Karo Sahakyan / Armagov Pan Photo / AP
Moscow Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds injured since fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia a week ago. Military forces from both countries are clashing on the Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region of Azerbaijan, and some major world powers are supporting the opposition in the standoff – and the U.S. Absent – there is a possibility that conflict in the Balkans could escalate.
International observers and analysts warn that, unlike in previous clashes on the two countries’ shared border, peace talks could be difficult this time around, not because NATO member Turkey has backed Azerbaijan and the United States is reluctant to play a key role. Arbitration.
Officials from both parties have claimed serious harm to the other. Both sides have claimed that others have killed civilians, including new reports in Azerbaijan on Monday that the bald city, home to more than 30,000,000 people, was targeted by Armenian forces.
Videos posted online from the battlefield show unprecedented use of heavy artillery, tanks, missiles and kamikaz drones as fighting escalates. Both countries have been accused of refusing to agree to set fire to each other, and have so far shown no willingness to recover from stalled peace talks.
What is behind the controversy?
Armenia and Azerbaijan were both part of the Soviet Union, but as it crumbled, new borders remained in dispute.
Getty / iStockphoto
As the end of Soviet communist rule approached in the late 1980s, the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous assembly voted to join Armenia in the mountainous region. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence, resulting in thousands of casualties. It is not recognized as an independent state by any other country
Still internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Armenians.
The long-running conflict was mediated by the Minsk Group, formed in 1994 by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and co-chaired by Russia, France and the United States.
Tofik Bebeyev / AFP / Getty
The hostilities, which began in late September, are said to be the worst since 1994, when the armistice and Armenia occupied the area.
“One step away” from the war
Despite the ceasefire, clashes with the so-called “Line of Contact” have continued for the past three decades. The last major blaze was in 2016, when dozens of soldiers from both sides were killed.
Tensions flared up again the following summer, but this time around, the global epidemic disrupted Europe and the U.S. from the politics of ethnic unrest and election year.
“All the signals were in place, everything was saying that growth was coming. And there is diplomatic silence,” Olesya Vartanyan, a senior analyst in the South Caucasus region of the international crisis group, told CBS News.
“We are definitely one step away from a large-scale war in the region,” he said, adding that such a conflict could engulf Russia, Turkey or both.
Russia has close ties with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and has sold military hardware to both countries. However Armenia is Russia’s military ally, and Moscow has a base in the country.
Turkey, a member of the NATO and Minsk group, has backed mainly Muslim Azerbaijan in the conflict and called Armenia a threat to peace in the region.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said last week that one of its jets had been shot down by a Turkish F-16. A spokesman for the ministry said the Turkish plane took off from the territory of Azerbaijan, flying over Armenia, shooting down an Armenian SU-25 military aircraft. Azerbaijan and Turkey have denied the allegations.
What is the international response?
On Thursday, the U.S., France and Russia issued a joint statement condemning the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We call for an immediate end to hostilities between the two armed forces,” the three presidents said in a statement. “We will also hold talks with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to remain committed without delay to start negotiations.
Aziz Karimov / Ritter
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that he had called the foreign ministers of both Armenia and Azerbaijan and said Russia was ready for talks.
On Monday, Iran, which sits south of both countries, also offered to help, the regime said, adding that it had a “plan” to present to Armenia and Azerbaijan this week.
So far, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey have all rejected the international community’s call for a ceasefire and offered to hold peace talks.
The role of Washington
The Trump administration also issued a unilateral statement last week calling on warring parties to show restraint, but it was the last major international actor to respond – a possible indication of the extent to which the White House is focused on the upcoming election, the cost of diplomacy.
Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinya spoke Thursday with Robert O’Brien, President Trump’s national security adviser. Pashini later told French TV and The New York Times that he had allegedly used a US-supplied F-16 aircraft in the conflict by Turkey, intentionally in support of Azerbaijan.
“The United States,” Pashinin told The New York Times, “needs to explain that he gave the F-16s to bomb peaceful villages and peaceful populations.” He said O’Brien had “heard and accepted” his concerns, and promised to arrange a phone call between the Armenian leader and Mr Trump.
But it was confirmed that Mr Trump had contracted a new coronavirus and was rushed to Washington’s Verter Reed Hospital for treatment.
The International Crisis Group’s Vartanya noted that all of President Trump’s recent predecessors had tried to calm previous tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“Even before the fight, many senior officials in the field told me they had not felt America’s interest in the conflict for more than three years.”
According to Thomas de Val, a senior member of Carnegie Europe’s think tank, Washington’s dramatic differences in this case are likely to escalate the conflict.
“Flare-ups can also be seen as a feature of the world, in which the US is no longer working to reduce regional tensions,” de Vale wrote in a comment published last week by Politico Europe.
.
