Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
March 7 2008

Mutual Recriminations After Karabakh Clash

Some ask whether front-line skirmish was connected with political
turmoil in Armenia.

By Karine Ohanian in Stepanakert, Samira Ahmedbeyli in Baku and Seda
Muradyan in Yerevan (CRS No. 434, 07-Mar-08)

As the dust begins to settle from a firefight between Azerbaijan and
Armenian forces earlier this week, their respective politicians have
reverted to verbal warfare as international mediators work to contain
the damage to longer term prospects for peace.

Accounts differ as to who fired first. But all agree it was the most
serious breach of the ceasefire in a decade, and one that could have
alarming consequences if it were repeated.

The uneasy ceasefire on the frontline held by Armenian forces from
Nagorny Karabakh and the Azerbaijani military was broken early on
March 4.

Azerbaijani defence ministry spokesman Eldar Sabirogli said Armenian
units broke the ceasefire by firing on Azerbaijani positions near the
villages of Cheliburt, Talish and Gapanli in the Terter district, and
the Tapgaragoyunli settlement in neighbouring Geranboy district. Both
districts are to the north and east of Nagorny Karabakh.

Armenian sources confirmed that the fighting was in this general
area, adjacent to the Mardakert district of Nagorny Karabakh.

Sabirogli said four Azerbaijani soldiers were killed and two
civilians injured.

Senor Hasratian, spokesman for the defence ministry of the
unrecognised Karabakh government, also cited a figure of four
Azerbaijani dead and said two Armenian soldiers were injured,
although in neither case were the wounds life-threatening.

He dismissed the accusations coming out of Baku, saying, `They are
deliberately distorting things. If we had launched an attack, the
bodies of the four Azerbaijani soldiers who died would not be lying
on territory held by the army of Nagorny Karabakh.’

The two sides agreed on these casualty figures, although according to
Reuters, the Azerbaijanis also claimed that the Armenians lost 12
soldiers, which Hasratian denied.

The defence ministry of Armenia itself, which treats Nagorny Karabakh
as a separate and independent entity, came out with a statement
blaming the Azerbaijanis for starting the firefight.

Ministry spokesman Colonel Seyran Shahsuvarian said Azerbaijani
forces seized an important defensive position held by the other side,
which then responded with gunfire, regained the territory, and forced
their opponents back to their original lines.

Major Hachik Tavadyan, one of those injured on the Nagorny Karabakh
side, confirmed this account of events from his hospital bed, adding,
`I was there and I know how it started. I cannot tell a lie – they
attacked us first.’

Anar Mamedkhanov, a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, told IWPR that
President Ilham Aliev was visiting that part of the country, so it
would hardly have made sense to launch military operations near to
where he was.

`Basic human logic would tell you that for reasons of security, it
wouldn’t have been in the interests of the Azerbaijani armed forces
to mount a provocation that day, since the president was in a
neighbouring region that day. Why create a risk to his life?’ asked
Mamedkhanov.

The incident was undoubtedly the most serious of its kind in many
years. Since a truce was signed in 1994, leaving Armenian forces in
control of Nagorny Karabakh, there have been sporadic shooting
incidents but the ceasefire has by and large held. The OSCE, the
international mediating group, operates a limited monitoring mission
which visits the front line periodically.

The OSCE’s `Minsk Group’ of international diplomats has tried
repeatedly to broker an end to what is effectively a frozen conflict,
but has found it impossible to devise a formula acceptable to all.

The Nagorny Karabakh authorities, along with Yerevan, say their de
facto independence should be recognised by the international
community. Azerbaijan insists that it has been deprived of control
over large swathes of territory within its international boundaries,
and that sovereignty must be restored as a precondition for
discussions on autonomy for the Armenians there.

Predictably, this week’s skirmish gave rise to belligerent talk from
officials on both sides.

`The Azerbaijani army is responding to the Armenians as they deserve,
and we are fully capable of defending our country’s independence,’
Lieutenant-General Najmeddin Sadigov, chief of the Azerbaijani
general staff, told ANS television.

Nagorny Karabakh’s foreign ministry said, `The Azerbaijani side has
sought to use such incidents of this kind to destabilise the
situation in the entire region as well as on the [front] line of
contact,’ and warned that Armenian forces would respond to such
actions robustly.

The ministry demanded that the OSCE mission conduct `a thorough
investigation into the causes and circumstances of the incident’.

OSCE monitors were due to visit the line of fire on March 7, but the
trip was postponed.

The international community was quick to call on all sides to avoid a
repetition of the violence.
Finnish foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office,
who had visited the region only the week before, urged everyone
concerned to `exercise maximum restraint, and observe the terms of
the ceasefire".
`At this critical juncture in the negotiations to find a peaceful
solution to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, any action leading to a
destabilisation of the line of contact can only have a negative
impact on the overall situation,’ he said. `I urge the parties to
avoid actions that could lead to further unnecessary loss of life."
He noted that the OSCE chairman’s representative for the Karabakh
conflict, Andrzej Kasprzyk, was currently in the region and was `in
close contact with the parties".
A senior OSCE official told IWPR that "the situation is very
dangerous; there is a risk of escalation", calling this `the worst
incident in the last ten years’.
"Fortunately, on this occasion, there was a political decision not to
escalate," he said. "The worry is that this kind of skirmish could
become a common occurrence."

The United States, one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, also had
a senior diplomat – Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza –
talking to top politicians in the region

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters
that the US was concerned about the incident, which only served to
underline the need for a negotiated settlement.

He noted, `There has not been a repeat of the incident and we hope
that continues.

Azad Isazade, a defence expert at the Institute for War and Democracy
in Baku, said ceasefire violations were fairly common at this time of
year, when the snow melted and it became easier to move around. `Of
course, on this occasion the shooting was on a larger scale,’ he
said. `But I don’t think it will lead to full-scale war.’

Other commentators in Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh and Armenia tended
to identify internal political factors which might have prompted the
opposing side to deliberately seek a confrontation.

David Babayan, a political analyst in Nagorny Karabakh, speculated
that the Azerbaijani leadership might have been probing their
opponents’ defences at a time when Armenia itself is in political
turmoil.

A second possibility, he suggested, was that Baku was seriously
concerned that Nagorny Karabakh’s aspirations for independence had
moved a step forward following the declaration of independence by
Kosovo, another former autonomous territory within a Communist state.

`Azerbaijan is seriously worried about the right of nations to
self-determination, and it chose to react by using force,’ he said.

A common theme among analysts across the region was that the exchange
of gunfire was in some way connected with the domestic political
strife in Armenia, where opposition protests over the results of the
February 19 presidential election ended in bloodshed on March 1.
Eight people were reported dead after running battles between police
and demonstrators in the capital Yerevan.

Azerbaijani political scientist Rasim Musabekov believes the
administration of outgoing president Robert Kocharian and his elected
successor Serzh Sarkisian stood to gain from creating a diversion to
distract attention from their own problems.

Armed forces chief of staff Lt-Gen Sadigov made a similar point,
saying the ceasefire was a direct consequence of Armenia’s internal
troubles.

Armenia’s foreign minister Vardan Oskanian, meanwhile, accused Baku
of `taking advantage of the exacerbation of the internal political
situation in Armenia".

Despite the exchange of recriminations between Azerbaijan and
Armenian politicians, and the flurry of international efforts to
smooth over the crisis, not everyone was so exercised about it.

In Baku, Zamin Haji of the opposition Yeni Musavat fulminated about
what he said was the `disgusting’ disregard that Azerbaijani
television stations showed for the clash by showing light
entertainment rather than breaking news on the fighting.

In Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorny Karabakh, economist Ruzanna
Petrosyan was dismissive of the media coverage of the fighting.

`I read on the internet that military activities had resumed. That’s
all down to you journalists – you make a world war out of a
common-or-garden clash, anything to be sensational,’ she complained
to IWPR. `It’s all untrue. As you can see, life goes on as normal.’

Karine Ohanian works for the Demo Newspaper in Stepanakert. Samira
Ahmedbeyli is an IWPR contributor in Baku. Seda Muradyan is IWPR’s
editor in Yerevan.

While every effort has been made to use neutral language in this
language, the terminology here was chosen by IWPR editors in London
and may not reflect that preferred by the authors.