NAGORNO-KARABAKH: STALIN’S SHADOW LOOMS OVER TRANS-CAUCASUS PIPELINE
by Rene Wadlow
World War 4 Report, NY
April 1 2006
The president of Azerbaijan, Ilhan Aliyev (son of the long-time
president Heydar Aliyev), and Robert Kocharian, president of Armenia,
met outside Paris, in Rambouillet Feb. 10-11, to discuss the stalemated
conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Rambouillet had also been the scene
for the last-chance negotiations on Kosovo just before the NATO
bombing of Serbia began in 1999.
During the two years of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, 1992-1994,
at least 20,000 people were killed and more than a million
persons displaced from Armenia, Azerbaijan and the 12,000 square
miles of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. Armenian forces now control
the Nagorno-Karabakh area-an Armenian-populated enclave within
Azerbaijan. Since 1994, there has been a relatively stable ceasefire.
Nagorno-Karabakh has declared its independence as a separate state.
No other state-including Armenia-has recognized this independent
status, but, in practice, Nagorno-Karabakh is a de facto state with
control over its population and its own military forces. Half of
the government’s revenue is raised locally; the other half comes
from the government of Armenia and especially the Armenian diaspora,
strong in the United States, Canada, Lebanon, and Russia.
In addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian forces hold seven small
districts around the enclave, some 5,500 square kilometers that
had been populated by Azeris and that are considered as “occupied
territory.” One of the ideas being floated during these negotiations
is an Armenian withdrawal from these occupied territories accompanied
by international security guarantees and an international peacekeeping
force, probably under the control of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which has been the major forum for
negotiation on the Nagorno-Karabkh conflict.
The USA, France, and Russia are the co-chairmen of a mediating effort
called the “Minsk Group” after an OSCE conference on Nagorno-Karabakh
which was to have been held in Minsk-but then indefinitely postponed
as there was no clear basis for a compromise solution. Part of the
negotiating guidelines of the Minsk Group meetings is that no official
report is made on the negotiations, so that analysis is always an
effort at putting pieces together from partial statements, leaks,
and “off-the-record” interviews with the press. This blackout on
direct statements opens the door to highly partisan analysis in both
countries, where the press has always been hard line. There are those
who believe that both presidents are “ahead of their people” in their
willingness to compromise and to move beyond the current “no war,
no peace” situation which is a drain on economic and social resources.
However, in both countries, the media is under tight control of the
respective governments-so the militaristic tone of the press is not
against government policy. The blackout on press statements is also
due to the monopoly on both sides of a small, tight group of people
responsible for the negotiations. Informal “Track Two” meetings are
very difficult and the few held were met by general suspicion or
hostility. There is a need for a broader-based pubic peacemaking
effort to counter the current narrow, militant rhetoric.
The Nagorno-Karabakh issue arises from the post-Revolution/Civil
War period of Soviet history when Joseph Stalin was Commissioner
for Nationalities. Stalin came from neighboring Georgia and knew the
Caucasus well. His policy was a classic “divide and rule”-designed
so that national/ethnic groups would need to depend on the central
government in Moscow for protection. Thus in 1922, the frontiers
of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia were hammered out in what was
then the Transcaucasian Federative Republic. Nagorno-Karabakh,
an Armenian-majority area, was given a certain autonomy within
Azerbaijan but was geographically cut off from Armenia. Likewise,
an Azeri majority area, Nakkickevan, was created as an autonomous
republic within Armenia but cut off geographically from Azerbaijan.
Thus both enclaves had to look to Moscow for protection. This was
especially true for the Armenians. Many Armenians living in what
had been historic Armenia which came under Turkish control had
been killed during the First World War; Armenians living in “Soviet
Armenia” had relatives and friends among those killed by the Turks,
creating a permanent sense of vulnerability and insecurity. Russia
was considered a historic ally of Armenia.
These mixed administrative units worked well enough-or, one should
say, there were few criticisms allowed-until 1988 when the whole
Soviet model of nationalities and republics started to come apart. In
both Armenia and Azerbeijan, natioanlistic voices were raised, and a
strong “Karabakh Committee” began demanding that Nagorno-Karabakh be
attached to Armenia. In Azerbaijan, anti-Armenian sentiment was set
aflame. Many Armenians who were working in the oil-related economy
of Baku were under tension and started leaving. This was followed
somewhat later by real anti-Armenian pogroms. Some 160,000 Armenians
left Azerbaijan for Armenia, and others went to live in Russia.
With the break up of the Soviet Union and the independence of Armenia
and Azerbaijan, tensions focused on Nagorno-Karabakh. By 1992,
full-scale conflict broke out in and around Nagorno-Karabkh and went
on for two years, causing large-scale damage. The Armenian forces of
Nagorno-Karabakh, aided by volunteers from Armenia, kept control of
the area, while Azerbaijan faced repeated political crises.
The condition of “no peace, no war” followed the ceasefire largely
negotiated by Russia in 1994. This status quo posed few problems to
the major regional states, all preoccupied by other geo-political
issues. Informal and illicit trade within the area has grown.
However, interest in a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
has grown as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline opened in May 2005.
The pipeline is scheduled to carry one million barrels of oil a day
from the Caspian to the Mediterranean by 2009. The pipeline passes
within 10 miles of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The crucial question for a settlement is the acceptance by
all parties and by the OSCE of an independent “mini-state.” An
independent Nagorno-Karabakh might become the “Liechtenstein of
the Caucasus.” After 15 years of independence, Karabakh Armenians
do not want to be at the mercy of decisions made in distant centers
of power but to decide their own destiny. However, the recognition
of Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent states raises the issue of the
status of other de facto mini-states of the region, such as Abkhazia
and South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Kosovo in
Serbia. Close attention must be paid to the potential restructuring
of the area. Can mini-states be more than a policy of divide and
rule? The long shadow of Joseph Stalin still hovers over the land.
——
Rene Wadlow is editor of the online journal of world politics
Transnational Perspectives and an NGO representative to the UN,
Geneva. Formerly, he was professor and Director of Research of the
Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva.
This piece originally appeared in Toward Freedom, March 21