On 5 May 2022, Caucasus Edition, a publication of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation, held another Zoom webinar as part of it series of events aimed at Armenia-Azerbaijan dialogue, this time on the new context and challenges that both countries find themselves in following both the 2020 Karabakh war and the more recent Russian further invasion of Ukraine.
As expected, 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 it might even have been arranged earlier. Publicly at least, and unlike previous meetings, senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials also openly met in Brussels on 30 March to prepare.
Fieldwork Interviews and Articles on the Yezidi minority in Armenia 1998-2008.
Though there have been many online Zoom discussions between Armenian and Azerbaijan activists, analysts and academics during and especially since the 2020 Karabakh War, there have been precious few actual in-person meetings. In part, this has been because of pandemic travel restrictions but not only. For example, one meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani analysts due to be held late last year was postponed because of the November border skirmishes and has still yet to be held. If it will at all, of course.
Ethnic Armenians in Tsopi, Georgia, one of a few villages co-inhabited with ethnic Azerbaijanis @ Onnik James Krikorian First published by Stratfor. as part of my work on ethnic Armenian-Azerbaijani coexistence in Georgia also published by the BBC and Radio Free...
Recently EurasiaNet reported that Yezidis in Armenia have requested the authorities in Yerevan assist their counterparts in Iraqi Kurdistan who are experiencing violent attacks from Kurds for selling alcohol. Despite non-Muslims apparently being allowed to do so, militias are reportedly attacking shops owned by Christians and Yezidis.
While it might be nearly 19 years since a May 1994 ceasefire put the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh on hold, analysts are increasingly viewing the situation on the Line of Contact (LOC) with alarm. Over 20,000 died in the war waged in the early 1990s and a million were forced to flee their homes. Frontline skirmishes and sniper incidents remain common with The Economist recently putting the number of dead since the armistice at over 3,000. More significantly, new generations are brought up unable to remember the time when both Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side together in peace.
Strategically situated as a major conduit for vital energy resources, the South Caucasus has long been an area for competing regional and geopolitical interests. But while competition between Russia and the United States has preoccupied many analysts since 1991 when the three countries making up the region declared their independence from the former Soviet Union, some consider that Turkey could also play an important role in the Caucasus. Despite its well-known problems with Armenia, this is particularly true since tensions between Russia and Georgia culminated in the August 2008 war.
While it didn’t come as much of a surprise, the latest report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) makes depressing reading. Locked in a bitter stalemate since the war over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh during which around 25,000 were killed and a million forced to flee their homes, a final peace deal remains as elusive as ever.
Russian border guards left Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport last week, concluding their nearly 32-year presence. The first point of contact for many citizens and tourists arriving by air in Armenia, their exact duties and numbers were never formally announced. The 1992 agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia instead only refers to the Border Directorate of the Federal Security Service (FSB) ensuring the protection of the border with Turkiye and Iran.
Since the exodus last fall of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the once disputed but now dissolved territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, many have believed a resolution to the three-decade-long conflict to be within reach. Up until Azerbaijan’s operation to disarm the remnants of the breakaway region’s military last September, the region was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was governed and populated by ethnic Armenians.
At the beginning of July, Armenian National Security Secretary Armen Grigoryan announced that talks with the United States to replace Armenia’s aging Metsamor nuclear power plant were now at a “substantive phase.” The first of two reactors at the power plant started operating in 1976, and the plant has largely met Armenia’s energy needs since. Metsamor produces 30–40 percent of Armenia’s electricity, depending on fluctuations in demand.