1) Intro: The unrecognized Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh declared a few days ago that it was dissolving itself by the end of the year.
By Friday, 85,000 of the 120,000 Armenian residents living in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabach had fled their homes. Tens of thousands of people seeking asylum in Armenia still don’t know where their next meal is coming from or where they’ll spend their nights. They don’t even dream of returning to their homes..
“Now, a massacre will begin there,” an Armenian woman told an Armenian news correspondent. “No Armenian will be left there.” Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has allocated $1 million to supply food and medicine for the refugees, with a few Western countries such as the United States, Spain and Canada also chipping in. Pashinyan also said that Armenia could find 40,000 apartments for the refugees.
2) Historical perspective: The Karabakh conflict dates back to 1988. It prefigured a dozen others that would erupt in what was then the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Nagorno-Karabakh was, legally, an autonomous region within Azerbaijan, a constituent republic of the U.S.S.R. As Mikhail Gorbachev’s government loosened political restrictions, Karabakh Armenians demanded the right, which they argued was guaranteed to them by the Soviet constitution, to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, also a Soviet constituent republic. Moscow rejected the demand. Meanwhile, shoot-outs between ethnic Armenians and ethnic Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh sparked violence elsewhere. In February, 1988, anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait left dozens dead. Two years later, a week of anti-Armenian violence in Baku, Azerbaijan’s historically multiethnic capital, killed dozens more. Thousands of ethnic Armenians fled Azerbaijan, where their families had lived for generations.
3) Main players ( Azerbaijan and Armenia): The Armenian tragedy is a swift and sweeping victory for Azerbaijan, in a move which ended within 24 hours of the initial attack on September 19. Nagorno-Karabakh will become an integral part of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s ambitions have not been fully fulfilled yet, and they are not Azerbaijan’s alone. Last Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a meeting with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the Azeri enclave of Nakhchivan inside Armenia rather than in the capital Baku.
4) Other dominant players:
A) Turkey: Erdogan declared that “a window of opportunity has opened for resolving the situation in this region. This opportunity must not be allowed to pass.” The opportunity Erdogan spoke of was stated more explicitly in his speech at the UN General Assembly, on the eve of the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which he said that “we support the steps taken by Azerbaijan, with which we work together under the slogan of ‘one nation, two states,’ in order to defend Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.”
B) Iran: Turkey, which is building itself as a natural gas distributor to try to become a regional power, is not wasting time, and plans with Azerbaijan to lay a pipeline that will connect the two countries and establish an overland corridor that will pass through Armenia. Armenia opposes this, as does Iran, since such a corridor with its gas pipelines will mean Turkish and Azeri control, or at least presence, in the southern part of Armenia. Iran views such a corridor, which will pass through Armenia, close to the Iranian border, as leading to a severing of its geographic link with Armenia, and through it, with Russia. But for Turkey and Azerbaijan, this is the opportunity Erdogan wants.
Iran’s policy in the Caucasus is also affected by Russia’s new positioning in the region. Like the Russians, Tehran is having to pick and choose where to get involved and where to stand back. It had warned Baku not to mobilize in Nagorno-Karabakh before this last Azeri invasion. After the invasion began, and even more so after its swift end, Tehran began considering its consequences: the Islamic Republic is apprehensive about a land corridor constructed by Turkey and Azerbaijan, but seems willing to change its tune after Erdogan declared his willingness to have the corridor pass through Iran if a settlement cannot be made with the Armenians. Now, Tehran is considering the potential benefits of such an arrangement. Beyond the corridor issue, Iran seeks to improve its relations with Azerbaijan, both in order to prevent it from becoming a playground for Israeli activity, and in order to prevent a flare-up of ethnic tensions. Iran is concerned whenever the historical connection is mentioned between Azerbaijan and the Iranian province of the same name, which was annexed to Russia during the 1828 surrender agreement.
C) Russia: This opportunity was created not just because of Armenia’s weakness and its inability to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia is now perceived as unwilling or unable to embark on another diplomatic or military conflict in order to help Armenia. In contrast to the 2020 war, Russian forces not only refrained from helping the Armenians, despite their commitment to do so in a signed agreement with Armenia, they actually blamed Armenia for the stinging failure which led to the fall of the enclave in Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia is furious with Armenia for what it calls its “flirtation” with the West, in the words of the deputy-director of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev.
D) Israel : Israel also provided Azerbaijan military stuff and drones in 2020 war. Then, as now, Israel was an active and vital partner in Azerbaijan’s war. Drones, ammunition and other weapons were sold by Israel to Azerbaijan for billions of dollars. Azerbaijan provides 40 percent of Israel’s oil needs through a pipeline going from Baku to Tbilisi and from there to Turkey.
According to foreign sources, Azerbaijan allows Israel to operate stations that gather intelligence on Iran on Azeri territory. The difference this time is that in 2020, Turkey and Israel were still rivals, with no full diplomatic relations. Then, only trade relations and intelligence sharing maintaining their fragile ties. Now, following the resumption of full diplomatic relations with Turkey, one can talk about an open triple strategic alliance in which each country contributes its part to their maintenance.
F) West : West is also watching the geopolitical development in the southern caucus, as this region provides the west with an inlet to resource rich Central Asia.. So their main concern is role of Russia, gas pipelines and impact of this issue on Russia’s current campaign in the Ukraine..
5) Way Forward and Conclusion : Peaceful Resolution of dispute, humanitarian assistance to fleeing Armenians, showing restraint while further escalation of tensions may be detrimental to the strategically important region..