Azerbaijan’s oil fortunes equal separatist Karabakh’s woes
by Simon Ostrovsky

Agence France Presse — English
June 19, 2005 Sunday 1:29 AM GMT

MARTAKERT, Azerbaijan June 19 — Tens of miles of abandoned, bombed-out
buildings separate the hometown of Rafael Petrosian from the nearest
city within the rebel region of Nagorno Karabakh, which goes to the
polls Sunday to elect a new parliament.

Petrosian is a school principal in Martakert, a small town on the
outer fringes of unrecognized Nagorno Karabakh Republic, population
145,000, which former Soviet Azerbaijan claims.

The closest neighboring town Tartar is just seven kilometers (four
miles) away, but it is across a series of barbed wire fences, trenches
and minefields in enemy territory controlled by the central authorities
in Baku.

“It’s dangerous over there,” Petrosian said, gesturing in the direction
of the ceasefire line. “They’re not human on the other side,” he said
of the Azeris with whom Armenians fought a bloody war a decade ago.

An ethnic-Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh won its
de-facto independence from the country when Baku signed a cease-fire
to a six year long war in 1994 and emotions on either side of the
ceasefire line still run high.

Karabakh’s status remains unsettled, but surprisingly little has been
said about resolving the simmering conflict in the campaign leading
up to the elections.

Azerbaijan however has become increasingly assertive on the
international arena as it prepares to go online with a US-backed
multi-billion-dollar oil pipeline later this year.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will pump oil from the
Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, was built with Washington’s backing
to help wean the West off of oil from the volatile Middle East.

Some Azeri officials have hinted that the money generated by the
pipeline, as much as 160 billion dollars over the next 30 years, could
finance a war machine geared at taking back the contested territories.

It is an emerging reality that has been glossed over during the
campaign leading up to voting in Karabakh.

Canvassing has instead focused on pleading with candidates to refrain
from mutual recriminations and mudslinging in an effort to make the
election look as democratic as possible.

The idea is that a smooth campaign will prove to the outside world
that Karabakh is capable of administering itself and international
recognition of its independence will follow.

“Our attitude to the elections must demonstrate to the world that
the democratic reforms in the country are irreversible to spur
international recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic,” its
‘President’ Arakady Gukasian announced on Friday.

Some 25,000 people died and one million were displaced in the last
war which left the ethnic Armenian forces in control of Karabakh and
seven other regions internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

But a Karabakh ‘foreign ministry’ official downplayed the risk of
Azerbaijan building up its armed forces for a new conflict saying a
Europe-wide arms control treaty, the CFE, would stop it beefing up
its military.

“Besides, the oil companies themselves are interested in stability,”
deputy foreign minister Masis Mailian told AFP.

But one of the leaders of a prominent opposition bloc, likely to
finish second after the ruling party in the parliamentary race,
said developments in Azerbaijan “concerned” him.

“We too must find alternative funds to maintain the balance,”
said Zhirar Shahijanian, a top leader in the nationalist-socialist
Dashnaktsutyun party and an Iranian-born ethnic Armenian.

He said it was in the West’s own interests to find a resolution to the
conflict because parts of the BTC pipeline lie a mere 25 kilometers (15
miles) away from territories controlled by the Karabakh authorities.

“We’re not saying we are going to blow it up, but if we are put
under extreme pressure this is one of the options open to us,”
Shahijanian said.

To Petrosian, the school director in Martakert, the reasons behind
why no country has recognized Karabakh’s independence comes down
to geopolitics.

“If our blood is cheaper than their oil, then let God be their judge,”
Petrosian said, addressing his thoughts to the international community.