Israeli arms quietly helped Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh, to the dismay of region’s Armenians

Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh travel on a truck on their way to Kornidzor, Armenia, on Sept. 26, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.

(Stepan Poghosyan, Photolure photo via AP, File)

 A convoy of cars of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh move to Kornidzor in Syunik region, Armenia, on Sept. 26, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.  


An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh sits inside an old Soviet style car as she arrives in Goris, in Syunik region, Armenia, on Sept. 27, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.

(AP Photo/Vasily Krestyaninov, File)

BY ISABEL DEBRE
October 5, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.

Just weeks before Azerbaijan launched its 24-hour assault on Sept. 19, Azerbaijani military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern Israeli airbase and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight tracking data and Armenian diplomats, even as Western governments were urging peace talks.

The flights rattled Armenian officials in Yerevan, long wary of the strategic alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan, and shined a light on Israel’s national interests in the restive region south of the Caucasus Mountains.

“For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told The Associated Press. In a flurry of diplomatic exchanges, Akopian said he expressed alarm to Israeli politicians and lawmakers in recent weeks over Israeli weapons shipments.

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“I don’t see why Israel should not be in the position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being expelled from their homeland,” he told AP.

Azerbaijan’s September blitz involving heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones — largely supplied by Israel and Turkey, according to experts — forced Armenian separatist authorities to lay down their weapons and sit down for talks on the future of the separatist region.

The Azerbaijani offensive killed over 200 Armenians in the enclave, the vast majority of them fighters, and some 200 Azerbaijani troops, according to officials.

There are ramifications beyond the volatile enclave of 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles). The fighting prompted over 100,000 people — more than 80% of the enclave’s ethnic Armenian residents — to flee in the last two weeks. Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has termed the exodus “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected the accusation, saying the departures are a “personal and individual decision and (have) nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Israel’s foreign and defense ministries declined to comment on the use of Israeli weapons in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenian concerns about its military partnership with Azerbaijan. In July, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Baku, the Azerbaijan capital, where he praised the countries’ military cooperation and joint “fight against terrorism.”

Israel has a big stake in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy Iran. It is also a lucrative customer of sophisticated arms.

“There’s no doubt about our position in support of Azerbaijan’s defense,” said Arkady Mil-man, Israel’s former ambassador to Azerbaijan and current senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran.”

Although once resource-poor Israel now has plenty of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast, Azerbaijan still supplies at least 40% of Israel’s oil needs, keeping cars and trucks on its roads. Israel turned to Baku’s offshore deposits in the late 1990s, creating an oil pipeline through the Turkish transport hub of Ceyan that isolated Iran, which at the time capitalized on oil flowing through its pipelines from Kazakhstan to world markets.

Azerbaijan has long been suspicious of Iran, its fellow Shiite Muslim neighbor on the Caspian Sea, and chafed at its support for Armenia, which is Christian. Iran has accused Azerbaijan of hosting a base for Israeli intelligence operations against it — a claim that Azerbaijan and Israel deny.

“It’s clear to us that Israel has an interest in keeping a military presence in Azerbaijan, using its territory to observe Iran,” Armenian diplomat Tigran Balayan said.

Few have benefited more from the two countries’ close relations than Israeli military contractors. Experts estimate Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020 — giving Azerbaijan an edge against Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defense industry.

“Israeli arms have played a very significant role in allowing the Azerbaijani army to reach its objectives,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales.

Israeli long-range missiles and exploding drones known as loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, Wezeman said, even at times striking deep within Armenia itself. Meanwhile, Israeli Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles have protected Azerbaijan’s airspace in shooting down missiles and drones, he added.

Just ahead of last month’s offensive, the Azerbaijani defense ministry announced the army conducted a missile test of Barak-8. Its developer, Israel Aerospace Industries, declined to comment on Azerbaijan’s use of its air defense system and combat drones.

But Azerbaijan has raved about the success of Israeli drones in slicing through the Armenian defenses and tipping the balance in the bloody six-week war in 2020.

Its defense minister in 2016 called a combat drone manufactured by Israel’s Aeronautics Group “a nightmare for the Armenian army,” which backed the region’s separatists during Azerbaijan’s conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh that year.

President Ilham Aliyev in 2021 — a year of deadly Azerbaijan-Armenian border clashes — was captured on camera smiling as he stroked the small Israeli suicide drone “Harop” during an arms showcase.

Israel has deployed similar suicide drones during deadly army raids against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

“We’re glad for this cooperation, it was quite supportive and quite beneficial for defense,” Azerbaijani’s ambassador to Israel, Mukhtar Mammadov told the AP, speaking generally about Israel’s support for the Azerbaijani military. “We’re not hiding it.”

At a crucial moment in early September — as diplomats scrambled to avert an escalation — flight tracking data shows that Azerbaijani cargo planes began to stream into Ovda, a military base in southern Israel with a 3,000-meter-long airstrip, known as the only airport in Israel that handles the export of explosives.

The AP identified at least six flights operated by Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines landing at Ovda airport between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 from Baku, according to aviation-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. Azerbaijan launched its offensive two days later.

During those six days, the Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport lingered on Ovda’s tarmac for several hours before departing for either Baku or Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, just north of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In March, an investigation by the Haaretz newspaper said it had counted 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights to Ovda airport from 2016-2020. Sudden surges of flights coincided with upticks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabkh, it found.

“During the 2020 war, we saw flights every other day and now, again, we see this intensity of flights leading up to the current conflict,” said Akopian, the Armenian ambassador. “It is clear to us what’s happening.”

Israel’s defense ministry declined to comment on the flights. The Azerbaijani ambassador, Mammadov, said he was aware of the reports but declined to comment.

The decision to support an autocratic government against an ethnic and religious minority has fueled a debate in Israel about the country’s permissive arms export policies. Of the top 10 arms manufactures globally, only Israel and Russia lack legal restrictions on weapons exports based on human rights concerns.

“If anyone can identify with (Nagorno-Karabakh) Armenians’ continuing fear of ethnic cleansing it is the Jewish people,” said Avidan Freedman, founder of the Israeli advocacy group Yanshoof, which seeks to stop Israeli arm sales to human rights violators. “We’re not interested in becoming accomplices.”

As Azerbaijan claims final victory in Nagorno Karabakh, arms trade with Israel comes under scrutiny

Story by By Max Saltman, CNN •

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

On September 19, the day Azerbaijan began its offensive in the majority Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Marut Vanyan heard an ominous noise in the sky over his hometown.

“I’m not a military expert,” Vanyan, a journalist, recalled. “But I heard very, very clearly… the roar above me. I’m sure it was a drone.”

Vanyan, a lifelong resident of Stepanakert, once Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city, recognized the sound from 2020, when Azerbaijan waged a 44-day war for the territory and surrounding regions with the help of Turkish and Israeli weapons.

Vanyan took a video of the sky above Stepanakert, gray and cloudy, the whine of a propeller distinct in the background, and posted it on X.

According to Leonid Nersisyan, a defense analyst and researcher at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) Armenia, an independent think tank, it was the sound of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harop, a loitering munition known for the piercing noise it produces as it descends on a target.

Azerbaijani forces used the Harop – often referred to as a “suicide drone” – and other Israeli drones throughout the war of 2020. CNN has contacted IAI for comment.

The nose of the Harop unmanned combat air vehicle developed by Israel Aerospace Industries is displayed during the Autonomous Robotics Unmanned System Expo, in the coastal city of Rishon Le Tsyion, south of Tel Aviv on November 26, 2014

 . - Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

Though their relationship is relatively discreet, Israeli equipment makes up most of Azerbaijan’s arms imports, according to arms researchers. Azerbaijani officials touted Israel’s weapons as integral to their country’s success in Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war.

Israel’s ‘fingerprints’

Now, as over 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the latest conflict there, Israeli-Azerbaijani ties have come under scrutiny, with an editorial in Israel’s most prominent left-wing newspaper Haaretz proclaiming that the country’s “fingerprints are all over the ethnic cleansing” in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Drones were used constantly” in the 2020 war, as well as in this latest conflict, a former lieutenant colonel in the Artsakh Defense Army – the Armenian separatist republic’s military force in Karabakh - told CNN on the condition of anonymity. (Artsakh is the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh and the self-proclaimed republic that existed there.)

Azerbaijan “used Harop kamikaze strike drones…Hermes-450 and Orbiter-1K, Orbiter-2, Orbiter-3 reconnaissance drones,” the ex-officer said. All were produced by Israeli arms companies.

Azerbaijan won the 2020 war in a little over a month, regaining much of the territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed, until now, almost exclusively by ethnic Armenians, following the expulsion of ethnic Azeris in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

September’s battle barely took 24 hours, leaving the whole of Karabakh under the control of Azerbaijan after months of blockade. All of the roughly 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the territory have either fled to Armenia or are expected to flee, fearing full-fledged ethnic cleansing or mass atrocities, although Azerbaijan has insisted that it would respect their rights there.

Azerbaijan and Israel are close military partners. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than 60% of Azerbaijani weapons imports came from Israel between 2017 and 2020, making up 13% of Israeli exports during the same period. SIPRI research reveals that Azerbaijan purchased a wide variety of drones, missiles, and mortars from Israel between 2010 and 2020.

However, according to SIPRI senior researcher Pieter Wezeman, certain specifics are unknown about the extent of the ongoing Azerbaijani-Israeli weapons trade.

“We had quite some information before 2020 and then it stops,” Wezeman said. “And that doesn’t really make sense because in 2020 Azerbaijan used a significant amount of its equipment… Most likely they have continued their relationship with Israel, but that’s about as far as we know.”

The trade is believed to be particularly active in periods just before Azerbaijan has gone to war. A March 2023 investigative report by Haaretz found that flights by an Azerbaijani airline between Baku and Ovda air base, the only airport in Israel through which explosives can be flown, spiked in the months just before Azerbaijan attacked separatist positions in Karabakh in September 2020.

Likewise, Haaretz reported in mid-September that the same company flew between Baku and Ovda less than a week before Azerbaijan began its latest assault in Nagorno-Karabakh. CNN reached out to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense and the airline in question, but did not receive a response. The Israeli Ministry of Defense, which oversees Ovda Airport, had no comment.

“We don’t know what was on board, but very likely it is something related to the military equipment that Israel already has supplied to Azerbaijan before,” Wezeman said.

Beyond guns and ammunition

The weapons trade between Israel and Azerbaijan mirrors their diplomatic relationship, once described in a leaked US diplomatic cable as “like an iceberg, nine-tenths of it… below the surface.” Despite decades of bilateral cooperation, Azerbaijan only opened an embassy in Israel this year.

Azerbaijan soldiers stand guard as at the Lachin border station, as cars leave Karabakh to Armenia, on September 26. - Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

But their ties go beyond guns and ammunition: OEC figures show that Israel bought 65% of its crude oil from Azerbaijan in 2021. The countries are also believed to share intelligence on Iran, Israel’s archenemy, with which Azerbaijan shares a border and which has a substantial ethnic Azeri population that constitutes the country’s largest minority. Azerbaijan has also reportedly allowed the Israeli spy agency Mossad to use it as a hub to spy on Iran. (The Israeli Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the matter.)

According to Efraim Inbar, an expert on Israel-Azerbaijan relations and president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, ties between the two have grown stronger since 2020.

“Oil and arms sales continue. Azerbaijan feels greater pressure from Iran whose international position is improving,” Inbar told CNN in an email. “There is no great sympathy (in Israel) for Armenia that is seen as an Iranian ally.”

In a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel said Israeli weapons are being fired at “peaceful civilians” despite Israeli civil society being “very pro-Armenia in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh and recognition of the Armenian genocide.” (Israel’s government does not recognize the mass murder of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I as genocide, fearing damage to its relationship with Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire.)

Arms sales ‘good for Israel’

But there is little political opposition in the country to selling arms to Azerbaijan, Inbar said.

“Arms sales do not receive much publicity,” he added. “The contribution of Israeli drones to Azerbaijan’s war is well known, however. Israelis are proud of their weaponry. Arms sales are considered good for Israel.”

Yet despite their high visibility in Karabakh, the role of drones should not overshadow that of other Israeli weapons, according to Nersisyan, the defense analyst at APRI Armenia.

“People consider them to be some kind of a super weapon,” he said. “Of course, they are very important, but there are roles of other types of weapons.”

Among those are Israel’s LORA missiles, which Azerbaijan first purchased from Israel in 2017 according to SIPRI.

In October 2020, Azerbaijan repeatedly struck the area near an electrical substation in Stepanakert using Israeli-made weapons. The former lieutenant colonel in the Artsakh Defense Army told CNN he witnessed one of these attacks personally. The diameter and depth of the crater there showed that the Azerbaijani military had used a LORA missile, he said, adding that it hit a residential building.

The question remains as to how far Israel is willing to go in supporting Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia. An ongoing border crisis between the two countries has resulted in Azerbaijani incursions into Armenian territory, and Azerbaijani troops currently occupy land well within Armenia’s borders in its southern Syunik province. Many in Armenia worry that an emboldened Azerbaijan will attempt to invade their country, which Azerbaijan denies. Some fears center around Nakhchivan, a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan that borders Turkey and Armenia, and Baku’s desire for a transport corridor linking it with the rest of the country.

“Azerbaijan doesn’t have any military goals or objectives on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia,” Hikmet Ajiyev, the foreign policy advisor to Ilham Aliyev, told Reuters on October 1.

Israeli ‘realpolitik’

Some in the international community are calling for action against Azerbaijan in the wake of the Armenian exodus from Karabakh. In the United States, where there is a large Armenian diaspora, nearly 100 members of Congress have called for sanctions on Baku, and lawmakers in the European Union have also called on the bloc to consider punitive measures.

Wezeman, the researcher at SIPRI, said Israel could come under pressure from its Western allies to reconsider arms sales to Azerbaijan.

“It will damage its relations with Azerbaijan, but at the same time, Israel will have to think about its relations with European states, which are more important partners.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Defense said they had no comment when reached by CNN.

Efraim Inbar said Israel wants to keep its reputation of being a reliable supplier to Azerbaijan.

“In any case,” he added, “Azerbaijan is much more important for Israel than Armenia. It is realpolitik that drives Israeli foreign policy.”

Israeli arms airlift helped Azerbaijan recapture Karabakh - report
International Astronautical Congress Baku 

credit: Resul Rehimov Reuters

5 Oct, 2023 
Dean Shmuel Elmas

At least six cargo planes of Azerbaijani carrier Silk Way Airlines transported advanced weapons from Israel Air Force's Ovda base to Baku in September, AP reports.

At least six cargo planes of Azerbaijani carrier Silk Way Airlines transported advanced weapons from Israel Air Force's Ovda base to Baku between September 1 and September 17, "The Associated Press" reports. Using the weapons from these flights, Azerbaijan was able to launch its operation to recapture the Nagorno-Karabakh region and resolve its more than 30-year old conflict with Armenia.

"For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people," Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told AP.

The report says that in the September operation more than 200 Armenians were killed, most of them soldiers. As it happens, Armenia has become a close regional ally of Iran and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is a close friend of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. For its part Azerbaijan has become Israel's closest friend in the Muslim world and supplies Israel with 40% of its oil.

AP reports that more than 1,000 Armenians fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region during the fighting, although Azerbaijan called on the Armenians to remain and take up Azerbaijani citizenship.

Israel's military cooperation with Azerbaijan began many years ago and has been key in Baku's battle to retake Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia. Amongst other things Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Harop loitering munitions and LORA missiles greatly contributed to Azerbaijan's victory.

In recent years, trade between Israel and Azerbaijan has been expanding, amounted to $1.718 billion in 2022. Since then the momentum has continued as this week's sale of two IAI satellites - a surveillance satellite and communication satellite - demonstrates.

Demonstration of Israeli power at Baku exhibition

This week Israel is presenting the best of its products as part of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2023 exhibition in Baku. The Israel Space Agency and IAI are taking part, and the inauguration ceremony of the Israeli pavilion was attended by, among others, IAI president and CEO Boaz Levy and the Deputy Ambassador of Israel In Baku Yoav Bistritzky At the same time, IAI signed an agreement on Tuesday with the Azerbaijan space agency Azercosmos for the sale of two OptSat500 satellites, which according to a report in Azerbaijan is worth $120 million.

In addition to OptSat500, which simultaneously captures SAR images and electro-optical images, IAI is exhibiting TecSAR XP, a satellite with high agility and high-quality imaging capability. Among other advanced satellites, IAI is presenting the MCS communication satellite, and the OptSat3000 electro-optical satellite.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 5, 2023.

WWIII ANOTHER BALKAN WAR
Politico: Blinken warns Azerbaijan may invade Armenia

Blinken warned lawmakers Azerbaijan may invade Armenia in coming weeks

Eric Bazail-Eimil and Gabriel Gavin
Fri, October 13, 2023 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned a small group of lawmakers last week that his department is tracking the possibility that Azerbaijan could soon invade Armenia, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The call indicates the depth of concern in the administration about Azerbaijan’s operations against a breakaway region in the west of the country and the possibility of the conflict spreading.

Azerbaijiani President Ilham Aliyev has previously called on Armenia to open a “corridor” along its southern border, linking mainland Azerbaijan to an exclave that borders Turkey and Iran. Aliyev has threatened to solve the issue “by force.”

In an Oct. 3 phone call, lawmakers pressed Blinken on possible measures against Aliyev in response to his country’s invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September, the people said, who were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive call.

Blinken responded that the State Department was looking at avenues to hold Azerbaijan accountable and isn't planning to renew a long-standing waiver that allows the U.S. to provide military assistance to Baku. He added that State saw a possibility that Azerbaijan would invade southern Armenia in the coming weeks.

Still, Blinken expressed confidence about ongoing diplomatic talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Democratic lawmakers, among them Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Anna Eshoo of California, and Frank Pallone of New Jersey.

Two additional people confirmed that a briefing happened on the situation in

 Azerbaijan, but did not provide details.

In a statement, the State Department declined to comment on the call, but emphasized the department’s commitment to “Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and resolving conflict through “direct talks.”

The decision to hold off on renewing the waiver is also telling. Every year since since 2002, the U.S. has issued the waiver, allowing it to sidestep a provision of the Freedom Support Act that bars the U.S. from providing military assistance to Azerbaijan in light of its ongoing territorial disputes with Armenia. The waiver lapsed in June and State had previously provided no explanation as to why it hadn't yet requested a renewal

Since the briefing, Pallone has said publicly that he’s worried Azerbaijan could invade soon. “Aliyev is moving forward with his objective to take Southern Armenia,” Pallone tweeted Wednesday, arguing that “his regime is emboldened after facing little consequences” for invading Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan’s military incursion into that region last month prompted more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh to flee. Local leaders capitulated as part of a Russia-brokered surrender and agreed to dissolve their three-decades-old unrecognized state. Azerbaijani forces have since detained more than a dozen ex-leaders.

In a Sept. 20 statement, Blinken said he was “deeply concerned by Azerbaijan’s military actions” and declared that “the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable.”

But Nagorno-Karabakh is not the only territorial dispute between the two Caucasus countries. Baku has proposed a route to the Nakhichevan exclave that would cut through Armenia’s southern Syunik region, known in Azerbaijani as Zangezur, and enable road traffic to bypass Iran.

Aliyev has said “we will be implementing the Zangezur Corridor, whether Armenia wants it or not.”

"In Armenia, this is perceived as territorial claims and a demand for an extraterritorial corridor,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Wednesday, in response to growing calls from Ankara and Baku to come to an agreement.

There have long been tensions at the border: In September 2022, Azerbaijan launched an assault across the border to capture strategic high ground in the east and south of Armenia. More recently, on Sept. 1 of this year, three Armenian servicemen were killed after Azerbaijan launched “retaliatory measures” in response to an alleged drone attack.

In an interview on Wednesday, Hikmet Hajiyev, Aliyev’s senior foreign policy adviser, denied Azerbaijan has any claims on Armenian territory. He said that the risk of conflict was low because “the last two weeks had been the calmest weeks in the history of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations — there are no longer soldiers in the trenches staring at one another” in the wake of actions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Azerbaijan restored what legally, historically and morally was ours” with its self-described “anti-terror” campaign in the region, and has no intention of pushing into de jure Armenian areas, he added.

Eric Bazail-Eimil reported from Washington. Gabriel Gavin reported from Baku, Azerbaijan.

Armenia wants a UN court to impose measures aimed at protecting rights of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians

MIKE CORDER
Updated Thu, October 12, 2023 
 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Armenia urged the United Nations top court on Thursday to impose new interim orders on Azerbaijan to prevent what the leader of Armenia's legal team called the “ethnic cleansing” of the Nagorno-Karabakh region from becoming irreversible.

Armenia asked judges at the International Court of Justice for 10 “provisional measures” aimed at protecting the rights of ethnic Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region that Azerbaijan reclaimed last month following a swift military operation.

Azerbaijan’s legal team strenuously denied the allegations.


“Azerbaijan has not engaged and will not engage in ethnic cleansing or any form of attack on the civilian population of Karabakh,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov.

“The Armenian residents of Karabakh are citizens of Azerbaijan, and their human rights are protected and upheld on an equal basis with those of Azerbaijan's other citizens,” he added.

In a 24-hour campaign that began on Sept. 19, the Azerbaijan army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate. The separatist government then agreed to disband itself by the end of the year. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Nothing other than targeted and unequivocal provisional measures protecting the rights of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will suffice to prevent the ethnic cleansing Azerbaijan is perpetrating from continuing and becoming irreversible,” the head of Armenia's legal team, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, told judges.

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia.

Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains during a six-week war in 2020, along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed earlier. Nagorno-Karabakh was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.

The world court is currently considering two cases focused on the deep-rooted tensions between the two countries. Armenia filed a case in 2021 accusing Azerbaijan of breaching an international convention aimed at preventing racial discrimination. A week later, Azerbaijan filed its own case, accusing Armenia of contravening the same convention.

The court has already issued so-called “provisional measure” rulings in both cases. The measures are intended to protect the rights of both nations and their nationals as their cases slowly progress through the world court.

Armenia on Thursday accused Azerbaijan of driving Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh even as the legal wrangling continues.

“It is still possible to change how this story unfolds," said Alison Macdonald, a lawyer for Armenia. "The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh is happening as we speak. It must not be allowed to set in stone.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has said that the departure of Armenians was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Mammadov, Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, used the court hearing to outline commitments by Azerbaijan including a pledge to protect the rights of all residents in Karabakh regardless of nationality or ethnic origin and to provide food, medicines, fuel, electricity and other humanitarian aid.

He also said Azerbaijan was committed to protecting property in the region including the homes of people who left and not to destroy "registration, identity and or private property documents and records found in Karabakh.”

The court is likely to take weeks to issue a decision on Armenia's request.

Armenia, Azerbaijan trade barbs at World Court over 'ethnic cleansing'

Richard CARTER
Thu, October 12, 2023 

The region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been disputed for decades 

(STRINGER)

Foes Armenia and Azerbaijan crossed swords at the UN's top court Thursday, as Yerevan accused Baku of "ethnic cleansing" in Nagorno-Karabakh, sparking a furious response from the Azerbaijani side over the "unfounded" charges.

The clash at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) came only weeks after Azerbaijan's lightning offensive to take control of the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in three decades.

The one-day operation sparked a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians, with the vast majority of the estimated 120,000 who had been living in the territory fleeing into Armenia.

"Despite comprising for millennia the great majority of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, almost no ethnic Armenians remain in Nagorno-Karabakh today," said Armenia's ICJ representative Yeghishe Kirakosyan.

"If this is not ethnic cleansing, I do not know what is."

Responding for Azerbaijan, representative Elnur Mammadov said Armenia had repeated its accusations of ethnic cleansing so often that the claims "have taken on a life of their own."

Dismissing the accusations as "unfounded" and "completely without merit", Mammadov said they "do not reflect the reality of what has actually been going on in Karabakh."

"Azerbaijan has not engaged and will not engage in ethnic cleansing or any form of attack on the civilian population of Karabakh," he said.

- 'Safe and expeditious return' -

The hearings concern Armenia's request to the ICJ to order Azerbaijan to "withdraw all military and law-enforcement personnel from all civilian establishments in Nagorno-Karabakh."

It has also called on the court to ensure Azerbaijan "refrain from taking any actions... having the effect of displacing the remaining ethnic Armenians... or preventing the safe and expeditious return" of refugees.

The ICJ rules on disputes between states, but while its decisions are legally binding, it has no power to enforce them.

"There is still time to prevent the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians from becoming irreversible and to protect the very few ethnic Armenians who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh," said Kirakosyan.

"You can still make a meaningful difference on the ground today," he told the judges.

Azerbaijan retorted that it was actually encouraging ethnic Armenians to return and would afford them safe passage.

"Azerbaijan not only guarantees a right to return, it genuinely hopes that Armenian residents will return, once they see that life in Karabakh can be different from the distorted images painted by Armenia," said Mammadov.

Mammadov set out a series of commitments from Azerbaijan, including protecting the property of those who have left and ensuring the security of those remaining.

Baku pledged to allow the "safe and prompt" return of residents and the "safe and unimpeded departure" of anyone wanting to leave.

Thursday's hearings at the Peace Palace in The Hague are the latest in a long-running legal battle between the two rivals.

Each country has accused the other of breaching a UN treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh was populated mainly by Armenians and became part of Azerbaijan under Soviet rule, in the years following the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.

It unilaterally proclaimed its independence with the support of Armenia when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

In the wake of the operation in September, Armenian lawmakers approved a key step in joining another international court based in The Hague -- the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This infuriated its traditional ally Russia because the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin on allegations of abducting Ukrainian children during Moscow's war on  Ukraine

 AzerbaijanPresiding judge Joan Donoghue, center, opens preliminary hearings in a case in which Armenia is asking judges at the United Nations' top court to order Azerbaijan to protect the rights of ethnic Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region that was reclaimed last month by Azerbaijan, at the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Nagorno-Karabakh: Azerbaijan's energy wealth gives it de facto impunity for ethnic cleansing

Sossie Kasbarian, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Stirling

THE CONVERSATION
Fri, October 6, 2023 

A United Nations mission finally arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh on October 1 to find its towns and villages almost completely deserted. Two weeks after Azerbaijan launched an all-out military assault on the disputed territory in the south Caucasus, the Armenian government has said there are now almost no ethnic Armenians left in an area they have lived in for more than two millennia.

The only people left are reportedly either too old, too poor, too remote or too infirm to flee to safety along the Lachin corridor to Armenia.

Before the military assault, Armenians living in the enclave had been trapped and living under siege since December 12, 2022. Azerbaijan established an illegal blockade of the narrow land bridge connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, blocking supplies, including food and medicine.

After more than nine months, having reduced the population of 120,000 to near starvation, Azerbaijan launched a military assault on September 19. The attack killed an estimated 200 Armenian troops and seized control of strategic high ground around the enclave.

Under the terms of the ceasefire that followed, both Armenian troops and the 2,000 Russian peacekeepers were required to disarm and disband. Armenians were given the “choice” of “reintegration” into Azerbaijan.

These sanitised terms mask a violence and dispossession that the pictures in the media last week can only hint at. The queues of desperate Armenians fleeing were so long that they could be viewed from space.

Map of Armenia and Azerbaijan showing Nagorno Karabakh

Dehumanisation of Armenians

It was always highly unlikely that any Armenians would “choose” to stay under Azeri control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The regime of President Ilham Aliyev does not tolerate criticism or plurality of voice among its own citizens.

So Azerbaijan’s pledge “to protect the rights and safety of ethnic Armenians” has a hollow ring. Azerbaijan is rated as a “consolidated authoritarian regime” by US-based democracy think tank Freedom House, which rates it at a paltry nine out of a possible freedom score of 100 and judges it as “not free”.

For decades, the Aliyev regime has promoted ethnic hatred of Armenians. Azerbaijan has actively worked for the eradication and appropriation of its Armenian religious and cultural heritage. This was referred to in a recent report as “the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century”.

Meanwhile, atrocities committed by Azeri troops during the previous Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020 have been well documented. The so-called “Military Trophies Park” in the Azeri capital of Baku, built as a memorial of the war, is filled with grotesque mannequins representing Armenians.

Ethnic hatred of Armenians is normalised by the government. A postage stamp issued in 2021 depicted the fumigation of Nagorno-Karabakh, implying that ethnic Armenians were a virus that needed to be eradicated (the stamp was not registered by the Universal Postal Union).

While Nagorno-Karabakh was being emptied, Azerbaijan reissued a map of Stepanakert, the capital city, with Azeri street names. One street has been renamed Enver Pasha, after one of the three Turkish architects of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Caviar and energy diplomacy

Reporting of the conflict has largely overlooked the complex history and forces involved – as well as wider regional power struggles.

Instead, the global media has been lending credence to Azerbaijan’s script, referring to “anti-terrorist operations” against “separatists” and “ethnic Armenian rebels” to describe the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. This language obfuscates the expulsion of 120,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland by a clear aggressor.

But Azerbaijan wields significant international influence thanks to its immense oil and gas wealth and the unqualified support of its “big brother” Turkey.

In addition, Azerbaijan uses all the propaganda weapons at its disposal. The Aliyev regime has become adept at courting political influence in the west through what has been dubbed “caviar diplomacy”. Events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix also function as high-profile projections of soft power, effectively “sportwashing” Azerbajan’s corruption and human rights record.

A statement of solidarity with Nagorno Karabakh signed by more than 100 UK academics on September 26 singled out the UK’s close relationship with Azerbaijan and the Aliyev regime as providing “a useful veneer of ‘respectability’ to the laundering of funds and history”.

Azeri impunity

Experts in international law have described the forced exodus of Armenians from their homes as a “war crime”. And former UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas has called for recent events to be investigated by the International Criminal Court.

But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has become an essential source for western energy. The country now seems to have a protected status as what EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, calls a “crucial energy partner”.

The question of sanctions against Azerbaijan has been raised in the EU parliament and expressions of concern have been made by the Council of Europe and the US government. But any concrete action from the west is thought unlikely.

While Armenians were fleeing their homes, an advertisement from the UK’s Department for Business and Trade in The Telegraph of September 29 enthused about the 450 UK companies already doing business in Azerbaijan. It noted that the UK is the country’s largest foreign investor. On the same day, the government announced it would give one million pounds to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a response to “events” in Nagorno Karabakh.

The international spotlight now has understandably shifted to the plight of 120,000 refugees. But the focus on the humanitarian crisis risks overlooking the ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan and the web of complicity that enabled it.

The fate of Nagorno-Karabakh offers us a glimpse into the casualties of the so-called “rules-based order”, where economic and geopolitical interests and whitewashing campaigns converge to a point where ethnic cleansing is of little note and apparently no consequence.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

OPINION

Azerbaijan's capture of Nagorno-Karabakh opens up challenges for India in the South Caucasus

As India refigures its foreign policy to a region now changed by Armenia’s defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh, it almost certainly will have to seek out other, more stable avenues for its infrastructure ties given the potential of the INSTC project

Maj Gen Jagatbir SinghOctober 06, 2023   FIRSTPOST.IN

(File) Ethnic Armenians gather in hope to leave Nagorno-Karabakh region for Armenia in the center of Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh on 25 September, 2023. AP

Wile the latest round of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the long-disputed Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, seems to have been over within hours of it having started ending with the Armenian population leaving their homeland, the reverberations will continue to resound. They had earlier faced a humanitarian catastrophe with the blocking of the Lachin Corridor.

The quick end can be attributed to a large degree by the unwillingness of Russia to get involved as it seems totally preoccupied by its commitments in Ukraine. However, the next fault line that seems to be emerging is Nakchivan, an enclave of Azerbaijan between Iran, Armenia and Turkey. Azerbaijan is demanding that Yerevan agree to the establishment of a corridor through Armenian territory that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan.

The South Caucasus region which lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea comprising of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan has been the region which has been the crossroads of the Persian, Ottoman and Tsarist empires as also the intersection between the Christianity and Islam.

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This land connects Asia to Eurasia apart from its significant natural resources. The conflict and emerging outcomes have both global and regional implications. Countries such as Russia, Iran, Turkey and Israel also have deep interests in this region, but it is also significant as far as India is concerned.

India’s broad engagement in the region

India does not have a publicly articulated policy for the South Caucasus — unlike “Neighbourhood First”, “Act East” or “Central Asia Connect”. However, since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, India’s ties with Armenia have steadily grown. India has a Friendship and Cooperation Treaty with Armenia which was signed in 1995 further, the signing of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2019 has resulted in increased cooperation in trade, investment, defence and culture. Though, India’s provision of military assistance to Armenia has strained its relationship with Azerbaijan, Armenia extends its unequivocal support to India on Kashmir issue whereas Azerbaijan not only opposes but also promotes Pakistan’s narrative.

In the case of Azerbaijan, ONGC/OVL has made investments in an oilfield project in Azerbaijan and GAIL is exploring the possibilities of cooperation in LNG. Azerbaijan also falls on the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) route, connecting India with Russia through Central Asia. It can also connect India with Turkey and beyond through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars passenger and freight rail link.

The conflict is essentially a conflict between two international principles viz., the principle of territorial integrity advocated by Azerbaijan and the principle of the right to self-determination invoked by Nagorno-Karabakh and supported by Armenia. When it comes to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, though India had talked of a mediated settlement between the two sides, However, it supported Armenia through arms sales and by condemning Azerbaijan’s aggression in the region. This was not without reason as Azerbaijan’s long-time association with Pakistan had turned the conflict into one of the world’s more obscure proxy wars.

Lately, India’s has enhanced its strategic partnership with Greece which was viewed as a direct challenge to Azerbaijan as Armenia is a traditional ally of Russia and Greece and strain in relations between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus dominate their relationship though both are part of NATO. The recent visit of the prime minister to Greece was part of a broader strategy to diversify its partnerships in the region. India’s strengthening ties with Armenia and Greece are aimed at countering the alliance formed by Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan by no longer relying solely on its traditional allies like Russia and Iran, instead seeking new alliances with countries that share its interests, such as Greece and Armenia.

India’s strategic approach of steadily building ties with Armenia, Greece and Iran reflect India’s increasing strategic interests in the Mediterranean region, which holds significant importance for its energy security due to its abundant oil and gas resources. Additionally, India aims to enhance its trade and investment relations with this region. This also serves as countering China’s expanding influence in the region.

India’s strengthening ties with Armenia and Greece have caused concern for Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, who have been working together to counter India’s influence in the Middle East and Central Asia

Region is crucial for India’s trade corridor

The South Caucasus region has also become key for India’s ambitions to build a transportation corridor linking it to Europe through the Iranian plateau, the International North-South Transportation Corridor, or INSTC.

As regards the INSTC, India needs a rail link to go from North Western Iran across the Southern Caucasus to either Russia or the Black Sea. In this regard, India (and Iran) have two options: one via Armenia’s Southern Syunik Province, and the other via the Caspian coast through Azerbaijan.

A key advantage of the INSTC is that it effectively outflanks Pakistan while accessing overland routes to Europe and Central Asia otherwise blocked. It also results in a closer relationship with Iran thereby countering Iran’s relationship with China and their Belt Road Initiative in the region.

In January 2023, at the Voice of the South Virtual Summit, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan mentioned that Armenia is interested in “advancing cooperation within the framework of North-South connectivity, as well as the Persian Gulf-Black Sea international transport corridor,” adding that “Armenia considers India’s potential and prospective role for these projects as quite significant.”

In April 2023, Armenia hosted the first trilateral meeting with Indian and Iranian officials, to facilitate a Black Sea-Persian Gulf trade route that would allow Indian goods to be exported to the West through Georgian ports

Yet the developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict threaten the viability of the Zangezur including Turkey and Pakistan as well as Ankara’s expansionist pan-Turkic ambitions. corridor, an important corridor linking Azerbaijan to its Enclave, Nakhchivan. Recent comments by President Ilham Aliyev, of Azerbaijan, as well as Turkish President Erdogan’s speech at the UNGA, now suggest that the territorial viability of this corridor might be in question. Iran seems to have taken the threat to Syunik seriously enough to both reiterate Armenia’s control over the province which is internationally recognized and strengthen its troops in its northwestern border in response to the recent fighting.

Irrespective of whether conflict actually breaks out over the corridor, the fact remains that building a railway through a region that has the potential for conflict between Iran and Turkey, two of the largest militaries in the region, does not bode well for political stability in the long term.

Defence relationship

India’s support for Armenia shifted gears in 2022 with the provision of $250 million worth of arms and ammunition. The deal included significant export orders of Pinaka Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers (MBRL), anti-tank missiles, rockets and ammunition to Armenia. In 2020, India also got a $43 million order to supply four Swathi weapon-locating radars to Armenia.

It was reported that this was the first time India has decided to export the Pinaka system to another country. Azerbaijan’s use of drones was a key reason why Armenia wanted the Pinaka system, since its “shoot and scoot” capability enables it to escape counter-battery fire.

India feels it can benefit from being an arms supplier to Armenia, filling a gap left by Russia’s strategic downsizing in the Caucasus due to its commitment in Ukraine.

In October 2022, Armenia’s Minister of Defence Suren Papikyan’s visited India and met the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh during the Defence Expo 2022.

In May this year, Armenia announced it was posting a military attaché to its embassy in New Delhi, tasked with deepening bilateral military cooperation. On 26 July Azerbaijan, summoned the Indian Ambassador and lodged a protest about India’s defence ties with Armenia saying that arming Armenia “at a time when Azerbaijan is negotiating a peace treaty with Armenia, the supply of deadly weapons by India opens the way to the militarization of Armenia and aggravates the situation, hindering the establishment of sustainable peace and security in the South Caucasus region.” The irony is that Baku continues to arm itself with Turkish and Israeli weapons for offensive purposes, but protests when Armenia takes a similar step to defend its borders.

Iran has played a crucial role. While Armenia is unable to purchase Iranian weapons due to fears of US and Western reactions, Tehran is facilitating the transit of weapons from India to Armenia.

On 23 September Armenia appointed a new Ambassador to India despite the ongoing chaos in Nagorno-Karabakh. The ambassador’s credentials, as both an Iran expert and as a regional diplomat in the South Caucasus, suggests the particular direction that Armenia wants to take bilateral relations.

An analysis from the Observer Research Foundation said; “India has overtly positioned itself on Armenia’s side in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and has consequently opted to resist Azerbaijan and its backers including Turkey and Pakistan as well as Ankara’s expansionist pan-Turkic ambitions.”

Pakistan support for Azerbaijan

While Pakistan has been siding with Azerbaijan since the outbreak of the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s, India entered the picture as an arms provider to Armenia only after Yerevan’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War in 2020 with both now supplying arms to the principal combatants.

Pakistani support for Azerbaijan is intertwined with Islamabad’s close strategic relationship with Turkey, Baku’s primary patron. The Pakistani government was second after Turkey in recognising Azerbaijan’s independence following the Soviet collapse in 1991 and Islamabad has never acknowledged Armenia’s independence.

The Pakistani and Azerbaijani militaries have reportedly been conducting joint exercises since 2016 and maintain extensive strategic security contacts. According to some unconfirmed reports, Pakistani military advisers reportedly participated in the Second Karabakh War, providing tactical advice. Some observers also believe Islamabad may sell the JF-17 fighter jets to Azerbaijan. There are also reports that Pakistan may soon join Azerbaijan as a partner in a Turkish-led effort to develop a new-generation stealth fighter, dubbed Kaan.

Pakistan’s involvement is helping cement an Ankara-Baku-Islamabad alliance, informally dubbed the “Three Brothers”. The three countries all supposed democracies are predominantly Islamic. The fact that all three are engaged in territorial and ethnic conflicts also acts as a binding agent, encouraging them to assist each other strategically and diplomatically.

By supporting Azerbaijan militarily and diplomatically Pakistan has played a decisive role in stymying India’s policies in the South Caucasus. The strategy has its drawbacks as Pakistan is now linked with a country that is being condemned internationally due to its aggression.

Conclusion

While it seems difficult for India to publicly endorse Nagorno-Karabakh’s right for self-determination in view of the possible repercussions it can have for India as Pakistan may twist the support by making erroneous connections with Kashmir. India has done little to indicate support for Armenia, or even condemnation for Azerbaijan’s actions with the exception of the meeting of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar with the Foreign Minister of Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan in the UN General Assembly.

As India refigures its foreign policy to a region now changed by Armenia’s defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh, it almost certainly will have to seek out other, more stable avenues for its infrastructure ties given the potential of the INSTC project. It is not as if India lacks alternative options and maybe the IMEC could be a viable option. The world now needs to focus on the Zangezur corridor and Nakhchivan the two-time bombs that are now likely to get activated.

The author is a retired Major General of the Indian Army. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

Opinion | Distraction of the Ukrainian War

 Has Enabled Azerbaijan Achieving a Brutal

 Outcome


Written By: Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh
News18.com
OCTOBER 03, 2023, 
New Delhi, India

Refugees from the Nagorno-Karabakh region ride in a truck upon their arrival at the border village of Kornidzor, Armenia. (Image: Reuters)

While the focus of the West continues to remain on Ukraine, there is a bigger long-term failure here, in their inability to prevent the violence and get the Armenians and Azerbaijanis to agree on an equitable resolution to this bitterly contested conflict

The third war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the long-disputed Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, ended almost as soon as it began. The Azerbaijani ‘anti-terror operations’ began on the afternoon of September 19 with artillery and drones and within 24 hours, the Karabakh Armenians, a population that has been pushed to the brink of starvation by a months-long economic blockade, capitulated, leaving Azerbaijan in effective control of the territory.

In scenes reminiscent of the Balkans in the 1990s, images of convoys of cars filling the mountain road from Karabakh to Armenia carrying thousands of ethnic Armenians leaving their homeland with as much as they can carry are flooding cyberspace. A region that has witnessed many such upheavals over the years faces yet another round of de facto ethnic cleansing.

While the focus of the West continues to remain on Ukraine, there is a bigger long-term failure here, in their inability to prevent the violence and get the Armenians and Azerbaijanis to agree on an equitable resolution to this bitterly contested conflict.

For the local population, the pendulum has swung since the collapse of the Soviet Union from euphoria, siege, victory, defeat and this outcome marks a bitter end and the complete destruction of a project that began in 1988 when the Armenians of Karabakh first tried to split away from Soviet Azerbaijan. The present loss of this territory and the consequent eviction of its people with centuries-old Armenian history and heritage is no doubt a brutal outcome.

The Azerbaijanis have called for the dissolution of all political structures in the territory — the local Presidency, Parliament, and elected Mayor — and are not offering any kind of political autonomy. In contrast, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan told the Karabakh Armenians that an earlier offer of status had “gone to hell” and what was left on the table were as yet undefined “educational rights, cultural rights, religious rights, and municipal electoral rights.”

Under those terms, some older people might choose to stay in Nagorno-Karabakh, and thousands of Azerbaijanis who lived there up until 1991 might return. But little or nothing will remain of all the local institutions built there over three decades.

Although the enclave had in theory been under the protection of Russian peacekeepers, Russian guarantees ended up being worthless. Russia has instead brokered a deal whereby the local population agreed to a full disarmament of their own “defence forces,” numbering several thousand men and to begin talks over their full “reintegration” into Azerbaijan. It has intervened to broker a ceasefire, the price for which is that Russia gets to keep its peacekeeping force on the ground and thereby a foothold in Azerbaijan; and to push Western mediators — the EU and US — further to the margins.

CROSS ROADS OF HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY

The modern maps of the South Caucasus were drawn between 1918 and 1921, during and after World War I. Then, Armenians and Azerbaijanis fought over the disputed territories of Karabakh, Nakhchivan, and Zangezur, and Turkish and Russian armies marched in and out. In 1923, the Soviet Union established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast—home to a 95 per cent ethnically Armenian population within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional legislature passed a resolution in 1988 declaring its intention to join the Republic of Armenia, despite its official location within Azerbaijan.

The South Caucasus region which lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea comprises Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan apart from Southern Russia. This region has been the crossroads of the Persian, Ottoman and Tsarist Empires as also the intersection between Christianity and Islam. Armenia is mainly Christian, with 97 per cent of the population belonging to the Armenian Apostolic faith, one of the oldest Christian churches founded in the first century CE. Azerbaijan is 96 per cent Muslim, with 65 per cent of the people adhering to Shia Islam and the rest to the Sunni faith. Four-fifths of Georgia is Orthodox Christian.

During the Soviet era, the roughly 1,700-square-mile region of Nagorno-Karabakh, whose population has been predominantly Armenian, was an autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was internationally recognised as part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which completely surrounded it. However, fighting erupted between Azerbaijan and local Armenian forces supported by Russia. Internationally sponsored negotiations tried to balance Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and its viability as a state with the aspirations of the Karabakh Armenians.

Back in 1992, when the first war expanded to full-scale fighting, the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Helsinki and called for a conference to be held in Minsk to resolve the conflict. It was to be attended by all parties, including “elected representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh and others”—in other words, both Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijanis. But in the end, the conference never happened.

The security organisation’s mediation was supposed to be based on the principles of the Helsinki Accords, the 1975 agreement between the West and the Soviet Union that formally established territorial integrity, self-determination, and the non-use of force as essential to preserving European peace. In practice, none of these principles were honoured. In fact, international commitment to this conflict was always under-resourced because the South Caucasus was considered too marginal.

In 1994, Russia brokered a ceasefire, and for the next 25 years or so, a stalemate was held in which forces backed by Armenia and Russia effectively controlled the territory. After 1998, the Karabakh Armenians were no longer represented in the talks, as the then President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, was a Karabakh Armenian who said he could negotiate on behalf of his people. Diplomacy was reduced to secret talks between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders.

In 2017, the Karabakh Armenians, encouraged by Armenian nationalists in the region and the Armenian diaspora, formally renamed their region Artsakh, an Armenian name dating back to ancient times. The implication was that Azerbaijan should give up on not just Nagorno-Karabakh but also surrounding regions under Armenian control.

Azerbaijan also showed little interest in substantial negotiations focusing instead on reconquest. For more than thirty years, no Azerbaijani leader negotiated directly with the Karabakh Armenians or put down any formal proposals for their future within Azerbaijan. Western mediators came up with peace formulas but were never able to offer the “boots on the ground” to enforce them. All this gave Russia the strongest leverage, and at the end of the 2020 war, it duly became the only outside power to intervene directly and put boots on the ground in the form of peacekeepers.

In 2020, however, the momentum in the conflict, which seemed to have been frozen, shifted decidedly toward Azerbaijan, which won a clear-cut military victory over Armenia during a short but consequential war over the territory which is widely remembered in military circles for the devastating role played by the Turkish Bayraktar drones against the Armenian tanks. That outcome heightened the latent tensions among the countries in the region at a time when Russia, which has traditionally been the most important outside actor in the conflict, was distracted by its commitment in Ukraine.

UNUSUAL ALLIANCES AT PLAY

The long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has created partnerships in the South Caucasus that cut across religious, ethnic, and geopolitical lines in surprising ways. Iran, which is ruled by Shiite clerics, has provided an economic lifeline to Christian-majority Armenia, whose primary backer has for long been Russia. Meanwhile, Israel and Sunni-majority Turkey have formed a strategic alliance with predominantly Shiite Azerbaijan. And the two Shiite-majority countries in the mix — Iran and Azerbaijan — remain locked in a bitter, decades-long dispute over territory and identity.

As Israel’s ties to Azerbaijan deepened, since 2016, Azerbaijan has received nearly 70 per cent of its arms imports from Israel, which in turn purchases 40 per cent of its oil from Baku. Iran became concerned that Israel is turning Azerbaijan into its proxy and using it as a launchpad for operations against it including the 2018 theft of information regarding its nuclear archive.

In recent years, the growing proximity of Israel and the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies has also been of concern to it. The Iranians now fear that a similar dynamic is taking shape between Israel and two countries with predominantly Turkic populations, Turkey and Azerbaijan. The perceived threat of being sandwiched between an Israeli-Gulf Arab bloc to the South and an Israeli-Turkic bloc to the North, combined with domestic unrest in Iran, led to Iranian support for the Armenians. They also feared the instigation of separatism among the Iranian Azeri population.

FALLOUTS OF THE WAR OF 2020

The War of 2020 led to 7,000 deaths in just six weeks of fighting. It also re-shifted the ethnic balance in the region. On one hand, by recapturing the area of Azerbaijan surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been devastated and occupied by Armenian forces for two and a half decades, Baku’s victory allowed hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani refugees to return to their homes. For the remaining 12,000 Karabakh Armenians, the situation was ever more precarious. The three-mile Lachin Corridor — their only supply route to Armenia — a slender and vulnerable lifeline was entirely dependent on the small Russian peacekeeping force, and by extension, Russia’s relations with Azerbaijan to keep the road open.

Once the war in Ukraine began in February 2022, Russia was distracted and its priorities in the Caucasus shifted. Azerbaijan, Russia’s main land route to the South, became a more important partner than Armenia, its traditional Christian ally in the region. This resulted in Azerbaijan sealing off the Lachin Corridor in December last year.

Having effectively lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan started saying publicly that Armenia renounced its territorial claims on the region. Instead, the formula he adopted in talks with Azerbaijan facilitated by the EU was that the issue was now “the rights and security” of the Karabakh Armenians. In turn, President Aliyev frequently used the words “territorial integrity” and used the war in Ukraine as cover. Western officials told him that the territory would return to Azerbaijani jurisdiction but that patience was needed. As recently as mid-September, he received calls from the US and other Western officials warning him against resorting to military force.

Domestic logic also dictated Aliyev’s actions. For two decades, he has been the leader of an authoritarian state. Hence why should he agree to Western demands for a model of conflict resolution that compels him to offer autonomy to a national minority community, weakening his hold on power?

Moreover, analysts feel that Aliyev believes that Turkey and Russia, not the West, are the only powers he needs to take seriously. In the present case, both Turkey and Russia see the utility of limiting Western engagement in the South Caucasus, a region where they have traditionally wielded influence.

Turkey, Aliyev felt, would support his effort to take full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia would not prevent it, and the West, with very little leverage in the region, would be a bystander.

FLURRY OF DIPLOMATIC ACTIVITY

In a flurry of diplomacy in May 2023, the US, EU, and Russia all hosted peace talks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted four days of talks with the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan and said they made steps toward normalisation and peace. Shortly after, European Council President Charles Michel mediated discussions in Brussels between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, describing them as “productive” talks.

Then, in late May, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a trilateral meeting with the two leaders to discuss the reopening of transportation links between Armenia and Azerbaijan, though no agreement was reached. After three days of US-held talks on Nagorno-Karabakh in late June, Blinken applauded “further progress” toward a peace agreement and said both sides showed a willingness to negotiate seriously.

On September 14, a senior Biden administration official said, “The United States will not countenance any action or effort—short-term or long-term—to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Five days later, Azerbaijan launched its military operation. On September 21 at the UN, the German Foreign Minister said, “The displacement and forced exodus of ethnic Armenians from Karabakh are not acceptable,” while the US Ambassador called for an international mission on the ground.

But the fight for the rights of Karabakh Armenians seems to be over before it began. Presently it is difficult to imagine an outcome that would protect their historic legacy and assure the survival of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The cost of their defeat will reverberate for decades to come.

NAKHCHIVAN: THE NEXT BOILING POINT

A potential outcome of Azerbaijan’s victory is the future of Nakchivan, an enclave of Azerbaijan between Iran, Armenia, and Turkey. Azerbaijan is demanding that Yerevan agree to the establishment of a corridor through Armenian territory that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan. President Ilham Aliyev called this passage “a historical necessity . . . [that] would happen whether Armenia wants it or not.”

Such a corridor would cut Iran’s access to Armenia as the two countries would no longer share a border. Iran, which views Armenia as a critical link with Eurasia, had threatened to use military force against any changes to the internationally recognised borders of the region. During a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last July, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned against creating a barrier between Iran and Armenia by blocking what “has been a communication route for thousands of years.”

Even though most of its provisions lie in tatters, the trilateral Ceasefire brokered by Russia in November 2020, and co-signed by Aliyev, Pashinyan, and President Vladimir Putin has as one of its provisions, Border Guards from Russia’s FSB to protect the transport corridor across Armenia to Nakhchivan, a region being referred to as Western Azerbaijan.

This is where the next battleground lies. It is felt by some that the UN backing should put this under a broader international umbrella but Azerbaijan and Russia may resist this. The crisis in the South Caucasus has the potential to spiral out of control and also draw Iran and Russia closer.

CONCLUSION

The Karabakh conflict has been central to the modern national identities of both the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. Both sides still use language that excludes the other: for example, the Armenians call Karabakh by the old Armenian name Artsakh, implying a region without Azerbaijanis, and the Azerbaijanis call the Armenian-populated town of Stepanakert by an Azerbaijani name, Khankendi.

The return to violence is also a reminder of the failure to establish a European security and rights framework for the South Caucasus. Western diplomats have for decades backed an approach to Nagorno-Karabakh built on international legal principles and modelled on resolving the Balkan conflicts. In theory, such a settlement would involve international peacekeepers, war crimes tribunals, political autonomy, and the eventual peaceful coexistence of Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Russian commitments in Ukraine have also limited its capacity to project power in its neighbourhood.

To quote Lenin, “Having gone a full circle we are back to square one”. Once again violence, not diplomacy, has played a role in determining key outcomes. Unfortunately, the importance of history and geography in geopolitics cannot be ignored and small players take full advantage of settling lingering disputes when major players are distracted. The pulsating ripples of the Ukrainian conflict have undoubtedly exposed yet another faultline.

The author is an Army veteran. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.