Last Updated: Tuesday, 23 May 2023, 12:44 GMT

Politics and Security Hold Each Other Hostage in Nagorno-Karabakh

Publisher International Crisis Group (ICG)
Publication Date 17 January 2018
Cite as International Crisis Group (ICG), Politics and Security Hold Each Other Hostage in Nagorno-Karabakh, 17 January 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a6844154.html [accessed 25 May 2023]
DisclaimerThis is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Politics and Security Hold Each Other Hostage in Nagorno-Karabakh

Sniper fire can hit almost every open-air spot in Nerkin Karmiraghbyur, an Armenian village in the Tavush region on the border with Azerbaijan. Nargiza, who runs a well-stocked shop out of an abandoned railway coach in the village centre, laments the locals' fate: "We never feel safe. We hear shooting at night, and fear it during the day. My neighbours have stopped cultivating their vineyards. They were being shot at while at work."

Nargiza means "daffodil". It's a common name in Azerbaijan and other Muslim cultures, but not in her native Armenia, especially since the start of the three-decade-long conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. As the two country's foreign ministers prepare for a rare meeting on 18 January, Nargiza's story is a reminder of how much is spoiled by the collateral damage of three decades of failure to resolve the dispute.

Security along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and the Line of Contact (LOC) around Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent Azerbaijani territories controlled by Armenians, has been precarious since the 1994 ceasefire. Just a handful of Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers monitor the line, even though this is one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world. The costly and destabilising arms race, aggravated since the early 2000s by Azerbaijan's oil and gas windfall, has been chiefly facilitated by Moscow, which sells weapons to both Baku and Yerevan. At the same time, Russia co-chairs, together with France and the U.S., the OSCE Minsk Group that steers the conflict settlement process. The downward spiral has grown deadlier since 2014, with increasing use of heavy artillery and renewed fighting in April 2016, which claimed at least 200 lives.

That fighting served as a wake-up call and opportunity to galvanise the stagnant peace process. In May and June 2016, President Sargsyan of Armenia and President Aliyev of Azerbaijan agreed on confidence and security building measures (CSBMs) – increasing the number of OSCE observers (likely from the current six to twelve) and creating a mechanism for investigating incidents – and taking forward substantive talks. But they failed to prevent another breakdown in confidence and negotiations in September 2016, when skirmishes broke out again on the conflict divide, and continued until preparations for a new summit began in the summer of 2017.

Sargsyan's and Aliyev's October 2017 meeting recommitted both to CSBMs and substantive talks. There is refreshed hope that diplomacy can prevent a new escalation, which in the worst case could provoke a regional conflagration, given Armenia's and Azerbaijan's respective defence and strategic partnership and mutual support agreements with Russia and Turkey. But there is also a risk that meetings, if unproductive, will lead to a renewed sense of frustration with diplomacy, and a temptation to view the use of force as a legitimate means to solve the conflict.

People living near the divide are highly vulnerable, both now and in the event of a renewed escalation. For this to be avoided, progress has to be made on security while political discussions need to resume. But as in many conflicts, security and politics hold each other hostage. The Armenian side insists on CSBMs before the substance of a future settlement can be discussed. "Who would discuss settlement while we are being shot at?", an Armenian politician said to Crisis Group. Azerbaijanis, for their part, have been reluctant to commit to CSBMs that would risk cementing the status quo, without discussions on the content of a future deal.

The 18 January meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will discuss an increase of the number of OSCE observers, according to diplomats close to the peace process. The sides are still at odds on modalities. Baku would at most like to see a light-touch arrangement with no change in the current offices, whereas Yerevan prefers a more hands-on arrangement, including new personnel with new duties. In Nagorno-Karabakh, sources told Crisis Group they seek a permanent OSCE field presence in heavily populated parts of the Line of Contact. Although it is a tall order for a dozen unarmed staff to monitor the full length of the line, and the impact of their presence on overall security may be limited, an increase in numbers would be a small breakthrough in a process that often struggles to secure as much as a date for the next meeting between the sides. The other CSBM on the table, an investigative mechanism, is far less likely to be agreed, diplomats say.

In Nargiza's village, Nerkin Karmiraghbyur, on the international Armenia-Azerbaijan border well to the north of Nagorno-Karabakh, nobody has been killed or injured recently, but the climate of fear is common along the length of the conflict divide. In Armenia's Tavush region, humanitarian agencies and local government have raised walls around the perimeter of schools and kindergartens to shield children from small arms fire. The local administration has built a bypass road – its exposed segments reinforced by a stone wall – to protect cars travelling between border villages. People move their beds away from windows exposed to the other side and Nargiza's railway coach shop has old bullet holes in it.

In Nagorno-Karabakh itself, 7,000 of the region's current 150,000-strong population live within 15km of the divide. Hundreds of thousands more people, many of them displaced by fighting in the 1990s, live similarly close to the line on the Azerbaijani side, where an incident in July 2017 killed an elderly Azerbaijani woman and her two-year-old granddaughter. People living near the divide are highly vulnerable, both now and in the event of a renewed escalation. Humanitarian aid workers are making contingency plans, and take a view that resumed fighting would have little regard for civilian lives.

In order to prevent such a scenario, a discussion on security alone is insufficient. The political aspects of a future settlement, based on mutual concessions, will have to be addressed with international security arrangements to guarantee them. A possible road map to an even-handed settlement was developed a decade ago in the Basic Principles, which outlines principles for a settlement, including: return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing security and self-government guarantees; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; future determination of Nagorno-Karabakh's final status through a legally binding expression of will; the right of return of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees; and international security guarantees, including a peacekeeping operation.

The principles continue to be accepted by both sides as the general umbrella for a settlement. In practice, they are shunned by people in both societies whose lives over the past quarter-century have developed around the conflict, and whose intractable discourses are in large part fuelled by their leaderships. As long as both leaders envision a settlement on their own terms only, security and politics will keep each other hostage. And men and women like Nargiza, on both sides of the divide, will remain in peril.

A year after Nagorno-Karabakh's April 2016 violent flare-up, Armenia and Azerbaijan are closer to war than at any point since the 1994 ceasefire. Political and security conditions that prompted the April 2016 escalation have become more acute and both sides claim a new wave of escalation already has begun. Since mid-January 2017, deadly incidents involving the use of heavy artillery and anti-tank weapons have occurred with varying degrees of intensity; May saw a significant increase, including reports of self-guided rockets and missiles used near densely populated areas along the Line of Contact (LoC), the heavily militarised area that divides the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides since the 1994 ceasefire. The settlement process has stalled, making the use of force tempting, at least for tactical purposes; today, both sides – backed by mobilised constituencies – appear ready for confrontation. These tensions could develop into larger-scale conflict, leading to significant civilian casualties and possibly prompting the main regional powers to intervene. Russia, France and the U.S. need to put their differences aside and apply concerted high-level pressure on the parties to unlock the current paralysis and mitigate risks of renewed violence.

This results from an opportunity lost. In the wake of the April 2016 escalation, which claimed at least 200 lives and swept both societies in a frenzy of pro-war sentiment, a new opening presented itself for the conflict settlement process led by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)'s Minsk Group, co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France. Although two meetings were held between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in May and June 2016, they produced no tangible result. Instead, since late summer 2016, escalation has ebbed and flowed, claiming dozens of lives. The heads of state have refused calls to restart negotiations, preferring to visit the "front line" and issue threatening public statements.

The past year has exposed the fragility of conflict settlement efforts, now caught in a standoff. Armenia – concerned about Nagorno-Karabakh's security and angered by Baku's increased assertiveness – insists on a lowering of security risks before substantive talks can start. Azerbaijan – frustrated with the longstanding status quo and concerned that additional security measures could further cement it – insists substantive discussions cannot be delayed. In their May and June 2016 talks, the two presidents agreed in principle to strengthen peace monitoring and introduce an investigative mechanism to lower tensions, while committing to substantive talks to address key sticking points in the settlement process. Although these were left unspecified, they would have to include returning some Armenian-controlled lands in the conflict zone to Azerbaijan's direct control, and addressing the status of the rest of the Armenian-populated disputed area as well as security arrangements in the whole conflict region. So far, there has been neither monitoring, nor an investigative mechanism, nor substantive talks.

Armenia and Azerbaijan's leaders view each other with deep mutual distrust, unable to acknowledge each other's interests. Effective channels of communication – whether between them, their respective governments, or military commanders in the conflict zone – are non-existent. The result is a standstill in which any incident is liable to spiral out of control, especially given the shared view in both societies that another conflict is inevitable, and that a "final solution" to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is necessary, even if it means a new war.

Basic principles of any viable settlement are well known: variants of a land-for-status formula coupled with strong international security guarantees. But these are predicated on mutual concessions that neither party shows any interest in making. Instead, positions have hardened since April 2016. Baku has become more assertive in emphasising the legal basis of its claims, seeking international acknowledgement that its territories have been annexed and suggesting Western sanctions should be imposed; it also is trying to restrict international actors' engagement with Nagorno-Karabakh, imposing restrictions on economic activity in, or visits to the region. It simultaneously is applying greater force to pressure the Armenian side. For its part, Armenia says it will respond in kind. In the worsening security environment, it has shown no appetite for discussions to unblock the current stalemate, and has launched a new "nation-army" program likely to further increase war rhetoric and societal militarisation. De facto Nagorno-Karabakh has even declared its readiness, if attacked, to advance deeper into Azerbaijan's densely populated territory along the Line of Contact to gain a new security belt and strengthen its hand in future negotiations.

As tensions rise, international mediation stagnates. Russia remains the most influential foreign player, yet its role is complex. It is prima inter pares in the Minsk Group, but also chief arms supplier to Azerbaijan and Armenia, both of whom suspect Russia is more interested in expanding its influence in the region than in resolving the conflict. Only when it cannot do enough alone is Russia prepared to share responsibility with the other OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, France and the U.S., but Paris and Washington have been pre-occupied with domestic political transitions. Neither Baku nor Yerevan trust Russia, the Minsk Group, or the broader international system.

In light of growing threats of confrontation, the mediators' primary task should be to resume regular communication between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders and insist that Yerevan and Baku soften positions that have calcified over the past 23 years as well as tone down martial rhetoric that fuels their publics' belligerence. They should more pointedly describe to these publics the risks and costs of escalation. And they should push Yerevan and Baku to agree to immediate measures to restore confidence and security, including: increasing the number of OSCE personnel to monitor the conflict zone; establishing an OSCE-led investigative mechanism to hold the two sides accountable, while introducing a degree of transparency regarding their military arrangements in the conflict zone; and establishing regular contacts between their respective field-based militaries. In parallel, Armenia and Azerbaijan should launch substantive discussions on outstanding issues, including the return to Baku's control of territories adjacent to the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Nagorno-Karabakh's status, international security arrangements, and return of displaced persons.

Moving in that direction will require Russia, the U.S. and France to iron out their differences, work in unison and overcome Baku's and Yerevan's distrust. Russia bears special responsibility given its role and the suspicions both sides nurture regarding what motivates Moscow. To assuage concern about the prospect of Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone, for example, Moscow could invite all OSCE Minsk Group members to explore options for a future multinational peacekeeping force. Likewise, it also could provide additional transparency on its arms sales to Armenia and Azerbaijan.

With their leaderships' buy-in, the three co-chair countries need to insist that Yerevan and Baku revise their positions. That won't be easy. Both the U.S. and France recently have gone through complicated political transitions, and suspicion of Russian motivations – in Baku, Yerevan and elsewhere – remains high. But diplomatic paralysis would be too risky and costly, and time for effective mediation is running out.

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