ABSTRACT
Ongoing instability threatens the economic recovery of the three countries that lie between the Black and Caspian Seas in the valleys of the rugged Caucasus Mountains. Dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has pitched two of these countries, Armenia and Azerbaijan, into open warfare, which has led to blockades, impoverishment, and the displacement of over a million people. In the third country; Georgia, armed separatists set up administrations in the regions of Abkhazia, Ajaria, and South Ossetia. As a result of conflicts involving the three countries, 1.5 million people have become refugees or internally displaced.
