Armenia-Azerbaijan Opening Remarks

Good evening and good morning to all of you. Firstly, many thanks for the opportunity to be part of this panel. Unlike the other panelists, I’m not from the South Caucasus though I am based here, albeit now in Tbilisi, so please take my opinions as that of an outsider’s looking at the situation from inside. Naturally, it is up to the citizens of both countries to find a solution.

I’ve been covering the Karabakh problem since first visiting in 1994 and I remember being told by one academic back then that it would take 20 years to find a lasting solution to the conflict. Sadly, as way of a reality check, it’s now been 27 years since that 1994 ceasefire.

It’s no wonder then that while preparing this statement as an opener I was feeling a little pessimistic about talking today, until then, as is normally the case, something happens to give me just a little bit of hope.

And that’s welcome because last year I wasn’t feeling very optimistic at all.

Indeed, on the 24th of September [2020], three days before the war broke out, an Azerbaijani acquaintance contacted me on Facebook wanting to interview me about the Karabakh peace process. I refused, saying that there was no point.

There was no genuine peace-process and a new war seemed inevitable, I responded. Of course, I was thinking that a new war would breakout in maybe in 5-10 years and not in a matter of days, but all signs were that any semblance of a peace process was gone.

But perhaps I really should try to be a little more positive.

This panel is about Karabakh and the prospects for peace, so let me start by simply saying that while the situation remains unclear, coexistence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis is inevitable. It’s not a question of if, but more of when.

Will it be in 5 years, 10, 20? Or 50 or a hundred years? I really don’t know. The war waged last year should have been a wake-up call, but it seems as though many people are still in a stage of denial as quite a few analysts have pointed out.

Perhaps that’s natural given the brutality of the conflict, but it’s also not very helpful when the agreement allows for Russian peacekeepers to remain in Karabakh only until 2025 unless the mission is automatically extended with no objections raised six months beforehand.

While many don’t expect them to leave, people should still be aware that they might.

It’s also worth noting that I don’t consider that last year’s fighting was a second Karabakh war given that what people consider to be the first only ended in a ceasefire and not a peace agreement. Last year’s hostilities seemed more like a continuation.

Suffice to say, there’s an urgent need for major efforts to bring Armenia and Azerbaijan back to the negotiation table. Some reports indicate that this will happen, but there are also mixed messages coming out of both Yerevan and Baku.

The opening of the so-called trophy park, including what many consider to be a dehumanising display of mannequins, in Baku hasn’t helped, and while not state-sanctioned, the burning of the Azerbaijani and Turkish flags in Yerevan last week didn’t help either.

And these aren’t the only examples which serve to mutually enrage the other. In CVE terns, we’re talking about reciprocal radicalisation, also including Diaspora communities, and that’s pretty alarming given the need to turn down the rhetoric quite a few notches.

Hate speech is already at an all-time high and the situation is made worse by closed borders and more people spending time at home connected to the Internet because of the pandemic. As is the case everywhere, disinformation is also a huge problem.

Nevertheless, if and when the rhetoric does die down, a negotiated peace is possible, though it will probably take decades. Instead, what’s necessary are various steps taken to slowly normalise relations given that an environment conducive to peace hardly exists.

This will probably take a long time, especially when it comes to the status of Nagorno Karabakh. This has long been the problem, of course, but it is a very valid concern given the need for a sense of security and establishing trust and confidence.

Baku says it considers the Karabakh Armenians to be its citizens, but doesn’t talk to them, and it’s also difficult to imagine an ethnic Armenian from Karabakh serving in the Azerbaijani army while schools in both Armenia and Azerbaijan will have to work on their textbooks.

So, I think that any peace deal will be phased, also a major sticking point in previous negotiations, but at least this time round there is the potential for economic interdependency and mutual gains to form the foundations of a lasting peace.

The alternative will simply be more pain and suffering, out-migration, and as I’ve said, the danger of another war that next time will prove even more disastrous for the entire region. As one ethnic-Armenian Georgian activist said to me in a recent interview:

It’s already horrific to consider that the young conscripts who died on both sides last year weren’t even born when the war of the 1990s happened.

So, what to do? Firstly, the war of words needs to stop. And secondly, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will have to re-familiarise themselves with each other. It’s astonishing that very few have met anyone from the other side in the past three decades.

In Georgia, of course, ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis do live together peacefully and there are even some co-inhabited villages and towns. During the war, relations remained stable in those locations where the two groups were used to living together.

But in other areas where they weren’t in such close proximity, however, relations were said to be tense. This does, nevertheless, demonstrate why people-to-people contact is so important and potentially game-changing if managed correctly.

There are, of course, also some outstanding issues related to the 10 November ceasefire agreement. There’s reportedly some disagreement over the link connecting Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan through Armenia’s Syunik region and there’s the also the issue of the POWs.

Azerbaijan too, is concerned by the landmines it’s discovering, though I have to say from personal experience that while there will be some maps there will also be many minefields which weren’t recorded.

A few days ago, some Russian peacekeepers were injured when they drove over an anti- tank mine. And there will still be some leftover from the war of the 1990s too.

In a perfect world, however, there are many things that can serve as a basis for cross-border cooperation and here I’m specifically talking about Armenia and Azerbaijan too. For example, with the reservoir that straddles the border between the two.

This was the subject of a video by the International Crisis Group and also recently mentioned by the EU’s special representative to the South Caucasus on his recent visit to Armenia so might well be being considered as a way to bring border communities together.

Meanwhile, the situation in Nagorno Karabakh has changed in ways unimaginable before the war. It is now more dependent on others than ever before, not just in terms of the Russian peacekeeping force, but also in terms of water supply, power, and even the Internet.

Earlier this year, for example, I read about how some of its Internet passes through regions which are, of course, now back under Azerbaijani control.

I don’t know if that’s still the case with the connection today, but it is worth pointing out that the Lachin corridor is only 5 km wide and the only way in and out for people, trade, and other essential services. Karabakh’s future now appears more likely to be reliant on its relationship with Baku than it does with Yerevan.

Indeed, trade and facilitating contact between the communities is something that needs to happen, but will depend on a top-down approach from the governments as well as a grassroots bottom-up approach from the communities themselves.

But it also desperately needs to start now. It would be a fundamental mistake not to seize the opportunity to start working on various projects as the end of a first 5-year term for the Russian peacekeepers draws ever closer.

Georgians will tell you that they’re highly skeptical that they’ll anyway leave, but you never know how the situation might develop, and if they were to then it would be highly unlikely that the Karabakh Armenians would choose to remain in the current environment.

It’s also worth remembering that under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Russia will control Armenia’s access to Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s access to Nakhichevan. Moscow holds all the cards, it seems, and controls most of the levers.

Back to that agreement, one item in the 10 November ceasefire agreement calls for the voluntary return of the all IDPs to their former places of residence. This of course, mainly refers to the 600,000 or so Azerbaijani IDPs that were created in the 1990s, but not only.

The return of the 7 regions surrounding the former NKAO were likely the most important gain that Azerbaijan achieved during the war, and had always been a main obstacle to the peace process in the past. Now that issue has gone.

However, it should also be noted that those Armenians who once lived in Hadrut remain displaced from last year’s fighting. Thankfully, although I hope I’m not tempting fate, Hadrut has not been settled by Azerbaijan since the ceasefire.

Perhaps this up for negotiation when talks do resume, but again, time is of the essence.

So, in conclusion, I think that what was a brutal and savage war last year has been a reminder of why peace is long overdue. I’m afraid to say, however, that there’s also plenty that can go wrong and a lot will hinge on the political will on all sides.

The choice for Armenia and Azerbaijan, perhaps, is whether a Cyprus-like situation will emerge, where the conflict is not fully resolved but there is a process with economic and communication links in place, or whether it instead resembles South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

The caveat here is that Karabakh does not possess a land border with a powerful ally and neighbour and nor does it have access to the sea.

On a brighter note, the military positions of both sides are now a matter of a few metres apart and there have been no major incidents. There have been some, however, so something like the EUMM’s Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism would be useful.

Already organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have proven themselves indispensable in terms of visiting POWs and also identifying the bodies of those slain in the war once they have been discovered.

More such organisations, including those working on sustainable development, obviously have a critical role to play here, as well as the financial resources. There have also unfortunately been references to religion in this latest conflict so some activity there wouldn’t go amiss either.

In 2010, the Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, visited Baku and held a small service in the Armenian church. The following year Sheik Pashazade made a trip to Yerevan. People at all levels of society now need to be in contact with each other once again.

This especially important given the destruction, reconstruction, and uncertain future of many religious and cultural sites throughout the conflict zone. And once the pandemic subsides, I hope that joint cultural projects will resume and become more relevant.

What isn’t so well known is that in Georgia there are many classical, jazz, pop, rock, and even metal festivals and concerts where Armenian and Azerbaijani musicians play together. These are particularly important given their ability to reach a younger generation.

Finally, despite the hate speech, more and more Armenians and Azerbaijanis are trying to talk to each other online, though they are in the minority. Even so, this is many more voices than existed before and so the information space has an important role to play.

Thank you, and especially for holding this timely panel discussion.