This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire agreement that put fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the Soviet-era mainly ethnic Armenian Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) on hold – or at least until it escalated into war in 2016 and more devastatingly in 2020. Despite the involvement of international mediators, peace remained elusive despite occasional claims to the contrary. The sides were said to have gotten close, but never enough to prevent tens of thousands dying in over three decades of conflict.
The terms of the 1994 ceasefire agreement, after all, were never implemented and despite hopes that the trilateral ceasefire statement signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia in 2020 could have been different, the time since has proven that it mostly wasn’t. The situation on the ground is now diametrically reversed, of course, and especially since last year’s exodus of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population, but one thing has remained constant – the need to unblock regional economic and transport routes and particularly between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave.
In October 1993, Chairman of the the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE)’s Minsk Conference, Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Raffaelli, had proposed the restoration of the gas pipeline, the Ijevan-Gazakh railway, and then all other forms of communication. But as is the case now, stumbling blocks emerged. In particular, while Baku wanted restoration of the connection through Armenia to Nakhchivan, Yerevan did not. By 1997, however, it was included as the “Baku-Horadiz–Meghri–Ordubad–Nakhichevan-Yerevan route” in the OSCE-proposed “package deal” and later as “direct and immediate land access for Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan” in the OSCE Minsk Group Madrid Principles.
Most recently, in the 2020 trilateral ceasefire statement, it was referred to as “unhindered […] transport communication [between the] western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic” as part of unblocking all “economic and transport links in the region […].”
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But more than three years since the November trilateral ceasefire statement, it is high time that these issues are finally resolved, something the European Union and the United States hope for. Yes, this should be with the concerns and interests of the main stakeholders in mind, but also without the geopolitics that could see the unblocking of regional communications again remain on paper.
The full opinion piece can be read online here.
