According to some accounts, the uneasy truce barely lasted an hour. Everyone maintained a maximal position, hoping to get everything without having to make compromises.”. This past weekend, the United States brokered a cease-fire between warring neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both sides have been using drones and powerful, long-range rocket artillery, they say. The capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, has been repeatedly bombarded. You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. “The conflict may soon reach an irreversible point where it will not stop without a dramatic expansion of fighting and increased loss of life,” wrote Carey Cavanaugh, a professor at the University of Kentucky who helped lead internationally mediated negotiations between the sides in 2001. The recent conflict has killed more than 750 Armenian soldiers and, according to the United Nations, more than 50 civilians; Azerbaijan has not revealed its military casualties. Signatories of the Azeri letter say the refugee problem needs to be solved, and people must be returned to their homes. subscription yet. log out. At least one Azeri peace activist has been arrested for making “anti-war statements online.”. That is an extremely unpopular position in Azerbaijan. “In the midst of a war it’s very hard to be objective,” he says. The remains of a home in the Nagorno-Karabakh region on Oct. 8 after shelling. The Armenians see the Azerbaijani offensive now as an existential threat to the people of Karabakh. That’s particularly true of ethnic and religious conflicts like this. Stay informed about the latest scientific discoveries & breakthroughs. “I know it’s difficult for them to understand Azerbaijan is a much stronger country.”. Isolation and lack of communication generates certain feelings, here and there.”. MOSCOW — A simmering, decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh erupted in late September into the worst fighting the area had seen since a vicious ethnic war in the 1990s. Through the fog of war, reports suggest Azerbaijani forces may be about to seize a rugged, strategic land corridor that connects Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. But the tensions go back further, to at least World War I, during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, when Armenians were slaughtered and expelled from Turkey in what many now consider a genocide. The 1994 cease-fire, always meant to be temporary, left about 600,000 Azerbaijanis — who had fled Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts captured by the Armenians — stranded away from their homes. An update on major political events, candidates, and parties twice a week. It has always been possible to solve this conflict humanely.”. Instead, the conflict in the Caucasus rages on, marking the worst period of hostilities in the region in almost three decades. Though marginalized – at least one Azeri signatory is now in prison for his anti-war stand – they make a strong case to their respective societies that this war is in the interests of neither population, should have been prevented by diplomacy decades ago, and that a reasonable peace settlement would open the door to economic prosperity and greater democracy in both countries. We want to hear from you. Azerbaijani soldiers at a makeshift military base in the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992. Travel restrictions related to the coronavirus prevented traditional shuttle diplomacy over the summer, said Olesya Vartanyan, a senior Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group. But someone needs to say that this war is a lie that serves the interests of only a few, such as arms dealers and imperialists.”, Mr. Ibrahim, who was reportedly arrested for making “anti-war statements online” shortly after his email exchange with the Monitor, says that “this war has already claimed the lives of many young people, who might not have gone to die if they hadn’t been fed by the state with incessant militaristic and nationalist propaganda. “These are totalitarian tendencies.”. In this photograph from the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, armored vehicles of the Turkish and Azerbaijani armies took part in military exercise in Baku. “It was considered frozen. “Our position, of course, has prompted a lot of people to label us as traitors. If you have questions about your account, please unless you renew or At that time, the ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan declared independence and was nearly crushed in the ensuing war before its fighters captured areas of Azerbaijan in a series of victories leading up to a cease-fire in 1994. Small and apparently unconnected groups in Armenia and Azerbaijan have signed open letters that call for peace. Thousands of soldiers have reportedly died on both sides. “As this conflict continues to escalate, Armenian, Armenian-backed and Azerbaijani forces have all been guilty of using of banned weapons that have endangered the lives of civilians caught in the middle.”. A legacy of Soviet mapmaking, the region was bitterly fought over after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For the antagonists in Nagorno-Karabakh, “this is a perfect time” to start a war, she said. Armenian officials have accused Azerbaijan of hitting civilian sites in its steady bombardment of Armenian positions in the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. At least, they say, that would avoid a wider war that might draw in Turkey and Russia. Azerbaijani Defense Ministry/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images, A local fight threatens to draw in regional powers, Russian-brokered cease-fire a week earlier, A cease-fire brokered in Moscow on Oct. 10. When Armenia killed a general and other officers in Azerbaijan’s Army in a missile strike during a border skirmish in July, Turkey immediately offered to help prepare a response, a retired Turkish general, Ismail Hakki Pekin, has said. “These advances are temporary,” he said. Russia losing its influence? Ms. Ayvazyan, the peace activist, says Armenian society missed a major opportunity by failing to deal with the war issue during its euphoric democratic revolution two years ago. Thank you for contacting The Christian Science Monitor. Should we come back to this topic? In July and August, it sent troops and equipment to Azerbaijan for military exercises. The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. While Azeris and Armenians have broadly supported the fighting over the contested region, there are nascent peace movements among both peoples. All attempts by international negotiators to frame a settlement – in which Armenia would return the occupied Azeri territories in exchange for peace, the return of refugees to their homes, and negotiations about an acceptable status for Nagorno-Karabakh – have foundered while both sides prepared for renewed war. “They say truth is the first casualty in war, and that has certainly happened here,” says Giyas Ibrahim, one of the signatories of the Azeri letter. At the same time, it is fighting proxy wars against Moscow in Syria and Libya. ... “Before the war people felt apathy towards the authorities and the political system, but now they solidarize with the authorities and support all their measures. My wife and I have operated a joint Azeri-Armenian peace website for years, in an effort to get a conversation going among Azeris about this. Why Russian aid for Lukashenko doesn’t end Belarus crisis, With or without Lukashenko, ‘Belarus will never be the same again’. “It’s either black or white. After satellite images revealed F-16s parked on the apron of an Azerbaijani airfield, Azerbaijan’s president conceded that Turkish planes were in his country but said they had not flown in combat. Azerbaijan now wants to see an Armenian withdrawal to internationally recognized borders, as laid out by earlier U.N. Security Council resolutions and agreements that were never implemented. “People of my age remember that Azeris and Armenians once lived together as neighbors,” says Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the independent Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. “Back in 2006, French, Russian, and U.S. mediators drafted a plan to thread the needle of the conflict, finesse the sovereignty dispute, and restore the rights of as many Armenians and Azerbaijanis as possible. Neither side appears willing to compromise, with rhetoric having grown harsher in recent months. or call us at 1-617-450-2300. “But doing that would require them to conclude that resolving their conflict is more in their common interest than persisting with military force or allowing others to resolve it for them.”, So far, little mutual understanding appears on show. Azerbaijan accused Armenia of firing powerful rockets at the country’s second largest city, Ganja, and at a hydroelectric station, suggesting an effort to destroy civilian infrastructure. The conflict has its origins in the early 20th century, though the present conflict began in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded that Karabakh be transferred from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? And the attacks have spread far from the front lines. “Our position, of course, has prompted a lot of people to label us as traitors.
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