BAKU

by LADA YEVGRASHINA

Azerbaijan, increasingly impatient with a now slow-boil conflict with Armenia over demarcating the border between the two adversaries, is threatening further military action.

“If Armenia wants peace, they must start with our negotiations on delimitation. If they don’t, they will be sorry about it,” President Ilham Aliyev said on Saturday at a reception of newly appointed non-resident ambassadors of ten countries in Baku.

There has been no official response from Yerevan.

AZERBAIJANI GAINS NOT LIKELY REVERSIBLE

A Russia-brokered armistice ending almost three decades of hostilities was signed on November 10, 2020. The six-week offensive reversed three decades of humiliation. Armenia was forced out of the Azerbaijani districts it held since the early 1990s, from which more than 600,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were ethnically cleansed. Left behind were unpopulated wastelands, stripped of anything of value down to bricks, wiring, roofing, and pipes. And full of landmines, another major issue between the sides.

In what Azerbaijan’s government calls the “Patriotic War,” at least 6,000 troops on both sides died, but some believe the death toll to be much higher. At least 200 civilians were also killed.

No serious military analysts believe Yerevan has any capability or even desire – despite occasional bravado by ultranationalists – to retake districts it once occupied. It would be facing Azerbaijan, strongly backed by its ally Turkey – and confronting Russia – a nominal Armenian ally and the “peacekeeper”.

Any resumption of hostilities would likely involve the few areas of internationally recognised Azerbaijan still under de facto Armenian control or border areas.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has already had to fend off ferocious attacks from nationalist detractors for agreeing to the armistice in the first place. He has defended this by saying it saved what remained of the former mostly Armenian-populated Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh from a worse fate, and there was no alternative.

And the 45-year-old writer-journalist Pashinyan, now only acting premier in advance of June 20 parliamentary elections – faces an increasingly bold onslaught by nationalist forces, including ex-President Robert Kocharyan, who has emerged from obscurity and is well-financed by unknown groups.

Pashinyan is sometimes met in regional towns with epithets of “traitor” or – worse, “Turk”.

ARMISTICE LEFT MURKY BORDER AND OTHER ISSUES

But delimiting the border is central. And thorny. Talks have ground to a halt. Incidents have raised tensions. Armenia claims Azerbaijani units took an area including a strategic reservoir, 3 km deep into what it says is its territory. Azerbaijan cites documentation and their relevance to international law as claiming the area as its own.

“If Armenia wants peace, it also ignores our proposal, which major international parties support, to start negotiations on the delimitation of the state border with Armenia. We do not understand this,” Aliyev stressed.

Baku says the strip of land and water is actually its territory, and both sides cite Soviet maps between the two USSR republics drawn up by military cartographers years ago.

Armenia also says it has no intention of opening a rail and road link via Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan and the rest of Azerbaijan via a 40-km section of its territory. This, Baku says, is a direct violation of previous agreements.

Russian peacekeepers in the area have taken no reported action. Moscow deployed 1,980 of them as part of the November agreement, small given the size of the area.

Azerbaijan has detained Armenians for “violating its border” or being “saboteurs”. Armenia says they are prisoners of war. Baku counters by saying they are not POWs as they were apprehended after the November 10, 2020 armistice and fall under criminal statutes.

DELIMITING BORDER KEY TO FINAL AGREEMENT

“If Armenia wants peace, we also need a peace agreement. If Armenia wants war, then it will receive this same result.” Aliyev told the diplomats.

But even while recognised by no one, what remains of the district is under “Karabakhi” – ethnic Armenian or Yerevan – control.

“The unclear situation could become very destabilising,” UK-based Dr Leila Aliyeva – no relation to the Azerbaijan President – told the Tribune.

“As long as that question is not resolved, it’s going to be an enormous headache,” she said.

The 2020 armistice left the former Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh district – still populated by an unknown number of ethnic Armenians – estimates range around 40,000 – in a sort of undefined space. And reliant on a main road via Azerbaijani territory to Armenia.

RESUMPTION OF HOSTILITIES POSSIBLE

This might include the road crossing Azerbaijani territory -the Lachin Corridor – linking Armenia to the last major town in the former Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh district, Stepanakert [Armenian place name] Xenkendi [Azerbaijani place name].

All of this would contain major dangers for each side.

An offensive might cause the remaining ethnic Armenians in the former Nagorno-Karabakh to flee, reducing the region to the main centre, Stepanakert/Xenkendi and a few outlying areas.

Some Azerbaijani politicians said the regional centre was largely left alone during the end phase of the 30-year war despite periodic shelling. Left alone because it was considered not particularly strategic, and if remaining ethnic Armenians were to flee, it might invite allegations of “ethnic cleansing” – just as the Armenians did when forcing the 600,000 plus ethnic Azerbaijanis out – an act which produced four unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions for them to withdraw which were ignored.

After all, Azerbaijan has back what it wanted most. Seven districts of its country were stripped of anything of value, where Armenians had not lived before the three-decade war. Furniture, carpets, bric-a-brac of those forced to leave were the first to be looted. As well as the crown jewel of Shusha inside the old Nagorno-Karabakh.

Shusha is a mountaintop citadel and a historic centre of Azerbaijani arts and letters and was more than 90 percent ethnic Azeri populated before the war.

BAKU SAYS FULL AGREEMENT NEEDED

But Azerbaijan’s Aliyev says a full, official agreement delimiting the border is needed without delay. He has recently called on the President of the European Commission to expedite the process.

A re-escalation might present Russia, though the official “peacekeeper”, with a major dilemma. A breakdown in its peacekeeping role or its effectiveness could be extremely damaging to its reputation.

Already its role was an unusual one. Officially, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led CSTO. (Collective Security Treaty Organisation) which also includes Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. It was designed as a counterweight to NATO.

It could also create problems for Turkey, as any Azerbaijani military action will be seen as sponsored or backed by Ankara.

Ankara was a key to Azerbaijan’s military success.

Armenians were driven out by high-tech weapons and “suicide drones”, which decimated old-style trench Armenian fortifications.

Aerial video footage showed hair-raising incidents in the previously occupied territories. Armenian troops – mostly young and inexperienced – raced to their trench fortifications upon hearing the slow-moving drones – only to be blown to bits as they hit. Many were obtained from Israel – a strategic ally of Azerbaijan – or Turkey – its main backer, though Azerbaijan also has a formidable domestic arms industry.