Author: Eduard Nalbandian

The near future will show whether Georgia can fulfill this difficult mission in the new period of US-Russia relations following President Biden’s June 16 meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland.On June 12, Azerbaijan and Armenia, through the mediation of the US State Department and the Georgian government, made an exchange: Baku released 15 Armenian captives, and Yerevan handed over to Azerbaijan maps of minefields in one of the formerly occupied regions around Karabakh. The freeing of Armenian prisoners took place on the territory of Georgia, not far from the point where the borders of all three South Caucasus states converge (Civil.ge, June 13).

On the same day, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili issued a special statement that he was “proud” of the role Georgia and he personally played in reaching an important compromise between Baku and Yerevan. Garibashvili stressed that Georgia achieved success in mediating between the two neighboring countries “in close coordination with our strategic partner the United States [and] Acting Assistant Secretary Philip Reeker to facilitate Azerbaijan’s release of 15 Armenian citizens detained during the conflict.” Also, according to the head of the Georgian government, the Armenian side’s conferral to Azerbaijan of information on the mined territories “is an important step” (Interpressnews, June 13).

The president of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, commended the prime minister on this success. “Irakli Garibashvili, congratulations for the humanitarian agreement reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia is back to its historic mediator role, [the] US and EU [European Union] are back in the Caucasus, building confidence is the path to lasting peace,” Zurabishvili wrote on Twitter (Interpressnews June 13).

Georgia’s special role during the negotiations over “prisoners in exchange for maps of minefields” was confirmed by representatives of both Azerbaijan and Armenia. “Armenian prisoners of war handed over by Azerbaijan to Armenia are already on the territory of Armenia,” the country’s Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated at a meeting with his supporters in Gavar. “Through the efforts of the Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili, our Georgian brothers, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker and partners from the European Union, our brothers have returned. They crossed into Georgia from Azerbaijan with the help of the Red Cross, and from there they entered Armenia through the Bagratasheni checkpoint,” Pashinyan said (Interpressnews, June 13).

The success of the Georgian mediation efforts was likewise mentioned in an official statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan: “We appreciate the support of the Georgian government headed by the Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili for the implementation of this humanitarian action. […] Obtaining mine maps will save the lives and health of tens of thousands of our citizens” (Mfa.gov.az, June 12).

Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted, “The U.S. welcomes the release by Azerbaijan of 15 Armenian detainees. We’re grateful to the Government of Georgia for its vital role facilitating discussions between the sides. Such steps will bring the people of the region closer to the peaceful future they deserve” (Twitter.com/SecBlinken, June 12).

Some Georgian experts are convinced that Tbilisi’s success in the mediation process is a triumph and the most important event for Georgia in recent years. An analyst with the independent media outlet Nation.ge, David Avalishvili, recalled in a June 14 interview with this author that throughout its 30 years of independence, Georgia was never able to act as an equal actor in the long-term Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. “The former Communist leader of Georgia, Jumber Patiashvili, tried to do this in 1988; and the first president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, [tried] in 1991; but these attempts then were totally unsuccessful. They even irritated the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides,” Avalishvili stipulated.

Professor Tornike Sharashenidze, who heads the International Relations Master’s Program at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA), is certain that the consent of the leadership of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the mediation by Georgia with the direct participation of the United States “reflects the fear of Baku and Yerevan about the increased influence of Moscow in the South Caucasus” in the wake of the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020). “Armenians and Azerbaijanis want to ‘balance’ the influence of Russia and Turkey with the help of the United States and Georgia. This is especially noticeable when analyzing the latest decisions of Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan, who demonstrates more independence from Moscow,” Sharashenidze argued (Author’s interview, June 14).

But the most important (from Tbilisi’s point of view) symptom of the new tendencies in the South Caucasus, is the US’s clear desire to give Georgia more “weight” in helping to resolve regional problems. During a recent visit to Tbilisi, Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker named Georgia “a key partner of the United States and the administration of US President [Joseph] Biden in the South Caucasus, as well as in the entire Black Sea region.” Moreover, Reeker expressed support for Georgia’s territorial integrity, condemned the “Russian aggression of 2008 with the occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” and also thanked Georgian service members “for the courage shown in Afghanistan” (Civil.ge, June 12). The US Assistant Secretary of State additionally promised that the United States “will support Georgia’s accession to NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization]” and, in the near future, “will provide Georgia with a large batch of the [COVID-19] coronavirus vaccine” (Interpressnews, June 7).

From Tbilisi, Reeker flew to Baku and Yerevan, held talks with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, returned to the Georgian capital and asked Prime Minister Garibashvili to convene a special meeting of the Georgian Security Council, which discussed the release of Armenian prisoners and the transfer of a minefield map to Azerbaijan (YouTube, June 11).

The participation of a US diplomat in a meeting of the Georgian Security Council was unprecedented in the entire history of the country. Paata Zakareishvili, who served as minister of state for reconciliation and civil equality in 2012–2016, said in a June 14 interview with this author that the United States “clearly wants to turn Georgia into a peacekeeping platform to actively influence regional processes.” Zakareishvili pointed out, “Georgia is the only country in the region pursuing an openly pro-American and pro-Western policy, which is different from Armenia and Azerbaijan. And given the fact that Washington was unable to play a significant role during the autumn war over Karabakh [see EDM, November 25, December 1, 3, 7], the State Department is now trying to use the ‘Georgian platform’ to maintain US influence in the South Caucasus, dominated by Turkey and Russia.”

On June 1, 2021, Yerevan announced the suspension of the Armenian-Azerbaijani-Russian working group, which was established during the January 11 trilateral leaders’ summit and tasked with presenting action plans (including implementation schedules) to their governments regarding regional railroad and highway projects (see EDM, January 12). Mher Grigorian, Armenia’s deputy prime minister, who also co-chairs the tri-partite working group along with his counterparts from the other two participating countries, claimed that the reason for Yerevan’s suspension was a lack of “an appropriate environment” for effective work (TASS, June 1). “When the situation on the border is like it is, I do not think that constructive work is possible in this format. Contacts in this format have stopped; we will see what happens in the future,” he announced at a parliamentary meeting, referring to the recent escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the state border (see EDM, May 18).

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has been continuing construction work on the railway connecting Fuzuli district and Agbend (Zangilan district of Azerbaijan), which is planned to be followed by a railway connection between Agbend and Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave via the Syunik region of Armenia (which Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur corridor) (see EDM, April 5). In early June, Baku also announced the launch of highway construction that will connect the village of Ahmadbayli (Fuzuli district) with Agbend (APA, June 9). The 124-kilometer road is foreseen to be part of a larger highway project linking mainland Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan.

Although the Armenian government had not previously opposed the railway project via the Syunik region connecting the two parts of Azerbaijan, Yerevan has explicitly rejected both the highway and the “Zangezur corridor” ideas promoted by Baku (see EDM, May 24). Azerbaijan, for its part, expects Armenia to adhere to the trilateral ceasefire accord from November 9, 2020, and to provide conditions along the Zangezur corridor akin to those Azerbaijan has provided to the Armenian side at the Lachin corridor (EurasiaNet, June 4). The absence of an agreement on these and other issues between the sides has been further exacerbated by the recently heightened border dispute.

A meeting in Moscow between Armenia’s deputy chief of the General Staff, Arshak Karapetian, the head of the Armenian border service, Arman Gasparian, Azerbaijan’s head of external intelligence Orhan Sultanov, and the commander of Russia’s peacekeeping mission in Karabakh, Rustam Muradov, on June 2, represented a new format of interaction among the three sides, though the regional transportation projects were probably not on the agenda (Sputnik Armenia, June 4). The participating parties reportedly discussed de-escalation on the border and humanitarian issues; but no concrete outcomes were made public.

Hence, it seems that amidst the hotly contested and increasingly combative pre-election period in Armenia (the snap parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 20), negotiations concerning the Zangezur corridor and other transportation projects have been put off until after Armenians go to the polls.

Meanwhile, the proposal to establish a Russian-mediated Armenian-Azerbaijani international commission to settle the two South Caucasus neighbors’ border disputes has yet to be followed up with any concrete actions (Civilnet, May 20). On June 12, at a meeting with foreign diplomats, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev lamented that Baku’s proposal to start negotiations on border delimitation and the establishment of a final peace agreement had so far been ignored by the Armenian side (Moscow-baku.ru, June 12).

Nonetheless, a week prior to Armenia’s parliamentary elections, a major breakthrough had, in fact, been achieved between the two conflicting states. This development has the potential to positively contribute to the emergence of a constructive environment for negotiations over other issues, including transportation projects and a settlement of the shared border. Namely, Yerevan handed over to Baku maps showing the location of 97,000 landmines that Armenian troops had laid in the territories of the formerly occupied Agdam district of Azerbaijan; in exchange, Baku released 15 Armenian detainees(Mfa.gov.az, June 12). These issues had been among the top concerns of the two sides since the establishment of the Russia-brokered ceasefire on November 9.

The breakthrough came as a big surprise for most observers as Armenia had previously, at various official levels, denied the existence of any such minefield maps when presented with repeated Azerbaijani demands to see them (EurasiaNet, June 11). Following the recent swap, however, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian admitted that the maps provided to Baku represented only a tiny fraction of such charts owned by Yerevan (TASS, June 13). He also expressed hope that this constructive cooperation would continue—although he specifically refused to call what transpired an “exchange of maps for detainees” (Hetq.am, June 12).

This swap was possible thanks to the mediation of the United States and Georgia (see EDM, June 14), and as such, it represented the first major development between Armenia and Azerbaijan with no Russian involvement since the end of last year’s 44-day war. That said, there is little to no chance the West can continue to play an impactful mediating role between the two conflicting sides. In the aftermath of the parliamentary elections in Armenia, Moscow will do all it can to preserve its position as primary mediator in the post-war negotiations between Baku and Yerevan, including over key issues like the unblocking of regional transportation routes and border delimitation.