The Road to Karabakh, Siunik Region, Armenia © Onnik James Krikorian 2000
With the first anniversary of the 2020 war in Nagorno Karabakh approaching it seems timely to consider where Armenia and Azerbaijan are in the post-war environment. The answer to that question won’t surprise anyone. The situation is not good. Despite some cautious optimism that last year’s 9-point ceasefire agreement might finally usher in a genuine peace process, it seems more likely that time is running out for the substantive developments that were expected during the initial 5-year deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the disputed territory to happen.
There is also some confusion surrounding Moscow’s presence in Karabakh. Already disliked by many in Azerbaijan, others such as former Karabakh negotiator Gerard Libaridian warn that their stay is likely not to exceed 10 years, assuming that a clause requesting that they leave towards the end of 2025 isn’t triggered. There is no mechanism for renewing their mission past 2030, he says, although many, of course, are skeptical that Russia will leave regardless of what it says on paper.
Indeed, the presence of some kind of peacekeeping mission in Karabakh seems necessary for the foreseeable future if its ethnic Armenian population is to remain. While the 7 regions retaken by Azerbaijan or returned by Armenia following the 2020 war are no longer the main obstacle to the peace process that they once used to be, the sensitivity surrounding the discussion of Karabakh’s status, if it continues to be pushed, remains one that will forever keep the sides apart.
Yerevan insists that the only status acceptable is Karabakh’s independence from Azerbaijan while Baku refuses to accept any discussion about status whatsoever. All this while Libaridian says that it will anyway end up in the distant future as something similar to what the Ter-Petrossian administration resigned itself to in 1997-98. According to scholars familiar with the first president’s administration, that meant a significantly high degree of autonomy.
Failure to reach a compromise peace deal back then would only lead to a weaker position later, Ter-Petrossian argued. Two decades later, Libaridian now refers only to some kind of “non-territorial cultural autonomy,” similar to that in place for the Armenian community in Istanbul, as a possible outcome.
Indeed, one thing that has always been ignored in the ongoing dispute is that the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination needn’t be incompatible. What are incompatible are the maximalist interpretations of those terms by the various sides. In reality, self-determination comes in various forms from internal self-determination (different levels of local autonomy) to external self-determination (actual independence).
Imagine Dialogue’s Phil Gamaghelyan has already referred to various models of cultural and political autonomy citing the example of South Tyrol and the Aaland Islands. However, they both require much higher levels of democratisation than can be found in the region. He also talks about Northern Cyprus as the most optimistic intermediate option for however long it will take to resolve humanitarian issues, transitional justice, and other pressing matters, and only with the absence of any threat of military confrontation.
Indeed, it is also unlikely that the ethnic Armenians in Karabakh would agree to anything less if their rights can’t be protected, and that doesn’t seem likely at present or in the foreseeable future either. Arman Grigoryan notes in a discussion with Emin Milli that rhetoric and actions several months after the ceasefire agreement has only reinforced this perception among Armenians.
In order for that to change, the environment, as well as the necessary requirements needed to create it, has to be transformed radically. It’s why some of us believe that Karabakh’s foreseeable future will resemble Northern Cyprus at best or Abkhazia and South Ossetia at worst. As a result, some argue that it is better to leave all discussion on status until such a time when a more positive environment can exist after years, if not decades, of confidence-building measures, people-to-people contact, and trade.
But there is another worst-case scenario that represents how markedly different Karabakh is from those other conflicts too. Unlike Northern Cyprus, Karabakh does not have a coast and nor does it operate flights to and from the territory under its control. It also lacks a sizeable border with a powerful military security guarantor such as the Russian Federation as is the case with Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Instead, now having lost control over Kelbajar and Lachin especially, Karabakh is connected to Armenia only by the narrow “Lachin Corridor,” and as per the 2020 ceasefire agreement, a new route bypassing the town itself is already under construction by a Turkish company. Karabakh, quite simply, is not viable without international security guarantees and establishing and improving relations with Baku. But so far, unless there is backchannel diplomacy taking place which isn’t being reported, the sides don’t appear to be talking.
Meanwhile, the de facto authorities in Karabakh note that over 80 percent of the disputed territory’s water comes from outside the former Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) itself, i.e. from Azerbaijan proper, so it is not difficult to imagine a situation where competition for water and other natural resources will increase as the seven regions surrounding NKAO are resettled by returning Azerbaijani IDPs as well as others.
It is therefore quite possible that at some point water will be diverted to meet the needs of those new Azerbaijani communities living outside what remains of the NKAO rather than the ethnic Armenians remaining within, all the while taking place against a backdrop of climate change and fears that future wars will be fought over water. Last year, a few months before the 2020 war, the International Crisis Group (ICG) made a strong argument for cooperation over water resources rather than competition.
The same is true with Karabakh’s electricity-generation capacity given that most of it came from hydroelectric power stations in areas that are now no longer under Armenian control. Taken together, it is difficult to consider Karabakh a viable or sustainable entity in any form until and unless there is an improvement in relations – assuming that both Armenia and Azerbaijan actually want that to happen.
Delimiting and demarcating the Armenia-Azerbaijan border also remains an issue, and tensions remain high on a new Line of Contact (LoC). Armenia seems reluctant to do this given that it would effectively mean recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, thus taking independence off the table once and for all. Others, however, note that this would at least transform the conflict away from an interstate one to a minority-majority issue within Azerbaijan itself.
This again means that Stepanakert and Baku need to talk, but developments since the 2020 war, however, aren’t exactly inspiring any confidence that they will.
The opening of the “Victory Park” of captured Armenian military equipment in Baku has certainly not helped, and failure to find a solution to the issue of Armenian Prisoner of Wars (POWs) in Azerbaijan keeps wounds open in Armenia. Meanwhile, the emergence of several ultra-nationalist armed militias in Armenia raises additional concerns. One of them has even reportedly stated that it “will not allow the establishment of dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan and […] the normalization of relations between peoples.”
Yet, unblocking the region in terms of trade and transport links, including connecting Azerbaijan through Armenia to Nakhichevan, but without Armenia relinquishing any sovereignty, could be a positive move, but it is anybody’s guess when that might occur or how ultra-nationalist forces would respond to such a development. One security consultancy firm in the UK has already warned of possible attacks on critical infrastructure by informal armed units.
For now, therefore, or at least in terms of implementing the 2020 9-point ceasefire agreement, the main issue at hand is to keep ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, a daunting task given the impracticality of the current environment. And time really is running out. Whether the peacekeeping mission remains in Karabakh longer than 2025 matters not if there is no water, electricity, or trade to sustain a population that is likely to decrease in the future. Libaridian notes that it is in Russia’s interest in making sure this does not happen, but with access to Karabakh more limited than it ever has been, it will be difficult.
In a recent Groong podcast with Emil Sanamyan and Areg Danagoulian, both noted that in the first few years of the Karabakh conflict of the late 1980s to early 1990s, Azerbaijan made the continued existence of ethnic Armenians within its borders contingent on whether any ethnic Azerbaijanis remained within the borders of Armenia. Obviously, they no longer do and so Baku now likely views ethnic Armenians remaining in Karabakh contingent on the demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the establishment of the route across Syunik connecting it to Nakhichevan.
“Open borders are better than closed borders,” says Sanamyan.
And unless there is progress on border demarcation and unblocking regional transport links it will be increasingly difficult for Karabakh Armenians to remain past 2025 let alone 2030. And if they were to leave, then that would not bode well for Armenia-Azerbaijan relations or regional stability in the South Caucasus.
