Tweet
Journal Pioneer, PEI, Canada
March 15 2015
Will Armenia and Azerbaijan go to war over Nagorno-Karabakh?
Henry Srebrnik
A low-intensity conflict in the southern Caucasus, involving the now
independent nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan, has been escalating of
late. It concerns the de facto Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh that
emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While Armenia and Azerbaijan were both full-fledged union republics in
the former USSR, Nagorno-Karabakh was an Armenian-majority enclave
within Azerbaijan, with the status of an autonomous oblast, or region.
According to the British academic Robert Service, in 1921 Joseph
Stalin included the area under Azerbaijani control to try and coax
Turkey into joining the Soviet Union. Had Turkey not been an issue,
Stalin would probably have left it under Armenian control.
With the Soviet Union firmly in control of the entire Caucasus by the
1920s, the conflict over the region died down for decades. But with
the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the question of Nagorno-Karabakh re-emerged.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, only the union republics gained
international recognition as independent states. So Nagorno-Karabakh,
along with other Soviet entities such as Chechnya, Moldova, South
Ossetia, and Transnistria, was out of luck.
On Nov. 26, 1991, the parliament of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist
Republic abolished the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh, and its
territory was split up and redistributed amongst the neighboring
administrative districts in Azerbaijan.
In turn, the region's Armenians, who comprised three-quarters of its
population, declared their independence in 1991 and then, with the
help of Armenia, defeated Azerbaijan in a war that lasted until 1994.
The new entity gained additional territory during the fighting,
ignoring UN Security Council resolutions on the inviolability of
international borders and the inadmissibility of the use of force for
the acquisition of territory.
Armenia now effectively controls the narrow strips of land to the west
and south of Nagorno-Karabakh, giving the unrecognized state direct
borders with its patron Armenia, as well as with Iran.
An estimated 15,000-20,000 people, including civilians, were killed
during the fighting and hundreds of thousands displaced. Today,
Nagorno-Karabakh is almost entirely Armenian.
Even apart from this, Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis have
had a tense relationship, including bloody massacres, that predates
Soviet times. The two countries have now both built up arsenals of
ever more powerful weapons, and January saw an upsurge of fighting
between them, with repeated gun battles and volleys of artillery and
rocket fire. Azerbaijan also shot down a drone not far from Agdam, a
formerly Azerbaijani city now occupied by Armenian forces.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, which has an economy seven times
larger than Armenia's, has announced that he plans this year to spend
more than double Armenia's entire annual budget of $2.7 billion on
strengthening his military. His Armenian counterpart, President Serzh
Sargsyan (who is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh) countered with his
own threats.
Aliyev also made reference to the influential Armenian diaspora,
formed largely after the Armenian genocide of 1915, when hundreds of
thousands of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were slaughtered
by the Turks, while others fled.
Today there are major Armenian communities throughout the world,
including in Australia, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia and the United
States.
"The truth is that the continued occupation of our lands is not just
the work of Armenia," he remarked. "Armenia is a powerless and poor
country. It is in a helpless state. Of course, if it didn't have major
patrons in various capitals, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would have
been resolved fairly long ago."
Neither side seems prepared to step down. As Abdulla Qurbani, a senior
official in the Azerbaijan Defence Ministry told a New York Times
reporter, "When water mixes with earth, this is mud. When blood mixes
with earth, this is motherland."
Nagorno-Karabakh's unresolved status remains one of the most
potentially explosive issues in the volatile southern Caucasus region.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University
of Prince Edward Island.
http://www.journalpioneer.com/Opinion/Columnists/2015-03-15/article-4077852/Will-Armenia-and-Azerbaijan-go-to-war-over-Nagorno-Karabakh%3F/1
March 15 2015
Will Armenia and Azerbaijan go to war over Nagorno-Karabakh?
Henry Srebrnik
A low-intensity conflict in the southern Caucasus, involving the now
independent nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan, has been escalating of
late. It concerns the de facto Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh that
emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While Armenia and Azerbaijan were both full-fledged union republics in
the former USSR, Nagorno-Karabakh was an Armenian-majority enclave
within Azerbaijan, with the status of an autonomous oblast, or region.
According to the British academic Robert Service, in 1921 Joseph
Stalin included the area under Azerbaijani control to try and coax
Turkey into joining the Soviet Union. Had Turkey not been an issue,
Stalin would probably have left it under Armenian control.
With the Soviet Union firmly in control of the entire Caucasus by the
1920s, the conflict over the region died down for decades. But with
the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the question of Nagorno-Karabakh re-emerged.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, only the union republics gained
international recognition as independent states. So Nagorno-Karabakh,
along with other Soviet entities such as Chechnya, Moldova, South
Ossetia, and Transnistria, was out of luck.
On Nov. 26, 1991, the parliament of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist
Republic abolished the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh, and its
territory was split up and redistributed amongst the neighboring
administrative districts in Azerbaijan.
In turn, the region's Armenians, who comprised three-quarters of its
population, declared their independence in 1991 and then, with the
help of Armenia, defeated Azerbaijan in a war that lasted until 1994.
The new entity gained additional territory during the fighting,
ignoring UN Security Council resolutions on the inviolability of
international borders and the inadmissibility of the use of force for
the acquisition of territory.
Armenia now effectively controls the narrow strips of land to the west
and south of Nagorno-Karabakh, giving the unrecognized state direct
borders with its patron Armenia, as well as with Iran.
An estimated 15,000-20,000 people, including civilians, were killed
during the fighting and hundreds of thousands displaced. Today,
Nagorno-Karabakh is almost entirely Armenian.
Even apart from this, Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis have
had a tense relationship, including bloody massacres, that predates
Soviet times. The two countries have now both built up arsenals of
ever more powerful weapons, and January saw an upsurge of fighting
between them, with repeated gun battles and volleys of artillery and
rocket fire. Azerbaijan also shot down a drone not far from Agdam, a
formerly Azerbaijani city now occupied by Armenian forces.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, which has an economy seven times
larger than Armenia's, has announced that he plans this year to spend
more than double Armenia's entire annual budget of $2.7 billion on
strengthening his military. His Armenian counterpart, President Serzh
Sargsyan (who is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh) countered with his
own threats.
Aliyev also made reference to the influential Armenian diaspora,
formed largely after the Armenian genocide of 1915, when hundreds of
thousands of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were slaughtered
by the Turks, while others fled.
Today there are major Armenian communities throughout the world,
including in Australia, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia and the United
States.
"The truth is that the continued occupation of our lands is not just
the work of Armenia," he remarked. "Armenia is a powerless and poor
country. It is in a helpless state. Of course, if it didn't have major
patrons in various capitals, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would have
been resolved fairly long ago."
Neither side seems prepared to step down. As Abdulla Qurbani, a senior
official in the Azerbaijan Defence Ministry told a New York Times
reporter, "When water mixes with earth, this is mud. When blood mixes
with earth, this is motherland."
Nagorno-Karabakh's unresolved status remains one of the most
potentially explosive issues in the volatile southern Caucasus region.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University
of Prince Edward Island.
http://www.journalpioneer.com/Opinion/Columnists/2015-03-15/article-4077852/Will-Armenia-and-Azerbaijan-go-to-war-over-Nagorno-Karabakh%3F/1