THE RISK OF A THAW

Economist, UK
Nov 29 2007

Another dangerous conflict zone in the Caucasus

IT MAY be the most combustible place in Europe. Were it to reignite,
the effects could be dire. Yet the world takes little interest in
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave disputed by Armenians and
Azerbaijanis, preferring to see it as just another "frozen conflict".

The fear is that it may be thawing.

A war that killed 25,000 people ended in a ceasefire in 1994,
leaving Armenians in possession of the province (which already had
an Armenian majority in Soviet times, but was part of Azerbaijan),
plus a long ribbon of Azerbaijani territory that the Armenians treat
as a "buffer zone". The trenches across the ceasefire line have moved
closer, and shots are often exchanged; 30 soldiers have been killed
this year. There are no peacekeepers, only a tiny unarmed group
of international observers. Even they are no longer monitoring the
ceasefire after a diplomatic dispute.

Suspicions in both countries have stymied any peace talks. Both are
expanding defence spending. Oil-rich Azerbaijan takes in as much as $20
billion a year in oil revenues. President Ilham Aliev has promised that
his military budget, now $1 billion a year, will overtake Armenia’s
total public spending. On October 30th he said, "We should be ready
at any moment to liberate the occupied territories by military means."

A meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers this week offered
only a fading chance for an agreement on a framework peace deal. The
hope had been that the two presidents might accept a statement of
basic principles that postpones final decisions on sovereignty, while
Armenians withdraw from occupied territory and the borders reopen.

Unfortunately both countries face presidential elections next year,
so their political leaders prefer not to risk accusations of making
deals with the enemy.

A full-blown war may still be unlikely in the immediate future. But
as a recent report from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group,
"Risking War", points out, the most dangerous moment may come in 2012,
when Azerbaijani oil revenues start falling and Mr Aliev’s government
may feel the country’s military edge over Armenia is at its greatest.

Nagorno-Karabakh sits in a strategically vital region, surrounded by
Georgia, Russia, Iran and Turkey. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
runs close to the ceasefire line. It would be easy for even a small
clash to get out of hand. An official who has dealt with the dispute
for years quotes Anton Chekhov’s maxim that, if a gun is hanging on
the wall in the first act, it will always go off by the play’s end.

ystory.cfm?story_id=10225045