Yerevan Train Station, Armenia © Onnik James Krikorian 2011
On this, the third anniversary of the 44-day Karabakh War, it remains unclear whether attempts to normalise relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to collapse or nearing their conclusion. In just 24 hours of fighting in late September, the situation changed literally overnight. Depending on your point of view, in the wake of the decree to dissolve the de facto Karabakh Armenian administration, there is either now no urgency to sign a peace agreement, or there is arguably no longer any reason for further delay.
Even the November 2020 trilateral ceasefire statement appears inconsequential given the exodus of tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians from Karabakh, raising many questions about the utility of the Lachin Corridor and the presence of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. This week’s news that Azerbaijan could now connect to its exclave of Nakhchivan via a rail connection through Iran also makes the prospect of doing so via Armenia either redundant, or at least less pressing.
Though such a link remains the subject of talks – whether through the trilateral working group established by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia in May 2021, or in negotiations facilitated by European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels ongoing since late the same year, this development is both encouraging and disappointing. On the one hand, it had been an obstacle to progress in talks. On the other, this interdependency could have contributed to the durability of any negotiated peace.
True, interdependence failed to prevent full-scale war in the early 1990s, and could lead to manipulation by any stronger party, yet it would at least create mutual incentives for cooperation while potentially deterring conflict in the future. The idea was to create a win-win situation where Azerbaijan would not only connect to Nakhchivan but Armenia could potentially join the Middle Corridor transportation link from China to Europe via Central Asia and the South Caucasus, ending its semi-isolation and exclusion from regional energy and transportation projects.
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The full opinion piece can be read here.
