Nigorno Karabakh, A Continuous Conflict Between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh (‘Mountainous Karabakh’ in English) is a classic of the complications left by empires when they die. This is the conundrum:  Nagorno Karabakh (‘Atsarkh’ in Armenian) is a tiny piece of land in the Southern Caucasus mountains.  It is placed directly between the major regional powers of Russia, Turkey and Iran, each of which has had a major role in the area over the centuries.  

Over the decades, the world has seen a lot of this in places as diverse as Ireland, Kosovo and in Nagorno Karabakh, where an ‘on-again, off-again’ war burst into deadly life again at the end of last month.

What to do when two peoples of differing religions, different cultures and languages, but intertwining histories claim the same piece of land with apparently equal legitimacy?  What they all have in common is that they are small states ruled by an empire whose borders have long since ebbed back into the tides of history.

Here is the problem; Nagorno Karabakh is an enclave of Armenian people in what is internationally recognized as the south west region of Azerbaijan.  It shares no common border with near-by Armenia being literally surrounded by Azeri territory.

It is a disputed parcel of land between the ex-Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which became independent when the USSR collapsed in 1991.  Fighting had already erupted in 1988, as Moscow’s power waned in the region.

A century ago, after the Bolshevik revolution put an end to the old Russian Empire, Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent.  Moscow, in the shape of the newly appointed Commissar of Nationalities, Joseph Stalin put an end to all that.  He decided Nagorno Karabakh should not remain with the newly formed Armenian SSR, putting it within the Azerbaijan SSR instead.

This often happens with empire, it was classic ‘divide and rule’ which has simply left a toxic legacy of ‘divide’.

The difficulty for the Azeri government in Baku is that it has no control over the mountainous pocket of land and its adjoining districts, all of which it lost in a war that ended, but didn’t really end, in 1994.  Intermittent skirmishing has continued to kill soldiers and civilians in small, but noticeable numbers ever since. Nigorno Karabakh, A Continuous Conflict Between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Clearly, Azerbaijan cannot quietly accede to losing its south west. Equally clearly, Armenia will not allow Nagorno Karabakh to be retaken by Azerbaijan, at least not without a fight.  Nothing has changed in that sense.

What has changed from twenty six years ago is oil.  Baku has become the centre of a major oil and gas hub in the Caspian Basin.  That brings in a vast amount of money, which the country has used to modernise its military, buying new, game changing equipment such as military drones from Turkey and ‘suicide’ drones from Israel. Turkey is saviour and spectre here.  Istanbul was the first to recognize Azerbaijan when it declared independence from the USSR in 1991.  Azeris and Turks are ethnically, linguistically, culturally very close.

At the back of Armenia’s mind is the Ottoman Turkish genocide of Armenians during the First World War, an event that Turkey puts down as simply deaths in the Great War, not a state organized mass killing.

Being what would be called elsewhere in the world, the ‘former colonial power’, Russia has been hard to read in this conflict.  It is close to Armenia, although not as close as it might be.  Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, took power in 2018 at the head of a colour revolution, something Russia has a strong dislike for.  Rather than being a new broom to sweep clean on the Karabakh conflict, he has proven to be a hardliner, committed to keeping Azerbaijan out of Karabakh.

Baku, is something Russia rather likes; a state run by personal autocracy similar to that of Vladimir Putin, which has made its business to remain close to Moscow.

While the local stage looks complicated, the international one is just as intricate.  Russia and Turkey find themselves on opposite sides in two other conflicts.  In Libya, Turkey supports the internationally recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli.  Until Istanbul stepped in with troops and other military support, Khalifa Hafter, a Benghazi based strongman, looked poised to smash his way through Tripoli.  Haftar’s army now takes support from Wagner, a private military contractor from…Russia.

The roles in Syria are reversed. President Recip Tayyap Erdogan supports what is left of the Syrian rebels, now confined to Idlib province.  Russia has practically won the civil war for President Bashar Al-Assad.

It is not a coincidence that President Erdogan is interested in Syria, Libya and Nagorno Karabakh.  His country has built influence in the Balkan peninsula too.  These areas were all part of the Turkish empire.  Doubtless, more practical matters take precedence over sentiment; there are substantial oil reserves in Libya and Azerbaijan.  South east European states (mostly EU members) have huge potential in trade and geopolitics.  Libya is also proving useful in Turkish attempts to make use of gas reserves believed to be under the territorial waters of divided Cyprus, another EU member. This is a flash point with both the European Union and Greece.

Russia and Turkey are old enemies going back over three centuries, with rivalries in south-eastern Europe and the Caucasus.  Just as the end of their empires still reverberate in 2020, the retreat of ‘American empire’ has created the current instability, or, as both Putin and Erdogan would put it, new opportunities.