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Nagorno-Karabakh: The Genesis and Dynamics of the Conflict

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The Nagorno-Karabakh deadlock

Abstract

The long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, which escalated into a “Four-Day” War in early April 2016 and resulted in hundreds of dead and wounded, is perhaps the single most complicated ethno-territorial conflict in the post-Soviet space. This conflict continues to cause great instability in the South Caucasus. Covering an area of just 4400 km2, the Nagorno-Karabakh region is relatively small.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shortly thereafter, on 23 October 1921, the Treaty of Kars was signed with the Armenian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR and the Georgian SSR as one party and Turkey (represented by Ankara) as the other. This treaty resolved the political and legal status of Nakhichevan. In Article 5, the Turkish government and the Soviet governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed that “the Nakhichevan region […] under the protection of Azerbaijan, comprises an autonomous area.”

  2. 2.

    Initially, the pendulum appeared to swing in favor of Armenia: Under pressure from Moscow, the revolutionary committee in Baku released a declaration to Armenia in December 1920 about the separation of Nagorno-Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan. Stalin, commissioner for matters of nationality, announced this decision on 2 December. But the Azerbaijani Communist leader Nariman Narimanov contested it. Then, in the presence of Stalin, the Caucasus Bureau of the Russian/Bolshevik Communist Party (CPR(B)) approved of adding Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR on 4 July 1921. Narimanov protested anew, causing the CPR (B) to review the issue the next day: Nagorno-Karabakh remained part of Azerbaijan.

  3. 3.

    The small town of Khankendi, which was renamed Stepanakert in 1923 in honor of Stepan Schaumian, the Armenian leader of the Bolsheviks in Baku, became the administrative center of the new autonomous region. This was contrary to the resolution, which had named the historical town of Shusha as the administrative center.

  4. 4.

    The events in Nagorno-Karabakh during the early (Soviet) phase of the conflict reached a bloody peak during the Sumgait Pogrom on 28 February 1988. In Azerbaijan’s second largest industrial city, where thousands of Azeri refugees from Armenia had told of bloody attacks, an angry mob stormed houses belonging to Armenians. The Prosecutor General in Moscow announced 30 dead, 197 injured and 42 arrests.

  5. 5.

    Shortly before the dissolution of the autonomous region, there was a military escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh. On 20 November 1991, an Azerbaijani military helicopter carrying a peacekeeping mission team consisting of 13 Azerbaijani government officials (including high-ranking government members), 2 Russian officials and 1 Kazakh, 3 Azeri journalists and 3 helicopter crew members was shot down by Armenian military forces near Karakend village in Nagorno-Karabakh. All 22 people on board were killed in the crash. As a result, the Supreme Soviet in Baku called a special session on 26 November requesting that martial law be imposed in the republic, withdrawing cadets and officers of Azeri ethnicity from the Soviet Army and ending all negotiations with Armenia. On 27 November, the Supreme Soviet voted to end Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomy and established direct rule over it. It also officially changed the name of Stepanakert to its pre-Soviet name Khankendi and re-organized the area’s administrative districts.

  6. 6.

    In the night of 25–26 February 1992, in Khojaly, a village in the conflict region populated by Azeris, Armenian troops killed around 600 civilians, including women and children, according to Azerbaijani sources – making it the largest massacre in the entire post-Soviet space.

  7. 7.

    An armistice agreement signed in Bishkek by representatives from Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Russia formally ended the war on 5 May 1994. It took effect on 12 May.

  8. 8.

    Over time, Armenians’ changed their view of this land from that of a bargaining chip to a vital security buffer and finally to “liberated territory” that is increasingly claimed to be an integral part of the de facto “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” (Crisis Group 2016, p. 6). This has led to the partial colonization of the occupied districts between the regions. According to local sources, since Kelbajar and Lachin were militarily occupied, approximately 11,000 Armenians have been resettled there (Crisis Group 2017, p. 20).

  9. 9.

    Russia maintains air and military bases in Armenia (with around 5000 personnel) and supplies nearly all of the country’s weapons. In 2010, Moscow deepened its military relations with Armenia, extending the lease for the Soviet-era military base in Gyumri in the northwestern part of the country until 2044. Russia also has extensive control over Armenia’s airspace, as well as its borders to Iran and Turkey. At the same time, Russia supplies 85% of Azerbaijan’s arms. After Russian President Putin visited Baku in 2013, President Aliyev put the value of the “military-technical cooperation” at USD 4 billion. Armenia also imports high-tech weaponry, such as drones, from Israel. A new defense minister and continuing military cooperation with Turkey, including special forces training, increased the armed force’s capabilities (Crisis Group 2016, p. 11).

  10. 10.

    As regards an international peacekeeping mission, only a small group of OSCE monitors is involved: “This group visits a pre-agreed area for a few hours twice a month. Their field trips essentially are symbolic and do not meet modern peace-monitoring requirements” (Crisis Group 2017, p. 25).

  11. 11.

    A typical example of this was the deadly use of weapons on the front line in July 2017, in which two Azerbaijani civilians (a woman and a child) were killed by Armenian artillery fire. This created a wave of popular indignation in Azerbaijan. Regarding the continuing force of arms at the demarcation line see the CrisisWatch Database (2003–2017).

  12. 12.

    Major fighting lasted from 2 to 5 April 2016. In combat that included the use of multiple-launch missile systems, heavy artillery, tanks, attack drones and highly trained special forces, and stoked powerful nationalist emotions in both countries, Azerbaijan seized small but strategically important pieces of land. Up to 200 people died on both sides. The acute threat of greater escalation drew in powerful neighboring countries and focused key international actors’ political attention on searching for a peaceful solution to the decades-old conflict, often mistakenly called “frozen” (Crisis Group 2016, p. i).

  13. 13.

    In this context, Azerbaijan has repeatedly affirmed that it is in conflict with Armenia and that Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh should therefore be considered “interested parties” just like Azeri refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh.

  14. 14.

    Nagorno-Karabakh’s position as a “party to the conflict” was codified at the 1994 OSCE Budapest Summit which welcomed the “confirmation by the parties to the conflict of the ceasefire” signed by Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1997, Nagorno-Karabakh’s rejection of the draft peace agreement from July of that year again excluded it (Crisis Group 2005a, p. 10).

  15. 15.

    Armenia has also officially declared itself a “guarantor and supporter for the security of the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the path to development it has chosen” (Armenian Ministry of Defense 2007, p. 2).

  16. 16.

    Many of Armenia’s highest political leaders (such as Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan, 2008–2016) come from Nagorno-Karabakh. On this topic and the domestic state of the “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”, see Halbach and Smolnik (2013, pp. 25, 17–20) and Crisis Group (2005b).

  17. 17.

    Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a constitution in 2006 that staked its claims to independence and statehood, and redrew internal administrative boundaries to create seven new districts that blur their demarcation from the surrounding occupied districts. The diaspora has sponsored numerous efforts to settle Armenians, some of them refugees from Syria, in the occupied territories (Crisis Group 2016, p. 12).

  18. 18.

    Baku justifies the expansion of its military budget by stating that increased oil revenues massively increased the state’s total budget. A few years ago, the government in Baku declared that Azerbaijan’s military budget would soon exceed Armenia’s entire national budget. In contrast, as a member of the Moscow-led CSTO, Armenia buys its weapons from Russia at so-called domestic prices, which somewhat mitigates its significantly smaller expenditures (Crisis Group 2016, p. 11).

  19. 19.

    The Global Militarization Index (GMI) compares a country’s military expenditure with its gross domestic product (GDP) and health expenditures (BICC 2016).

  20. 20.

    The permanent members of the Minsk Group also include Belarus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Turkey, along with Armenia and Azerbaijan and the rotating OSCE triumvirate. In 1995, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office appointed a Personal Representative (PR) for all matters related to the conflict and to support the co-chairs, particularly regarding measures to maintain the ceasefire and prepare for a peacekeeping force. The current PR, a former Polish diplomat, who has been in office since 1997, works to defuse tension through contacts with key decision makers in the region developed over nearly two decades. He also heads a small team based in Tbilisi, which conducts basic ceasefire monitoring activities (Crisis Group 2016, p. 5 f.).

  21. 21.

    The plan envisioned the following: “Territory released as a result of this withdrawal of forces forms a buffer zone and a dividing zone. A) Upon the completion of withdrawal of armed forces the buffer zone will be located along the 1988 boundaries of the NKAO and the north and south boundaries of the Lachin corridor. The buffer zone will remain without human population and is completely demilitarized, with the exception of elements forming part of the OSCE peacekeeping mission. B) The dividing zone is demilitarized with the exception of forces assigned to assist the work of the Permanent Joint Commission, including: (1) Units forming part of the peacekeeping mission; (2) Units assigned for border patrol and demining purposes; (3) Civil police forces, the number and permitted weaponry. C) In the buffer and dividing zones a no-fly zone, into which the Sides will not conduct military flights, is established under the control of the OSCE peacekeeping mission. D) Security conditions in all districts controlled by the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities after the withdrawal of forces in accordance with Article II will be guaranteed by the existing military and security structures of Nagorno-Karabakh” (OSCE 1997b).

  22. 22.

    A follow-up meeting between the presidents planned for June 2001 in Geneva also did not materialize.

  23. 23.

    At the following G8 Summits in Muskoka, Canada on 26 June 2010 and in Deauville, France on 26 May 2011, the three presidents of the Minsk Group’s co-chair countries strengthened their appeal to the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia to strive for a quick and peaceful settlement on the basis of the Madrid Principles.

  24. 24.

    As mentioned above, in Key West (Florida, US) the parties to the conflict came very close to reaching a compromise through the mediation efforts of US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

  25. 25.

    In January 2012, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were invited by Medvedev for a trilateral meeting in Sochi. In a joint statement, the three presidents spoke of an “acceleration” of the peace process on the basis of the well-known basic principles. In fact, the meeting was only held in order to demonstrate their intention to not abandon the negotiations but to temporarily transfer them to the ministerial level. Following an extended hiatus, the first meeting of the presidents under the auspices of the Minsk Group co-chairs took place in Vienna on 19 November 2013. But they did not address the core issues of the conflict there. In December 2015, a final more or less ritualized meeting between Aliyev and Sargsyan was conducted in Switzerland, without any results.

  26. 26.

    There was some suspicion that Russia intended to dominate the peacekeeping force so as to extend its military presence in the region but both sides made clear their opposition to such a military presence and Moscow played down that possibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ADA University, Baku, Azerbaijan

    Azer Babayev

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  1. Azer Babayev
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Correspondence to Azer Babayev .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ADA University, Baku, Azerbaijan

    Azer Babayev

  2. PRIF – Peace and Research Institute Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland

    Bruno Schoch

  3. PRIF – Peace and Research Institute Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland

    Hans-Joachim Spanger

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Babayev, A. (2020). Nagorno-Karabakh: The Genesis and Dynamics of the Conflict. In: Babayev, A., Schoch, B., Spanger, HJ. (eds) The Nagorno-Karabakh deadlock. Studien des Leibniz-Instituts Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25199-4_2

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