Founded in the Internet:

Stories from the Caucasus, June 21 to June 30, 1998

In early 1998, I was asked to go to the Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan to do a mission for the American Red Cross. One of many ways in which the American Red Cross participates in the international Red Cross movement is to provide technical assistance to the Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies in developing countries. This work supplements the more conventional relief work for which the Red Cross movement is best known. In 1997 and 1998, the American Red Cross offered a management development program to support the national societies in the three southern Caucasus republics, which have been independent since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. They wanted to do an evaluation of the program, and recruited me as the principal investigator for the evaluation.

I spent nine days in the region in late June. While there, I wrote a series of travelogue-type stories. I had hoped that the Morning Call, the local newspaper in the Lehigh Valley, would publish them, and I diligently e-mailed them back as they were written. They declined, asking instead for an op-ed piece that you can access via a link to the Morning Call by clicking here.

However, I thought I would take advantage of the writing I had done by putting these stories up on the web page here. There are four stories:

Yerevan, Armenia, June 24
Tblisi, Georgia, June 25
On the Road from Tbilisi, Georgia to Baku, Azerbaijan, June 27
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 30

Enjoy, and let me know what you think at: RJKushner@aol.com