THE KARABAKH SETTLEMENT: OPENING A NEW EPOCH?
Andrei Areshev

en.fondsk.ru
22.09.2008
Eurasia

Russia has established diplomatic relations with South Ossetia and
Abkhazia and signed bilateral treaties with the two Republics. The
new geopolitical configuration in the Transcaucasia which has emerged
as the result of repelling the Georgian attack against South Ossetia
has been given a definite international-law framework.

The developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia triggered the frantic
activity of the entire range of international forces trying to react
to the situation timely. The tendency is exemplified by the geography
of the visits of the Turkish leader and the "multi-vector" efforts
of the Iranian diplomacy. Washington and Brussels go on speaking the
language of threats, but this hardly shows that the positions of the
US and NATO are strong.

Speaking at the German Marshall Fund on September 18, C. Rice said
that "the legitimate goal of rebuilding the Russian state has taken
a dark turn – with the rollback of personal freedoms, the arbitrary
enforcement of the law, the pervasive corruption at various levels
of Russian society, and the paranoid, aggressive impulse, which has
manifested itself before in Russian history". Nevertheless US Under
Secretary for Political Affairs W. Burns said he hoped that Russia
would help the US in dealing with Iran.

What makes the rhetoric in Washington and Brussels particu larly
aggressive is the clear understanding of the fact that should Georgia
start another war in the Transcaucasia, Russia’s response is going
to be even harsher than last August.

Defeated in the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia, the
architects of "the new Transcaucasia" and "the new Central Asia" which
they plan to incorporate into their "Greater Middle East" project
hope to recoup their losses in the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict. The
official recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has transformed
the Karabakh problem.

For a while, Karabakh has explainably been in a particular position
in the ranks of the unrecognized post-Soviet formations. As long as
Russia’s stance on the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
remained open to diverging interpretations, bracketing Karabakh —
a Republic with no considerable Russian population or common borders
with Russia — with them was hardly in Moscow’ interests. Even
Abkhazia has suffered for years from the Russian blockade and saw
attempts to resolve secondary issues like the return of refugees
(the numbers of those were seriously overstated) ignoring the key
issue of the Republic’s political status.

The essentially new situation which we are witnessing after
the developments of last August makes it possible to discern the
complete identity of the political and legal genesis of the problems
of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh. In a ll the three cases we
are dealing with the consequences of the unconstitutional partition
of the USSR, during which its Republics seceded with gross violations
of the existing legislation, and former Soviet administrative borders
were converted into the borders of new countries arbitrarily and on
the basis of dubious rationale.

Attempts to change the ethnic balance by force have taken place in
all the three Republics where the population was expelled from its
traditional locale by various, both "peaceful" and violent means (from
hydro-terrorism to the deliberate destruction of infrastructures —
what happened in Tskhinvali in 2004-2008 had already happened in
Stepanakert in 1992-1993).

The suppression of the Georgian aggression made the military-strategic
situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia similar to that in Karabakh
after the end of the active phase of the armed conflict in 1994. At
that time, Karabakh and Azerbaijan exchanged the populations,
established a continuous control zone, and minimized the line of
contact so as to take into account the specific features of the local
landscape. The militarized enclaves in Shusha and in a number of
other settlements were made neutral just as later in 2008 Tamarasheni,
Erdevi, and several other villages used as firing positions. A minor
difference is that the buffer zone between the Karabakh and Azerbaijani
forces is not controlled by "neutral" Western "observersB B (only
episodical monitoring is conducted in the area), whereas in the cases
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia there seems to be an overwhelming desire
to pass the borders under the control of the OCSE, whose observers
would readily serve as the shield for the incursions of the Georgian
special forces into the territories of the newly independent Republics.

At present the need to reduce the conflict potential in Karabakh is
more urgent than ever. Azerbaijani President I. Aliyev’s brief visit
to Moscow on September 16 will be remembered for the total lack of
any militant rhetoric on his behalf and the highly indicative fact
that he never mentioned "the territorial integrity". Not using
force and relying on peaceful means of conflict settlement were
emphasized during the joint briefing of the Russian and Azerbaijani
Presidents. Summarizing the results of the meeting, President Medvedev
confirmed that Russia’s position remained unchanged and expressed
support for the negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He
promised Russia’s assistance in the search for a solution acceptable to
both sides. In his turn, the Azerbaijani President said that despite
the complexity of the situation in the region there is a fair chance
to improve it.

During the visit it became known from the leaks that Moscow sought
Baku’s definite guarantees that the scenario of resolving the Karabakh
conflict by force neither before nor after the October, 2008

presidential elections in Azerbaijan was considered. There were rumors
that a meeting of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Moscow
was being arranged by Russia, and, judging by the statements made by
the two leaders, the possibility is indeed being looked into.

Inevitably, the energy cooperation, the joint activities of Azerbaijan
and Armenia in the Caspian region, and the problem of Iran had to be
touched on during the second meeting of the two Presidents. Another
round of hysteria is underway in the Western media due to the
allegations that Tehran is supplying the Talibs in Afghanistan with
weapons, and the Republican Vice President nominee Sara Palin says
the US should not prevent Israel from attacking nuclear targets in
Iran. One of the themes during the talks between Presidents Medvedev
and Aliyev could be the legal framework of the ban on the entry of
the armed forces of any countries having no territories in the Caspian
region into it.

The August disruptions of the operation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline have demonstrated the inadequacy of Washington’s highly
politicized projects which make Azerbaijan and even more so Central
Asia bet their "oil and gas future" on the narrow and unsafe Georgian
corridor. Politics watchers opined that D. Cheney’s recent tour —
the US Vice President is the main curator of the Nabucco and other
anti-Russian projects — was a fabulous failure. In20Baku he even
failed to show up at the dinner in his honor. In the meantime, Russia’s
energy giant Gazprom and the Azerbaijani Oil and Gas Company continued
the talks on the cooperation in the gas business. Of course, joint
energy projects are unlikely to materialize unless Baku guarantees
that hostilities will not resume in Karabakh.

It appears that the repulsion of the Georgian aggression, which echoed
with a fit of hysteria among some pro-government commentators at the
Absheron peninsula, had a sobering effect on the more rational of the
country leaders and made them realize that following the example set
by Georgian President Saakashvili may not be a good idea. It also
transpired as a result that the necessary dialog between Baku and
Yerevan is going to be fruitful only in case it helps to resolve the
key problem – the political status of the Karabakh Republic which
has been de facto independent since 1991.

The intensification of Moscow’s efforts related to Karabakh did not
remain unnoticed in the West. It is unlikely that Russia is trying
to do anything jointly with the Mensk Group — at the moment this
organization established to integrate global players with colliding
interests in the Transcaucasia, simply seems dead. The ambitious
projects of resolving the Karabakh problem churned out by the Mensk
Group used to be abstract, unrealistic, and totally subordinate to
the geopolitical objectives of Washington and Brussels.

Not surprisingly, at present Russia, the US, and the EU are taking
steps independently and do not even pretend to coordinate their
activities.

Rather, there may be some level of coordination with Turkey and,
hopefully, with Iran.

Matthew Braiza rushed to Stepanakert at the same time President Aliyev
visited Moscow. While in Karabakh, the US curator of the Transcaucasia
delivered lengthy speeches the meaning of which was hopelessly obscure.

After that, the indefatigable husband of Zeyno Baran followed the
example of Cheney and headed for Baku, where he met Azerbaijani
President Aliyev and Defense Minister Safar Abiyev. US Ambassador to
Azerbaijan Ann Dercy, widely acclaimed for her former statements on
Azerbaijan’s future NATO membership, also took part in the meeting with
the latter. Bernard Facier, the French colleague of Matthew Braiza,
landed in Karabakh somewhat later than his American counterpart. He met
Karabakh’s President Bako Saakian and even made it to talk to Braiza.

What we see as we look back is that all the noise around the West’s
"peace initiatives" for Abkhazia and South Ossetia and all the visits
paid by Braiza and Steinmeier merely disguised the preparations for
the plans Tbilisi and its patrons attempted to put into practice on
the night of August 7. In fact, this was admitted by Braiza in July
when he made unveiled threats to the Abkhazian leadership. Likewise
snap offensi ve plans thinly disguised by the "peacekeeping" may have
been devised for Karabakh…

Facier must have had a real hard time as he said in Stepanakert on
September 17 that the US, French, and Russian mediators united in the
framework of the Mensk Group were experiencing serious difficulties
in Karabakh. Facier said they would start organizing a meeting of
the two Presidents after a meeting on the ministerial level and the
presidential elections in Azerbaijan. There are no indications that
the initiative has been coordinated with Moscow.

On the one hand, all of the above complicates the situation in which
the conflicting sides – Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Karabakh Republic
– find themselves. On the other hand, as a result they get greater
space for maneuvering except for the cases in which the mediators
jointly pressure the party they regard as more yielding at the moment
and make it face demands meeting which would be practically tantamount
to capitulating.

Russian Foreign Minister S. Lavrov said on September 18 in the upper
chamber of the Russian parliament that Russia would continue to act
as a mediator in the negotiating processes in the Transdnistria
and Karabakh and that the crisis in South Ossetia had not set
any precedents for them. This generally questionable point can be
regarded as one of a number of prerequisites for opening negotiations
more serious than they used to be in=2 0the past. Other (mandatory)
prerequisites must be the conflicting sides’ agreement not to use
force and to stop the arms race in the conflict zones.

The involvement of the leadership of Karabakh in the Moscow talks
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the intensification of direct contacts
between Moscow and Stepanakert, the readiness to address the existing
humanitarian problems would altogether create both a general positive
background and the necessary conditions for the final resolution of
the problem of the Karabakh Republic’s political status, regarding
which its people have expressed their will clearly on several
occasions. Thus Moscow’s policy in the Caucasus would acquire an
integrated and complete character.