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Azerbaijani forces resumed strategic territories south of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave on Tuesday, lighting an alert for separatists of Armenian origin, who must now review their defense strategy if they do not want to lose control of the Lachi Corridor, their main land link with Armenia. A month has passed since the historic conflict over Azerbaijani territory has again turned into open warfare, the Azerbaijani army appears, for the first time, to be making real progress.
– Azerbaijan’s strategy is clear: it ceded control of Nagorno-Karabakh to suffocate the region – Heitor Loureiro, professor of International Relations at United Metropolitan Colleges, told GLOBE. – In the 1990s, it was in fact a territorial problem. Now, with the use of military drones by the Azerbaijanis, the situation is completely different.
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According to Loureiro, Azerbaijan no longer needs to have real military control over Nagorno-Karabakh. It is enough to control the surrounding territories and send drones and missiles to isolate the population, which would be left without receiving military aid and supplies from Armenia, which supports them in the conflict.
“Azerbaijan is playing hard, because criticism has also started to weigh on President Ilham Aliyev, who spent a lot to make little progress in almost a month of war,” said James Onnig, professor of International Relations at Campinas Colleges. – But Aliyev’s strategy is clear: depopulate Karabakh, invest against the civilian population and destroy the local infrastructure, which would force the population to withdraw.
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No perspective agree
According to Onnig, the Azerbaijani people, who mostly support the war to retake the territory controlled by separatists since 1994, expected a quick offensive, given the military superiority of Azerbaijan and the support of Turkey. But Azerbaijani forces slowed down mainly for geographical reasons.
– The first major Armenian cities in that region start at an altitude of 800 meters, while the plain where the Azeris meet is 250 meters high – explains Onnig. – The capital, Stepanakert, is located 850 meters above sea level.
The ongoing conflict over the past month has led Baku and Yerevan to radicalize their speeches, says Loureiro. While Armenia says that the solution is to recognize the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Azerbaijan says that it accepts nothing less than the recovery of sovereignty over the territory.
“I am very skeptical about a lasting peace agreement,” he says. – Unless something changes in the geopolitics of the region, Russia increases intervention or Turkey changes support for Azerbaijan, for example, the trend is that in months or years the confrontation breaks out again, as it has been for years. 1990.
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For Loureiro, Nagorno-Karabakh “has always been a non-negotiable issue”, but before there was an international context favorable to pressure for peace in the region. Currently, he notes, the countries that mediated the conflict through the Minsk Group – Russia, France and the United States – are “trapped in their own internal and geopolitical dynamics.”
The war, on the contrary, brought about the incorporation of a new political actor to the conflict. Located on the southern border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran announced this week that it had drawn up “a plan with the approval of the country’s top officials for a permanent solution to the Karabakh conflict,” which will be discussed with the parties in the coming days. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also announced that he will visit Baku, Yerevan, Moscow and Ankara in the coming days to promote the Iranian conflict resolution initiative, drawing on the numerous Azeri and Armenian communities in his country.
Last Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that Azerbaijan has used cluster bombs in residential areas of Nagorno-Karabakh. Neither Baku nor Yerevan signed the 2008 treaty banning this type of ammunition, which is banned because of its widespread and indiscriminate effect and the long-term danger to civilians.
Azerbaijan has also systematically destroyed the Armenian tanks and other equipment of the separatists, using modern, quiet and deadly “suicide drones”, supplied by Turkey and Israel.
Despite diplomatic contacts and the three announced ceasefire agreements, with Russian, French and American mediation, the hostilities have already caused some 5,000 deaths, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed last week.
If the 1994 war led some 800,000 Azeris to flee Nagorno-Karabakh, the current war is causing thousands of Armenians to flee the enclave to Armenia and other countries.
Specialized organizations speak of a humanitarian emergency, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic.
