Russian minority has remained high and represents a broader tension between the Eastern European regions that are more closely aligned with Russia and those that seek greater connectivity and trade with Western Europe. Eastern Ukraine is largely comprised of Russian speakers, while Western Ukraine predominantly speaks the state language of Ukrainian (Figure 6.5.5). Overall, around three-quarters of people in Ukraine identify with the Ukrainian ethnicity.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Russian Language Usage in the Macroregions of Ukraine, KIIS Survey, 2003. In the East (86.8%) and South (82.3%) macroregions, the Russian language dominates absolutely. In the East-Center (46.4%) macroregion the Russian language dominates relatively. In the West (3.1%) and Center (24.2%) macroregions, the Ukrainian language dominates absolutely. (CC BY-SA 2.5; Russianname via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Russia sought control of Crimea, an area that had been annexed by the Russian Empire and was an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic until the 1950s when it was transferred to Ukraine. After protests in 2014, a majority of the people of Crimea supported joining Russia and it was formally annexed by Russian forces. The region is now controlled by Russia (Figure 6.5.6). The international community, however, has largely not recognized Crimea’s sovereignty or Russia’s annexation. This conflict again escalated in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to the largest European refugee crisis since World War II. Perspectives on the actions of Putin vary but a key notion is that recent efforts want to assert a particular notion of Russian national identity which sees Russia not as a nation-state but as a ‘civilisation’, that extends beyond the boundaries of the Russian Federation and is incompatible with an independent Ukraine (Figure 6.5.7).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Map of Crimea. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; Caitlin Finlayson based on derivative work by Crosswords, Wikimedia Commons, via Press Books).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): How Far Does Putin's Imperial Dream Stretch? Bordes of Today's Russia (in solid red shading) and the Russian Empire in 1914 (in red and grey stripes). (CC BY-ND; Statista).

 

On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched an invasion of Ukraine from the air, land, and sea. On March 2, a rare emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly was called to discuss a measure condemning the invasion and calling for Russia’s immediate withdrawal from Ukraine. The measure passed by a vote of 141 in support, 5 against (Belarus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Russian Federation, and Syria), with 35 countries, including China, abstaining. Many countries imposed sanctions on Russia and Belarus and major multinational corporations closed their operations in Russia. Meanwhile, NATO countries pledged billions of dollars in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Figure 6.5.8 shows where Ukrainians refugees fled to in the early months of the conflict. By August 2022, more than 6.4 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees. As of May 24, 2022, there were:

• 3,505,890 Ukrainian refugees in Poland,
• 961,270 Ukrainian refugees in Romania,
• 919,934 Ukrainian refugees in Russia,
• 644,474 Ukrainian refugees in Hungary,
• 471,223 Ukrainian refugees in Moldova,
• 442,316 Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, and
• 27,308 Ukrainian refugees in Belarus.

An estimated 7 million people remain in Ukraine as internally displaced persons (IDPs). The United Nations World Food Programme reported that one in three Ukrainians are unable to meet their daily food requirements due to the war and that globally, millions of people are facing food insecurity because of the Russian blockades of Ukrainian grain.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Ukrainian refugees as of May 24, 2022. This map displays the 6,552,971 refugees, mostly women and children, who fled Ukraine between Feburary 24 and May 24, 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, with airstrikes hitting across the country, some as far west as Lviv. In addition to widespread destruction, the conflict has caused a migration crises as over 6 million refugees have fled to neighboring European countries during the first three months of the war. As of May 24th, after losses in the north, Russian forces are focusing offensives in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. Mariupol officially fell to Russian forces on May 16th, following one of the war's bloodiest battles. (Used under terms of use; Elbie Bentley via Visual Capitalist).

 

Putin’s Rhetoric on the Ukraine Invasion

In July 2021, Putin wrote a 5,000 word article elaborating on his long-stated belief that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” The article stated that Ukrainian soldiers fought alongside Russians for “their great common Motherland” during World War II, but Putin provided no evidence the Red Army’s Ukrainian soldiers ever believed Russians and Ukrainians are the same people. His article also demeaned Ukraine’s persistent independence movements, which Soviet leaders were unable to stamp out for decades. Many notable historians and scholars denounced the article as a flawed and amateurish recounting of history, with the sole purpose of advancing Putin’s geopolitical goals. Historian Anne Applebaum called the article “essentially a call to arms,” and researcher Anders Åslund deemed it “one step short of a declaration of war [on Ukraine].” Just seven months later, Putin’s forces followed through and launched an all-out, brutal war against Ukraine. The falsehoods about Ukraine and Ukrainians that Putin trumpeted in his article played an important role in his justification for Russia’s full-scale invasion.

To rationalize his current war of choice against Ukraine, Putin invoked the language and imagery of World War II, specifically the words “Nazi,” and “genocide” (a term coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who studied in Lviv, in what is now western Ukraine) to evoke the Nazi Party’s policy of systematic murder of Jews and other groups targeted for annihilation. The Kremlin has turned the word “Nazi” into a catchall for anyone who disagrees with Putin and his regime, insulting the memory of all those who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.

In his February 24 speech declaring his war of choice against Ukraine, Putin falsely asserted, “the purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” Invoking his discredited “one people” narrative, Putin directly addressed members of Ukraine’s military, stating, “your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine.”

Russia’s officials have even used the word “Nazi” against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Jewish president, whose family members were killed by Nazis. Experts on genocide, Nazism, and World War II voiced their strong opposition to Putin’s attempt to compare Ukraine and its democratically elected government to that of Nazi Germany. Hundreds of historians and scholars signed a letter condemning the Russian government’s “cynical abuse of the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, and the equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also released a statement saying that “Vladimir Putin has misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history by claiming falsely that democratic Ukraine needs to be ‘denazified.’”

 

Press Freedoms

In the early 2000s, Putin launched a campaign to severely restrict all independent media outlets in Russia. The campaign was undertaken in the name of ending “misinformation” spread by these news agencies. In Putin’s view, most news reports that diverged from official, state-sponsored media outlets, constituted misinformation. Media crackdowns persisted and intensified following every major crisis experienced within Russia. In some cases, Putin ordered the arrest and imprisonment of owners of media outlets, including Russian oligarch, Vladimir Gusinsky. One by one, independent news agencies were shut down or brought under the direct control of the Russian government.

“Press freedom is defined as the ability of journalists as individuals and collectives to select, produce, and disseminate news in the public interest independent of political, economic, legal, and social interference and in the absence of threats to their physical and mental safety”.^[1] Each year the international non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders creates the World Press Freedom Index based on:

• Quantitative data on abuses against journalists and media outlets, and
• Qualitative surveys sent to journalists, researchers, academics, and human rights defenders.

Based on this data, Reporters Without Borders assigns countries a score where 100 is the best possible score (the most press freedom) and 0 is the worst (Figure 6.6.2). Russia ranks 155 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Reporters Without Borders notes that since the invasion of Ukraine almost “almost all independent media have been banned, blocked and/or declared ‘foreign agents’”.^[2]

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Map of world press freedom, 2022. Countries ranked by level of press freedom in 2022. Highest ranked countries: Norway (1), Denmark (2), and Sweden (3). Lowest ranked countries: Iran (178), Eritrea (179), and North Korea (180). (CC BY-ND 3.0; Statista),

 

 

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References:

[1] University of Minnesota. 2022. Armenia.

[2] Reporters without Borders. 2022. Methodology used for compiling the World Press Freedom Index.

[3] Reporters without Borders. 2022. Russia.

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Attributions:

“The Armenian Genocide” is adapted from Ancient Armenia by Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), Armenia by CIA World Factbook (public domain), and Spatiality of the Stages of Genocide: The Armenian Case by Shelley J. Burleson and Alberto Giordano (CC BY-NC 4.0).

“Conflict in the Caucasus” is adapted from World Regional Geography by Caitlin Finlayson (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

“Afghanistan” is adapted from Ancient Afghanistan by Ralf Rotheimer (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), Afghanistan by Lumen Learning (CC BY-SA), Rise of Anti-Soviet Sentiment by Lumen Learning (CC BY-SA), The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan by Lumen Learning (CC BY-SA), The United States and the Mujahideen by Lumen Learning (CC BY-SA), Emergence of Extremism by Lumen Learning (CC BY-SA), and Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy: In Brief by Congressional Research Service (public domain).

“Invasions in Ukraine” is adapted from World Regional Geography by Caitlin Finlayson (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) and The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge of the European Order by Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), The Chameleon in the Kremlin: Contemporary Russia under Putin by Anna McCollum et al. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), and Vladimir Putin’s Historical Disinformation by U.S. Department of State (public domain).

 

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