Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Armenia-Azerbaijan Time Bomb Ticks Down In Karabakh

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Armenia-Azerbaijan Time Bomb Ticks Down In Karabakh

    ARMENIA-AZERBAIJAN TIME BOMB TICKS DOWN IN KARABAKH
    By Mariam Harutyunyan

    Times
    http://www.sundaytimes.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21867 :armenia-azerbaijan-time-bomb-ticks-down-in-karabakh-by-mariam-harutyunyan&catid=83:analysis&Itemid=561
    July 17 2012
    SriLanka

    Wednesday, 18 July 2012 11:39 .MARDAKERT, Azerbaijan, July 18, 2012
    (AFP) - The rusty sign reads: "this area is under enemy fire."Only
    the wind is heard rustling the wheat fields at the Karabakh frontline,
    but the silence is deceptive -- the soldiers lined along the Mardakert
    Heights know that shooting can start at any time.

    Thirty metres (yards) divide Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in the
    fragile ceasefire over Nagorny-Karabakh, the mountainous region that
    is home to one of the world's most dangerous frozen conflicts and
    will hold leadership elections Thursday.

    Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a bitter dispute over
    Nagorny-Karabakh, which Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized
    from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s that left some 30,000 people
    dead but Baku wants to reclaim.

    Despite years of internationally-mediated negotiations since the 1994
    ceasefire, the two sides have not yet signed a final peace deal and
    the risk of a new conflict remains palpable.

    There are still frequent exchanges of gunfire between the opposing
    armies and energy-rich Azerbaijan has repeatedly vowed to retake the
    region using its huge defence budget, a move that Armenia warns it
    would crush.

    Nagorny-Karabakh is still internationally recognised as part of
    Azerbaijan but the Azerbaijani community -- which before the war made
    up around 25% of the population -- no longer exists.

    Almost all of the 145,000 population of Nagorny-Karabakh is Armenian
    and the region declares itself as the Nagorny-Karabakh Republic. But
    its existence as a state is recognised by no country in the world,
    not even Armenia.

    The breakaway region will on July 19 elect a new leader with security
    dominating the campaign of the two main hopefuls, incumbent and
    former security minister Bako Sahakyan and retired army general
    Vitaliy Balasanyan.

    "If Baku starts war, it will get a crushing rebuff from the Karabakh
    army," said Sahakyan.

    According to Svante Cornell, director of the Washington-based Central
    Asia-Caucasus Institute, there is still no meaningful international
    effort to solve the problem and domestic issues in the two countries
    could tip the dispute into a full-blown conflict.

    "This situation cannot continue forever and at some point something
    has to break," he told AFP. "This is a time bomb. If nobody does
    anything about it, I don't see how it could not at some point erupt
    into a new armed conflict."

    --- 'The chance of war will increase' ---
    ========================================= >>From his
    well-camouflaged observation point overlooking the vast lowland on the
    Azerbaijani-controlled side of the frontline, Karabakh army colonel
    Jalal Harutyunyan can see the Azerbaijani fortifications and the
    "enemy" village buried among the verdure of orchards.

    "Azerbaijanis shoot every day. If it lasts for long, then we return
    fire," he said.

    Streets are deserted in the village as locals live in constant fear
    of Armenian snipers. They have built a four-metre-high fence around
    the cemetery to safely bury their dead, but still funerals here are
    only held at night.

    War paused in a freeze-frame at the "line of contact" -- the entire
    frontier between Karabakh and Azerbaijan proper -- stuffed with
    landmines to avert infiltration of commandos.

    Sometimes commandos manage to clean paths of landmines and approach
    enemy positions under the dead of night.

    "I was on duty when I saw three men speaking in Azerbaijani. I opened
    fire, but they threw a grenade and wounded a friend of mine," said
    Grigor Madatyan, a 19-year-old soldier with wide green eyes.

    "We have found out that it was a group of 12 saboteurs. They managed
    to escape, taking with them their wounded." Increasing the stakes
    in the standoff, Azerbaijan is under increasing domestic political
    pressure to restore the country's territorial integrity with its
    budget bulging with the revenues from oil and gas exports.

    Baku is trying to win concessions from Yerevan by trapping it into
    an arms race it cannot afford and excluding it from strategic energy
    projects. Yet the military option remains very much on the table.

    "Azerbaijan uses economic levers to force Armenia into peace --
    through economic exhaustion of Armenia and its exclusion from important
    regional projects," Mubariz Gurbanly, senior lawmaker from Azerbaijan's
    ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party, told AFP in Baku.

    "Azerbaijan's military budget is bigger than the entire state budget
    of Armenia," he boasted, adding that "if talks do not bring results,
    then the probability of war will increase." Cornell said that the
    economic disparity between Azerbaijan and resource-poor Armenia was
    widening very quickly. "You have weak Armenia and probably revanchist
    Azerbaijan."




    From: A. Papazian
Working...
X