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Tuesday, September 29, 2020
By Sebastian Huld
In a few days, the skirmishes between Azerbaijan and Armenia turn into a military conflict on several fronts. As always, this is the controversial Nagorno-Karabakh. The many weapons are new and the role of Turkey.
No war can do without a propaganda battle. So these days, both martial and anachronistic images are flooding social media: the Armenian government has published images that supposedly show Azerbaijani tanks being destroyed in air strikes. The world is not without conflict, but direct disputes between the armed forces of two states have become rare, also due to the high potential for escalation. But this is not the only reason why events in the Caucasus are important. The region is important for supplying oil and gas to Europe, and transit routes run through it. However, at the same time, as is often the case in its history, the Caucasus is once again the scene of competition between other great powers. Until now, Europe has remained the role of the helpless spectator.
Who is fighting there?
According to the reading, two, three or even five countries are directly involved in the conflict. The main roles are played by predominantly Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan. The two former Soviet republics have been antagonistic to each other since they waged a violent war over territory claimed by both sides in the early 1990s as part of their newly gained independence. Azerbaijan is very rich due to the energy resources of the Caspian Sea, but the Aliyev clan has ruled it as authoritarian for 27 years. In the poor neighboring country of Armenia, the democratically elected Nikol Pashinyan has ruled since the Velvet Revolution in 2018. Other players include the governments of Russia, Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh, the bone of contention.
Why are both states fighting?
It is the fertile land of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, sometimes also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, with around 150,000 inhabitants, seven neighboring provinces and the unclear direction of the common border between the two states. As an island in Azerbaijani territory, Nagorno-Karabakh was, unlike the surrounding areas, predominantly inhabited by ethnic Armenians before the war. There is a dispute between the two countries over historical facts about who can claim the land for themselves. Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been formally independent since the last war, is generally not recognized as an independent state under international law, not even by Russia, Armenia’s partner country. Armenia also controls the surrounding provinces in order to assert itself militarily in Nagorno-Karabakh. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis have been displaced from these areas since the 1990s, while Armenians have resettled.
What has happened since the last war?
The war in both countries ended in 1994 with around 30,000 deaths, people displaced by ethnic cleansing on both sides, and a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Since then there has been neither war nor peace between the two nations. Every year, around two dozen combatants or civilians are killed in exchanges of gunfire between the two sides. More recently, the conflict escalated again in 2016, with 120 to 225 deaths at the time, depending on the source. In the following years, something resembling a peace agreement was on the horizon. At least that’s what the heads of government Pashinyan and Aliyev announced in 2018. The door opener was, among other things, the change of power in Yerevan: unlike Serzh Sargsyan, who was replaced at the time, and his colleagues , Pashinyan does not come from Nagorno-Karabakh itself.
Why are both states soaring again?
Baku and Yerevan accuse each other of being the culprits of the new escalation. An independent evaluation is pending. Neither Russia nor the German federal government wanted to commit to this. Armenia announced that Aliyev wanted to distract his compatriots from the serious economic troubles plaguing the country as oil and gas prices fell. Science and Politics Foundation expert Uwe Halbach also points to the problem that Pashinyan may have to be tough on Azerbaijan for power politics reasons. Otherwise, he threatens to be pressured by the government clique around Sargsyan, which he has replaced. The current conflict erupted in mid-July, when the two countries fought for the first time since the end of the war in 1994 along their common border, in the north of both countries near Georgia.
Furthermore, according to Halbach, both states have improved tremendously in recent years. This exacerbates the perceived threat from the other on both sides. Increasingly powerful weapons also cause more casualties: according to official figures, 114 people have already died on the Armenian side in the ongoing conflict alone. Azerbaijan does not provide figures on its armed forces and only published the number of ten civilians killed. The current clashes could cause the most deaths since the ceasefire in 1994. In addition, Armenia said it was fired on Tuesday on its own territory. That would mean a violent escalation.
What role does Russia play?
For the outside world, Russia assumes the role of an honest broker who is primarily concerned with stability. On the other hand, Putin is the most important security guarantor for Armenia. The country maintains a large military base in the Caucasus state. Furthermore, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Alliance Organization and thus receives discounted Russian military technology. However, Russia also sells weapons on a large scale to solvent Baku, which Moscow justifies with a policy of military balance. So far, Russia has joined the West in international efforts to achieve peace in the region. The country belongs to the Minsk Group of the OSCE, which was founded in 1992 and a half between the two countries.
What is Turkey doing?
Turkey and Armenia keep their common national borders closed. Since the genocide of the Armenians in 1915, which Ankara has contested to this day, the relationship between the two peoples has been difficult. On the contrary, Turkey counts the Turkish people of Muslim Azerbaijanis as one of its allies. In the current conflict, the government is fueling the dispute, among others, over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly pushing for Armenia to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh. Even after a telephone conversation with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu stated: “There is only one solution. Armenia is withdrawing from the Azerbaijani territory it has occupied. “. In the summer, shortly after the border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey sent 11,000 troops for a large-scale maneuver to Azerbaijan. Armenia accuses Turkey of having intervened in the current conflict, with its own soldiers, planes and militias imported from Syria. The federal government has not yet been able to confirm such reports.
What is the world of states doing?
The United Nations, the European Union, the OSCE, NATO and other international organizations have urged all those involved to end the conflict. Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned the heads of government of both countries, so far without success. Moscow and Ankara are likely to decide how to proceed. The countries have already clashed in Syria and Libya in recent years, but repeatedly found compromise formulas that were acceptable to both parties.
What would a solution look like?
What is difficult about the dispute is – in the words of Stefan Meister, an expert at the German Foreign Policy Society (DGAP) – that “the mythologization of the conflict has become part of the national construction of both states.” The Nagorno-Karabakh war is the identity of the young countries. That is why neither party can simply do without Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku’s biggest concession so far has been the suggestion of the possibility of an autonomous republic within Azerbaijan. In return, Armenia should evacuate the seven surrounding provinces. But then Nagorno-Karabakh would be defenseless from the Armenian point of view, which is why a lot of confidence-building, security guarantees and possibly also international peacekeeping forces would be needed for this. Until then, Halbach writes, other approaches could contribute to detente: the resumption of personal contacts among the civilian population, the rights of return of displaced persons, and the participation of the population in peace diplomacy. For this, however, the weapons would first have to be silent. The greatest danger at this time, Halbach wrote in early September, was not a deliberately provoked war, but a “war by accident,” an accidental war. At the moment, it appears that this oversight has already occurred.
You can find the detailed analysis of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by Uwe Halbach here. In May, Stefan Meister from DGAP published a report on the new tensions in the magazine “Internationale Politik”.
