Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, European Council President Charles Michel, and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels on 6 April 2022 © European Union
Last Wednesday’s meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels was a serious endeavour. As early as 22 March, Armenian media had reported such a meeting was planned and, unlike previous meetings, senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials had already met in Brussels on 30 March to prepare for the talks.
Those officials were Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the Armenian National Security Council, and Hikmet Hajiyev, advisor and head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration. The European Council’s statement said that both agreed to meet again in the near future.
Moreover, months of speculation, albeit largely away from the public eye and media, had prepared some of us for what could be expected. Much of that was also revealed in the middle of March when Baku publicised its suggested 5-points that could form the basis for negotiations to normalise relations between the two estranged neighbours.
They were, or rather are:
Mutual recognition of respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of internationally recognized borders and political independence of each other;
Mutual confirmation of the absence of territorial claims against each other and acceptance of legally binding obligations not to raise such a claim in future;
Obligation to refrain in their inter-State relations from undermining the security of each other, from threat or use of force both against political independence and territorial integrity, and in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the UN Charter;
Delimitation and demarcation of the state border, and establishment of the diplomatic relations;
Unblocking of the transportation and other communications, building other communications as appropriate, and establishment of cooperation in other fields of mutual interest.
Yerevan responded to the proposal by saying that the points were acceptable, but added that there was also the need to include the question of the security and rights of the ethnic Armenian population living in what remains of the Soviet-era Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO). For Armenia, the process is also important because the parallel process of Armenia-Turkey normalisation is linked to that with Baku.
According to a statement released afterwards, two of Azerbaijan’s points were specifically touched upon in the Brussels meeting, with the EU reiterating its support for the unblocking of regional economic and transport links as per the 2020 ceasefire agreement, including from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, and there was also an agreement to establish a joint commission to start the process of delimiting the Armenia-Azerbaijan border by the end of the month.
The importance of addressing humanitarian issues in order “to promote confidence and peaceful coexistence was also stressed,” including the release of the remaining Armenian detainees held by Baku and the outstanding question of missing people, presumably from both the first and second Karabakh wars. The EU would also support work to support demining efforts as well as the long and arduous task of rehabilitation and reconstruction.
In terms of the latter, the EU is perhaps best placed to assist in this given its recent allocation of financial packages up to €2.5 billion and €2 billion to Armenia and Azerbaijan respectively.
Michel is also reported to have shown the two leaders satellite images highlighting how close the Armenian and Azerbaijani militaries are, thus leading to tensions and occasional clashes. He also announced that Aliyev and Pashinyan had agreed to “launch a concrete process to prepare for a possible peace treaty and to address all necessary elements for such a treaty.”
“The process started, it is extremely clear. It started tonight,” Michel told journalists as he ended a brief meeting with journalists following the meeting that lasted for over 4.5 hours.
There also seems to be a sense of urgency to that process, something that should be welcomed as it has always seemed lacking in the past, with RFE/RL quoting an anonymous EU diplomat as saying that the plan is to move quickly on organising more talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the nearest future.
“I’m fully conscious when I say that there’s not much time left,” said the diplomat. “I think we will need to be following up quite quickly with this. And I think there is an expectation that we would look to have a meeting at leaders’ level relatively soon to review progress and tackle any outstanding issues that are blocking the moves forward.”
The diplomat also said they believed that the issue of the status of Nagorno Karabakh might be brought up in future talks. Even though Baku considers the issue already resolved following the 44-day war, Yerevan disagrees, though possibly with a caveat. If in the past Armenia only interpreted the principle of self-determination as meaning independence, a less maximalist approach might now be adopted.
As Eurasianet reported on 1 April, some believe the Armenian government could now be ready to accept Karabakh within the borders of Azerbaijan as long as the rights of its ethnic Armenian population are guaranteed. Certainly, the international community has not shown itself ready to recognise the territory as independent, and Armenia’s trump card, the seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan it had previously controlled, is now gone.
Nonetheless, Yerevan is likely also hoping for some kind of compromise from Baku, as one anonymous diplomat told the publication.
The specific nature of those rights is a big open question “because one of the key rights has always been self-determination. […] But if they are willing to think about that in terms other than the traditional Karabakhi-Armenian view that it means something essentially leading to independence, then there may be some room to negotiate,” one foreign diplomat familiar with the negotiations told Eurasianet on condition of anonymity.
“That [the rights of Armenians in Karabakh] continues to be the core question of the whole basket of issues that continue to divide Armenia and Azerbaijan,” the diplomat continued. “Most of them can be resolved if the issue of the future of the Armenian population could be addressed. That is the issue that started the conflict and … the issue that needs to be addressed to resolve the conflict.”
[…]
One Baku-based analyst said that the government there may be interested in offering some kind of political rights as well, but would still stop short of a special status for the region.
“After the war, it seemed that returning back to the ‘90s with an administrative status for Nagorno-Karabakh would be impossible, but the government would like to offer a minimum plan like talking about cultural rights. And if there is an appetite from the local Armenians, then the discussion could turn into something bigger than cultural rights,” the analyst told Eurasianet on condition of anonymity.
As detailed in a recent podcast this interpretation of self-determination has also dogged previous attempts to resolve the conflict. Armenia’s position was that it can only mean independence, i.e. external self-determination, rather than another form, internal self-determination, that allows for some form of autonomy in terms of local governance or decision-making.
Few took the Eurasianet piece seriously and some even attempted to discredit it, despite the fact that it had been predicted since 1997. Others, such as Yerevan-based political analyst Benyamin Poghosyan, though seemingly against this outcome, have also been saying the same for several months, including in an audio podcast broadcast 12 days before the publication of the Eurasianet piece.
In that podcast, Poghosyan said he believed that the Armenian leadership is ‘psychologically ready’ for abandoning the maximalist demands of the previous authorities, but it remains unclear if it is ‘politically ready.’ There is also the issue of the return of ethnic Armenians to Hadrut and Shusha, albeit as Azerbaijani citizens according to Baku, and the return of Azerbaijanis to parts of the former NKAO they had previously inhabited.
Though some analysts have warned that Karabakh could find itself becoming ‘another Abkhazia or South Ossetia,’ with Russian forces stationed there indefinitely, Karabakh is markedly different. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, it is now almost entirely surrounded by parts of Azerbaijan taken back or returned after the 2020 war and almost totally reliant on Baku for resources so much so that its future is questionable without an agreement.
As much as 80 percent of Karabakh’s water reportedly flows into it via Azerbaijan-controlled territory as does a gas pipeline traverse the same, and apparently other amenities such as Internet as well. Electricity generation will increasingly become a problem in the future too. Thus, at some point, direct communication between Stepanakert and Baku seems inevitable if Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population is to remain, a very real concern for many.
Other such as Gerard Libaridian have also stressed the importance of striking a deal that allows the community to remain. Moreover, he warns, though many believe Russian peacekeepers will remain indefinitely, there is actually uncertainty, either in 2025 when its first term expires and may or may not be extended, but also in 2030 when there is no reference in the ceasefire agreement to any additional extension.
The former presidential advisor and co-author of a recent white paper, The Karabakh War of 2020 and Armenia’s Future Foreign and Security Policies, articulated this last year.
The leadership and most probably the people of Karabakh seem to have tied their future to the presence of the Russian peacekeeper and to Russia. The path remains uncharted, and its future uncertain as a consequence of various factors. The authors do not see the path to independence a likely one after this war, just as it was unlikely before the war.
In such a situation, what might well emerge if talks continue is the reframing of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict from an interstate one to a matter of minority rights within Azerbaijan. Yerevan, however, could remain engaged politically and diplomatically rather than militarily. Certainly, following the 2020 war, Armenia is in no position to act as a security guarantor, unofficially deploying its own military as it has in the past.
Though many Armenians remain unconvinced, the Armenian opposition made up of former regime forces certainly believe this to be the government’s position. The evening before the Brussels meeting, it held a demonstration in Yerevan’s Liberty Square accusing the government of being ready to recognise Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, effectively accepting that Nagorno Karabakh is an integral part of its neighbour.
The rally, however, was poorly attended with video footage showing that only about 5-7,000 people turned up. In part, though, this could be because of a number of factors. First, few in Armenia believe that any government would be prepared to ‘abandon,’ as they see it, Karabakh, and secondly, the opposition remains largely discredited in the eyes of those who can still remember the years of the Kocharian and Sargsyan regimes.
Time will tell if the opposition can mobilise greater numbers in the future, but for now that seems unlikely even if the population disagrees with anything less for Karabakh than independence or unification with Armenia. Indeed, in his podcast, Benyamin Poghosyan argues that Yerevan’s overtures to the OSCE Minsk Group, now seemingly defunct since the Russia-Ukraine war, is an attempt to buy time to prepare the population for peace.
Three decades later, and long overdue, now would certainly seem to be time. It might even be the last chance to sign a peace agreement if a third Karabakh war in the future is to be averted, something that some already warn could well take the form of a far more devastating proxy war. Lest it’s forgotten, in 2011, warnings of a second Karabakh war were ignored and drowned out by maximalist demands. Now is not the time to ignore such warnings again.
In 2022, though, there’s room for some cautious optimism with last week’s EU-facilitated meeting welcomed by the international community, including by Russia and the United States. That’s not to say, however, that many issues don’t remain outstanding or that a difficult and possibly long path doesn’t lie ahead. That, after all, is what negotiations are all about, and it can only be hoped that significant progress is made over the coming months.
It’s a sobering thought, after all, to remember that I wrote a similar post to this one in 2011. Suffice to say, I do not want to have to write another in 2033.
