BAKU/YEREVAN

The most violent phase of the long war between Armenia in Azerbaijan may be behind, but huge obstacles remain to a lasting peace.

Wasting no time, Azerbaijan is now in a full-speed press for a fast, final agreement with Armenia.

In a six-week 2020 blitz, Baku crushed Yerevan, driving Armenia out of Azerbaijani lands occupied for nearly 30 years. At least 7,000 were killed-at least 95 percent of them military-in the decisive phase, ending in a Moscow-backed armistice.

BORDER ISSUE URGENCY

Yet, the border between the countries is still not agreed on. Road and rail routes are shut. The situation remains tense, with allegations of incursions, and detentions.

Baku reported its troops were fired upon by Armenian snipers for more than 12 hours over the weekend in an area along the jagged frontier. It was an illustration of the need to demarcate the border in exact terms. Yerevan denied this.

With 2,000 peacekeepers on the ground, Russia has vowed to speed efforts to promote reconciliation.

President Vladimir Putin spoke with both Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last week by telephone.

AN UNUSUAL CALL

The last two weeks have put on display increasing confidence by Azerbaijan and a show of independence by both leaders to varying degrees.

There was one particularly prominent twist to the confab between Putin and Aliyev.

Almost without exception, the Kremlin chief calls the leaders of former Soviet republics. Not the other way around.

According to well-connected government sources in Baku, this time was different.

It was President Aliyev who telephoned Russia’s Putin, in an evident display of discontent with perceived foot-dragging by Moscow, the official “mediator”. This is a serious symbolic challenge to the Kremlin’s more than two-century rule –  either formal or informal – over the South Caucasus.

BAKU INDICATES IMPATIENCE WITH MOSCOW

Azerbaijan is demonstrating other signs of confidence by turning to alternative actors, notably the European Union. The EU was essentially a non-factor during the war.

Aliyev met a high-level EU delegation, including three foreign ministers, on June 25. The visit was given high prominence in the Azerbaijan media. Many saw this as a direct signal to the Kremlin of Baku’s increasing assertiveness. “It’s a message to Moscow that they no longer dictate terms,” said one Azerbaijani analyst, who preferred not to be identified.

Baku has also advertised Georgia – a neighbour to both Armenia and Azerbaijan with decent ties with both – as a potential mediator, though Tbilisi’s actual role is likely minimal.  The move is seen as a clear affront to Russia, which has had no diplomatic relations with Georgia since a 2008 war between the countries.

Aliyev welcomed heightened EU involvement in post-war reconstruction of Azerbaijani lands looted and systematically destroyed during the Armenian occupation. More than 600,000 Azerbaijanis were ethnically cleansed.

“As I understand, your visit is connected with the post-war situation…Azerbaijan’s position is clear…peaceful development,” he told the EU delegation.

And while Aliyev approved EU involvement, he again blasted the largely failed 28-year “mediation” effort by a different international entity – the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), accusing it of ineffectiveness. The OSCE format still exists but is now relegated to the sidelines. The OSCE  “Minsk Group” – co-chaired by Russia, the United States, and France, was bedevilled by conflicting interests between those countries, its limited powers, and alleged laxity.

ARMENIAN POLITICAL CLARITY MAY HELP

Though Aliyev said Armenia was not yet cooperating as needed on several issues, he said the resounding victory by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in a snap parliamentary election last week might offer positive signals.

“Without a full peace agreement with Armenia, there can be no peace in the South Caucasus,” he said.

TRANSPORT, LANDMINES ON AGENDA

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev signalled realism that resolving the remaining key issues will take time. He told the EU delegation their involvement over “this year and next” would be important.

Aside from the border delimitation, there are other thorny issues.

One is the restoration of a road and rail link between the rest of Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhchivan, cut off by a 40-km strip of Armenia since the early war days. Nakhchivan is wedged between Iran, Turkey, and Armenia.

Some in Armenia say allowing transit to resume via its territory is tantamount to ceding territory. Azerbaijan says simply establishing normal relations would moot any “sovereignty” issues.

The transport link is important in a larger sense; it would facilitate a key route between Turkey, Azerbaijan, Central Asia, and even to the Far East, including China, benefitting all, including Armenia.

Re-elected Armenian PM Pashinyan had to face down charges he was a “traitor” or even of being a secret “Turk” during the recent election campaign because of the war losses. He says the eventual armistice with Azerbaijan was inevitable – and saved the country from further setbacks.

“He will likely be careful at first,” Yerevan-based analyst Alexander Iskandaryan told the Tribune. “Anything seen as more concessions can be politically exploited,” he said.

Nonetheless, Pashinyan sounds a positive tone.

“Armenia is ready to respond with corresponding measures to humanitarian acts by Azerbaijan,” he said. Pashinyan was speaking about the release of 15 Armenians recently by Azerbaijan. The release happened as Pashinyan released maps of a staggering 97,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines to Azerbaijan from the formerly occupied district of Agdam.

The region had a pre-war population around 1990 of only 60,000, meaning there are 1.5 mines for every former pre-war resident. The district is now almost empty, as the town of Agdam was so looted and dismantled during the occupation it earned the unenviable label of “Azerbaijan’s Hiroshima”.

At least 25 Azerbaijanis have died, and over 100 have been injured in mine incidents since the November armistice. Armenia had long been called upon to release whatever maps it had of areas chock full of landmines.

PASHINYAN FACES RISKY PATH

Pashinyan responded by raising eyebrows. He handed over some maps to an American special envoy, rather than via Russia, the official mediator and country which deployed peacekeepers. The U.S. envoy then delivered them to Baku. It was seen as a sign by Pashinyan to the Kremlin.

Baku says the initial map handover was a start, but many other de-occupied areas are mined to the hilt, and more landmine maps, to the extent they exist, are needed.

Officially, Armenia is part of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which also includes Belarus and three Central Asian countries. But many analysts see it as a reluctant member. Azerbaijan is not a member and pursues what it calls a “multi-vector” foreign policy.

Pashinyan, who has made many rather daring statements contradicting conventional wisdom, also emphasised the desire for Armenia to pursue closer ties with the EU over the weekend. This is unlikely to go down well with Moscow, especially as Azerbaijan’s Aliyev also gave unusual prominence to relations with the bloc. The EU delegation also travelled to Armenia and met with top officials.

Pashinyan, a 46-year-old writer and journalist, secured a two-thirds majority in the snap poll. But nationalist foes, including ex-President Robert Kocharyan, who led the “Armenia” opposition bloc, has support in unabashedly pro-Kremlin security circles. Pashinyan was also met with amazement by saying in parliament that despite Armenia’s historical enmity with Turkey, Azerbaijan’s ally, the countries were, after all, neighbours. And would have to find a way to get along eventually. This earned him howls of outrage by more nationalist types.

As the leader of a “colour revolution” in 2018 – such events in other countries Moscow has labelled Western plots – he’s not the type usually favoured by the Kremlin. However, he is the only real present interlocutor.

FATE OF “NAGORNO-KARABAKH”

Ultimately there is the question of Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated area, the former Soviet autonomous district known as Nagorno-Karabakh. It was the original catalyst for the war, though the conflict spread way beyond it over the years.

Armenian forces control a much-reduced part of that area – mostly the “official” regional centre Stepanakert [Armenian] or Xenkendi [Azerbaijani] and a few outlying villages. Connected to Armenia by one main road via Azerbaijan, how many remain there is not clear, with estimates from 25,000 to 50,000.

Aliyev, dressed in camo fatigues, addressed military officials on Armed Forces Day on June 26. He emphatically repeated that the region does not exist.

“Armenia has one way – to establish normal relations with its neighbours and abandon territorial claims, and generally not to use the expression Nagorno-Karabakh,” the president said. “There is no territorial unit of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the concept of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict does not exist.” The implication is that Azerbaijan will simply officially add the former autonomous area to other surrounding districts.

“They can have ‘cultural autonomy’, one government official echoed. “Not more”.

TURKEY’S QUIET ASSERTIVENESS

Russia’s Putin has been in frequent contact with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

NATO member Ankara helped transform the rag-tag Azerbaijan military and induced sophisticated strategies over a 25-year period.  The countries official languages, while different, share basic roots and Turkic cultural ties.

The Turkish military role in Azerbaijan’s reversal of fortunes was major, including using “suicide drones” to pound old-style Armenian trench fortifications in the now de-occupied territories. Yet Baku left the core of the small Armenian inhabited areas of the ex-Nagorno-Karabakh largely alone, thus avoiding “ethnic cleansing” accusations.

The Kremlin said President Erdogan, in a recent conversation – backed Russian mediated agreements between the countries.

Moscow clearly does not relish the prospect of more dissension with NATO power Ankara. It was careful to comment minimally on a recent, unusual, two-day visit by Erdogan to Azerbaijan, including de-occupied areas, such as Shusha, a citadel of Azerbaijani academic culture de-occupied during the six-week war. Erdogan mentioned Russia’s role positively during a speech to the Azerbaijan parliament, the Milli Mejlis, but otherwise, the Kremlin was largely a non-subject during the historic visit.

This – and the high-level visit by the EU delegation – demonstrated the increasing confidence of Azerbaijan in displaying an independent streak. The same can be said of Armenia’s Pashinyan’s statements expressing a desire for closer ties with the EU.