NAGORNO-KARABAKH – THE NOT-SO-FROZEN CONFLICT
TransConflict
Oct 21 2014
In recent months, the ‘frozen’ Karabakh conflict has been more fire
than ice. With outside powers stoking the flames, what are the chances
of finally securing peace?
By Neil Melvin
During the summer months, as international headlines were dominated
by the crisis in Ukraine, Eurasia experienced another serious conflict.
In late July, violent clashes between the armed forces of Azerbaijan
and those of the non-recognised state of Nagorno-Karabakh, supported
by Armenia, escalated dangerously. By early August, the fighting
reached an intensity not seen for 20 years.
Despite an official ceasefire agreed back in 1994, violence has
remained a regular feature between the two opposing forces. Dozens
have been killed by snipers, in small-scale exhanges of fire, and
from mines in the region; and hundreds of military personnel and
civilians have been injured.
Summer 2014
The violence during the summer of 2014, however, was notably different
from the previous instances of conflict. While the precise trigger
for this round of violence is disputed by each side, fighting quickly
intensified and soon led to the deaths of more than 20 combatants in
the fiercest clashes since the signing of the ceasefire agreement.
The fighting occurred both along the ‘Line of Contact’ – the
160-mile-long, heavily militarised ceasefire line that marks the
boundary between Azerbaijani forces and Armenian-held areas in and
around Karabakh – and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. The
fighting also involved high-calibre weapons, not just small arms, as
had previously been the case. As the death toll mounted, both sides
became involved in fierce exchanges of rhetoric, with Ilham Aliyev,
the president of Azerbaijan, at one point appearing to threaten war
via social media, to restore his country’s ‘territorial integrity.’
Faced with the prospect of a return to full-scale warfare,
international mediators, in the form of two of the three co-chairs
of the Minsk Group, drawn from the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – Russia and the US – called for the
ceasefire to be respected, and launched urgent efforts to dampen
down the violence. Concern over the fighting has been particularly
acute because, increasingly, the struggle over Karabakh forms part
of a destabilising regional security competition, stretching from the
South Caucasus into Eastern Europe, and involving both Russia and the
‘transatlantic community.’ This raises the prospect that unless a
breakthrough can be made in peace negotiations, the status quo that
has existed around the Karabakh conflict since the mid-1990s may
destabilise further, risking a wider regional confrontation.
An old fight
The contemporary origins of the Karabakh conflict lie in the final
years of the Soviet Union, despite the fact that both sides employ
arguments based on historical claims stretching back hundreds, if
not thousands, of years. In 1987, a group of Karabakh Armenians,
the majority population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region
within the then Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, began demanding
unification of the region with Armenia. At the time, Karabakh contained
a significant Azeri minority community and an Armenian majority.
Tensions mounted and both sides began to mobilise politically, leading
to clashes. The conflict quickly spilled beyond Karabakh into the rest
of Azerbaijan and into neighbourng Armenia, precipitating widespread
violence and ethnic cleansing, and, ultimately, full-scale war, from
1991-94. The conflict is estimated to have caused a total of 25,000
to 30,000 casualties on both sides. It also resulted in 750,000
internally displaced persons within Azerbaijan, and around 360,000
Armenian refugees who fled Azerbaijan.
The internationally unrecognised Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, a
de facto independent state with an overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian
population of 140,000, was the outcome of this war. To guarantee
strategic depth and create a security buffer zone, the Armenian
forces occupied seven Azeri districts (15 % of Azeri territory)
surrounding Karabakh, including a land link to Armenia. Throughout
the remainder of Azerbaijan and in Armenia, ancient histories and
cultures of co-existence and cooperation have been destroyed, as
societies have been ethnically unmixed – often at the point of a gun.
A Gordian knot
The OSCE Minsk Group (today co-chaired by France, the US and the
Russian Federation) was launched in 1992 in an effort to find a
peaceful settlement to the conflict. Over the last two decades there
have been repeated efforts to find solutions, and the sides have even
appeared close to agreement – most notably during the 2001 Key West
meeting, when the US made its biggest push to resolve the conflict.
More recently, in 2011, then Russian president Dmitri Medvedev led an
ultimately unsuccessful dialogue that culminated in a meeting between
Aliyev and Armenia’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, in Kazan.
Other efforts have been made to cut through the Gordian knot of the
conflict. From 2007 to 2010, Turkey and Armenia were engaged in a
dialogue to normalise relations, backed by the US, that could have
significantly advanced the Karabakh peace process. But like all other
high-level initiatives, the process foundered. In recent years, there
have been efforts to engage civil society and develop people-to-people
contacts as part of the peace process, but such relationships could
take years to mature.
Despite more than two decades of international mediation efforts,
the Karabakh conflict has remained immune to a political solution. By
and large, the region’s leaderships and the ‘international community’
have lacked the neccessary interest to find peace.
Between fire and ice
Caught in limbo between war and peace, and raised solely on
state-sanctioned versions of the conflict, generations of Armenians and
Azeris have grown up with an increasing hostility towards one another.
At state level, the positions of Armenia and Azerbaijan have also
hardened, in part because elites in both countries have sought to
manage internal dissent and to divert attention away from social
problems by invoking nationalist sentiment in regard to Karabakh. An
erosion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in both
countries has made challenging the official narratives of the conflict
a risky business. Ideas of pluralism, cooperation, and shared interests
have been framed as a lack of loyalty and even treachery.
Stepanakert (capital of Nagorno-Karabakh) authorities have come to
view the seven occupied territories (deemed vital to water security)
as an extension of the Karabakh region, making the return of this land
to Baku even more diffcult. Azerbaijan has sought to challenge this
status quo on the back of its new-found oil wealth by funding an arms
race aimed at bankrupting the Armenian economy. Armenia has responded
much as expected by increasing its own arms purchases. Against this
backdrop, the region has become increasingly militarised. Today it
is estimated that some 40,000 heavily armed Armenian and Azerbaijani
troops face each other, risking military confrontation.
The popular designation of Karabakh as a frozen conflict has been based
upon the absence of full-scale war, backed by conventional military
deterrence and an arms race; and with a fragile self-regulation by
the conflict parties. After the failure of so many peace initiatives,
the ‘international community’ increasingly seems to have opted for
an approach to Karabakh focusing on conflict management and long-term
peacebuilding.
The elements of the status quo that has operated for the past
two decades around Karabakh are, however, coming under increasing
pressure. A conflict that began in local ethnic and socio-economic
issues, has increasingly taken on an inter-state character centred upon
the rivalry between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A return to war between
these two countries could quickly descend into a full-out regional
conflict pulling in international powers from both East and West;
powers which have long made their interests in the region known.
Moscow
Almost from the outset, Moscow has played a key role in the Karabakh
conflict. In the final years of the USSR and the early post-Soviet
years, first the Soviet authorities and then the newly-formed Russian
government sought to shape the struggle around its own interests,
but largely failed, and found itself simply reacting to developments
on the ground. At the same time, armed groups from the Russian North
Caucasus, elements of the Soviet military under Moscow’s control, and
the newly established Russian military were involved in the fighting.
As the conflict progressed, a Russian position gradually emerged,
focused on support for Armenia as a key ally in the Caucasus. Military
aid; the basing of Russian troops in Armenia; an expansion of
Russian-owned business into the republic; and the inclusion of Armenia
within Russian integration projects, became the central planks of
Russia’s southern Caucasus policy. From Armenia’s standpoint, its
security relationship with Russia has become even more important as
Azerbaijan has built up its military forces.
The collapse of the Soviet Union opened the Caucasus up to a variety
of regional and international actors that had been kept out during
the Soviet era. With one eye firmly on Caspian oil resources, the US
and Turkey led the way in the 1990s. Azerbaijan and Georgia emerged
as the key partners for the ‘transatlantic community.’ Consolidating
the independence of these countries and promoting their emergence as
pro-Western democracies became central goals, not least as a means of
preventing the re-emergence of a Moscow-dominated regional order. This
in turn paved the way for the more assertive Russian policy towards the
Caucasus, evident under Putin. In this context of rising competition,
the region’s protracted conflicts have become of key interest for
both sides.
Choosing sides
In the first phase of competition – during the last decade – the
prospect of NATO enlargement in the region, and growing EU engagement,
culminated in the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, which centred around
the protracted conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The fighting
around Karabakh this summer emerged within a new round of rivalry
between Russia and the ‘transatlantic community.’
An Armenian soldier keeps watch. Both sides are often only 100 metres
from each other. CC Azerbaijan-irs.comFollowing the Russia-Georgia war,
Russia and the EU have both sought to strengthen their positions in the
region by launching political and economic integration initiatives. For
the Russian Federation, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation,
the Customs Union and the emergent Eurasian Union have been developed
to counter and rival the institutions of the EU (Eastern Partnership)
and NATO.
This rising competition has increasingly placed countries of Eastern
Europe and the Caucasus into a position whereby they are forced to
take sides in this bipolar struggle, pushing them to abandon the
multi-vector foreign and security policies that have allowed them
to balance competing pressures from regional powers, for much of the
post-Soviet period.
In 2013, Armenia found itself caught directly between these two
geopolitical projects as the EU offered and encouraged Yerevan to sign
up to an Association Agreement, including a Deep and Comprehensive
Free Trade Agreement, ahead of the Third Eastern Partnership Summit in
December 2013. Armenia was interested in the agreement and negotiated
its terms for three years with the EU. Russia, however, concerned that
its alliance with Armenia was being threatened, was less than keen on
this prospect; and Moscow made sure that Armenia received the message.
On 13 August 2013, Putin made his first trip to Baku in seven years.
During the visit, media reports publicised the fact that Russia
would sell weapons to Azerbaijan worth an estimated $4 billion. In
addition, in July, Gazprom (which controls Armenia’s main gas company
ArmRosGazprom) raised gas tariffs for individual consumers in Armenia
by 50%, after which Russia suggested that the price hike could be
reversed if Armenia agreed to join the Customs Union.
Following an extended bilateral meeting between Sargsyan and Putin
on 3 September, at which the security implications of Armenia’s
decision to sign the Associated Agreement with the EU are reported
to have been discussed, Sargsyan announced that Armenia had made the
decision to seek accession to the Customs Union of Russia, and not
to proceed with the EU Association Agreement.
Armenia’s decision to turn towards Moscow because of security
considerations, and away from Brussels, did not help to stabilise the
region. Following Armenia’s announcement of its intention to join the
Customs Union, the question emerged as to whether Karabakh would be
part of the agreement, and whether it would be integrated into the
Russian-led economic union, so raising alarm in Azerbaijan.
Tensions rise
With tensions rising in the region, violence around Karabakh began
to pick up from January 2014. Uncertainties were further exacerbated
following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Many in the Caucasus saw
this Russian step as providing Armenia with a precedent – to formally
annex Karabakh.
At the UN General Assembly vote on 27 March 2014, on the resolution
‘Territorial integrity of Ukraine,’ which called on states not to
recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Armenia voted with Russia to
oppose the resolution while Azerbaijan voted with the ‘transatlantic
community’ in support.
Despite Armenia’s decision to follow Russia’s lead on Ukraine,
however, Russia appears to have signalled a readiness to rebalance
its position between Yerevan and Baku by, for example, pursuing
arms sales to Azerbaijan. This has caused anxiety in Armenia, which
recognises its security dependence on Russia, particularly with regard
to Karabakh. These overtures by Moscow, however, have failed to quell
anxiety in Azerbaijan, which has remained resistant to any changes
that could lead to a Pax Russica in the Caucasus.
Azerbaijan
In a situation of growing regional uncertainty, and with the EU and
US focused on Ukraine, and reluctant to upset a potential supplier
of gas to European markets, Baku’s elite has looked to consolidate
its authoritarian order at home.
In the spring of 2014, the Azerbaijani authorities began a crackdown
against the remnants of the country’s civil society, using the idea of
a country besieged by enemies and traitors as its leitmotif. In April
2014, Azerbaijani journalist Rauf Mirkadirov was arrested for alleged
espionage on behalf of Armenia – his crime was to collaborate with
Armenian NGO colleagues. Following this, Baku launched a widespread
crackdown on NGOs, human rights organisations, and independent media,
targeting in particular groups that had been engaged in peace building
activities toward Karabakh.
In July, the leading human rights activist Leyla Yunus was arrested,
followed in August by the detention of her husband Arif Yunus, accused
of treason, spying for Armenia, illegal business activities, forgery,
and fraud. Both had worked on people-to-people initiatives to rebuild
links with Armenia over many years.
During this period, pressure also mounted on Armenia. Sargsyan was
embarrassed at the summit of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council
on May 29 in Astana, where Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev read out a letter
from the president of Azerbaijan in which he indicated that it was
impermissible to admit Armenia to the Customs Union together with
Nagorno-Karabakh.
During the previous Eurasian Economic Council summit in October 2013,
Lukashenko of Belarus had stated that Armenia would have to resolve
its territorial dispute with Azerbaijan, and that Customs Union
members would consider Azerbaijan’s position on the issue. Despite
originally intending to join the Customs Union in the spring of 2014,
Armenia has repeatedly postponed the final signature.
Fighting over peace
The sudden escalation of violence in Karabakh has occurred in a
political and security context that had deteriorated throughout the
region over the previous year. Growing competition between Russia
and the ‘transatlantic community,’ from the middle of 2013, and the
wider destabilisation caused by the Ukraine conflict, are important
factors in the worsening of relations, which have placed pressure on
key elements of the status quo supporting the Karabakh ceasefire.
Landmines remain a serious problem in the disputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Photo: Onnik Krikorian via demotix (c)As the conflict
worsened, Putin convened a meeting in Sochi with the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leaders, but without the American and French Minsk Group
co-chairs. Putin’s initiative promoted speculation that Russia was
seeking to downgrade the Minsk process and assert Russia as the leading
international actor in the Karabakh peace process. Some observers also
saw in Russia’s initiative an effort to prepare the way to introduce
Russian ‘peacekeeping’ forces into the Karabakh peace equation and,
thereby, side-line the EU and the US.
On September 4, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with the
presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the margins of the NATO Wales
Summit. The attendance of the Armenian president was viewed as an
important sign that, despite Russian pressure, Armenia would like to
keep its options open. Kerry is reported to have underlined during
the meeting that negotiations should continue in the framework of
the OSCE Minsk process.
At the conclusion of the NATO Summit, NATO members issued a statement
asserting that allies ‘remain committed in their support to the
territorial integrity, independence, and sovereignty of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova.’ The statement
reaffirming territorial integrity was welcomed in Azerbaijan but
caused some anger in Armenia.
Armenia is also growing increasingly concerned by the emerging security
cooperation between Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. On 21 August,
the defence ministers of the three countries met trilaterally for
the first time and promised to carry out joint military exercises.
The focus of the military cooperation is the protection of the Caucasus
energy infrastructure; elites are concerned that instability in the
region might spill over and threaten the emerging east-west Caucasus
energy corridor.
For Armenia, such cooperation potentially opens a new situation
in its relations with Georgia. In any conflict with Azerbaijan,
Georgia would be a vital corridor for military supplies from Russia –
a supply route would be directly challenged by an alliance allowing
Turkish military forces to transit Georgia to Azerbaijan.
Breaking the status quo
The Caucasus region is now experiencing a potentially far-reaching
shift as a result of growing security tensions at the local, regional,
and international level. Countries of the region are increasingly
caught up in the competitive integration projects of the EU and Russia,
forcing them to choose one bloc over the other. The Ukraine crisis has
only accelerated these trends. Today, as the security situation in
the Caucasus comes under increasing strain, there are growing signs
that the fragile status quo that has kept the Karabakh conflict at
a relatively low level of violence is beginning to break.
High-level statements over the summer reflect growing international
concern over Karabakhh and its potential to further destabilise
Eurasia. For now, there appears to be a shared awareness that, despite
regional competition, a further destabilisation of the Caucasus is
not in anyone’s interest.
With this in mind, President Hollande of France has invited Aliyev
and Sargsyan to Paris for talks at the end of October. Ahead of the
Paris meeting, the Minsk Group co-chairs face a strategic choice:
should their efforts be aimed at shoring up the status quo or should
they once again try to find a political solution to the conflict?
Some reports suggest that France is considering ways to include
Karabakh directly in the upcoming discussions. Such a step would mark
a major shift in the peace process but it would also bring with it
the serious risk of confronting Azerbaijan with a situation it could
not accept. Any long-term solution would also have to ensure that
Russia and Turkey (and possibly Iran) did not feel threatened by the
final agreement. A great deal of care would therefore be required
to ensure that a new peace initiative does not trigger precisely the
confrontation it is designed to prevent.
The fighting of this summer is a clear warning that Karabakh can no
longer be viewed simply as a local dispute capable of being contained
within existing conflict management arrangements. And with fighting
in Ukraine continuing to destabilise Central Europe and Eurasia,
and with crises spreading and intensifying south of the Caucasus in
Syria and Iraq, new ways of thinking and fresh approaches are urgently
required to thaw the supposedly ‘frozen’ conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Neil Melvin is director of the Armed Conflict and Conflict Management
Programme at SIPRI.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.transconflict.com/2014/10/nagorno-karabakh-frozen-conflict/