CAUCASUS CONFLICT COULD TURN TRAGEDY INTO WIDER DISASTER
Frank Kane
The National
rticle?AID=/20100227/BUSINESS/702269819/1058&t emplate=columnists
Feb 27 2010
UAE
I’ve got to know Parviz Ismailzadeh pretty well over the past couple
of years.
Parviz is the consul of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Dubai, and since
my marriage to an Azeri lady he has been a great help in facilitating
the documentation necessary to regularise matters for us and for our
young daughter.
It was a shock how much paperwork was needed, but Parviz guided us
cheerfully through the minefield of post-Soviet bureaucracy and has
become a friend. He is an affable man, good company over a good steak,
and he has taught me much about the political and economic affairs
of Azerbaijan, a fascinating country at an equally fascinating stage
in its history.
My trips to Baku, where my in-laws live, are much better informed as
a result of my briefings with him. The business and financial affairs
of the city, the oil-rich capital of the Caspian, are complex, but a
working knowledge of them is crucial to understanding the strategic
role of Azerbaijan in the area.
Parviz was in unusually sombre mood at an event last Thursday night in
Dubai. Along with the ambassador to the UAE, Elkhan Gahramanov, some
of the leading lights in the Azeri business and diplomatic community
in the Emirates were gathering to commemorate the anniversary of a
tragic event in Azerbaijan’s history: the massacre of Azeri citizens
at the town of Khojali in 1992.
Khojali is in the centre of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh,
the Mountainous Black Garden, historically part of Azerbaijan but
occupied by forces of the neighbouring (though not neighbourly)
republic of Armenia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In February 1992, Armenian forces, with the aid of Russian regular
troops, surrounded Khojali as part of their campaign to extend their
control of Azeri territory. They offered civilians one exit route to
a nearby Azeri-controlled town. When the old men, women and children
tried to take that road to safety, they were attacked by soldiers who
left 631 dead and seriously injured a couple of thousand more. The
American journalist Thomas Goltz describes the result at a nearby
morgue in cold, hard prose in his book Azerbaijan Diary, the best
single volume on the country’s tortured history.
I felt like an interloper at a private tragedy at the Dubai event. My
view is coloured by my marital ties with Azerbaijan, and I know
Armenia disputes the version of a cold-hearted massacre. They say
their forces were fired on by Azeri soldiers among the refugees,
and the resulting firefight caused most of the deaths.
But you did not need any of this background to understand that
something terrible had happened in the burnt-out houses and
corpse-strewn fields of Khojali. In the comfort of a Dubai hotel we
watched grainy, shaky footage of the consequences of the attack. It
was a powerful, disturbing reinforcement – like images of My Lai
in Vietnam or Fallujah in Iraq – of what happens when civilians get
caught in the military machine.
The Azeris have a list of 31 names of those they believe responsible
for the massacre, and have been trying for years to get international
police forces and courts involved in their apprehension. The Dubai
event was the latest stage of a campaign to get Middle Eastern
countries to take up the cause of the Muslim victims of Khojali.
The Azeri government also wants the international community to
implement its historical claims to Nagorno Karabakh, which have been
recognised many times by the UN.
There is a strategic backdrop to this that has repercussions for the
UAE, the Gulf countries and the global energy industry. The UAE has
been increasing its trade links with Azerbaijan significantly over
the past few years. Sultan al Mansouri, the Minister of Economy,
heads a committee to further develop UAE-Azerbaijan relations.
The GCC has a legitimate interest in matters in the southern Caucasus,
through which a large part of central Asian oil and gas supplies
pass, and which is increasingly drawing the attention of American and
European energy investors. Any conflict there could spark Russian,
Iranian and Turkish strategic intervention, for reasons of their
historical ties to Azerbaijan and the security of their energy supplies
from the Caspian region.
Conflict could still be averted. The Russians have hosted a number
of meetings to try to resolve the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, so far
unsuccessfully.
But at about the same time as I left the sombre men in Dubai, the
foreign minister in Baku was telling diplomats that a "great war" in
the south Caucasus was inevitable unless Armenia withdrew. That would
turn the tragedy of Khojali into the makings of a global disaster.