Category: 2023

Azerbaijan’s push into the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is drawing comparisons to other episodes of ethnic cleansing. What can be done under international law?

Article by David J. Scheffer

The ethnic Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, a largely Christian community in a predominantly Muslim nation, is experiencing ethnic cleansing at warp speed. Over the last week, almost all of the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have fled west to Armenia. This exodus follows clashes with the Azerbaijan army that have reportedly killed upwards of four hundred people, including some civilians. The renewed conflict demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts to prevent the persecution of ethnic Armenians, and remaining options to address the situation with the tools of international law are limited.

The Armenian government has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. The term “ethnic cleansing” has garnered varied definitions over the years, but the United Nations describes it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” The use of starvation tactics against ethnic Armenians during the monthslong closure of the so-called Lachin Corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, combined with Azerbaijani army intimidation, resulted in an exodus of Armenians that has triggered the charge of ethnic cleansing.  

More on:

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh

International Law

Human Rights

While ethnic cleansing is not defined as a matter of criminal law, its attributes appear in the crime against humanity of persecution and as predicates for acts of genocide. International criminal tribunals prosecute those atrocity crimes, and in many such cases, claims of ethnic cleansing have been front and center. The most prominent example of ethnic cleansing in the last few decades was the forcible removal of the Muslim Bosniak population of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Bosnian Serb (Orthodox Christian) and Bosnian Croat (Roman Catholic) forces in the early 1990s. 

An explicit invocation of ethnic cleansing also can be found in the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P) adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly in 2005. R2P states that nations have the responsibility to protect their own populations from “genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.” But if a government fails to do so, R2P proclaims, then the UN Security Council can act with enforcement power under the UN Charter to prevent and confront such assaults on a civilian population. The Security Council has not acted under R2P in the current Nagorno-Karabakh crisis because Russia, as one of the five veto-wielding Permanent Members of the Council, almost certainly would block any such action while it remains focused on waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Deterrence, including measures that could discourage ethnic cleansing, reached its expiration date in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now too late for international monitors to bear witness to the fate of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN observers that have arrived in the enclave have confirmed that nearly all ethnic Armenians have already fled to Armenia. 

The history of monitoring in the region is mixed. In the wake of the 2020 resurgence of conflict over the enclave, Russia deployed peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, an echo of the small contingent of monitors sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) years earlier. The Russian force, which normally would act as a de facto monitoring mission, has proven itself to be remarkably ineffective. It refused to intervene to open the Lachin Corridor, and it has now failed to deter a renewed assault on the enclave. 

However, one other prospect could be the deployment of OSCE or UN monitors under a fresh mandate to patrol the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in hopes of deterring cross-border movements by either country’s armed forces. This approach would have to include a negotiated withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from the Armenian territory that they occupied in 2021 and 2022 and a return to internationally recognized borders. If that idea proves unworkable, the two countries could agree to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice for adjudication.

Azerbaijan claims that it will treat the remaining Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just like any other minority population. That promise likely will not instill much confidence among the small number of Armenians who now face the prospect of Baku dominating their governance in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Azerbaijan is party to multiple multilateral treaties that include obligations that either explicitly protect or reflect the rights of minority populations. OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov could intensify his monitoring of Azerbaijan’s compliance with and any violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Aggrieved ethnic Armenians can lodge claims against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights, the legal arm of the Council of Europe, a human rights body to which Armenia and Azerbaijan both belong.

To demonstrate its respect for R2P, Azerbaijan should prevent ethnic cleansing, including its incitement, against ethnic Armenians. While that could seem inconceivable given what has occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh, the United Nations and influential actors such as the United States, Turkey, and the European Union should be pressing the point in all diplomatic exchanges with Baku.

There is long-standing animosity between the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s majority-Muslim population, whose resentment has been stoked by the brutal war and subsequent Armenian occupation of the enclave and surrounding Azerbaijani districts in the early 1990s. The resulting armed conflicts of recent years and the rout that has driven most ethnic Armenians onto Armenian territory demand some sort of dialogue. Otherwise, resentments and insecurities will govern the future relationship between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

As a start, the Council of Europe should explore a truth and reconciliation commission that brings both government officials and average citizens together to address grievances and hopes. There likely is no turning back on the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh as a territory now—it will be absorbed into the nation-state of Azerbaijan. But the ethnic Armenians who have called Nagorno-Karabakh home will still seek an end to persecution and hatred. Respect and dignity are the pillars of any truth and reconciliation commission. Armenia and Azerbaijan should work to restore both to their peoples, starting with an initiative that seeks the truth and creates momentum for reconciling divisive prejudices. Nor need there be a trade-off between justice and transparency, as both could be uniquely balanced in the outcome, as proved to be the case in Sierra Leone after its civil war.

One approach to justice would be to turn to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which can investigate and prosecute charges such as ethnic cleansing. On October 3, the Armenian Parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC and two months after its formal deposit of that instrument of ratification—probably early December 2023—will become a state party. The news was not welcomed by Armenia’s longtime (now fading) ally Russia, whose leader, President Vladimir Putin, has been charged by the ICC with war crimes in Ukraine and who now could be arrested if he were to visit Armenia. Azerbaijan remains a non-party state of the court.

Armenia’s embrace of the ICC can be a powerful weapon of lawfare. Indeed, even before it formally becomes the 124^th member of the ICC, Armenia could file immediately a special “Article 12(3)” declaration granting jurisdiction to the Court over the forcible deportation of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh onto Armenian territory. This option would be similar to the ICC’s current jurisdiction for atrocity crimes committed on Ukrainian territory (a non-party State).  Ukraine had filed two such declarations, triggering an official ICC investigation into the Ukraine situation (and of Russian officials). The investigation commenced following referrals by scores of ICC countries; a similar course of events could be a plausible prospect for Armenia’s injury in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation. Once Armenia’s status at the ICC is settled, Azerbaijan political and military leaders could be drawn into the jurisdiction of the ICC because of the character of the alleged crime, just as the forcible deportation (ethnic cleansing) of the Rohingya minority onto the territory of ICC member Bangladesh by military forces of Myanmar (a non-ICC country) in 2017 exposed Myanmar officials to ICC investigation. 

Baku might want to capitalize on the depopulating of Nagorno-Karabakh with a swift military movement across Armenian territory to control access to Nakhchivan, an exclave region of Azerbaijan bordering Iran. But now that Armenia is poised to join the ICC, Azerbaijan’s political and military leaders would likely risk investigation by the ICC prosecutor of the crime of aggression. That may explain the Armenian Parliament’s rapid move to ratify the Rome Statute—to address not only the fate of ethnic Armenians but to deter any Azerbaijani aggression across its territory.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan faces the challenge of providing for Nagorno Karabakh refugees while mitigating risks of Azeri aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.

Vladimir Putin, self-declared protector of ethnic Russian and other allied communities along Russia’s borders, failed last week to defend nominal Armenians allies who live in Azerbaijan from being driven out of the country by the Azeri army.

Though distant geographically, the Azerbaijan offensive was a byproduct of Putin’s failure to conquer Ukraine, where the Russian leader has also pledged to defend ethnic Russian allies. Such active solidarity is one of the Kremlin’s key foreign policy talking points.

But Azerbaijan took the opportunity of Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine to end more than three decades of war with pro-Russian Armenians living in the breakaway Azeri region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians are now effectively no longer in Azerbaijan.

Russia’s war in Ukraine seems to have played a role in the spasm of violence. The Azerbaijan government gambled that Putin would be unwilling to take on a new military operation, however small, while fighting a full-scale war in Ukraine.

Armenians inside Azerbaijan and within Armenia suspect that Ukraine had sapped Russia’s war-making abilities. “Armenia’s security architecture was 99.999% linked to Russia, including when it came to the procurement of arms and ammunition,” Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.

“Today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition and in this situation it’s understandable that even if it wishes, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs.”  

In any event, Azerbaijan’s action is the latest of multiple, unexpected and negative events along Russia’s borders stemming from the Ukraine war.

Russia faces a new NATO adversary in Finland, which rushed to join NATO after the  Ukraine war. Before the invasion, Helsinki, even if wary of Russia, maintained a formal neutrality between Moscow and the West. Sweden, shelving a long tradition of neutrality in Europe, is also joining.  

DISCLAIMER: All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of EURACTIV Media network.

As EU leaders gather in Granada today, their most publicised agenda item is the situation with Armenia after Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh following a 24-hour military operation that ended almost four decades of tension.

The international press has focused on Azerbaijan’s strongman, Ilhan Aliyev, who snubbed the five-way talks planned on the sidelines of the summit with the leaders of France, Germany, and Armenia, hosted by Council President Charles Michel.

Such a snub is embarrassing for the hosts. But Aliyev is the EU’s favourite dictator. After Russia attacked Ukraine, Azerbaijan’s gas became precious as Russian supplies dwindled.

Aliyev has so far accepted all the invitations by the EU’s Michel to discuss Karabakh, and there were many photo opportunities with his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinyan, despite the total failure of the exercise.

Now Aliyev took Karabakh as a low-hanging fruit because he could.

He can also claim there is no ethnic cleansing: The population of 120,000 left to seek refuge in Armenia, not because Aliyev’s army drove them out but because they feared this would happen. There is no damage to civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and housing or to cultural and religious sites in Karabakh, the UN said.

So everything is fine, the EU’s favourite dictator has accomplished the perfect war – without casualties, without destruction, without war crimes.

Moreover, under international law, Nagorno-Karabakh is the territory of Azerbaijan, so one may argue that this was going to happen sooner or later.

Aliyev succeeded, it seems, because Europe has forgotten how things went down in Munich in 1938.

Appeasing the dictator (Hitler in that case) was the basis of the 1938 agreement between France, the UK, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. It essentially provided for the German annexation of a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived.

Giving Hitler “what he wants” to appease him was of course a shameful and wrong move.

Aliyev is suspected of gearing up for another war, whose aim is to establish a land corridor between the Azeri enclave of Nahichivan and mainland Azerbaijan – by grabbing Armenian territory.

And he has the support of Turkey, which has megalomaniac dreams about a bigger Turkic corridor, all the way from Anatolia to the Uigurs in China. The only piece of land lacking to complete this puzzle is Armenian territory.

Aliyev knew he would be under pressure in Granada, alone against four at the five-way talks, so he turned down the invitation. As a pretext, he used “pro-Armenian statements” by French officials and an alleged French decision to supply Yerevan with military equipment.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was the first Western official to visit Yerevan after the fall of Karabakh. But she didn’t announce a decision to supply Armenia with French armament. What she said was:

“France has given its agreement to the conclusion of future contracts with Armenia, which will allow the delivery of military equipment to Armenia so that it can ensure its defence.”

Giving “an agreement” for the conclusion of future contracts does not mean military supplies would start anytime soon. And France doesn’t have much to send anyway, as the supplies sent to Ukraine have dried up the stocks.

The real context: France is home to half a million ethnic Armenians and Colonna needed to visit Yerevan and say something that would sound nice and appropriate. Aliyev knows that, but the pretext was just too good to pass up.

The EU made a major mistake by not inviting Turkish President Recep Erdoğan to the five-way mediation talks in Granada. The Turkish president is a major player in the region, and a strong backer of Azerbaijan, and should not be absent from such talks.

If the Granada meeting was expected to be a milestone, indeed, it will be one, in terms of failed European policies.

The gathering will likely encourage Aliyev and Erdoğan to go ahead and grab from Armenia what they want. The Armenians can try to fight – but perhaps they had better surrender. It seems no one is really prepared to help them.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

Azerbaijan rid itself of Russia’s “frozen conflict” hotspot. Routing Yerevan’s army has accelerated the changes in the geopolitical landscape of the Southern Caucasus.

On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan renewed its military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. The aim of its “anti-terror operation” was to force what it referred to as “illegal Armenian military formations” to surrender their weapons and to dissolve the “illegal regime” of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. 

After less than 24 hours of fighting, the Armenian side surrendered. The message is that Azerbaijan has decided to once and for all suppress any form of self-determination for the ethnic Armenian population living in the once-autonomous province.

The return of kinetic warfare ended a period of rising hopes that, after more than three decades of intermittent war, Armenia and Azerbaijan might finally be nearing a negotiated peace. A first step was taken in early May 2023, when United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan for preliminary talks in Washington. Significant progress was said to have been made, as the sides “agreed on principles” for normalizing their bilateral relations.

By early June, optimism was growing that a peace deal might be signed by year’s end. Yet, matters started to slip by the end of the month when the parties met for intense talks in the U.S. The Azeri side imposed a blockade on the ethnic Armenian population in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, trapping some 120,000 people and provoking accusations of genocide from the Armenian side. The official explanation from Baku was that it was merely a question of environmental activists seeking to stop illegal mining.

The failure of Western-led mediation will translate into a significant loss of influence.

Attempts at mediation continued, involving the U.S. and the European Union, and separately, Russia. Yet, on July 21, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned that renewed war must be considered “very likely” without a peace deal. The conflict was edging toward a resolution with force mainly because the geopolitical framework had turned decisively against Armenia. 

There are three dimensions where the stakes in the process go far beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

The first concerns the international order of peaceful conflict resolution. When the Soviet Union collapsed, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh found themselves a landlocked minority inside independent Azerbaijan. Taking up arms to fight for independence, they were supported by the armed forces of Armenia, which, in turn, were backed clandestinely by Russian armed forces. The outcome was an Armenian occupation of territories that stretched between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia proper. The self-declared Republic of Artsakh was proclaimed in September 1991.

Following the 1994 cease-fire agreement, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) embarked on a lengthy but feeble process of seeking durable peace. That process was halted in 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a military offensive to recapture the Armenian-occupied territories. With support from Turkey, the Azeri forces came close to complete victory. In a last-ditch intervention, Russia managed to broker a cease-fire that entailed the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Their primary mission was to ensure free movement along the Lachin Corridor that connects Armenia proper with the remnants of Artsakh.

Three years later, Azerbaijan delivered the final blow to the enclave, and now it is questionable if the West will have any future role in the South Caucasus. The failure of Western-led mediation will translate into a significant loss of influence. The problem is compounded by a crisis in the EU’s relations with Georgia. These approached rock bottom as the government in Tbilisi has been reluctant to condemn the Russian war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey are tightening, and the geopolitical circumstances in this strategically important region have shifted in their favor.

The second and related dimension concerns the future role of Russia in the South Caucasus. While Armenia and Azerbaijan remained at war, Moscow was able to cement its role as regional hegemon by playing both sides. Although it presented itself as a protector of Armenia, with a sizeable military garrison at Gyumri, it was not shy about selling weapons to both sides. The war in 2020 has brought that balancing act to a screeching halt. 

Although the Moscow-brokered cease-fire that year did save the Armenian forces from a rout, that intervention may well have been the last stand for Russia in the South Caucasus. 

Having long been able to use the frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh as leverage to remain a regional hegemon, Moscow has now been decisively outflanked by Turkey. Likely, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rationale for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi shortly before Azerbaijan’s attack was to inform the Russian side about the pending operation and to demand that its peacekeepers stand aside, which they did. 

The currently dominant transportation route through the region is the east-west Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.

It is symptomatic that Moscow did not react when, in the early hours of the assault, the deputy commander of the Russian peacekeeping force, Captain First Rank (Colonel) Ivan Kovgan, was killed. Although he was a senior officer, having served as deputy commander of the submarine force of Russia’s Northern Fleet, his death did not cause much public reaction from Moscow. And it is also telling that Armenia recently opted to hold military drills with U.S. forces.

The third – and in a longer-term perspective, most important – dimension of the geopolitical transformation concerns the regional transport infrastructure. The geographical location of the South Caucasus, wedged between the Caspian and the Black Seas, means that it is critical to controlling the main transport arteries between east and west (China and Europe) and north and south (Russia and the Indian Ocean nations). 

In the Soviet era, the South Caucasus was a major conduit for the flow of goods from southern Russia along the Caspian seaboard in Azerbaijan, and onward to Iran and India. The war over Nagorno-Karabakh blocked that route, as its vital link through southern Azerbaijan ended up in a war zone. The railroad link that skirted its southern border fell into disuse and disrepair.

The currently dominant transportation route through the region is the east-west Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. Also known as the Middle Corridor, it forms part of the well-funded Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Iran is attempting to break its international isolation by promoting two alternative routes to revive the link from north to south. One is the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 kilometer-long “multimode” network of shipping lines, rails and roads that links India with Russia via Iran and Azerbaijan. At present, it is mainly used for running guns from Iran to Russia. 

Tehran has also sought to revive an old proposal for a corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea that would connect Mumbai in India with Bandar Abbas in Iran and proceed onward to Europe via the South Caucasus, bridging Georgia and Bulgaria across the Black Sea.

Banking on its traditional friendship with Iran, Armenia hopes this latter corridor will bypass Azerbaijan. Its optimism is enhanced by India, which has emerged as a prominent provider of weapons shipped via Iran. Under a $245 million deal signed in October 2022, New Delhi agreed to supply Yerevan with multiple-launch rocket systems, anti-tank rockets and drones, and equipment for demining, communication and night-vision surveillance. 

Following decades of mutual animosity, the Armenian side has every reason to fear that life for those who become subjects of Azerbaijan will not be easy.

In March 2023, Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan said the country’s armed forces had received significant deliveries of weapons and ammunition. At the same time, an Armenian delegation visiting New Delhi sought Indian investments for the Persian Gulf-Black Sea Corridor to be drawn via Armenian territory. The proposal was timed to coincide with a visit by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan. Eager to circumvent the Suez Canal and avoid disruptions caused by the confrontation between Russia and the West, India may find the idea tempting.

The main problem for both variants of a north-south corridor is that they mainly serve for arms smuggling. In contrast, the BRI and the Middle Corridor bypassing Russia and Iran are firmly based on commercial interest. And while Russia and Iran are economic basket cases, the powers behind the Middle Corridor have ample resources.

In the final analysis, much will depend on whether some form of peace can be engineered. The core concern is the fate of the ethnic Armenian population that remains inside Nagorno-Karabakh. The two sides have agreed in principle to recognize each other’s territorial integrity, which means that the story of Artsakh is over. But the outlook for sustained peace is uncertain. 

Following decades of mutual animosity, the Armenian side has every reason to fear that life for those who become subjects of Azerbaijan will not be easy. Although the Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor (a mountain road linking Armenia and Artsakh) hardly qualifies as a crime against humanity, it seriously indicates what may be in store for the Armenian minority. The possibility of discrimination and ethnic cleansing policies cannot be ruled out. The outcome of the “anti-terror operation” casts a shadow.

Yerevan is running short on friends who might support its cause. It had a good run with Russia as a patron. Its successful assault on Azerbaijan in the early 1990s would not have been possible without Russian support. The same was true about maintaining the illegal occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories. But these days, Armenia has abandoned all hope of help from Russia in securing an equitable peace. 

The Armenian position is so weak that Yerevan may have to accept promises it does not feel it can trust.

Looking to the West for help may appear a logical alternative. Under other circumstances, given their emphasis on human rights and minority protection, Western governments would be sympathetic. But Armenia has alienated many potential Western supporters by cultivating friendship with Iran and playing an intermediary role in Russian sanctions-busting schemes. In 2022, it helped Russia obtain significant shipments of U.S.- and EU-made chips, processors, and the desired consumer goods, such as autos.  

If India continues to veer toward the West, Armenia’s only remaining friend will be Iran. Although the two only share a short border stretch, Iran has been a vital supplier of energy and other necessities over the years. However, if needed, it will be easy for Azerbaijan to seal this passage, leaving landlocked Armenia isolated between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia.