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TENSIONS REIGNITE IN THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT
Updated News, Canada
March 9 2015
The embers of the quarter-century-old war over Nagorno-Karabakh -
a landlocked mountainous region in the South Caucasus that lies at a
crossroads between East and West - are smouldering again, and raising
concerns another full-scale war is not far away.
The region has been the playground of empires for centuries with the
Persian, Russian, Ottoman, and European empires wrestling over its
natural resources and geostrategic advantage - while various ethnic
groups fought for local control.
The most recent conflict erupted in 1988 after 65 years of imposed
peace under Soviet rule, when Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region of what was then the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)
declared their desire to separate and join neighbouring Armenian SSR.
What was initially a peaceful movement soon degenerated into violence
and ethnic cleansing by both sides, and ultimately a full-scale war
between the newly independent Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan in
the 1990s.
It was one of the most brutal conflicts to result from the imploding
Soviet Union with an estimated 30,000 people killed, mostly civilians,
and hundreds of thousands displaced before a ceasefire took hold.
"You are asking very painful questions," said Ashot Harutiunyan, a
war veteran and director of the history museum in the town of Shushi
in Nagorno-Karabakh, when asked about the region's bloody past.
Life before the war, he said, was different "because that was during
the Soviet government. It was a government where people couldn't
discuss questions of national identity... And of course we lived
in this system, had neighbours, visited each other - there were
good Azeris."
'Grenades at home'
Aynur Jafar was an internally displaced person who fled her home in
the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam with her family when the situation
became too dangerous.
"It was a very peaceful place and even Armenians were coming and
visiting," she recalled. "I mean, we were neighbours, we were living
peacefully ... we didn't think a war could happen."
But it did.
"We kept hand grenades at home. Everybody had this ... in case they
suddenly attacked," Jafar, who was seven-years old when the war
started, told Al Jazeera.
The stories of torture from neighbouring villages were so terrifying
that all in the community feared being taken hostage.
"We'd decided to come together and just use that grenade to [commit]
suicide," Jafar said.
Traumatised civilians, who initially resolved never to abandon their
homes, felt lucky to have escaped the war zone in the end.
"People didn't even have time to pack some things. They just ran ...
arriving in Yerevan [Armenia's capital] with just the clothes on
their backs," Silva Prodan, who served as a doctor in the war, said
of the Armenian refugees who fled Nagorno-Karabakh upon being caught
in the crossfire.
By the time a ceasefire was negotiated in 1994 with the help of
regional powers, Armenian forces took control over Nagorno-Karabakh,
along with some buffer corridors of Azeri territory, and
Nagorno-Karabakh declared itself an independent republic, albeit
unrecognised by much of the world, with its own government and
military.
The ceasefire has far from resolved the conflict, however, and failed
to lead to a peace agreement. To the contrary, said Harutiunyan.
"Basically since 1994 ... there has been an ongoing unofficial war".
Azerbaijan vows to re-establish the integrity of its "occupied"
territories sooner or later, while Armenian authorities boast they
will retain the "liberated" Armenian lands.
Ceasefire
In the 25 years since the ceasefire, tit-for-tat gunfire has resulted
in periodic deaths of border guards on both sides.
But there has been a significant escalation in these incidents recently
involving the use of heavier weapons and attacks on civilians,
"which was not visible as often before", said Arsen Kharatyan,
a Tbilisi-based freelance journalist.
In 2014, 60 people died in cross-border violence, with one of the more
serious incidents involving the downing of an Armenian helicopter by
Azeri forces in early November.
More troubling is both Armenia, and by proxy Nagorno-Karabakh, as
well as Azerbaijan have been amassing an unprecedented presence of
weaponry, with Azerbaijan's annual military budget reaching $3bn by
2011, exceeding Armenia's entire gross domestic product.
Furthermore, recent statements from officials from all sides contain
increasingly belligerent rhetoric.
Bayram Safarov, chairman of the Azerbaijani Community of
Nagorno-Karabakh in Exile, declared on February 3 that the Azerbaijani
army is capable of "running the Armenians not only out of the occupied
territories of the Azerbaijan Republic, but from Armenia itself".
In his New Year's greetings to the armed forces, Azerbaijani Defence
Minister Zakhir Gasanov announced: "We will not allow the enemy to
live peacefully on our historic lands. We will restore our territorial
integrity."
On the other side, Armenian authorities have indicated they are
preparing for all-out war.
As early as 2010, Lieutenant General Movses Hakobian, the defence
minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic stated: "I'm not waiting for
[Azerbaijani] provocations, I'm waiting for war... Nagorno-Karabakh's
defence ministry and defence army were set up to wage war, and we
are getting ready for that every day, every hour."
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan responded to the latest border
violence with: "We have prepared many surprises for the hotheads
in Azerbaijan."
A tangle of alliances raises further concerns that the escalating
situation could expand beyond full-scale war into a wider regional
conflict.
Russia has taken Armenia under its wing, while Azerbaijan, with
its abundant oil resources and strong cultural bonds with Turkey,
has forged alliances with NATO and the West.
On February 7, senior officials of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Minsk Group, comprised of the
United States, Russia and France - tasked with finding a peaceful
resolution to the conflict - met to discuss the worrying developments
and issued a statement condemning the deadly and escalating aggression
from both sides.
Officials encouraged the involved parties to stop the violence and take
"steps to reduce tensions and strengthen the ceasefire and ... find
the political will to begin this process immediately without excuses".
>From February 16-19, representatives from these organisations
travelled to the region for personal meetings with officials of the
conflict countries to further discuss "the dangerous rise in violence".
No need to worry
Despite the heightened state of alert, however, analysts agree there
is no reason for worry about an escalation and, on the contrary,
the current situation of perceived danger actually benefits some of
the countries involved.
"A full-blown war is in nobody's interest," said Luke Coffey, a
political analyst.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan want to pursue economic development and
recover from the devastating effects of the war, he said.
Coffey, who just returned from a visit to Azerbaijan, said although
Azeri officials vow to retake "stolen" territories, Azerbaijan,
in particular, has much to lose.
"Azerbaijan likes making money from oil and gas, but oil and gas is
going to be there for a certain time, but Nagorno-Karabakh is going
to be there forever. So I'd say in the short term, their interest is
getting money from oil and gas to improve infrastructure, to improve
the lives of the IDPs living in Azerbaijan, and to modernise and
rearm their military," Coffey told Al Jazeera.
Likewise, Armenia, is working to recover both economically and
politically from the war, and on reducing its dependence on Russia
and diaspora remittances, and cannot afford another full-out war.
"In order to reach peace with a neighbour, we must first make order
inside our own country," said Harutiunyan, the museum director.
"We must create a strong economy, jobs, a country of social justice,"
because economic development is key to any successful peace process,
he continued.
Another war would be "disastrous for all parties", agreed Kharatyan.
"Political rhetoric is one thing, and it is strongly directed to
internal audiences, all politics is local."
Creating distractions at the border takes attention away from internal
political troubles for the leaders of both Armenia and Azerbaijan,
he argued.
"This is especially true in the case of Azerbaijan," said Arzu
Geybullayeva, a political analyst and human rights activist based in
Istanbul. "To divert international attention from these issues, the
Azerbaijani government is skilfully using the conflict and escalation."
Regional powers also have a stake in the status quo of instability
in the region.
"I think part of it is that Russia is antagonising Armenia to take
more of an aggressive stance, and that is triggering a response from
Azerbaijan, so both sides are willing to use force along the line of
control... But I think Russia benefits from this," said Coffey.
It is interesting that despite being members of the Minsk Group,
Russia and the US are among the main suppliers of military equipment
to both countries.
The Minsk group, explained Coffey, "right now is dead, just because
of the political realities... It can issue statements, but that's
the extent of its abilities."
The spotlight brought on by the instability in the Caucasus, "distracts
the West [in light of the Ukrainian war], and makes Putin look like
a statesman [trying to broker a peace deal], and helps Russian oil
and gas companies" by pushing business away from unstable Azerbaijan,
he added.
Turkey, on the other side, explained Coffey, "needs the investors to
look to the South Caucasus. They need oil and gas transiting through
the region into Turkey, because Turkey has this aspiration to be a
regional oil and gas hub".
Yet, despite this economic incentive, Turkey remains steadfast in its
support for its ally. The Turkish-Armenian border remains closed to
this day.
Despite all the noise, the casualties, and the rhetoric of war -
the status quo will likely linger.
"Which is terrible," said Coffey. "I think that's the reality,
especially in the South Caucasus, [where] these frozen conflicts find
a natural home."
Al Jazeera
http://www.updatednews.ca/2015/03/09/tensions-reignite-in-the-nagorno-karabakh-conflict/
From: Baghdasarian
Updated News, Canada
March 9 2015
The embers of the quarter-century-old war over Nagorno-Karabakh -
a landlocked mountainous region in the South Caucasus that lies at a
crossroads between East and West - are smouldering again, and raising
concerns another full-scale war is not far away.
The region has been the playground of empires for centuries with the
Persian, Russian, Ottoman, and European empires wrestling over its
natural resources and geostrategic advantage - while various ethnic
groups fought for local control.
The most recent conflict erupted in 1988 after 65 years of imposed
peace under Soviet rule, when Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region of what was then the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)
declared their desire to separate and join neighbouring Armenian SSR.
What was initially a peaceful movement soon degenerated into violence
and ethnic cleansing by both sides, and ultimately a full-scale war
between the newly independent Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan in
the 1990s.
It was one of the most brutal conflicts to result from the imploding
Soviet Union with an estimated 30,000 people killed, mostly civilians,
and hundreds of thousands displaced before a ceasefire took hold.
"You are asking very painful questions," said Ashot Harutiunyan, a
war veteran and director of the history museum in the town of Shushi
in Nagorno-Karabakh, when asked about the region's bloody past.
Life before the war, he said, was different "because that was during
the Soviet government. It was a government where people couldn't
discuss questions of national identity... And of course we lived
in this system, had neighbours, visited each other - there were
good Azeris."
'Grenades at home'
Aynur Jafar was an internally displaced person who fled her home in
the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam with her family when the situation
became too dangerous.
"It was a very peaceful place and even Armenians were coming and
visiting," she recalled. "I mean, we were neighbours, we were living
peacefully ... we didn't think a war could happen."
But it did.
"We kept hand grenades at home. Everybody had this ... in case they
suddenly attacked," Jafar, who was seven-years old when the war
started, told Al Jazeera.
The stories of torture from neighbouring villages were so terrifying
that all in the community feared being taken hostage.
"We'd decided to come together and just use that grenade to [commit]
suicide," Jafar said.
Traumatised civilians, who initially resolved never to abandon their
homes, felt lucky to have escaped the war zone in the end.
"People didn't even have time to pack some things. They just ran ...
arriving in Yerevan [Armenia's capital] with just the clothes on
their backs," Silva Prodan, who served as a doctor in the war, said
of the Armenian refugees who fled Nagorno-Karabakh upon being caught
in the crossfire.
By the time a ceasefire was negotiated in 1994 with the help of
regional powers, Armenian forces took control over Nagorno-Karabakh,
along with some buffer corridors of Azeri territory, and
Nagorno-Karabakh declared itself an independent republic, albeit
unrecognised by much of the world, with its own government and
military.
The ceasefire has far from resolved the conflict, however, and failed
to lead to a peace agreement. To the contrary, said Harutiunyan.
"Basically since 1994 ... there has been an ongoing unofficial war".
Azerbaijan vows to re-establish the integrity of its "occupied"
territories sooner or later, while Armenian authorities boast they
will retain the "liberated" Armenian lands.
Ceasefire
In the 25 years since the ceasefire, tit-for-tat gunfire has resulted
in periodic deaths of border guards on both sides.
But there has been a significant escalation in these incidents recently
involving the use of heavier weapons and attacks on civilians,
"which was not visible as often before", said Arsen Kharatyan,
a Tbilisi-based freelance journalist.
In 2014, 60 people died in cross-border violence, with one of the more
serious incidents involving the downing of an Armenian helicopter by
Azeri forces in early November.
More troubling is both Armenia, and by proxy Nagorno-Karabakh, as
well as Azerbaijan have been amassing an unprecedented presence of
weaponry, with Azerbaijan's annual military budget reaching $3bn by
2011, exceeding Armenia's entire gross domestic product.
Furthermore, recent statements from officials from all sides contain
increasingly belligerent rhetoric.
Bayram Safarov, chairman of the Azerbaijani Community of
Nagorno-Karabakh in Exile, declared on February 3 that the Azerbaijani
army is capable of "running the Armenians not only out of the occupied
territories of the Azerbaijan Republic, but from Armenia itself".
In his New Year's greetings to the armed forces, Azerbaijani Defence
Minister Zakhir Gasanov announced: "We will not allow the enemy to
live peacefully on our historic lands. We will restore our territorial
integrity."
On the other side, Armenian authorities have indicated they are
preparing for all-out war.
As early as 2010, Lieutenant General Movses Hakobian, the defence
minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic stated: "I'm not waiting for
[Azerbaijani] provocations, I'm waiting for war... Nagorno-Karabakh's
defence ministry and defence army were set up to wage war, and we
are getting ready for that every day, every hour."
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan responded to the latest border
violence with: "We have prepared many surprises for the hotheads
in Azerbaijan."
A tangle of alliances raises further concerns that the escalating
situation could expand beyond full-scale war into a wider regional
conflict.
Russia has taken Armenia under its wing, while Azerbaijan, with
its abundant oil resources and strong cultural bonds with Turkey,
has forged alliances with NATO and the West.
On February 7, senior officials of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Minsk Group, comprised of the
United States, Russia and France - tasked with finding a peaceful
resolution to the conflict - met to discuss the worrying developments
and issued a statement condemning the deadly and escalating aggression
from both sides.
Officials encouraged the involved parties to stop the violence and take
"steps to reduce tensions and strengthen the ceasefire and ... find
the political will to begin this process immediately without excuses".
>From February 16-19, representatives from these organisations
travelled to the region for personal meetings with officials of the
conflict countries to further discuss "the dangerous rise in violence".
No need to worry
Despite the heightened state of alert, however, analysts agree there
is no reason for worry about an escalation and, on the contrary,
the current situation of perceived danger actually benefits some of
the countries involved.
"A full-blown war is in nobody's interest," said Luke Coffey, a
political analyst.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan want to pursue economic development and
recover from the devastating effects of the war, he said.
Coffey, who just returned from a visit to Azerbaijan, said although
Azeri officials vow to retake "stolen" territories, Azerbaijan,
in particular, has much to lose.
"Azerbaijan likes making money from oil and gas, but oil and gas is
going to be there for a certain time, but Nagorno-Karabakh is going
to be there forever. So I'd say in the short term, their interest is
getting money from oil and gas to improve infrastructure, to improve
the lives of the IDPs living in Azerbaijan, and to modernise and
rearm their military," Coffey told Al Jazeera.
Likewise, Armenia, is working to recover both economically and
politically from the war, and on reducing its dependence on Russia
and diaspora remittances, and cannot afford another full-out war.
"In order to reach peace with a neighbour, we must first make order
inside our own country," said Harutiunyan, the museum director.
"We must create a strong economy, jobs, a country of social justice,"
because economic development is key to any successful peace process,
he continued.
Another war would be "disastrous for all parties", agreed Kharatyan.
"Political rhetoric is one thing, and it is strongly directed to
internal audiences, all politics is local."
Creating distractions at the border takes attention away from internal
political troubles for the leaders of both Armenia and Azerbaijan,
he argued.
"This is especially true in the case of Azerbaijan," said Arzu
Geybullayeva, a political analyst and human rights activist based in
Istanbul. "To divert international attention from these issues, the
Azerbaijani government is skilfully using the conflict and escalation."
Regional powers also have a stake in the status quo of instability
in the region.
"I think part of it is that Russia is antagonising Armenia to take
more of an aggressive stance, and that is triggering a response from
Azerbaijan, so both sides are willing to use force along the line of
control... But I think Russia benefits from this," said Coffey.
It is interesting that despite being members of the Minsk Group,
Russia and the US are among the main suppliers of military equipment
to both countries.
The Minsk group, explained Coffey, "right now is dead, just because
of the political realities... It can issue statements, but that's
the extent of its abilities."
The spotlight brought on by the instability in the Caucasus, "distracts
the West [in light of the Ukrainian war], and makes Putin look like
a statesman [trying to broker a peace deal], and helps Russian oil
and gas companies" by pushing business away from unstable Azerbaijan,
he added.
Turkey, on the other side, explained Coffey, "needs the investors to
look to the South Caucasus. They need oil and gas transiting through
the region into Turkey, because Turkey has this aspiration to be a
regional oil and gas hub".
Yet, despite this economic incentive, Turkey remains steadfast in its
support for its ally. The Turkish-Armenian border remains closed to
this day.
Despite all the noise, the casualties, and the rhetoric of war -
the status quo will likely linger.
"Which is terrible," said Coffey. "I think that's the reality,
especially in the South Caucasus, [where] these frozen conflicts find
a natural home."
Al Jazeera
http://www.updatednews.ca/2015/03/09/tensions-reignite-in-the-nagorno-karabakh-conflict/
From: Baghdasarian