Month: October 2023

The de-facto Armenian authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh announced on September 28 the dismantling of all institutions by January, marking the end of the enclave, which dates back to the beginning of the Soviet period.

The Armenian government of the region, which it calls Artsakh, has dissolved, its army surrendered, and one of its former leaders was arrested, all in the space of a few days. It is an ignominious end to a 35-year-old statelet.

This also marks an end to a tragic story of one of the most brutal territorial and ethnic conflicts in what was once the Soviet Union, and ushers in an interesting precedent where a post-Soviet country successfully reconquered its lost territories.

Azerbaijan’s victory changes the ethnic composition on the ground. At the time of publication, more than 50% of Karabakh’s Armenian population of 120,000 had fled the region. Many more are expected to go. This is not population expulsion at the point of a bayonet, but that may be because Azerbaijan doesn’t need to. The months-long Azeri siege of the Armenian community, denying them food and medicine,  made clear that its intentions were not friendly.

How did all this come about?

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous area in the South Caucasus with a historically mixed population. Throughout the 20^th century, the region evolved into a mostly Armenian-populated area. Armenians and Azeris clashed after the end of the Romanov Empire, but with the Soviets, relative peace was established, though the roots of future conflict were seeded by placing the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Azerbaijan, with no land connection to Armenia.

Over time, tensions grew. The process accelerated in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union started to disintegrate. The regional parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to become part of Armenia, although the decision was not recognized by the central Soviet authorities or Azerbaijan.

With Soviet imperial power fading, hostilities erupted in 1988 and lasted six years. Armenia was the winner, and as a result, Nagorno-Karabakh, with its surrounding territories, became a de facto independent republic, heavily backed by Armenia, but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

For decades, there were multiple efforts to negotiate. One such was mediated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group (co-chaired by Russia, the United States, and France), but there was no significant progress.

As talks floundered, there were intermittent political and military escalations. Clashes occurred along the line of contact and claimed numerous lives on both sides. In 2016, for example, Azerbaijan managed to occupy hundreds of hectares of land in a short campaign often seen as a precursor to the Second War of 2020.

In late September of that year, Azerbaijan launched a short and successful campaign to reclaim the area, using foreign-supplied technology, including drones. More than 5,000 troops on both sides were killed in just six weeks of hostilities. The Kremlin — which rejected Armenian pleas for military aid — brokered a temporary ceasefire on November 10, which handed most of the seven regions around Karabakh itself and parts of the separatist region, including the city of Shusha, to Azerbaijan. In a major Russian victory, a key element of the deal was the dispatch of a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to the truncated region.

While the 2020 ceasefire agreement brought an end to active hostilities, the fundamental disagreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding the region’s status remained. The international community continued to monitor the situation, hoping for a comprehensive and lasting resolution. As in the past, these efforts made barely any difference.

And yet things had changed in the three decades since the first ceasefire. Azerbaijan had built a war-winning military; it had reasonable relations with Armenia’s long-standing friends, and it had become a major energy supplier to the European Union (EU) after the Kremlin’s attempt to annex large parts of Ukraine. The Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, may have felt there was no better time to strike.

The result of all this is far from clear, however. There are multiple questions about what the new power balance will mean for the region, and especially Iran. The latter has enjoyed close ties to Armenia and was uneasy that the 2020 war irreversibly tilted the balance toward Azerbaijan. This caused a re-think in Tehran, which concluded it should use a mixture of military deterrence (holding military exercises) and diplomatic pressure against Azerbaijan.

Russia, another of the big three powers bordering the South Caucasus (along with Iran and Turkey), has also markedly changed its approach. Its tolerance of Azerbaijan’s use of force may partly be linked to its need to access Iran as a part of the International North-South Transport Corridor. The route runs through Azerbaijan. It may also be because its forces in the region have been stripped to the bone to reinforce its war of aggression in Ukraine.

But there is a personal element too. Putin’s animus toward Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power after the revolution in 2018, is deep-seated. There are many reasons for this, but Pashinyan’s attacks on Russia’s refusal to assist and his questioning of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), along with exercises with US forces, have infuriated Russia. So too, has the decision to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has a warrant out on Putin.

Yet it is doubtful that Russia will simply allow Azerbaijan to regain its territories in the hope of having a more Russia-leaning leadership. Perhaps there is a wider calculus at play: Moscow may be extracting concessions from Baku which might include membership of CSTO or its Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

The real problem now — apart from the absolute fury of many Armenians — is that there’s another issue between the two rival states with almost the same explosive potential.

The presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan met in the area of Nakhchivan on September 26. This is part of Azerbaijan physically separated from the motherland by Armenian territory. It was clear from the words used by Aliyev when speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that he is now seeking a “peace corridor” between the two parts of Azerbaijan. This has previously been referred to by Iran as a casus belli.

The losers of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute are now apparent. Clearly, Armenia has been defeated; it is in no position to challenge Azerbaijan’s gains and is deeply divided internally and militarily inferior. Whatever Russia says, it has been exposed as an unreliable ally and as a spectator rather than the key power in the region. And the US and EU have been revealed as the authors of strong statements, but not much else.

The winners are Azerbaijan and its closest ally, Turkey. What they decide will determine whether there is peace or more war in the South Caucasus.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor at European University and the Director of Middle East Studies at the Georgian think-tank, Geocase.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

On September 28, the president of the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Samvel Shahramanyan, announced that it would cease to exist on January 1, 2024. According to a decree that he has signed, all state institutions will have been dissolved by this date.

It follows Azerbaijan’s military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent flight of large parts of the ethnically Armenian population, a dramatic turn in the long-running conflict over the region, which revolves largely around the question of the disputed region’s independence. Azerbaijan, which is predominantly Muslim, is supported by Turkey, while Russia has acted as a protective power for Armenia, which is majority Christian.

Geopolitical consequences

The self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which declared independence in 1991, has a predominantly Armenian population but is located on Azerbaijani territory. According to international law, it belongs to Azerbaijan, not Armenia.

Armenia has never recognized the breakaway republic. Even though some consider the region to be an “inseparable part” of Armenia, draft laws to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence have been blocked in the Armenian parliament and by the government. 

The conflict has geopolitical relevance far beyond the two states due to several major oil and gas pipelines in the region that transport millions of barrels a day from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Azerbaijan has been supplying the EU with more gas.

Disputed for centuries

The conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis has its origins in the seventh century, when Christian Byzantines fought for control against Muslim Arabs. Under later Ottoman rule, the Armenian population looked to Russia for protection. 

As Christian Armenians came under pressure from Persia in the 18th century, the Russian tsarina, Catherine the Great, issued letters of protection for them.

After Nagorno-Karabakh came under Russian control as a result of the Russo-Persian War of 1804 to 1813, the Christian Armenian population received preferential treatment over the Turkic Muslims of the wider region, later known as Azerbaijanis. 

Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 in the Ottoman Empire led many Armenians to flee to Nagorno-Karabakh, and exacerbated the conflict with the Azerbaijani population. In March 1918, there were pogroms against Azerbaijanis, and then there were anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani capital Baku. In 1920, pogroms in the city of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh claimed the lives of over 30,000 Armenians.

After the fall of the Russian Empire, the Russian Revolution, and the First World War, the region continued to be disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which both enjoyed a brief period of independence.

In 1922, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia formed the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, but it was dissolved in 1936 and disintegrated into individual Soviet republics. However, riots and pogroms between Armenians and Azerbaijanis did not stop. 

There have been tens of thousands of casualties on both sidesImage: AP/dpa/picture alliance

Collapse of Soviet Union

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independence. The region of Nagorno-Karabakh followed suit on September 3, 1991. Two months later, Azerbaijan lifted its autonomy and launched an energy blockade.

The conflict escalated again and in early 1992, there were more mass killings in both Azerbaijani and Armenian villages. On May 12, 1994, a cease-fire agreement came into force that strengthened Nagorno-Karabakh.

Some 35,000 people are estimated to have died in the 1990s and over 1.1 million were displaced.

A Second Nagorno-Karabakh War broke out in 2020 after which the region suffered major territorial losses despite support from Armenia. The war came to an end due to a cease-fire agreement brokered by Moscow that helped Azerbaijan regain parts of the disputed territory.

From the Armenian perspective, Azerbaijan at no time guaranteed autonomy to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, stated repeatedly that it recognized “broad autonomy” for the region, but not independence.

This article was translated from German.

By Luke Coffey

This has been a historic week in the South Caucasus. For Azerbaijan and Armenia, one chapter in a long and often deadly story has ended. Now both sides must look toward the future.

After intense fighting in the region in the early 1990s, Armenia ended up occupying a sizable area of Azerbaijan, including the Karabakh region, for almost three decades. During this period, Yerevan propped up a separatist government, the so-called “Republic of Artsakh,” led by ethnic Armenians and not recognized by any other country in the world.

During the 2020 Karabakh War, Azerbaijan regained control of most of its territory. The resulting ceasefire agreement left a small section of Karabakh out of the hands of Baku and under the supervision of a Russian peacekeeping force.

On Sept. 19 this year, Azerbaijan launched a military operation to retake the remaining parts of Karabakh. The Russian peacekeepers on the ground sat idly by and did nothing. In less than 24 hours, a ceasefire was agreed and the Armenian forces, and Armenian-backed separatists, laid down their weapons.

For international observers of the South Caucasus, what has happened in the past few weeks in Karabakh should not have come as a surprise. There are a few factors that led to the recent events. Firstly, there is a perception that Russia is weak in the region right now as a result of its quagmire in Ukraine. Azerbaijan was never happy with the presence of Russian troops on its territory in the aftermath of the 2020 Karabakh War, and Baku has been looking for the right time to make a move that might lead to their departure from the region.

Secondly, “presidential elections” for the so-called “Republic of Artsakh” were held by the Armenian separatists in Karabakh this month. Unsurprisingly, Azerbaijan considered these elections to be illegal and needlessly provocative. They were not alone in this. There were also strong statements of condemnation from the Council of Europe, the EU, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Organization of Turkic States.

Thirdly, there was the issue of transit links. For countries such as Azerbaijan located in the heart of Eurasia, transport connections to the outside world are key. As part of the agreement that ended the 2020 war, Azerbaijan committed itself to building a new road connecting Armenia with the section of Karabakh under the control of the Russian peacekeepers.

This was accomplished in 2022, a year earlier than was required by the 2020 ceasefire agreement. In return, Armenia pledged to “guarantee the security of transport connections” between Azerbaijan proper and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, through Armenia’s Syunik province. This has yet to happen. Understandably, the lack of progress on this promise has frustrated Baku.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what the world saw play out in Karabakh over the past couple of weeks was the culmination of more than three decades of diplomatic failures. Since the early 1990s, four UN Security Council resolutions were passed calling for the “cessation of all hostilities and the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces” from Azerbaijan. None were ever enforced.

The war in 2020 should have served as a wake-up call for the international community to redouble its efforts to find a long-lasting and durable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but all efforts failed.

Now that Azerbaijan has restored control over its territory, the hard part begins. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who were forced out of their homes in the 1990s will want to return. Tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians, most of whom will distrust the government in Baku, will need to be integrated into Azerbaijani society.

While there have been many cavalier claims, mainly by commentators in the West, thousands of kilometers away, of genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place in Karabakh, there is so far no evidence that this is taking place. There has been a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians leaving for Armenia but the government of Azerbaijan has made it clear that they can remain if they wish.

Azerbaijan must now ensure that ethnic Armenians who do decide to stay receive all the usual protections afforded to minority groups in dozens of countries around the world, including freedom of religion and the ability to preserve their Armenian language and culture. Considering the diversity that already exists in modern-day Azerbaijan, there is no reason to assume that this would be a problem. But it will take years for trust to be restored.

As with any conflict, there are winners and losers. Azerbaijan is obviously a clear winner. Turkiye, as Azerbaijan’s top ally, is also a winner. Russia and Iran are the losers in the aftermath of the recent fighting.

For Moscow, its influence in the South Caucasus is waning as its problems in Ukraine continue to mount. Tehran, meanwhile, has maintained a cozy relationship with Armenia for years in an attempt to undermine Azerbaijan’s influence in the South Caucasus. This will now be more difficult.

The outcome of the conflict for Armenia is complicated, especially when we consider the long term. On one hand, its armed forces have been devastated and there is a feeling of betrayal by Moscow, its top military and economic ally.

However, it is quite possible that the normalization process and peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan (and someday between Armenia and Turkiye) could create new economic opportunities in the region. Now that the conflict is over, international investors might be willing to channel billions of dollars in direct investment to the region. As residents of the poorest country in the region, the Armenian people need this.

As the Armenians find peace with their neighbors, their reliance on Russia might diminish. This could create an opportunity for Yerevan to move closer to the Euro-Atlantic community. However, this will not happen quickly and will likely require a generational change in Armenian society.

On Oct. 5, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet in the Spanish city of Granada during a summit of the European Political Community. It is too early to speculate what the outcome of this meeting might be. However, let us hope it is the beginning of what will be a process that brings peace, stability and economic prosperity to the South Caucasus.

For too long this region has suffered. The international community should redouble its efforts to get all sides around a table and find a lasting peace.

• Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. X: @LukeDCoffey

Twenty-five years ago, after the fall of the Soviet Union, an academic at the University of Warwick began work in the Russian archives to map the sophisticated regime that made the Soviet Union the most secretive state that ever existed.

A new book, based on decades of research, describes the complex layers of secrecy within the Soviet Union, what secrecy hid, what the state gained and lost because of it, and what we can learn about how secrecy is used in Russia today.

Emeritus Professor of Economics Mark Harrison at the University of Warwick and author of Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism says: “The Soviet Union’s archives hold many millions of secret documents. Their volume is far greater than the government information that was released into the public sphere. But the biggest secret was the huge gap between the appearance and reality of the communist party dictatorship. To all appearances, the Soviet state was decisive, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Behind the scenes, the state was ruled by procrastination, indecision, groupthink, mistrust, fear, and disinformation. This gap was hidden by secrecy.

“The communists were the most diligent state-builders of the twentieth century. The political leaders valued secrecy because it bought them security of tenure. But secrecy was extremely costly. The price they paid was in a state machine that was far less capable than the one they pretended to deploy. There was a secrecy/capacity trade-off.”

“Ordinary people who had no direct connection to power also paid the price of secrecy. Not only were they denied the freedoms of an open society. In addition, they knew that the secret police held information about their background and lives. You didn’t know what that information was or how it affected your life. A promotion might be mysteriously blocked, or an application to travel abroad that was refused without reason. You would never know why. You could only suspect that there was something in your past that the state knew about. And there was no appeal process.”

A measure of the scale of the Soviet Union’s secret state compares the number of US and Soviet  secret informants at the height of the Cold War:

“In 1976 the FBI had around 1500 undercover informants. In a slightly earlier year, 1968, the KGB had 165,000 informants. Given that the Soviet population was slightly larger than the American population at the time, the difference was 1:100.”

What we can learn about Russia’s secrecy today

The digital age we are now living in is more adapted to disinformation than to censorship. Yet, the secrecy /capacity trade-off continues to operate, explains Professor Harrison:

“President Putin chose to plan and launch the invasion of Ukraine in complete secrecy, to preserve his freedom of action and achieve surprise. But in doing so he sacrificed a large part of his invasion force. With more transparent decision making, Russia’s soldiers would not have invaded Ukraine thinking they were on an exercise, and President Putin would not have sent them into battle believing that he could win the war in three days.”

Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism by Mark Harrison, published by Stanford University Press (2023), is out now.