Author: Hagop Kamalian

Azerbaijan will follow up the capitulation of Nagorno-Karabakh with an attack on Armenia itself, Tigran Balayan tells Brussels Signal.

Assistant Professor in Global Humanities, Simon Fraser University

Azerbaijani forces attacked the breakaway and long-disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. Less than a month later, and the region is now all but deserted.

The declared aim of the attack was to eliminate the last forces of the Armenian-majority self-styled republic. The lightning “anti-terror operation,” as Azerbaijan called it, precipitated the collapse of the breakaway republic. Most importantly — given that it came after a debilitating blockade that lasted for almost nine months — it instilled fear among the Karabakh Armenian population.

Many fled their ancestral homeland.

As an endless convoy of cars transporting desperate refugees filled the winding road to an uncertain future away from their homes, regional entities were lining up to influence the future shape of the South Caucasus region on the border of eastern Europe and west Asia. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has been unfolding there for decades.

In Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev has been investing heavily in cultivating nationalism and militarism over the past few years to shore up his authority and his regime.

Starting from the second Karabakh war in 2020 until the present, Azerbaijan’s Border Service and Armed Forces used inspirational pop music videos to glorify the government’s military posturing and patriotic films to incite nationalism.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev arrives for a summit in Moldova in June 2023. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

After Azerbaijan’s 2020 victory effectively cut off Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia — leaving only one precarious point of access to the outside world, the Russian-policed Lachin corridor — the international community urged a negotiated peace settlement that would ensure Nagorno-Karabakh’s reintegration to Azerbaijan in exchange for local self-government.

But Aliyev’s preference for military action was no surprise, since a self-governed Nagorno-Karabakh would have required conflict resolution that was at odds with his preferred authoritarian and centralized governance approach over the rest of Azerbaijan.

Aliyev’s boldness was enabled by Russia’s and Turkey’s interests. Both are intent on regional peacemaking. This allows them to maintain their dominance in the South Caucasus region and keeps both the European Union and the United States at arm’s length.

Russia and Turkey have developed a model I call “managed competition” in the South Caucasus to ensure their often competing objectives don’t undermine their common goal to exclude states with opposing interests.

They worked together during the 2020 conflict to ensure they were the only powers to have a presence by stationing peacekeeping and monitoring forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor, albeit Turkey assumed a lesser and mostly symbolic role. The Turks are intent on doing so now as well.

The “two states, one nation” slogan used by Turkey and Azerbaijan to emphasize the ethnic kinship of their people underlies their strategic partnership, including co-ordination on foreign policy, energy and defence.

Turkey supported Azerbaijan with arms and by training the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in both the 2020 and 2023 conflicts.

Ilham Aliyev and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for photos in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in June 2021. (Turkish Presidency via AP)

Azerbaijan, in turn, has helped Turkey reduce its energy dependence on Russia and Iran by boosting its own gas exports.

Both Russia and Turkey regard military action in Nagorno-Karabakh as an opportunity to open the Zangezur corridor — a land bridge between the Nakhcivan (the only part of Azerbaijan sharing a border with Turkey and largely dependent on it) and the rest of Azerbaijan that will effectively provide a link between the two countries.

An increasingly isolated Russia sees in a friendly Azerbaijan a crucial link to Iran and its Persian Gulf ports and a valuable ally that gives it strategic depth in the South Caucasus.

By sacrificing its traditional alliance with Armenia and acquiescing to Azerbaijani aggression, Russia wants to convince Aliyev not to undermine Russia’s strategy of disrupting western natural gas supplies.

Furthermore, the destabilizing effect of a tense relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan strengthens Russia’s role as an arbiter in the region.

Aliyev knows how to stir nationalist fervour, and he’s likely to continue creating tensions if Russia allows him to.

He’s already been designating territories in Armenia as “western Azerbaijani lands” and vowed to work for “the return” of western Azerbaijanis to Armenia.

Another reason Russia is turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s military posturing — including its occupation of 50 square kilometres of Armenian territory — is the effect it has in destabilizing the current Armenian government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shake hands during their meeting in Russia in June 2023. (Ramil Sitdikov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Russia considers Armenia a reluctant ally that’s increasingly looking westwards. Already, Armenia’s pro-Russian opposition anticipates the demise of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and its return to power, despite its history of corruption and cronyism.

If the current developments provide any indication of what a post-conflict scenario underwritten by Russia and Turkey will look like in the region, the picture is bleak.

Russia and Turkey opt for containment, not peace and reconciliation, and so tensions will likely intensify in the South Caucasus until the next opportunity to forge a genuine peace presents itself.

https://theconversation.com/nagorno-karabakh-whats-next-for-the-south-caucasus-region-following-azerbaijans-aggression-against-armenians-214661

Bulgaria is helping three people injured in the explosion of a fuel warehouse in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The incident happened on September 25 and the signal for help from the European Commission's Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) to member states came a day later.

The transport of the victims was provided by the Air Force at the request of the Ministry of Health with a "Spartan" plane. The task was carried out by a crew from the 16 "Vrazhdebna" airbase. The military transport aircraft departed yesterday, October 6, 2023, at 1:12 p.m. for Yerevan, Armenia. On board was a 6-member medical team from the Military Medical Academy (MMA), headed by Col. Dr. Maria Georgieva.

Last night, at 00:35, the patients were transported from the Sofia airport with ambulances of the Medical Academy to the "Pirogov" hospital.

The three foreign nationals have been admitted to the Clinic for Burns and Plastic Surgery, and highly specialized medical care has been provided for them.

“This is not something that we welcome.”

The Kremlin is fuming about Armenia’s efforts to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin in connection with alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Kremlin Spokersperson Dmitry Peskov warned that Armenia’s interest in joining the ICC is “extremely hostile” to Russia.

“Armenia knows very well that we are not parties to the [Rome Statute], and Armenia is well aware of the difficult decision [of the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin], adopted on the basis of this statute,” Peskov said, according to TASS. “We know that in Yerevan about this is very well known. This is not something that we welcome.”

The arrest warrant was issued in relation to Putin’s alleged involvement in abducting children from Ukraine during the war. The ICC doesn’t have the power to enforce its arrest warrant, so any effort to apprehend Putin will have to be in coordination with local authorities.

The icy statement from Moscow comes as Armenia signals it is interested in a foreign policy less dependent on Russia, after Moscow failed to intervene when Azerbaijani military forces attacked the breakaway republic Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave located inside Azerbaijan, last week. Armenia is a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a group in which members promise to protect each other if attacked.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called his country’s security understandings with Russia “ineffective.”

“It has become evident to all of us that the CSTO instruments and the instruments of the Armenian-Russian military-political cooperation are insufficient for protecting external security of Armenia,” Pashinyan said this week.

Armenia is now working to grapple with a surge of ethnic Armenian refugees fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh. Over 76,000 ethnic Armenians—over half of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population—have arrived in Armenia already, fleeing violence and the looming dissolution of their regional authorities, the office of the Prime Minister of Armenia said Thursday.

The separatist region capitulated to Azerbaijan and announced it will cease to exist by January 1, 2024. President Samvel Shakhramanyan, the region’s separatist leader, signed a decree this week aimed at dismantling all of the region’s institutions, urging residents to consider integrating with Azerbaijan.

Armenia is hoping to join the ICC in order to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its violence and alleged war crimes, according to Armenia’s Minister of Justice, Grigor Minasyan.

Azerbaijan has denied it has conducted ethnic cleansing, and rather has claimed it began its lightning offensive last week to go after “anti-terrorist” operations, according to TASS.

Pashinyan sent the ICC’s founding document, the Rome Statute, to parliament earlier this month. Armenia signed the Rome Statute 25 years ago but never ratified it.

Changes won’t happen immediately, but Armenia’s parliament is taking steps this week towards ratification of the statute. The Armenian National Assembly’s Standing Committee on State-Legal Issues approve the decision on Thursday, according to Armenian Public Radio.

If ratified, the Rome Statute would enter into force in 60 days, according to Yeghishe Kirakosyan, Representative of the Republic of Armenia for International Legal Matters.

While Moscow is irritated with Armenia’s desire to join the ICC, Armenia has expressed that it is not interested in angering Moscow, but instead is focused on going after Azerbaijan.

Armenia has long been interested in joining the ICC. Last year, Pashinyan’s administration began the process of ratifying the Rome Statute to hold Azerbaijan accountable for a spate of violence in 2021 and 2022 as well.

Pashinyan previously pushed back on the idea that joining the ICC is a barb aimed at Russia.

“The decision is not directed against CSTO and the Russian Federation,” he said. “It comes from the interests of the country’s external security, and taking such a decision is our sovereign right.”

“War crimes are being committed against our country. We need this [ratification]; our country needs it,” he said.

Kirakosyan, too, sought to throw cold water on the idea that if Putin were to visit Armenia while it is party to the Rome Statue that he would be arrested.

“Leaders of countries have immunity,” he said Thursday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-fumes-over-armenias-effort-to-join-icc-in-response-to-azerbaijani-violence-nagorno-karabakh 

Geopolitical crises are sometimes very complicated indeed. The 19th-century British Prime Minister, Viscount Palmerston, wryly acknowledged this when asked about the cause of a labyrinthine dispute that almost triggered a major war in the 1860s. 

“Only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten,” he said. 

The South Caucasus can feel a little like this at times, with overlapping claims and trans-generational arguments about land and ownership. 

While the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has sometimes seemed like this to outsiders, it has recently become much starker; both more alarming and more dangerous. 

The enclave’s substantial Armenian minority of around 120,000 is now besieged by the Azeri forces that won back control in 2020. They have effectively cut off food and medical supplies. Pregnant women now lose their babies because they lack help, while others faint while waiting in food queues. Temperatures are rising, armies are on the move, intense gunfire is exchanged and a new war is threatened. 

There are two major root causes. The first is Russian ambiguity, caused in part by the Kremlin’s focus on its unsuccessful war against Ukraine, and in part by its own uncertainty as to which of the two countries it supports. The second, linked, phenomenon is Azeri military superiority, which has given the Baku government of President Ilham Aliyev a sense that there will be no better time to move against its long-time Armenian rival and grab what it likes. 

The mood in both capitals, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, is now somber. Little has been achieved on the diplomatic front. Several attempts to hold direct discussions between Azerbaijan and the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian community have failed. 

Geopolitical crises are sometimes very complicated indeed. The 19th-century British Prime Minister, Viscount Palmerston, wryly acknowledged this when asked about the cause of a labyrinthine dispute that almost triggered a major war in the 1860s. 

“Only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten,” he said. 

The South Caucasus can feel a little like this at times, with overlapping claims and trans-generational arguments about land and ownership. 

While the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has sometimes seemed like this to outsiders, it has recently become much starker; both more alarming and more dangerous. 

The enclave’s substantial Armenian minority of around 120,000 is now besieged by the Azeri forces that won back control in 2020. They have effectively cut off food and medical supplies. Pregnant women now lose their babies because they lack help, while others faint while waiting in food queues. Temperatures are rising, armies are on the move, intense gunfire is exchanged and a new war is threatened. 

There are two major root causes. The first is Russian ambiguity, caused in part by the Kremlin’s focus on its unsuccessful war against Ukraine, and in part by its own uncertainty as to which of the two countries it supports. The second, linked, phenomenon is Azeri military superiority, which has given the Baku government of President Ilham Aliyev a sense that there will be no better time to move against its long-time Armenian rival and grab what it likes. 

The mood in both capitals, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, is now somber. Little has been achieved on the diplomatic front. Several attempts to hold direct discussions between Azerbaijan and the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian community have failed. 

The Azeris deny there is a siege at all, and say they will supply the items needed by the Armenian population. Armenians see this as a precursor to ethnic cleansing.  

A parallel negotiation has been underway. An initiative led by the European Union (EU) and supported by the US, seeks convincing mechanisms to ensure the rights of Karabakh Armenians. Moscow-led efforts meanwhile, have essentially pushed for a statement of rights enshrined in Azeri law. 

The true aims of the participants are less obvious, particularly Russia’s. Since its all-out war in Ukraine began, the Kremlin’s behavior in the South Caucasus has been puzzling. Although Moscow is doing very little diplomatically, it appears to hope that no one else does very much either. And while it wants to keep a leading position as the key mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a position it traditionally enjoyed, it has become increasingly partial toward the Azeris.  

Moscow has made little mention of the plight of the Karabakh Armenians, beyond statements indicating that it is essentially Armenia’s own fault. It also accuses Yerevan of altering the conditions under which Russian peacekeepers were sent to the troubled area in November 2020. Weeks before that decision, as fighting raged and 5,000 troops on both sides died, the Kremlin had refused Armenia’s appeals for help under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and their mutual Friendship Treaty. 

Armenia was angry then, and has become even more so since. In a series of political moves and statements, it has questioned the point of its relationship with Russia. Thus on September 4, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan used an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica, to criticize Russia and state that relying on the Kremlin’s security pledges was “a strategic mistake.”  

With relations at a historic low, the ties that bind the two old allies are fraying. The Armenians have threatened to leave CSTO, and have recalled the country’s permanent representative to the organization. Armenia refused to join CSTO exercises in Belarus this month and instead announced its troops would drill with the US military. And just in case the Kremlin was failing to get the message, it sent the premier’s wife to personally deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine, its first such shipment. 

Russia appears to seek a closer relationship with oil-rich Azerbaijan. The EU has growing influence and interests in the country given its expanding energy links with Azerbaijan, something that worries the Kremlin. Azerbaijan is also a key player in Russia’s ambitions to develop the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) down to Iran to develop ties with that regime and improve routes for sanctions-busting. 

This all plays well with the regime of President Aliyev, who runs a profoundly repressive domestic regime, and now sees opportunities aplenty on his borders.  

He will need to be careful. Russia may switch policy if it can ever untangle itself from Ukraine, and an angry and resentful Armenia may simply bide its time before seeking to reverse the results of the 2020 war. 

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and Armenians are going hungry. Too often there is a temptation to resolve intricate geopolitical issues with the imagined simplicities of war.  

Francis Harris is the Managing Editor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.)

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.