© United World International
Commonspace yesterday published another opinion piece of mine on the current peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“Time is not on the side of peace between [Armenia and Azerbaijan] and never has been,” writes Onnik James Krikorian for commonspace.eu. “The wounds of the past are still raw and will continue to fester unless there is concrete progress, whether through the efforts of the European Union, United States, or Russia.” He adds that “in such an environment, it is imperative for local and international actors to become proactive again, with absolutely no space for complacency or hope for a new but unsustainable status quo to emerge.”
Next month will mark the 29th anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan that ostensibly brought an end to the first Karabakh war. Almost to the day, it will also be 2.5 years since the November 2020 trilateral ceasefire statement halted what most refer to as the second Karabakh war. Despite initial hopes, the current peace process appears to have stalled.
This current failure to end another sorry chapter in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan does not bode well for the future, to put it mildly.
Time is not on the side of peace between the two warring nations and never has been. The wounds of the past are still raw and will continue to fester unless there is concrete progress, whether through the efforts of the European Union, United States, or Russia. Furthermore, last year’s full scale invasion of Ukraine by Moscow further complicates the situation.
[…]
In such an environment, it is imperative for local and international actors to become proactive again, with absolutely no space for complacency or hope for a new but unsustainable status quo to emerge. Even if the international community once again shifts its focus from conflict resolution to conflict prevention as it did a decade ago, the 2020 Karabakh war demonstrated how ineffective that was as strategy.
The full opinion piece can be read here.
