Author: Vardan Badalian

Asia Times


by Richard Giragossian
Sept. 28, 2020

Surprise assault on Nagorno Karabakh leaves dozens dead in what could
be the first salvo in a protracted conflict

YEREVAN – Following months of bellicose threats, Azerbaijan launched
on Sunday a coordinated military offensive against the Armenian-held
breakaway republic of Nagorno Karabakh, leaving dozens dead and
raising the specter of a protracted open war.

On Monday morning, Karabakh officials announced 32 Armenian soldiers
had been killed, as well as two civilians, a woman and child. Baku
said an Azeri family of five were killed by Armenian shelling but did
not announce any casualties among its armed forces.

Azerbaijan, a gas-rich state run by an authoritarian dynasty, declared
martial law on September 27, as did Armenia, whose president called
for a general mobilization of military personnel.

The eruption of hostilities over the vast and strategic mountainous
territory comes two months after Azeri forces launched a cross-border
attack, which only differed by targeting Armenia proper.

Since that foiled July incursion, Azerbaijan has been increasingly
open about its disdain for diplomacy and desire to rely on the force
of arms.
“Karabakh is ours! Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” Azeri President Ilham
Aliyev tweeted on Sunday.


For the nearly three decades since the implosion of the Soviet Union,
unresolved conflicts continue to litter the landscape. One of those is
over Nagorno Karabakh, seized by Armenian forces during the breakup of
the Soviet Union in 1991.

Azerbaijan, following the loss of the enclave which it had been
granted during the Soviet era, continues to claim Karabakh as part of
its territory – a claim recognized by the United Nations.

The unresolved nature of this and other lingering conflicts of the
Soviet breakup have served to distort economic development, discourage
democratization and, in most cases, defend Russian influence and
interests.

For Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict poses its
own burden, as an imperative for Armenia’s embrace of Russia for
security and as an impulse for Azerbaijan to challenge the status quo.

After decades of peace talks, Azerbaijan is frustrated by the lack of
any substantive progress in negotiating the status of the 4,400 square
kilometer territory.

Defined by a sense of national humiliation over the loss of the
historic region, Azerbaijan’s frustration has now reached a dangerous
level as it drives a resolution to the conflict by military means. The
country is armed with billions of dollars worth of armaments purchased
in recent years with its vast gas wealth.

This latest military offensive shows Azerbaijan’s desire to negotiate
on the battlefield rather than at diplomatic summits.

Despite a sometimes confusing war of words over who started the
fighting, the military reality on the ground suggests that the purely
defensive force posture for the Armenian and Karabakh sides greatly
reduces any offensive threat, thereby revealing little logic and even
less validity in Azerbaijan’s claims that Armenia attacked first.

From a military perspective, the Karabakh defenders would be unlikely
to cede their advantage by launching a risky offensive that negates or
diminishes tactical advantages inherent in their entrenched fortified
defensive positions.

Unlike the political and diplomatic context, however, it is less
important and largely irrelevant who attacked first. Once forces are
engaged in combat operations they tend to follow their own logic and
tempo.

Context of conflict

In the opening round of fighting on early Sunday morning, the
Azerbaijani attacks left 10 Karabakh soldiers and at least one
civilian dead, with more wounded. By Monday morning, the toll had
risen to 32 soldiers announced dead by the Armenian defense ministry.

This latest round of fighting is markedly different than previous
clashes, opening a new chapter of the Karabakh conflict. This latest
Azerbaijani offensive has been much grander in scale and space, with
coordinated attacks all along the line of contact separating Nagorno
Karabakh from Azerbaijan proper.

Unlike the two sides’ previous round of fighting in April 2016, which
at the time was the most serious seen since a fragile ceasefire was
reached in 1994, the latest salvos are marked for their intensity and
use of heavier firepower.

A second new aspect of the offensive is rooted in the scope of combat
operations. For example, this sudden offensive opened with preliminary
massive artillery and rocket barrages.

Those were then followed by an assault on three areas along the line
of contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijan that involved the use of
armored units in support of an infantry ground assault that was
bolstered by the deployment of more than two dozen UAVs, or
military-grade drones.

After inflicting the initial damage and casualties in the surprise
attack at dawn on Sunday, later that morning Karabakh defensive units
were able to repulse the broader offensive, although fighting
continued well into the early evening in border areas along the north-
and south-east.

A third defining feature of the initial offensive was the Azerbaijani
forces’ ability to seize and secure at least one and perhaps as many
as four Armenian military positions in the area. By the end of the
first day of fighting, the Armenian side also reported more than 100
wounded, largely from artillery bombardments.

Armenian military sources also showed evidence of the destruction or
capture of some 33 Azerbaijan tanks, 11 armored personnel carriers
and, in another rare achievement, the downing of four helicopters as
well as a number of UAVs.


The coordination and logistical preparation necessary to conduct this
expansive offensive demonstrated Azerbaijan’s improved capacity. Such
preparation confirms that this latest round of fighting was a
calculated and planned act of aggression.

Beyond the surprise nature of the attack, Azerbaijan’s willingness to
target civilian areas and population centers in Karabakh also
demonstrates an apparent new disregard for the loss of civilian life.

This may stem from the failure of the initial July offensive, which
was quickly halted and decisively repulsed due to the tactical
advantage of the defenders in terms of terrain and topography, and as
a result of the quick loss of the tactical element of surprise in the
location and intensity of the attack.

From this perspective and based on Azerbaijani military performance in
the past, local unit frustration and strategic failure on the ground
have translated into a desperate and deadly reliance on artillery and
rocket attacks on civilian areas that inflict damage with little or no
real military value.

External actors and factors

Despite its localized nature with no foreign presence on the ground,
the Karabakh conflict has the potential to morph into a much wider
confrontation of competing interests of larger, more powerful regional
actors including Russia, Turkey and Iran.

For Russia, the Karabakh conflict offers the most effective leverage
for maintaining its power and influence over both Armenia and
Azerbaijan, especially as it now serves as the primary arms supplier
to both sides.

As a key external actor, Russia is now seen and generally accepted as
having a legitimate interest in the conflict. That’s due mainly to its
diplomatic engagement and initiative as a co-chairing nation, along
with France and the United States, of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) “Minsk Group,” the sole diplomatic
entity empowered to mediate.

At the same time, the conflict is also a challenge for Russia, as it
has only revealed and deepened the weakness and inherent limits of its
“strategic partnership” and security alliance with Armenia.

Beyond the Karabakh conflict, there has been a profound crisis in
Armenian-Russian relations for several years. That stems from
Armenia’s deepening dissatisfaction with the unequal terms of the
relationship, marked by frustration with the asymmetry and disrespect
afforded to its alliance and exacerbated by a sense of betrayal by
Russia.

While Azerbaijan looks to Russia and Israel for military equipment, it
is Turkey – now engaged in proxy wars as far afield as Libya and Syria
– that has taken a most active and assertive policy in response to the
Karabakh conflict by forcefully backing Azerbaijan.

Turkey’s vocal defense of fellow Turkic Azerbaijan is partially driven
by a desire to regain its past role as Azerbaijan’s primary military
patron that Russia and Israel now serve. The Turkish response to the
latest eruption in violence was immediate and harsh, endorsing
Azerbaijan’s version of events well before the state of affairs on the
ground was determined.

Diverging domestic drivers

Every modern Azerbaijani leader up until the current President Aliyev
has either risen to or fallen from power due to events on Karabakh’s
battlefield.

It thus follows that resorting to force and resuming war is a risky
gambit for the Aliyev dynasty in Baku. Yet the use of military force
and an appeal to nationalism by the Azerbaijani leadership has also
served as a convenient, if temporary, distraction from domestic
problems, as was the case with the 2016 fighting.

On the other side, since a rare victory of non-violent people power in
2018, Armenia has emerged as a respected and legitimate democracy. Yet
this has only exacerbated the divergence and divide between the two
rival states.

This divergence is evident in the very nature of the regime in
Azerbaijan, whose political legitimacy is founded not on free and fair
elections but rather derived from family tradition and genetics, with
power passing from father-to-son through the rule of the Aliyev
dynasty.

Armenia and Karabakh now stand alone, with no partner for peace and
little hope for sincere or serious negotiations with Azerbaijan. The
imperative now is to focus on a back to basics diplomacy, aimed less
at substantive peace talks and more on preventing a further escalation
of renewed hostilities that threaten to lure in rival regional powers.