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The war in the South Caucasus lasted almost two weeks. Now Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to a ceasefire in the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that this should start on Saturday afternoon. The Russian ministry released a statement on Saturday night.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers sat at the negotiating table in Moscow for ten hours. While the two warring parties were still meeting in Moscow on Friday night, eyewitnesses reported new airstrikes on social media. Azerbaijan claimed to have captured nine villages in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The fighting for the area that broke out on September 27 is the worst since the mid-1990s. In the last 13 days of the war there were large numbers of casualties in both Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia reported 320 soldiers killed in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has yet to provide any information on its own victims, but it does speak of some 30 civilians killed. The ceasefire that has now been negotiated will be used to exchange prisoners of war and deliver the bodies of dead soldiers to their homeland.
Now the OSCE should mediate once more
The so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will lead the upcoming peace negotiations. The group is led by Russia, the United States and France, which are mediating in the conflict. The OSCE had repeatedly sent observers to the front lines in recent years. However, so far efforts to find a lasting political solution have been in vain. The international legal situation is too difficult.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an area about twice the size of the Saarland, had the status of an autonomous enclave in central Azerbaijan in Soviet times. Nagrony Karabach was called “mountainous black garden” at the time. Armenian Christians, who held most of the high-ranking positions, lived here alongside Azerbaijani Muslims. Time and again, however, the Armenians demanded their independence. When the USSR disintegrated, there were demonstrations, violence, and finally mass murder on both sides. They led to a war that left the region in ruins until an armistice in 1994 and continues to shape it today. The self-proclaimed Armenian Republic of Artsakh arose in the disputed area – a de facto state that is not recognized internationally. Around 145,000 Armenians live there today.
However, according to international law, the area still belongs to Azerbaijan. People on both sides have lived in fear for 26 years. Again and again there were battles and exchanges of gunfire. Ruins from the 1990s can still be seen in Nagorno-Karabakh today. The most surprising is the ancient Azerbaijani village of Ağdam, which is located directly behind the front in the area occupied by the Armenians. Only the two minarets of the mosque remained. They tower over the remains of the foundation walls of this massive ghost town. These painful memories of the war left a deep mark on the southern Caucasus.
Independent observers such as the International Red Cross, which has been on the ground with aid teams on both sides of the conflict since the war in the 1990s, assumed until Friday night that there would be no solution for now and that the situation it would continue to deteriorate dramatically. . Authorities estimate that some 75,000 people are at large. Civilians who have remained in the war region seek refuge in unheated bomb cellars.
“Both sides suffer equally”
“Heavy artillery fire and air strikes, including missiles, have destroyed and damaged hundreds of homes and important infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, on both sides of the contact line,” said Eteri Musayeljan, mission spokesperson for the Red Cross in Stepanakert. Civilians would feel the full impact of the increased violence. “Both sides suffer equally from the escalation.”
And the future is still uncertain: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev described the meeting in Moscow as a “last chance” for a peaceful solution. He continues to demand that Armenia renounce Nagorno-Karabakh. Militarily he obtains the support of Turkey. Armenia, which is dependent on Moscow for help, will probably not accept this. Especially not when Turkey gets involved, which to this day does not recognize the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War. A compromise seems almost impossible.
With material from the agencies
