Poverty and unemployment remain high across the region, as do the numbers of refugees and displaced persons. Along those borders that remain nominally open, bureaucratic barriers impede free trade. The borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan and between Georgia and Russia are entirely or partially shut, the result of tensions between neighboring countries. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the conflicts that accompanied it, the South Caucasus was thrown into a complicated and fractured condition, de Waal said. Susan Glasser from Foreign Policy moderated. In an event to mark the launch of his new book, The Caucasus, An Introduction, Thomas de Waal discussed the South Caucasus and the misperceptions surrounding it, calling for better understanding of the South Caucasus as a single region. The region, which has historically functioned as an important economic and transport corridor, is grappling with the challenges of post-Soviet independence and unresolved conflicts in the three breakaway territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. Bordered by the Black and Caspian Seas and the Greater Caucasus mountain range, the three countries of the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, still suffer from political tensions with one another and with their larger neighbors.
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