by Gaochao Yi
TBILISI, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- South Caucasus, after the Balkans and North Africa, is presenting itself as a hotbed for another crisis which may well involve all the three nations in the region and players from the outside.
Ethnicity-related territorial disputes that have arisen during and after the Soviet era are the direct causes of the South Caucasus crises long in the making.
Such disputes have caused a flash conflict between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 in the north of the region and triggered on-again-off-again border sniper warfare between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the south, which claimed thousands of victims.
The three Caucasian countries combined cover an area of slightly over 186,000 square km, accounting for 0.12 percent of the global land area. Yet on this strip sandwiched between the major and minor Caucasus mountain ranges, there are other dormant conflicts.
For example, there has been a genocidal conflict between Armenia and Turkey, but the "football diplomacy" between the two nations has done a lot to ease the tension.
Local players aside, outsiders with energy, security and strategy interests in this region are also trying to take advantage of the situation there, further complicating the Caucasus chaos.
NATO, for one, is a big player in this region. To cash in its Bucharest Summit promise of eventually allowing Georgia into the military alliance, it may have to reset and perhaps even reinvent its relations with the former Cold War nemesis, not only in the South Caucasus but in all those areas where NATO and Russia have their respective interests to claim and verify.
