Regional attitudes toward weapons possession changed rapidly in the late 1980s as \u201cthe Soviet system was collapsing and much of the region was descending into ethnic conflict.\u201d1<\/sup> Soviet leadership struggled, and ultimately failed, to keep long-running ethnic tensions under control in the South Caucasian states, all of which were Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). By the end of the 1980s, it had become abundantly clear that the Soviet Union could no longer guarantee law, order, and protection to its citizens in the South Caucasus. As Armenians, Azeris, and Georgians faced this reality, they took security into their own hands. Citizens began acquiring SALW on a large scale,2<\/sup> through theft (namely, robbery of Soviet military stores), smuggling, and illegal purchases. This quickly devolved into a large-scale weapons circulation regime that overtook the entire region, exacerbating conflict and intensifying violence.<\/span><\/p>\n As the 1980s drew to a close, multiple conflicts were already underway in the South Caucasus. Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994), an ethnic and territorial conflict over control of the eponymous oblast. The oblast\u2014a term given to regional territories with autonomous status within SSRs\u2014was located in Azerbaijan but inhabited by ethnic Armenians. Possession of Nagorno-Karabakh had been a subject of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan for centuries; as soon as the Soviet Union was no longer present to enforce the territorial rules of the oblast, fighting immediately commenced.<\/p>\n Similar events had begun in Georgia by the turn of the decade. Abkhazia, situated on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and formally a part of Georgian territory, had also operated as an autonomous zone under the Soviets. In 1989, Abkhazia began to push for territorial sovereignty, igniting a war with Georgia. South Ossetia, another Soviet oblast in Georgia, similarly declared independence in 1990, sparking a war that pitted the Georgian government and Georgian-backed militias against South Ossetian separatists and Russian forces.<\/span><\/p>\n These two territorial conflicts \u201ctook place in a context of civil war in Georgia proper.\u201d3<\/sup> In 1991, post-election violence led to a coup that plunged the state into a full-scale war between the ousted government, the newly elected government, segments of the Georgian National Guard, and numerous paramilitary groups that lasted until 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n With four conflicts raging, the South Caucasus became a seedbed for the theft, smuggling, and circulation of arms by government-affiliated forces, black market dealers, and common citizens. The specific arms procurement sources, motivations, and issues for each of the three South Caucasian states will be examined in the following sections, as each state possesses its own singularities. However, similar themes hold true for all three. The region as a whole was affected by \u201cforces of destructive nationalism, intolerance towards diversity, belief in violence as a way to resolve problems, vulnerability to external influences \u2026 [and] an excessive accumulation of armaments.\u201d4<\/sup> These forces were magnified by a growing belief among South Caucasians that, in the immediate post-Soviet era, a lack of weapons meant a lack of safety.5<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n As a result, illegal arms transfers rose steeply at the peak of the conflicts in the mid-1990s. Most transfers occurred on the black market and \u201cmoved through unofficial channels, but with sanction or approval by some government agencies.\u201d6<\/sup> When conflicts dissipated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and South Caucasian states finally had a chance to solidify their burgeoning autonomy and governmental authority, they attempted to curb the unfettered weapons trade within their borders. Yet the South Caucasus remained an outsider to the international arms control establishment.<\/p>\n All three states possessed \u201cvirtually no viable mechanisms to control or limit the main types of conventional weapons,\u201d7<\/sup> and there was little definitive information on the amount and varieties of weapons in circulation. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia all became state-parties to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which limits conventional weapons and military forces deployed in the region, though there have been ongoing issues with their treaty compliance.8<\/sup> Only Georgia became a signatory to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which restricts or bans weapons that can cause indiscriminate harm to civilians, such as anti-personnel mines or blinding lasers. Failure to embrace arms control was due to a combination of factors, including competition and grievances between regional powers, the normalization of weapons ownership, state corruption, and \u201cfears of renewed conflict and general insecurity.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, unchecked SALW trafficking became an especially dire issue in Georgia. Because the Abkhazia war, the South Ossetia war, and the Georgian Civil War all began as soon as Georgia became an independent state, its still-developing security and institutional apparatuses were incapable of controlling SALW proliferation. As the state failed to \u201cmaintain monopoly control over either law-enforcement and security agencies,\u201d10 the emergence of numerous armed paramilitary groups involved in the three conflicts exacerbated illegal SALW circulation. As a result of the state\u2019s engulfment in armed conflict, the growth of an illegal arms circulation network, and the sharp increase in SALW possession by both civilians and paramilitaries, Georgia quickly found itself with a \u201c\u2018war economy\u2019\u2014a phenomenon typical of weak, war-torn societies plagued with illegal activities.\u201d11<\/sup> Georgia\u2019s \u2018war economy\u2019 was a direct result of rampant SALW circulation, which, in turn, \u201cpromoted further proliferation.\u201d12<\/sup>\u00a0Weapons entered Georgia from a variety of sources. The most common was Russian military stockpiles, which were known to provide weapons to Georgians through five different avenues: \u201cfree distribution, seizure\/theft, sale, regional trading \u2026 [and] external procurement.\u201d13<\/sup>\u00a0Reported thefts of Russian stockpiles were often, in fact, coordinated illegal transfers. From these stockpiles, Georgians procured a considerable amount of weaponry, including grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, landmines, and small mortars.14<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n Russia indirectly supported Abkhazia and anti-government factions in the Georgian Civil War, and directly supported South Ossetian separatists through political influence and weapons transfers. Primarily, Russia provided arms out of a national interest in destabilizing Georgia as a newly independent state and undermining the growth of anti-Russian attitudes and policies. However, Russia was not Georgia\u2019s only source for weapons. Paramilitary groups and non-state actors also procured SALW from Romania, the Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.15<\/sup>\u00a0Georgian paramilitaries also \u201cbenefited from Russian-abetted small arms proliferation in neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia,\u201d16<\/sup>\u00a0particularly as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh left a surplus of weapons available for purchase through non-state intermediaries.<\/span><\/p>\n From the early to mid-1990s, Georgia remained in a perilous situation of widespread illegal arms circulation. Between 1989 and 1993, SALW circulation in Georgia had the following effects:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[It] catalysed the militarization of politics, leading to the political dominance of armed militias and paramilitary groups; augmented the scale and lethality of armed violence in the South Ossetian, Abkhaz, and Georgian conflicts; facilitated Russian attempts to alter the balance of power between belligerents; and caused widespread loss of civilian life and the breakdown of law and order.\u201d17<\/sup><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n However, after 1993, Georgia managed to largely resolve all three of its conflicts for the time being. Georgia had a growing interest in integrating into the international community, particularly European alliances and Atlantic security arrangements. To become a more appealing international partner, the state attempted to reform its institutions and curb SALW proliferation.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1994, Georgia adopted a series of laws concerning SALW possession and \u201claunched several schemes to collect SALW from the civilian population.\u201d18<\/sup>\u00a0The state also sought to limit the reach of paramilitaries and for-hire security personnel. In all, these domestic measures aimed to limit the open availability of weapons and reduce black market arms networks. On the international level, Georgia received technical and institutional arms control support from Western partners, including North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states. Georgia became party to major arms control agreements, including the CFE Treaty and the CCW. However, in the Georgian context, these international measures did little to help domestic arms control issues, as they were \u201ctoo limited to cover paramilitary groups and irregular forces.\u201d19<\/sup><\/p>\n Moreover, Abkhazia and South Ossetia\u2019s semi-autonomous status impeded government-led arms control and verification measures. As a result, Georgia’s measures were \u201ceither non-existent or too vague to allow for a meaningful observation of the security situation.\u201d20 Despite making valid attempts at arms control, Georgia remained plagued by corruption, weakness in its democratic institutions, black market crime (including a prominent shadow economy21<\/sup><\/span>), privatized security, and deeply embedded norms around \u2018gun culture.\u2019 The enduring availability and proliferation of SALW contributed to Georgia\u2019s struggles with law and order, political stability, social cleavages, and post-conflict tensions with Abkhazia and South Ossetia.22<\/sup><\/p>\n Similar to Georgia, SALW availability in Armenia and Azerbaijan was low during the decades of Soviet control, as it was strictly regulated and largely limited to hunting purposes. However, as the Soviet regime lost authority over the South Caucasus in the late 1980s, weapons proliferation increased. For Armenia and Azerbaijan, the motivation behind a large-scale weapons proliferation regime was the outbreak of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the oblast became an epicenter of large-scale war between the two states following decades of ethnic tension.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 1988, citizens in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh began protesting for the oblast\u2019s reunification with the Armenian state. However, these protests were met with a heavy-handed response from Azerbaijan. Azeri forces\u2014supported by the Soviets\u2014killed some Armenians in Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, and attempted to forcefully expel the remaining ethnic Armenian population from the oblast.23<\/sup>\u00a0As the Soviets tried and failed to keep the violence at bay, Armenians quickly \u201cbecame convinced that it was necessary to acquire weapons simply to ensure their physical survival.\u201d24<\/sup>\u00a0The period from 1988 to the establishment of Armenia\u2019s sovereignty in 1991 was \u201ccharacterized by a chaotic and practically uncontrolled inflow of arms into the country,\u201d25<\/sup>\u00a0many of which were transported into Nagorno-Karabakh to support the war effort.<\/span><\/p>\n Weapons were typically supplied by the Armenian Union of Hunters and stolen from government storage facilities in Armenia, armed security personnel, and Soviet military stores (these \u2018robberies\u2019, again, were often staged transfers).26 <\/sup>Paramilitary groups and armed non-state groups multiplied, as did handmade SALW and ammunition. When the Armenian government was established, it directed its Defence Committee to purchase SALW, often through illicit Soviet sales. The Armenian state was entirely focused on weapons acquisition for national defense and to accomplish its goal of retaking Nagorno-Karabakh. However, this also left the state vulnerable to unfettered arms circulation. As a result, it is unknown how many, and what kinds, of SALW were transported into Armenia.27<\/sup><\/p>\n As the Armenian state and public dove into rampant arms circulation, Azerbaijanis were stifled by both their own authorities and the authorities in Moscow. Azerbaijani officials attempted to convince citizens of their safety even as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated, and Soviet officials tried to prevent citizens from acquiring their own arms. Authorities confiscated hundreds of weapons from the Azerbaijani population in Nagorno-Karabakh and the neighboring Agdam region.28<\/sup> Simultaneously, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh became heavily armed, leaving Azerbaijanis vulnerable to the increasing violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Around the same time, Azerbaijani and Soviet authorities banned the formation of paramilitaries, exacerbating the power imbalance between Armenia and Azerbaijan. By 1989, it became abundantly clear that \u201cthere was an acute shortage of weapons and ammunition on the Azerbaijani side.\u201d29<\/sup> In response, citizens built homemade firearms and explosive devices and sold their livestock and personal possessions to illegally purchase rifles, pistols, and machine guns, mostly from Soviet\/Russian stockpiles, while the government returned previously confiscated weapons to citizens.30<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n The Azerbaijani and Soviet decision to limit weapons acquisition and ban paramilitaries put Azerbaijan at a significant disadvantage in the war, but prevented widespread arms circulation for a time. However, this began to change in the early 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, large quantities of SALW and heavy weapons were funneled into Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh. As weapons circulation increased, public trust in the governments waned, political turbulence intensified, crime rates rose, and fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh reached its peak. The war resulted in thirty thousand casualties, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and full Armenian control of the oblast.31<\/sup><\/p>\n When the war was formally over, both states attempted to disarm citizens, demobilize paramilitaries, and retain control of SALW circulation. Armenian government ministries were tasked with tracking illegal arms transfers, confiscating weapons, and prosecuting those involved. However, Armenia only managed to account for \u201c40-50 percent of weapons trafficked to Armenia\u201d32<\/sup> during wartime, leaving it unclear where the remaining portion ended up. In the long term, these measures underpinned a gradual disarmament campaign that positively impacted arms control and succeeded in reducing unregistered weapons in civilian possession.33<\/sup> Armenia was more successful in demobilizing armed groups, which did not have any significant public presence after the war, and in maintaining relatively low levels of armed crime.<\/p>\n Although the SALW trade in Armenia and Azerbaijan was not eliminated, substantial progress was made in the post-war period. In the immediate post-war years, crime rates in Azerbaijan exponentially worsened due to the high rates of illegal firearm possession throughout the state,34<\/sup> and weapons circulation went unabated. However, from the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Azerbaijan successfully limited the presence of armed non-state groups and the circulation of SALW. This was partially due to the influence of Russia, as well as the more autocratic nature of the Azerbaijani regime, which proved effective in seizing \u201ccontrol of the arms procurement process\u201d35<\/sup> and collecting illegally possessed SALW.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Despite this progress, Armenia and Azerbaijan still failed to meaningfully engage in international arms control following the war. Neither state became a party to any SALW-related arms control measures, including the CCW, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. This was largely a result of the persistent threat of conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (which occurred in 2020 and again in 2023), and a general \u201cinsecurity dynamic sustained by a lack of trust\u201d36<\/sup> between the two states. Though Yerevan and Baku made significant progress in SALW control within their borders, they were generally uninterested in limiting their capability to use force abroad. Ultimately, the two states were unwilling to make any \u201ccompromises that [were] guaranteed to be politically costly and difficult,37<\/sup> even if it would have improved regional stability.<\/p>\n When the Soviets lost effective control over the South Caucasus in the late 1980s, it opened a Pandora\u2019s box of ethnic wars and weapons proliferation in the region. Weapons originally spread as a response to armed conflict and the need for self-protection among citizens, but transformed into something else altogether. The presence of weapons and the \u201cpersistence of unresolved conflicts \u2026 started to create secondary security effects,\u201d38<\/sup> including criminality, violence, and an illegal arms trade. These issues were not endemic to one state, but to all in the region, and were exacerbated by institutional corruption, the militarization of ethnic groups, and foreign influences.39<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n Due to its geographic positioning between the Balkans, Eurasia, and the Middle East, the South Caucasus became a vital throughway for trade and transportation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the concurrent expansion of the black market for weapons, the South Caucasus likewise became a corridor for the illegal transfer of firearms40<\/sup> and was left vulnerable to political and criminal interference from these neighboring regions, namely the Soviet Union. Arms transfers peaked across the South Caucasus in the 1990s, with all three states engaging in rampant weapons acquisition to aid their separate campaigns in armed conflicts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Both during and after this peak, the newly independent South Caucasian states did not embrace international arms control mechanisms. They also failed to engage in meaningful regionally-led arms control efforts. External influences and the region\u2019s general disinterest in arms control contributed to residual state instability and ethnic strife, which left the South Caucasus \u201cat the very beginning of a tortuous path\u201d41<\/sup> toward reining in SALW proliferation. These factors compounded regional insecurity from the immediate post-Soviet era into the early 2000s, and limited both the interest and abilities of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to engage in effective arms control.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Isabel Silagy is a recent graduate from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies with an M.A. in International Affairs and a specialization in Security Studies. Her research focuses on the role of international institutions in preventing armed conflict and human rights violations, and her areas of expertise include human security, mass atrocities, and South Caucasus politics. Isabel co-authored a chapter in the newly published Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations, and she seeks to support the evolution of national and global security planning by integrating holistic approaches that reduce human risk.<\/p>\n Avagyan, G. \u201cArmenia: Forcing the peace\u201d in <\/span>The Caucasus: Armed and Divided – Small arms and light weapons proliferation and humanitarian consequences in the Caucasus<\/span><\/i>, p. 1-12. London: Saferworld, 2003.<\/span> https:\/\/www.saferworld-global.org\/downloads\/pubdocs\/ArmedArmenia.pdf<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Center for Preventive Action. \u201cTensions Between Armenia and Azerbaijan.\u201d <\/span>Council on Foreign Relations, <\/span><\/i>12 August 2025. <\/span>https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/global-conflict-tracker\/conflict\/nagorno-karabakh-conflict<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cornell, S.E. \u201cThe growing threat of transnational crime\u201d in <\/span>The South Caucasus: a challenge for the EU<\/span><\/i>, p. 23-37. Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2003. <\/span>https:\/\/www.iss.europa.eu\/sites\/default\/files\/EUISSFiles\/CP65.pdf<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Darchiashvili, D. \u201cGeorgia: A hostage to arms\u201d in <\/span>The Caucasus: Armed and Divided – Small arms and light weapons proliferation and humanitarian consequences in the Caucasus<\/span><\/i>, p. 1-33. London: Saferworld, 2003. <\/span>https:\/\/www.saferworld-global.org\/downloads\/pubdocs\/ArmedGeorgia.pdf<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Darchiashvili, D. \u201cGeorgian security problems and policies\u201d in <\/span>The South Caucasus: a challenge for the EU<\/span><\/i>, p. 107-128. Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2003. <\/span>https:\/\/www.iss.europa.eu\/sites\/default\/files\/EUISSFiles\/CP65.pdf<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Demetriou, S. (2002). \u201cPolitics From The Barrel of a Gun: Small Arms Proliferation and Conflict in the Republic of Georgia (1989-2001).\u201d <\/span>Case Studies<\/h3>\n
Georgia<\/i><\/h4>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nArmenia & Azerbaijan<\/span><\/i><\/h4>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
\nAbout the Author<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n
\nEndnotes<\/h3>\n
\n
Bibliography<\/h3>\n