Fighting Escalates Between Armenia and Azerbaijan

The shaky ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been severely tested this week by some of the worst violence for years. The clashes are alarming in both scale and location, and further fighting is very possible.

On 4 June three Armenian soldiers were killed and six wounded by Azerbaijani forces in a clash allegedly sparked by an attempted infiltration of Armenian-held territory. Azerbaijan, however, has claimed that the incident was a "provocation attempt" by Armenian forces. This was followed by news on 5 June that five Azeri soldiers were killed by what the Defence Ministry in Baku called Armenian "saboteurs".

This is one of the worst clashes in some time. Usually losses are confined to one side, and tend to be as a result of brief artillery duels, bursts of machinegun fire, or snipers. Whatever the truth of the 'incursions', the information available suggests that both sides attempted to seize positions held by the other at different points.

Empty Words On Nagorno-Karabakh

I have complained before about the vagueness of the OSCE Minsk Group, its emphasis on form over substance, but the mediators of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process – Russia, France and the US - seem to have outdone themselves this time in empty diplomatese:

“The Co-Chairs presented a plan for the sides to put into action the joint statement made by Presidents Medvedev, Aliyev, and Sargsian on January 23 in Sochi.  Building on the two Presidents' joint commitment to accelerate reaching agreement on the Basic Principles, the Co-Chairs proposed steps to assist the sides in furthering work on the framework for a comprehensive peace settlement.”

France, Turkey, and the Caucasus

The French Senate’s decision to ratify a bill criminalising denial of the Armenian genocide has already provoked a stinging response from Turkey. ‘Permanent sanctions’ are now on the cards, and in a capital display of petty politics, the mayor of Ankara has proposed renaming Paris Street, where the French embassy is located, to ‘Algeria Street’.

The expected freezing of ties between Paris and Ankara will have major ramifications for Turkey-EU ties and for the situation in the Middle East. It will also be another nail in the coffin of the Turkey-Armenia thaw, since neither government will now feel in the mood to compromise on the ‘historical dimension’ which was one of the protocols restoring diplomatic ties. That said, the eulogies for the rapprochement were read a long time ago so this shouldn’t be overstated.

Low expectations for new Karabakh summit

After a seven-month gap, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia are set to meet again on 23-24 January to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Once again, they will do so under the auspices of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; once again, they will almost certainly fail to make any progress.

The last meeting between the two presidents was in June, in the Russian city of Kazan. There were high hopes in advance, with the OSCE Minsk Group (co-chaired by Russia, France and the US, tasked with mediating the peace process) warning that if the two sides failed to make progress on agreeing to the ‘Basic Principles’, the peace blueprint would be scrapped and a new one produced.

The Caspian in 2012 - Azerbaijan

From now until the end of the year, I will be running a series of posts offering some (guarded) predictions for 2012.

The Azerbaijani government has enjoyed a pretty good 2011, with solid economic growth, no changes on the political front and some small but symbolic foreign policy victories, winning the Eurovision Song Contest and (more importantly) securing a temporary seat on the UN Security Council for 2012 and 2013. Although relations with Iran have been testy, and Karabakh still smoulders, this is nothing new.

In energy, the scramble to choose a pipeline route to Europe for Azerbaijan’s gas may have energy analysts and companies in a spin, but whatever route is picked, Baku wins – it has fully emerged as a critical player in regional energy politics.

Karabakh snipers, a microcosm of the conflict

One of the signal failures of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process has been an inability to persuade the belligerents to withdraw snipers from the front line.

This relatively small step – which would leave untouched the vast numbers of infantry, heavy machine guns, mortars and artillery along the Line of Contact (LoC) – would cost little and would indicate at least some commitment to the peace process. But neither side has been willing to pull back snipers and, if anything, have boosted the capabilities of their sharpshooters.

Is Azerbaijan trying to change the Karabakh mediators?

Following up on an earlier post I wrote on the shifting dynamics of the Karabakh mediating process, comes an interesting comment from Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister (via Hurriyet):

“We observe the leading position of Russia in the Minsk Group [of the OSCE, tasked with mediating the negotiations] when the U.S. and France, the other partners of the trio, stay behind. The last nine meetings being led by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is a result of this development,” Azimov said. “We would like to see the U.S. and France become more active to create a balance.”

In addition Azimov criticised the absence of Turkey and - interestingly - Germany from the Minsk Group. The lack of a formal Turkish presence has long been a point of complaint for Azeri diplomats, which views the three co-chairs as too pro-Armenian for either geopolitical or domestic political reasons. That said, Ankara has exercised plenty of informal leverage over the years. 

Germany is an unexpected choice. Azerbaijan probably calculates that another major European power is needed, and that Germany's large Turkish diaspora would place it in the pro-Baku camp, as a counterweight to France, which is perceived to be pro-Yerevan due to its vocal Armenian diaspora.

The Deputy Foreign Minister also complained about the lack of a coherent NATO or EU strategy for the region, which has been a perennial issue - and one which is unlikely to change if the current process, dominated by the OSCE and driven by Russia, continues.

However calling for Turkey and Germany to be brought on board, encouraging NATO and the EU, and pushing for a more active role by the US and France, suggests that Baku is striving to alter the parameters of the existing peacemaking format. In particular it implies that Azerbaijan believes that the current arrangement is being overly influenced by Russia, which sent both Azerbaijan and Armenia a revised (and so far under wraps) peacemaking framework earlier this month. 

Grist to the mill is Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov's proposal to start drafting a peace agreement now, even before the existing disputes on the peace blueprint are settled. This will reinforce suspicions that Baku is seeking to circumvent the current process, avoiding excess pressure from Moscow which damages Azerbaijan's national interests. Which raises the question - just what has Russia been pushing  Baku to do?

Interpreting the Diplomatic Chatter on Karabakh

In advance of the Kazan summit in late June, when Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian met to discuss the deadlocked Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, there were rumblings among international mediators that this was the last chance. If the two sides failed to make headway on the current blueprint (the Basic Principles), the OSCE’s Minsk Group warned, they would go back to the drawing board and produce a new plan.

This announcement may have encouraged intransigence in Kazan, as both sides held out in the hope of getting a more beneficial blueprint – what Tom De Waal has referred to as ‘forum shopping’ – but more critically it put the OSCE mediators in a corner. They now have to follow through on their warning, and adjust or abandon the Basic Principles, or risk losing even more credibility in the eyes of cynical and wary officials in Baku and Yerevan.

Recent days have seen a lot of diplomatic chatter on the issue. On July 8^th the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over its own proposal on the conflict to Baku and Yerevan. To date no details have emerged whilst the two sides study the proposal. According to the Russian daily Izvestia, the ‘interim status’ for Karabakh during the settlement process was the stumbling block during Kazan, so the new Russian proposal may seek to address this without overhauling the Basic Principles entirely.

There seems to be a slight thawing of the two sides’ positions since the Russian proposal was delivered, notably Azerbaijan. On July 13 senior official Ali Hasanov told an Azerbaijani newspaper that the OSCE-backed principles for peace “should not be viewed as aimed at providing an unambiguous victory to Azerbaijan or Armenia in the issue” and that mutual concessions were inevitable.

On the same day, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov seemed positive, saying that Baku and Yerevan should “continue negotiations with no hysterics and work on rapprochement of positions.” However, he also insisted that the Basic Principles should be used and that progress should continue “without waiting for the next phase of negotiations on basic principles”. This suggests that Azerbaijan, at least, is happy with them as they are. President Aliyev echoed this, insisting that the original Basic Principles drawn up in 2009 were acceptable, although the unspecified ‘new’ version is not.

Whilst the details and the effects of Moscow’s new proposal are unclear, other parties have been drawn into the peace-making arena. Firstly, high-level US officials have been undertaking one of their perennial rounds of telephone diplomacy. This is welcome acknowledgement of the problem for Azerbaijani and Armenian officials, but is never sustained or forceful enough to change the situation.

Secondly, the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly may not be the most heavyweight organisation, but it has been taking a greater interest since Kazan under a new Special Representative, Joao Soares. On July 10 the PA adopted a resolution deploring growing tensions in Karabakh, and the Azerbaijani representative has been lobbying for greater involvement by the OSCE PA. This is probably just the usual empty statements, but it probably reflects growing frustration with the Minsk Group.

Finally the EU, long content to leave Karabakh to Russia and the OSCE, has also stepped up its calls for peace. Speaking on July 6 the EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton declared that the EU is “ready and committed to step up its efforts in support of the work of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs.” An EU official reiterated the message some days later, revealing that Brussels was talking to the OSCE about concrete ways to get involved and play a more active role.

And of course the Karabakh mediation underdog, Iran, has also weighed in, with a speech by Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on July 2. Like an enthusiastic but not particularly welcome neighbour, Tehran regularly calls for a peaceful settlement, offering its own assistance and warning darkly of ‘distant powers interfering’. This is rather undercut by a recent Wikileaks cable (I can only find it through third-party sources) in which Armenian officials bluntly stated that Tehran does not really want a resolution of the conflict.

So does any of this mean a sea change in the mediation format? Probably not for now, but it suggests that the standard approach - occasional meetings coordinated by the Minsk Group, repetition of the same blueprint – is losing its appeal.

A more nuanced approach may be in the works, with unilateral Russian mediation (which has always been a feature) supplemented by greater EU assistance and some additional ‘soft power’ influence from the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. A revised or adjusted settlement blueprint might also be forthcoming, although getting both Baku and Yerevan to agree on a new formula will be a Herculean task.

Karabakh peace talks fail, to nobody's surprise

Who would have expected it? The latest round of peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh, held in the Russian city of Kazan, have produced no results.

It's worth looking into the statements which emerge - or, more tellingly, do not emerge - after the collapse of these summits. They tend to give an admittedly fragmented and partial insight into why the meeting failed and who was responsible.

First off: the Minsk Group co-chairs, tasked with settling the conflict, have not released a boilerplate statement welcoming the progress made and calling for greater efforts, as they usually do. It's still very early and one will probably be forthcoming once the lower-level talks today (June 25th) have wrapped up. Nonetheless, the absence of a press release at the end of the main day of talks is telling. It suggests that either the co-chairs are confident some more positive steps can be eked out today, or that there is nothing worth releasing a statement about. Probably the latter.

Secondly, the joint release that was made - by Russia, hosting the summit, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan - was utterly anodyne. The only reference to the results is that "common understanding had been reached on a number of issues whose resolution will promote the conditions for approval of the Basic Principles." 

No details on these issues; no assessment of how far is still to go. Does this, for instance, mean any agreement on the perennial issue of withdrawing snipers from the frontline? On the wording of the preamble to the Basic Principles? Lacking anything of substance, we can only conclude that this statement means that nothing has changed.

So, who's to blame? Sifting the tea leaves of state-friendly media in both Baku and Yerevan suggests that in this instance Azerbaijan was responsible. The Armenian Foreign Ministry was quick off the mark, claiming that Baku "was not ready to accept the latest version of the basic principles" and wanted around a dozen changes. By contrast Azerbaijan's pro-government media has not flagged up the failed talks, and neither the Foreign Ministry nor the president's office have issued a statement. 

Of course, it's very early days. However, usually Azerbaijan and Armenia both scramble to put out statements blaming the other side as soon as they can - Baku's silence suggests that it was responsible for the breakdown of talks. But with the negotiating process so shrouded in secrecy and rhetoric, fully understanding what went on in Kazan is simply impossible.

‘Last chance’ on Karabakh peace plan in Kazan?

Seasoned Karabakh-watchers could be forgiven for thinking that the wave of speculation and anticipation about a forthcoming trilateral meeting in Kazan between the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian presidents is just grist to the mill. 

Before every major summit to resolve the twenty-year old conflict over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, local news agencies are filled with commentaries predicting a 'breakthrough'. Then the meeting is held, a terse handshake is photographed, 'significant progress' is recorded towards agreeing on the Basic Principles for settling the conflict... and then both sides resume their sniping at each other, both literal and metaphorical.