Karabakh breakthrough or Karabakh deadlock
The Armenian side also does not sit "idly", accusing Baku of 250 - including mortar shells - just last week. In total, according to estimates of the Transcaucasian media, since the end of the so-called. "Four-day war" in the conflict zone killed 81 people.
At the moment, the situation looks deadlocked.
Meanwhile, the Armenian radical party Sasna Tsrer, marked in July 2016 by attacking the police station and taking hostages, began collecting signatures on the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia - and at the same time speaks sharply against the Russian Federation.
According to the leaders of the party, their main concern is the stagnation of the situation along the lines of Abkhazia.
- considers the leader of the party Zhirayr Sefilyan.
Back in January, the new Armenian government announced new negotiations. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in Armenia on the wave of protest speeches, announced the implementation of a new policy in this direction.
It is worth noting that Pashinyan dismissed the so-called power station for many years. "The Karabakh clan". During the war, Serzh Sargsyan (in different years, the Prime Minister and the President of Armenia) was the chairman of the NKR Self-Defense Forces Committee, Robert Kocharian - another former President of Armenia - headed the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in 90's. “The Karabakh clan” in a certain period virtually monopolized the economic and political power in the country, and echo of this will be heard in any statement of Nikol Pashinyan.
Pashinyan has to sit on two chairs. On the one hand, he came to power as an opposition liberal politician who threw off a seemingly unshakable lump of security and military officials. On the other hand, the Karabakh agenda remains one of the most pressing issues in Armenia - despite the high level of corruption (according to international estimates).
The new prime minister had to maneuver. And, like, by announcing peace talks and setting a new vector for the Karabakh policy, he practically immediately identified several completely unacceptable for Azerbaijan - even at the level of the initiative - decisions.
To begin with, Pashinyan immediately stressed that "the formula of Levon Ter-Petrosyan" territories in exchange for peace "cannot even be discussed." That is, in fact, it seems that having made a peaceful gesture towards, suddenly changed direction and crossed out one of the main demands of Azerbaijan.
The next step of Pashinyan was the requirement to make Stepanakert one of the official participants in the peace process - something that Baku is not ready for in principle. Indeed, recognition of the power of Nagorno-Karabakh is, in fact, recognition of the sovereignty of these territories.
Political analyst and historian Oleg Kuznetsov in an interview with the Azerbaijani edition of Day.az summarized the requirements of Baku in the following way:
1) the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the return of the occupied territories under its jurisdiction;
2) guarantees and the maintenance of the special status of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh as potential citizens of Azerbaijan, and also as an optional item of this issue - compensation to those Karabakh Armenians who want to leave Karabakh in the event of its peaceful return to Azerbaijan (when solving the issue militarily, You see, there will be no talk about these compensations in principle).
However, all actions of Pashinyan can be regarded as part of public policy. Similar games in their homeland are led by Ilham Aliyev, however, as an authoritarian ruler who has a little more freedom. 11 January, publicly stating at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan:
- at the same time, in the framework of negotiations on the fate of Karabakh, he is engaged in a dialogue on possible economic cooperation with Armenia.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict costs both parties dearly, both financially and politically. It would seem that it is necessary to force the situation and go on a political and diplomatic breakthrough. But the parties themselves are stumped and unable to maneuver, which makes Azerbaijan and Armenia too dependent on regional allies, and no one in the South Caucasus loves this. This is to a large extent related to the role of Russia.
There are some complaints that we have forgotten, but not forgotten by Armenia, against Vladimir Lenin, who transferred part of the Armenian lands to Turkey. And actually given to 4 aircraft, I can hardly compensate the Armenians for the impossibility of being a little more independent in their own foreign policy. All this concerns a more friendly and traditionally allied Armenia.
Pashinyan diligently works with the so-called "Karabakh clan" in order to have free hands to achieve their own goals. When the entire fate of a country turns out to be hostage to a single territorial issue, either its non-trivial decision or political will becomes a matter of principle. Otherwise, any questions will be tied to the needs of one group of the population.
In order not to lose the “people's love” publicly, the head of the Armenian government has to be tougher than the “hawks” from among the former leaders of the republic. But at the same time, having released Kocharyan, he removed from office the defense minister of the self-proclaimed republic Levon Mnatsakanyan: his commander of the 5 army Karen Abrahamyan, a professional soldier of the Armenian armed forces, who has nothing to do with Karabakh.
Fundamentally impossible to resolve the situation often only seem so. A good example is the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The seemingly impossible peace was concluded literally two years after the start of negotiations, and it still holds.
The cruel truth of real life is that peace is almost always achieved through war. In order for the signatures to be written down in ink on paper, securing the peaceful border of the two countries, we had to make painful concessions and bury the thousands who died.
In the Doomsday War (or, as the Egyptians call it, October), which began and ended in the autumn of the 1973 year, both sides declared victory. And in 1979, Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, shook hands.
It can be seen that something similar can wait for Armenia and Azerbaijan. The whole question is that the heads of Armenia and Azerbaijan often shake hands, including at CIS summits. The only question is the number of wars that the parties will have to go through. Or is peaceful resolution at the round table still possible? To be a Karabakh breakthrough or remain a Karabakh deadlock?
- Evgeny Kamenetsky
- Armenian Armed Forces Press Service, Azerbaijani Armed Forces Press Service
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