On July 28, three Armenian soldiers were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan. The result was both countries accusing the other of having violated the November 2020 ceasefire that ended the brief war of reconquest led by Baku. Russia again played the role of “peacekeeper” and negotiated a return to calm. This incident, which follows several others in recent months, should serve as a reminder to the international community that the conflict between the two countries is far from over.
The issues immediately at stake are two-fold: the fate of the prisoners taken during the short war of late 2020, and the landmine issue resulting from twenty-five years of Armenian occupation of technically Azerbaijani territory. Meanwhile, each side has accused the other of having destroyed religious and cultural sites. In recent weeks, however, there have been signs of goodwill. Azerbaijan has released prisoners, while Armenia has issued minefield maps for regions so devastated that they are reminiscent of northeastern France in the aftermath of the First World War.
But the burning issue, of course, remains one of territory.
The border problem
First of all, “restoring the international border,” which Western countries have rightly called for, is not a straightforward goal. Although the borders in the South Caucasus had been fixed in the 1921 Treaty of Kars, the one separating Armenia and Azerbaijan - a simple line separating two Soviet republics - remained poorly demarcated.
Secondly, the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is also the small ethnically Armenian self-proclaimed republic of Artsakh and the primary issue at the heart of the conflict, remains uncertain. By the end of 2020, Azerbaijani forces were forced to end their advance before the enclave was fully under their possession (they only control about 25% of it in the south and west). However, the exact status of the former Soviet oblast is undecided. Baku speaks only of integration and no longer mentions the cultural autonomy it once promised. Meanwhile, all Armenian inhabitants of the country automatically have Azerbaijani citizenship. But will the 20,000 or so “settlers” who have arrived there since 1994 accept that?
The complexities of the region do not end there. There is also Nakhchivan, a large Azerbaijani exclave established in 1921 that borders Iran and, for a few kilometers, Turkey. Its strategic position has not escaped the interest of Ankara, aroused by the prospective opening of a road and rail corridor controlled by the FSB, that would allow direct access to Central Asia, even as far as China, along the Iranian-Armenian border. President Ilham Aliyev has already threatened to establish it by force. Additionally, there are also small Armenian enclaves in Azerbaijani territory and a number of Azerbaijanis in Armenia, about which discreet negotiations are said to be taking place.
The hope is that the agreement reached in principle between Baku, Yerevan and Moscow in the spring - to create a commission on border delimitation and demarcation - will bear fruit. However, as is often the case in many so-called “border” conflicts, the border is more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself.
Identity conflict
In reality, this is not a thirty-year war. It has been going on for over a hundred years. In 1922, the two states were incorporated into the Soviet Union after three years of deadly confrontation. The memory of cohabiting within the USSR has now given way to overtly nationalist narratives, often rooted in a religious substrate. This evokes memories of former Yugoslavia and, perhaps even more so, the Middle East with its succession of wars, refugees, colonization, and liberation of “sacred lands” and “martyrs.”
Skip to main content
Add new comment