Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London. He is co-author of Chechnya: calamity in the Caucasus (New York, 1998) and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war (New York, 2003).

Recent articles

A neglected east-central European dispute involving a breakaway statelet, regional rivalry, contested territory, black markets and bearish presidents seems to have all the ingredients of a Caucasus-Balkans bloodbath. But seen close, Moldova-Transdniestria dissolves such preconceptions, finds Thomas de Waal.

Georgia and Russia have stumbled into a war that need not have happened. The price of their political calculation - and folly - is being paid by civilians on both sides, says Thomas de Waal of the IWPR

Georgia's blitzkrieg against one of its two breakaway territories, South Ossetia, is provoking a ferocious Russian response. This is a political as well as a military disaster, says Thomas de Waal - and the primary responsibility lies with Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russian bullying and Georgian insensitivity are combining to heat the frozen conflict over the disputed Black Sea territory of Abkhazia