Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

Following Azerbaijan’s 19 September military offensive that led to the dissolution of the breakaway but unrecognised mainly ethnic Armenian-inhabited entity of Nagorno Karabakh, there had been hopes Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would meet again at the European Political Community summit in Granada, Spain. However, on the eve of the 5 October talks, Aliyev pulled out, citing the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron in the multilateral meeting that also included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Council President Charles Michel.

Whether the meeting would take place was anyway in doubt. Although Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan and Azerbaijani Presidential Assistant Hikmet Hajiyev met with the advisors to Macron, Michel, and Scholz on 26 September in Brussels, the European Council only spoke of a ‘possible meeting’ in Granada. Likely swaying Baku at the last minute was the visit to Armenia by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna two days beforehand. Not only was she again critical of Azerbaijan but Colonna also announced that France would be ready to supply weapons, albeit of a defensive nature, to Armenia.

Colonna also said that France would seek to introduce a new resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for an international mission in Karabakh now the region had come totally under Baku’s control and the exodus of almost all of its post-1994 population. Baku was also irked by the rejection by France and Germany to have President Erdogan of Turkiye join them in Granada as a counterbalance to France, which Azerbaijan considers pro-Armenian.

Both Aliyev and Erdogan did not attend the EPC summit with the latter excusing himself because he ‘had a cold.’ Their absence was enough to cast doubts the the EU-facilitated process and hinted that it might now be close to collapse. Russia has been increasingly concerned by what it sees as western interference in the region with the aim of driving it out. Similarly, several steps seen by Moscow as anti-Russian by Pashinyan, including ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, has further infuriated the Russian President.

“[…] Azerbaijan does not need such a format. Baku does not see the need to discuss the problems of the region with countries far from the region. Baku believes that these issues can be discussed and resolved in the regional framework,” Azerbaijani media quoted the authorities. Nonetheless, it did at least reassure Brussels that it would still participate in negotiations in the tripartite Aliyev-Pashinyan-Michel format. Now that the issue of Karabakh itself has been essentially resolved, albeit by the use of force, the two outstanding issues arguably concern border demarcation and unblocking all economic and transport connections in the region.

In this context, the issue of restoring communications between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through Armenia, or what is referred to by Baku and Ankara as the “Zangezur Corridor,” is key. It remains unclear whether lingering disagreement has now been effectively resolved by Baku’s victory in Karabakh. Last week, three of the unrecognised entity’s de facto presidents – Arkhady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan, and Arayik Harutyunyan – were detained by Baku and transferred to pre-trial detention on multiple charges, including terrorism.

Yerevan and many regional analysts, however, are fearful that Azerbaijan might use force to open the route to its exclave, though on 27 September Turkiye’s Erdogan said that the road and rail link could also pass through Iran. In a telephone call held on the day of the Granada summit, Aliyev also told Charles Michel that Azerbaijan had no territorial claims on Armenia. Indeed, this is not the first time such assurances have been given with Aliyev previously saying that the modalities of the “Zangezur Corridor” would be reciprocal to those on the Lachin Corridor linking Armenia to Karabakh.

And on 4 October, Elchin Amirbeyov, Azerbaijan’s Presidential Representative for Special Assignments, again stressed that Baku recognises that the “Zangezur Corridor” would operate under the sovereignty of Armenia. Instead, the issue concerned Armenia reluctant to abide by the terms of 2020 ceasefire statement which required it to be overseen by Russian border guards. Iran has also said that any changes to borders are unacceptable to Tehran while on 5 October Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary, further warned against any “geopolitical changes” by external actors.

Despite Aliyev’s absence, a quadrilateral meeting between Macron, Michel, Scholz, and Pashinyan did take place where the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict was discussed. In a joint statement following the meeting, the four leaders specifically recognised the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ‘mass displacement’ of its ethnic Armenian population, and also their right to return with international monitoring in place to ensure ‘due respect for their history, culture, and human rights.’

It also called for greater regional cooperation and the reopening of all borders, including between Armenia and Turkiye, as well as the restoration of regional connectivity ‘with full respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of each country as well as on the basis of equality and reciprocity.' Pashinyan was also given assurances at the summit that the European Union supports Armenia and will do everything to deliver on its promise of a multi-billion Euro investment package.

Following the meeting, Charles Michel announced that both Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to meet in Brussels later this month. Meanwhile, Iran and Azerbaijan started work on the first stage of constructing a possible route to Nakhchivan through its own territory, potentially excluding Armenia from another regional project.

Athirty-five-year war reignited last week. Hundreds of people died. Tens of thousands may have been displaced. The world, focussed on the United Nations General Assembly and the war in Ukraine, barely noticed. On September 19th, Azerbaijan started shelling towns and military bases in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave that had long fought for independence. In less than a day, the self-proclaimed republic was effectively disarmed and forced to capitulate. Russian forces, ostensibly there to prevent just this kind of outcome, offered little or no resistance. The most generous reading of the situation is that they were caught unawares. The least generous is that Russia had given its approval to the attack, perhaps in exchange for maintaining a military presence in the region.

The Karabakh conflict dates back to 1988. It prefigured a dozen others that would erupt in what was then the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Nagorno-Karabakh was, legally, an autonomous region within Azerbaijan, a constituent republic of the U.S.S.R. As Mikhail Gorbachev’s government loosened political restrictions, Karabakh Armenians demanded the right, which they argued was guaranteed to them by the Soviet constitution, to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, also a Soviet constituent republic. Moscow rejected the demand. Meanwhile, shoot-outs between ethnic Armenians and ethnic Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh sparked violence elsewhere. In February, 1988, anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait left dozens dead. Two years later, a week of anti-Armenian violence in Baku, Azerbaijan’s historically multiethnic capital, killed dozens more. Thousands of ethnic Armenians fled Azerbaijan, where their families had lived for generations. Some left on a plane chartered by the chess champion Garry Kasparov, probably the best-known Azerbaijani Armenian, who was also leaving his motherland forever.

In 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart and each of its fifteen constituent republics became a sovereign state. For Karabakh Armenians, this meant that any legal basis for their secessionist aspirations had vanished. Nagorno-Karabakh became one of several ethnic enclaves in the post-Soviet space that was fighting for independence from the newly independent country of which they were a part—South Ossetia and Abkhazia tried to break free from Georgia, the Transnistria Region fought to separate from Moldova, Chechnya wanted out of Russia. In the early nineteen-nineties, each of these conflicts became a hot war. In every case outside its own borders, Russia supported the separatist movements—and, in most cases, used the conflicts to station its own troops in the region. Two decades later, Russia used the same playbook to foment armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh lasted until 1994. Both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing: the deliberate displacement and killing of people based on their ethnicity. Moscow secretly supported Azerbaijan in the conflict. The war ended with a de-facto victory for the Armenians, who were able to establish self-rule on a large part of the territory they claimed, even though not a single country—not even Armenia—officially recognized the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. Whether it was because the Armenians won, or because the conflict ended when Russia had been destabilized by its own bloody constitutional crisis, Nagorno-Karabakh was the only conflict region in the former empire where Russia did not station its troops.

For the next three decades, the political paths of Armenia and Azerbaijan, two neighbors inextricably linked by blood and war, diverged. Azerbaijan transitioned from Soviet totalitarianism to post-Soviet dictatorship, with a ruling dynasty, censorship, and widespread political repression. One of the world’s original oil powers, Azerbaijan also grew comparatively wealthy. It nurtured diplomatic, economic, and military ties with neighboring Turkey and with Israel, which views Azerbaijan as an ally in any confrontation with Azerbaijan’s next-door neighbor Iran. Armenia, at least formally, undertook a transition to democracy. That transition hit a dead end in October, 1999, when a group of gunmen burst into the parliament and assassinated nine people, including all the leaders of one of the two ruling parties. The leader of the surviving party, Robert Kocharyan, led the country for another decade, and his clan remained in power until 2018, when a peaceful revolution seemed to start a new era. The new leader of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, is a former journalist.

In both countries, Nagorno-Karabakh remained the focus of political life. For Azerbaijan, the pain and humiliation of the 1994 defeat formed the centerpiece of the national narrative. “Azerbaijan got its independence in parallel with the war, so Nagorno-Karabakh has played a major role in shaping Azerbaijani national identity,” Shujaat Ahmadzada, an independent Azerbaijani political scientist, told me. “There was the memory, the images of internally displaced people, adding to the narrative of having suffered injustices. And conflict is important to keeping and solidifying power.”

In Armenia, what became known as the Karabakh Clan has held power for most of the post-Soviet period. Kocharyan is a former leader of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Armen Martirosyan, an Armenian publisher and longtime political activist, told me that, in 2018, he had hoped that Nikol Pashinyan would finally represent a “party of peace.” But even Pashinyan, who was born in 1975, was compelled to claim that he had got his political start in Nagorno-Karabakh. “Seven out of eight of our political parties are parties of war,” Martirosyan said.