The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 Mongol invasion and occupation of 1235. (The Mongols re- named the fort Narin Qala: literally, Little Fort.) Enter the Russians Two other powers then began a centuries-long tug-of-war over the region: the Persians and the Ottoman Turks. Once Catherine the Great saw advantage in using Christian brethren to fight her two Muslim rivals during the expansion of the Russian empire, she signed a treaty with Georgia in the mid-1700s making it a vassal state, and annexed it in 1801. After the Russian Revolution, Georgia proclaimed its inde- pendence. That status was short-lived, however, for the So- viet Union annexed Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1922. In 1936, Georgia became a separate Soviet republic. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia proclaimed independence. Hostilities with breakaway Ab- khazia began almost immediately, but in 1994 Russia and Georgia signed a treaty that brought a temporary peace to the region. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. began assisting Georgia with counterterrorism so it could operate effectively against Chechen and Islamic militants operating out of the Pankisi Gorge deep in the Caucasus. This relationship blossomed under the Bush administration, with Georgia ultimately seek- ing NATO membership following the 2003 Rose Revolution and the presidential victory of the young anti-corruption can- didate, Mikheil Saakashvili. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, running fromAzerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, was completed in July 2006, fur- ther eroding Russian economic control over its former vassal. Yet following con- troversial NATO exercises in “crisis re- sponse” and “field training” involving 1,000 troops inMay 2009, the Russian mil- itary still patrols Georgian territory along its border with South Ossetia. Toward Armenia Departing Tbilisi and its ancient Or- thodox churches full of exquisite icons and smoky incense, we drove a van full of diplomatic pouches along the Mtkvari River (regarded by geographers as the nat- ural division between Europe and Asia as it flows into the Caspian through Azerbai- jan) on the two-lane road that heads south- southeast toward the Armenian border. Once out of the river valley the road is straight and flat, interspersed with unre- markable little towns. To the west, how- ever, are picturesque rolling hills crowned with the occasional thousand-year-old, rough-hewn church. Approaching the Armenian border, the road drops into the Debed River Valley and parallels it until a narrow bridge ap- pears just past Sadakhlo. Full of stationary traffic, the bridge leads to the Armenian border crossing in a ramshackle town across the river. Even with diplomatic plates, there is no way to jump the line because of heavy oncoming traffic, but the picturesque river flowing out of the hills to the south eases the wait. Across the bridge, once one passes through Armenian im- migration and past Russian military sentries, the striking scenery really begins. There are two routes to Yerevan, but because Azerbaijani snipers were active on the road running along the disputed border, the regional security officer had forbidden its use. The status of the landlocked, de facto “in- dependent republic” of Nagorno-Karabakh, an island of Ar- menians within the contiguous borders of Azerbaijan, remains unresolved. The flip side to Nagorno-Karabakh is the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked enclave of Azerbaijani nationals within Armenia, southeast of Yerevan along the Iranian border. The valley road hugs the forested Debed riverbank for sev- eral miles before entering the mouth of a huge gorge. Sheer cliffs soar above the two-lane road that rides a roller coaster of topographic undulations along the river. On the opposite bank, Soviet train tracks intermittently disappear under mas- Tbilisi, as depicted by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov in 1837. Lermontov painted the scene while in military service in the Caucasus.