AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA: A BREWING PROXY WAR?
Mint Press News
Jan 13 2015
By Catherine Shakdam | January 13, 2015
With Russia to the north and Iran to the south, the small republic of
Azerbaijan sits at a geostrategic crossroads between Eastern Europe
and Western Asia.
Although often overlooked, Azerbaijan remains nevertheless an important
cog in the Eurasian machine, key to regional stability and to a
greater extent world security. Its energy resources and geography
have long attracted the interests of extra-regional actors, making
this one country of the Caucasus an invaluable asset and political
pressure point.
In his book, “The Grand Chessboard,” Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski,
U.S. National Security Adviser under the Carter administration,
describes Azerbaijan as one of the most significant “geopolitical
pivots of Eurasia and key to U.S. security interests.” Thus, though
small in size, the country emits a notable political gravitational
pull.
Also an emissary to Azerbaijan for the Clinton administration,
Brzezinski long advocated strong ties with Baku, asserting that as
a country holding rich energy resources and having deep ties to the
international powers along its borders, Baku is uniquely situated
to play a pivotal role in regional affairs. Although his assessment
was made some 16 years ago, regional realities vis a vis the United
States remain as relevant as ever, especially in light of the U.S.
government’s negative stance toward Russia and Iran.
“Due to its geography, Azerbaijan has a sensitive location that
presents itself as a defensive shield for the Caspian Sea: it opens
or blocks the access to many significant extra-regional actors, oil
and gas thirsty,” said Inessa Baban, a specialist on post-Soviet
countries with a strategic military research institute under the
French defense ministry, to MintPress News.
“Baku has a pair of keys to the rich energetic Caspian Sea region,
whose place in the global geopolitics of energy is increasing
proportionally to the degree of instability in the Middle East.”
Sometimes compared to Afghanistan in that events in Azerbaijan are
seldom confined to its territorial borders and carry implications
that ripple beyond the region, political developments in Baku have
been subject to much international scrutiny of late, as tensions with
Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region have devolved into calls
for war.
The butterfly effect
A group of Azerbaijanis walks between a pair of Soviet tanks in Baku,
capital of Azerbaijan on Saturday, Jan. 28, 1990. The Soviet army
invaded the republic earlier this month to quell ethnic violence and
to put down a growing nationalist movement. Photo: AP
A state of the Soviet Union until Oct. 18, 1991, Azerbaijan was once
an axis of Moscow’s energy policy strategy, the Kremlin’s jewel in
the Caucasus. In fact, Baku’s energy potential and its opening onto
the Caspian Sea prompted Soviet Russia to invade this small state in
the first place.
Back in 1920, at a time when Moscow sought to assert communism as
the new political regional paradigm, Vladimir Lenin understood the
crucial role that Azerbaijan would come to play in securing Soviet
Russia’s economic and energy independence. Later, Adolf Hitler, too,
would come to covet the Caucasus, acutely aware that whichever power
would bring this region to heed would have its thumb on one of the
coronary arteries of the world and thus exert unparalleled territorial
and political control.
In an interview with the Chicago Policy Review, Elin Suleymanov,
a former Azerbaijani ambassador to the U.S., recalled the following
historical anecdote:
“There is a 1943 video of Hitler in which one of his generals gave him
a cake of the map of Russia and asked him to cut out a piece of his
favorite part. He cut out Baku, Azerbaijan. He wanted the oil. Ever
since the internal combustion engine, Europeans and the world have
looked to Azerbaijan as an important energy provider.”
An important cog in the world’s geostrategic machine, decisions made
in Baku ripple far beyond Azerbaijan’s borders. As Fariz Ismailzade, a
political analyst based in Baku, explained to MintPress, “Azerbaijan’s
policies ultimately carry broad regional repercussions, especially
when it comes to its decades’ long territorial dispute with Armenia,
its regional arch-enemy.”
The Caucasus’ very own Pandora’s box, the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
holds such sway over the greater region that it could set wheels in
motion on the global arena, in much the same way that the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand sent dominoes falling across Europe in
the lead-up to World War I.
“This particular territorial dispute is merely the reflection of
an overlapping of interests and political wills within the greater
region. It was never just about Azerbaijan reclaiming sovereignty
over its land,” Russian-based analyst Alireza Noori told MintPress.
Noori explained that resolutions passed by the United Nations
Security Council calling for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from
the Nagorno-Karabakh region were little more than ink on paper.
“The fact that the U.N.S.C. [United Nations Security Council] was
unable to enforce the immediate withdrawal of all Armenian troops from
the Nagorno-Karabakh stands testimony to the supra-regional character
of this conflict. Yerevan and Baku’s rivalries have been played up to
serve others’ agendas. It is so much about why Azerbaijan and Armenia
cannot reached an acceptable truce, but more about why haven’t they
been allowed to broker a peace agreement,” Noori added.
Indeed, while Azerbaijan’s territorial dispute resembles that of
many others — Eritrea and Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, Israel
and Palestine, for example — the influence Azerbaijan has on world
dynamics and the manner in which it has leveraged its positions and
resources vis a vis international players, mean that Baku’s troubles
are no longer just its own.
With powers such as Turkey, the U.S., Russia and Iran looking in,
Azerbaijan’s territorial claims against Armenia could lead to a
dangerous political and diplomatic unravelling, putting much more
than the future of the Caucasus in the line of fire.
Territorial integrity and national sovereignty
At dangerous odds with each other since 1988, when Armenia staked
territorial claims on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a province of
Azerbaijan, on the basis that the region is majority Armenian, Baku
and Yerevan have been in a state of a semi-permanent war, always
tittering on the edge of a knife in the name of national sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
Azerbaijan and Armenia’s territorial dispute dates back to 1918,
following the disintegration of the Transcaucasian Federation, when
both states laid claims to territories they respectively understood
as ethnically and historically theirs.
Inter-ethnic clashes first broke out in 1988, after the parliament
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in Azerbaijan voted
to unify the region with Armenia on Feb. 20, 1988, leveraging the
Soviet Union’s military withdrawal in Afghanistan and the fall of
communism across Eastern Europe to its advantage. With Moscow losing
its grip over the Caucasus, Armenian separatists seized a historical
opportunity, exploiting Azerbaijan’s weakness in order to occupy its
land. In 1994, following brutal and bloody clashes, Armenia managed to
seize control over 16 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories, including
the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Traumatized by years of intense ethnic conflict, Azerbaijan has yet
to come to terms with what it perceives as Armenia’s unwarranted and
unlawful aggression against its people and its land. An estimated
30,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Azerbaijan and over
a million were displaced prior to the 1994 cease fire.
With emotions still running high in Baku over allegations that Armenia
systematically targeted Azerbaijani nationals on account of their
ethnicity and religious affiliations to serve its hegemonic ambitions
— Armenia is majority Christian, while Azerbaijan is majority Muslim
— Baku is still waiting for the international community to make good
on U.N. Security Council Resolutions 822, 853, 874, and 884.
In March 2008 the Security Council called for the unequivocal
withdrawal of all Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijan, including
the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
An open wound on the young republic’s history, Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity has driven Baku’s foreign and national policies since the
late 1990s, pulling the narrative back toward war as foreign powers
have proven either unable or unwilling to commit to more than words
on paper.
Renewed tensions could set the tinderbox alight
In this Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014, photo a convoy of Azerbaijan’s Army
tanks moves in the direction of Agdam, Azerbaijan. Recent months have
seen a sharp escalation in fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia
around a tense line of control around Nagorno-Karabakh. Photo:
Abbas Atilay/AP
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Following a period of relative calm, Baku warned in late November that
it would no longer tolerate Armenia’s encroachment on its territories,
even if that means an all-out war.
In the wake of a series of attacks against civilian population
in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry issued an official
statement on Nov. 28 to condemn Armenia’s actions against Baku,
emphasizing that Armenian troops targeted Azerbaijan’s territories
on 51 separate instances in less than 24 hours — a clear violation
of the long-standing cease fire agreement.
Days after the defense ministry published such strong warnings against
Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov echoed the
state’s veiled warnings of military retaliation at the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s 21st Ministerial Council,
held in Basel, Switzerland, on Dec. 4.
“Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that presence of Armenia’s armed
forces on the occupied territories is major destabilizing factor
with the potential for escalation at any time with unpredictable
consequences,” Mammadyarov told the council.
“Unfortunately, after recent presidential meetings of Armenian and
Azerbaijani presidents in Russian resort city of Sochi, Newport
city in Wales and last round of talks in Paris, the armed forces
of Armenia held provocative large-scale military exercises on the
occupied territories of Azerbaijan.”
Baku has yet to engage Armenia on the ground, but its officials have
made its abundantly clear in recent weeks that any further acts of
aggression will be met with speed and resolution.
With tensions and resentment running high between the two opposing
states, the entire region stands to go up in smoke.
“What we see today is the manifestation of foreign powers’ failure to
promote peace and regional cooperation in the former Soviet bloc. An
opportunity for peace was missed in the 1990s and today we are paying
the price for this failure,” political analyst Murad Ismayilov told
MintPress.
In “The Grand Chessboard,” Brzezinski warned:
“A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three
most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the
map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically
entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and
Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central
continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia,
and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in
its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about
three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”
This tug of war in the Caucasus, heightened by conflicting foreign
agendas, has fueled the fires that burn between Azerbaijan and Armenia,
acting as a catalyst for opposing regional agendas. With Russia and
Iran both hardening their tones toward the West as their interests in
the Middle East clash with that of the U.S. and the European Union,
Eurasia could well become a new geopolitical faultline.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/azerbaijan-and-armenia-a-brewing-proxy-war/200705/