On 5 May 2022, Caucasus Edition, a publication of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation, held another Zoom webinar as part of its series of online and offline events facilitating Armenia-Azerbaijan dialogue, this time on the new context and challenges that both countries find themselves in after not only the 2020 Karabakh war but especially the more recent and further Russian invasion of Ukraine. It followed another, Rethinking Peacebuilding in the South Caucasus in Relation to the War in Ukraine, held in April.
The speakers were Phil Gamaghelyan, co-founder of Imagine and a co-editor at Caucasus Edition, as well as Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego Assistant Professor, and International Crisis Group analyst Zaur Shiryev. The event was moderated by Christina Soloyan, another co-editor of Caucasus Edition, who started the discussion off by saying that while Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations had been in deadlock for some time, there were no significant developments happening very quickly, especially over the past month.
The first question was simple and to the point. Why now?
Gamaghelyan, the first to respond, said there were three main reasons, the first being that for over 30 years both Armenia and Azerbaijan had seen each other as a main threat, but now, with the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine, the perception of what is possible in world politics has changed. If a large country such as Ukraine can be effectively ‘colonized’ then so too can any former Soviet republic. Admitting that this mutual perception still remains, Gamaghelyan says that it is more manageable than one coming from a great power.
The second reason is that the 2020 Karabakh war effectively pushed out the United States and European Union from the process, while Russia and Turkey’s position strengthened, so their involvement in what appears to be a move towards peace is an attempt to stage a comeback. Fortunately, he adds, not militarily but diplomatically. Finally, he notes that the third reason is that both the Armenian and Azerbaijani government have a degree of domestic strength, something that they lacked prior to the 2020 war.
This is especially true for Azerbaijan, that might now be able to make some concessions from a new position of strength that would have otherwise been domestically unacceptable in the past, but there is also a government in Armenia that has been democratically elected twice, most recently last year despite the vote coming so soon after a military defeat. That’s a big difference compared to previous decades, he said, and its electoral win affords it a popular mandate for a program that now includes normalisation and stabilisation.
Phil Gamaghelyan, Caucasus Edition Symposium, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2022
Shiriyev agrees, but adds that it should be noted that when the Russian invasion started there were also fears there would also be new clashes over Karabakh because the West and Russia would be more focused on Ukraine. However, that did not happen even though there was another consequence. At the Aliyev-Pashinyan-Putin meeting in Sochi, for example, there was an undertaking to work on border delimitation and demarcation between the two countries but this never occurred, probably highlighting Moscow’s preoccupation with Ukraine.
The EU, however, became more proactive compared to its more passive involvement in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Indeed, it even facilitated bilateral talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Brussels, something neither the OSCE Minsk Group or Russia had achieved. This is an important step, believes Shiriyev, because it can result in a greater degree of trust between the two sides. There are also signs that Baku genuinely believes it has received positive messages from Yerevan.
With the five points that should form the basis for a future peace agreement submitted by Azerbaijan and already accepted by Armenia, Shiriyev says he is therefore cautiously optimistic about recent developments.
Gamaghelyan explains, nonetheless, that even though Yerevan has accepted the five submitted points it has done so at the expense of relinquishing its own agency and responsibility for the war. This centers around the belief that the situation on the ground today in and around Karabakh because of the last fighting would have been the same in the event of a negotiated peace settlement prior to 2020. First of all, he says, this disrespects the memory of thousands that died in the second Karabakh war who would otherwise be alive today.
Secondly, Gamaghelyan believes this argument is flawed. During the OSCE Minsk Group process, especially in terms of the Madrid Principles, the blueprint for how a peace agreement had previously looked like, included provisions for a whole set of issues from the status of Karabakh to the demilitarisation of the seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan that are now militarized. In order to move towards normalisation, the government needs to reclaim its agency and acknowledge it responsibility for its own actions before the war.
And while the Pashinyan government has made a public shift away from the type of militaristic rhetoric that plagued both sides prior to the 2020 war, including by openly saying that it has lowered the bar on status and effectively accepting the de jure jurisdiction of Azerbaijan over Karabakh, the question is then what happens next? If it is to have an autonomous status, then what kind? This discussion is largely missing, says Gamaghelyan, but it should start because “we are talking about the lives of over 100,000 people.”
Shiriyev nonetheless adds that the submitted points by Azerbaijan should result in normalisation and prevent a new war. Yerevan and Baku are currently negotiating an extended variant, but even so, one of the most important issues that remains is the need to delimit and demarcate their mutual border. As this will likely take years it mustn’t or shouldn’t, however, hold up a peace agreement. Another pressing issue is the transport link between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan through Armenia as per the 2020 ceasefire agreement.
There is an agreement on the railway connection, says Shiriyev, but not on any highway. Azerbaijan is also now publicly making it known that it would prefer the Russian peacekeeping force not to remain for another five years when its first term expires in 2025. But if that is the case, and if Azerbaijan decides to request Moscow to remove its soldiers, what would replace it or what security guarantees would need to be in place?
Zaur Shiriyev, Caucasus Edition Symposium, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2022
There are, of course, potential spoilers ahead. One, says Shiriyev, is Russia given that it views its mediation in the November 2020 ceasefire agreement as a “success story in the post-Soviet space,” so other international actors should understand the necessity to keep Moscow on board with any and all developments. Indeed, he believes, the two EU and Russian parallel processes should be integrated. Other possible spoilers ahead could be escalations on the border that would disrupt the peace process and any instability in Armenia.
This issue was one particularly touched upon by Gamaghelyan. For now, given that the opposition protests are effectively led by the former governments of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, their appeal is limited. Nonetheless, they do have a stable base as demonstrated by their frequency and, at the time of the webinar, that they are still ongoing. Nevertheless, they also show that the level of support for Pashinyan, as well as the opposition, has not changed since last year’s election so it is unlikely that a popular uprising will occur.
On the other hand, he warns, it can not be discounted that there could be an attempt to stage a coup d’état or even the outbreak of civil war or violent clashes that would destabilize Armenia. Whatever your opinion of him is, says Gamaghelyan, Pashinyan was democratically elected, a first in 30 years of independence, so such an eventuality is a frightening proposition given that it would plunge the country into a situation that would be very difficult to emerge from.
Thus, says Shiriyev, it is essential that the peace process must be such the trust and confidence of both societies is earned. Accusatory tones in rhetoric from both sides should stop, there should be no military clashes, and gestures on the humanitarian front should be forthcoming. For Armenia this last point concerns the return of those soldiers still in detention in Azerbaijan while for Baku there is the long-standing issue of the fate of missing persons from the war of the early 1990s.
That is the minimum, he believes, but another important factor must be the widening of civil society involvement in the process so that it is more inclusive and not simply the preserve of a cadre of analysts and academics. There needs to be the participation of others such as musicians, actors, environmentalists, and the media, especially given the extent of misinformation and disinformation in circulation. Moreover, this inclusivity and involvement should be in place from the very beginning.
Perhaps, says Shiriyev, the example of civil society involvement in the Armenia-Turkey process could be a positive one here. This also included the private sector.
For now, however, civil society is almost completely missing from the current Armenia-Azerbaijan process, says Gamaghelyan. This is unfortunate, he explains, because the governments might not have the necessary experience of dealing with sentitive and important matters such as transitional justice or possess any familiarity of dealing with the complex topic of memory given 30 years of mutual enmity and mass violence.
Moreover, in response to a comment by a member of the audience for the event, Murad Nasibov, himself formerly involved in Track II projects, Gamaghelyan nonetheless noted that civil society activities aimed at promoting democracy should be decoupled from conflict resolution. Before it was believed that human rights and democratisation would lead to peace, but that didn’t quite work out, he comments.
“Waiting for democracy to arrive so we can stop killing each other is quite a dangerous proposition,” Gamaghelyan remarked.
Finally, in response to a comment that I had submitted about the possibility of a Cyprus-like scenario emerging, though others might have sent the same too, Gamaghelyan noted the importance of it becoming more of a Cyprus+ situation. While that conflict transformed itself into one where violence is absent and where some kind of basic coexistence exists in terms of mutual visits and economic linkages, it is also in limbo.
I wholeheartedly agree with Gamaghelyan here and have believed the same since I first visited Northern Cyprus to train journalists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as those from the disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno Karabakh, in 2011. More recently, I have also explained why I believe that a Cyprus-like situation for Karabakh is anyway unsustainable here and here.
In conclusion, I fully support Gamaghelyan’s point about Cyprus+ and also consider that a stagnant status quo setting in, something that was sadly the case for the twenty years from 1998 to 2018, must be prevented. This timely and relevant webinar is perhaps an important step in making that possible. You can view it in full below.
