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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Book Fair Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Common states in Karabagh
By Graham Usher
Set against the dark green Caucasian mountains, the morning sun gives Stepanakert the glint of a town freshly scrubbed. Women in municipal overcoats and woollen leggings pick up litter in the town square. Everywhere roads are being laid and apartment blocks restored. On Stepanakert's main Azatamartikneri ("Partisans") Street, there are stores displaying fresh fruit and cheeses, alongside the odd restaurant and a new discotheque.
But the prosperity is a veneer. Stepanakert is the capital of Karabagh, a small region in the Caucasus covering 4,388 square kilometres and home to around 120,000 Armenians. It is also one of the most fiercely contested pieces of land on earth. Formerly an "autonomous region" within the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Karabagh declared its independence following Azerbaijan's secession from the Soviet Union in October 1991. Azerbaijan responded by annulling Karabagh's autonomous status.
Over the next three years, an utterly ruthless war raged for the enclave, between Karabagh, aided by Armenia from the west, and Azerbaijan, aided by Turkey, which blockaded both Armenia and Karabagh to its east. By the time a ceasefire was declared in May 1994, an estimated 20,000 people (including 4,000 civilians) had lost their lives and a colossal l,750,000 were displaced, as Armenians in Azerbaijan and Azeris in Armenia fled the other's territory after atrocities were inflicted on and by both sides.
Yet Karabagh preserved its independence. Even worse, as far as Baku was concerned, by the end of the war Karabagh and Armenian forces had occupied a further 12,000 square kilometres of territory in southwest Azerbaijan.
Every Armenian -- whether in Armenia or Karabagh -- knows Azerbaijan will not accept this status quo indefinitely. "Karabagh won the battle between 1991 and 1994," says Armenian analyst, Max Sivaslian. "It didn't win the war." The issue now is whether the status quo will now be changed via a renewal of hostilities, or through negotiations where the claims of both sides can be equally addressed.
For Armenians, the case of Karabagh is that of the right of a people to determine their own political status. An integral part of Armenia by history and demography for over 2,000 years, Karabagh was illegally ceded to Azerbaijan by the Russian Communist Party in 1921, partly to curb nationalist ambitions within Armenia and partly to reward Baku for the support it gave the Bolshevik Revolution in the civil war that created the Soviet Union. The force behind the decision was the Bolsheviks' then commissar of nationalities, one Joseph Stalin.
For Azerbaijan -- whatever the cause of the dispute -- Karabagh was an integral part of its territory for over 70 years. If the Armenians can claim the right of self-determination, Azarbaijan can claim the right to the territorial integrity of its internationally recognised borders. Thus the question is: Is there any potential settlement that can reconcile these two rights ?
An old man sitting in a graveyard facing the mountains remembers his son, one of Armenia's beloved martyrs. An estimated 20,000 people including 4,000 civilians had lost their lives and a colossal 1,750,000 were displaced
photo: Ara Keuhnelian
Armenian politicians hope there may be. At a Council of Europe Commission meeting in Paris on 16 December, an Armenian parliamentary delegation submitted the formula of a "common state" as a way out of the impasse.
Foreign Minister of the self-declared Karabagh Republic Naira Melkoumian explains the idea. "We 2100want to create on the former territory of Soviet Azerbaijan a common state in which relations between Karabagh and Baku are horizontal, rather than subordinate," she says. "The world need not recognise Karabagh as a state. But Azerbaijan must recognise our right to determine our own laws, demography and, above all, our own defence."
As for the Azeri territories Karabagh now occupies, these can be returned, except for those -- such as the 15-kilometre long Lachin corridor -- that connect the enclave to Armenia proper. "Lachin is our life," says Melkoumian. "To give up Lachin is to give up Karabagh." Politicians from Armenia are even more accommodating. Apart from the issue of the security of the Karabaghi people, says Anahit Mirzoyan, an aide to Armenia's President Robert Kocharian, "everything is negotiable."
Since the ceasefire, Azerbaijan has shown little interest in negotiations of whatever stripe. It has already rejected the "common state" idea and refuses to attend forums like the Council of Europe on the grounds that Karabagh is "not a party to the conflict." Sitting on potentially vast energy reserves in the Caspian, Azerbaijan prefers to wait until the oil comes on stream. When it does -- Armenians fear -- the political price Baku will demand is diplomatic support for the return of Karabagh to Azerbaijan on the basis of its 1991 borders.
It is a trade-off few Armenians are prepared to accept. "We will not be ruled again by Baku. That period is over -- forget it," says one Stepanakert resident. And it is this sense that renewed conflict is both imminent and inevitable that explains the pessimism with which most Karabaghis view the myriad building sites and "rehabilitations" that are sprouting up around them.
The road out of Stepanakert is freshly tarmacked. It winds through the gorges of the Karabagh mountains, passes beside the town of Lachin and then descends into Armenia. The entire route is technically within Azerbaijan, though no Azeri communities have lived there since the war and a new Armenian church has been built at Lachin. The road reportedly cost $20,000 per kilometre.
"That's a lot of money in Armenia," says Max Sivaslian. In a war zone like Karabagh who would risk such an investment ? It depends, he says, on "whether the road is intended to keep the Karabagh in Armenia, or to take the Armenians out of the Karabagh."
