Brief synopsis of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict
© Embassy of the Republic of Armenia to the United States, August 2003
Introduction
Nagorno Karabakh, or Artsakh, is a historically Armenian territory which, over the past two thousand years, has formed part of Armenia, Aghvank (Caucasian Albania), Persia, and the Russian Empire. Its Armenian roots reach back to first millennium B.C.E. The term Nagorno-Karabakh, the most common international designation for the region, has a curious pedigree: Nagorno is an inflected Russian adjective for ‘mountainous’ and Karabakh is a Farsi/Turkic word meaning ‘black garden.’ The Armenian name for the region is Artsakh. The term Nagorno-Karabakh made its first appearance in 1923, when the Soviet Government, having earlier placed the region in Soviet Azerbaijan, institutionalized the de-facto existing Armenian autonomy there, calling it the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous District. Its current official name is the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh (Artsakh).
Historical Background of the Conflict
Ancient Times
Artsakh was a geographic region of historical Armenia (Armenia Maior in the
works of Ptolemy and Pliny). After the Kingdom of Armenia was divided in 387
C.E. between the Persian and Eastern Roman Empires, the region of Artsakh was
incorporated into Persia but continued to be populated by Armenians and ruled
by local Armenian feudal lords with minimal interference from the central Persian
government. This pattern continued even as control of Artsakh intermittently
passed to Caucasian Albania and new invaders that came to the region, including
Arabs, Seljuks, and Turkic elements.
Armenia, including Artsakh, was independent again from 9th to 11th centuries, but a succession of foreign invasions and conquests by Seljuks, Mongol, Turkmen, and Turks ransacked Armenia and introduced new ethnic elements to the region. While Greater Armenia was ruled by a hodge-podge of Muslim and local Armenian rulers, the distinct Armenian and Christian character of the Artsakh region was further reinforced during the late Middle Ages, when the Armenian Church began to play administrative and legal role in the Armenian-populated regions. Armenia and northern Iran were devastated by continuing warfare between the Ottoman and the Persian Empires in the 16th –18th centuries, but Artsakh was relatively removed from the main areas of fighting and appears to have suffered less than other parts of Armenia. Moreover, whereas by the 18th century nomadic rulers and clans of Turkic, Kurdish, or Persian origin ruled over most Armenian-populated lands in Asia Minor and the Caucasus, Karabakh was one of the few Armenian regions where local Armenian princely families (or Meliks) ruled over their Armenian subjects while acknowledging the overlordship of the Persian Shah.
There is ample historical information pointing to the continuing Armenian presence in Artsakh, such as references in the works of Armenian and foreign historians, archeological evidence, and finally and visibly, the many Armenian monasteries, churches, and monuments dating from early medieval to modern period in that region.
18th – 20th Centuries: From Persian Shah’s
subjects to Soviet Citizens
The Ottoman-Persian conflicts subsided by mid-eighteenth century as both countries
were strained by overextension and warfare. Armenia and the rest of the Caucasus
were divided between the two Empires. During the 18th century, the growing Russian
Empire began to wrestle control of the Caucasus from these two countries, securing
control of Georgia by 1801, of Azerbaijan and Karabakh in 1813, and of all of
Eastern Armenia in 1828.
Under the terms of the Russian-Persian Treaty, concluded at Gulistan in 1813, Karabakh was transferred from Persian to Russian dominion. For the first time since the 11th century, the Armenian-populated lands in South Caucasus were ruled by an Orthodox Christian power. Despite the authoritarian and despotic character of the Tsarist rule, Armenian farmers in Karabakh and elsewhere were better off than under the Turkish and Persian rule as the unfair religious levies and tithes targeting the Christian population had been abolished. The nineteenth century, therefore, was a period of economic, cultural, and population growth in Karabakh. The city of Shushi flourished as a major center of Armenian cultural and economic life, with many schools, churches, and cultural organizations. Beginning in 1860’s, many thousands of Armenians from Karabakh emigrated to nearby province of Baku to be employed in the nascent oil industry there. This process intensified by the turn of the twentieth century as industrialization in the Caucasus began.
The growing incompetence and inability of the Russian Tsarist autocracy to address the numerous economic and political ills of the Russian Empire, coupled with external challenges, exacerbated the social tensions created during the industrialization process. In the Caucasus, the social tensions resulted in ethnic and religious confrontation, not without participation and encouragement of the Tsarist secret police that hoped to direct the popular discontent into pogroms and fighting targeting the Armenian workers, deemed as more susceptible to the Socialist propaganda. While a revolution raged through Russia in 1905, ethnic strife broke out in Baku between the Armenian and Muslim workers. Despite the incidents of 1905-1906, the Karabakh region remained largely undisturbed until the Russian revolution of 1917.
After the 1917 Russian revolutions and the collapse of the Tsarist rule, there emerged in 1918 the briefly independent Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Republic of Azerbaijan was the first Azeri state in history, and the dispute between the Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijan, on whose side the Ottoman Turkish army intervened, dates from this period. In July 1918, the First Armenian Assembly of Karabakh declared the region a self-governed territory and established a National Council and government. At the urging of the British military authorities (which under the terms of the 1918 First World War Armistice controlled the south Caucasus), in August 1919 the Karabakh National Council entered into a provisional treaty arrangement with the Azerbaijani government in order to avoid a military conflict with a superior adversary. This, however, did not prevent Baku’s continued violation of the terms of the treaty, which culminated in March 1920 with a massacre of the Armenians in Karabakh’s former administrative center, Shushi; the massacre was organized by the Government of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population of the city was completely annihilated, and Shushi thus remained a predominantly Azeri-populated city until 1990’s. Consequently, the Ninth Karabakh Assembly nullified the treaty in whole and pronounced union with Armenia.
The massacre in Shushi threatened to widen the scope of the genocide carried out against the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey starting on 1915. Aided and abetted by the Turkish army elements, Azerbaijani forces had already committed a series of atrocities against the Armenians in Baku and elsewhere in 1918. The ethnic and military conflicts exhausted the south Caucasus republics, and exposed them to the intervention of the Russian Red Army. In April 1920, the Republic of Azerbaijan ceased to exist, becoming a Soviet Socialist republic. In November 1920, a similar fate befell the young Republic of Armenia. The status of Karabakh seemed to be finally resolved when the Soviet Government of Azerbaijan recognized Nagorno Karabakh as a part of Armenia, and in June 1921 the government of Soviet Armenia formally incorporated Karabakh into Armenia.
1921-1988: Victim of Stalinism
However, the Karabakh conflict was only in the making with the establishment of Communist regime in the Caucasus. Within the Soviet Union, the nature of the Karabakh conflict was transformed from an ethnic conflict to an intra-empire one. On July 5, 1921, the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party adopted a political decision to attach the Armenian-populated Karabakh to Soviet Azerbaijan, thus laying the foundation for the Stalinist practice of gerrymandering in South Caucasus, a relatively small region with five “autonomies” that were established in the territories of Georgia and Azerbaijan during the 1921-1925 period. The fuzzy administrative divisions served as a means for realization of Joseph Stalin’s “nationalities policy” which sought to divide and conquer by pitting the nationalities against each other.
On July 7, 1923, Soviet Azerbaijan’s Revolutionary Committee
resolved to dismember Karabakh and create on part of its territory the Autonomous
District of Nagorno (Mountainous) Karabakh, thus giving birth to the current
borders of Nagorno-Karabakh. From 1924 to 1929, on the territory of the present-day
districts of Lachin and Kelbajar, an uncertain entity called “Red Kurdistan”
was established, with the intent of effectively separating Nagorno Karabakh
from Armenia. In 1930, the Kurdish autonomous area was abolished but the artificial
buffer between Armenia and Karabakh was retained. Stalin’s 1936 Constitution
sealed this territorial arrangement.
During the seven decades of the existence of the Soviet Union, the government
of Soviet Azerbaijan conducted a systematic policy of removal of Karabakh Armenians
from their historic homeland. Soviet statistics show that from 1923 to 1979
the Armenian population of Karabakh was reduced from 150,000 to 120,000, while
the influx of new settlers increased the Azeri population five-fold from 7,500
in 1923 to 38,000 in 1979. This radical change in Karabakh’s ethno-demographic
composition has exacerbated decades of conflict between Azerbaijan and the Armenians
of Karabakh.
As the Soviet Government began to release its grip of power on the constituent parts of the Soviet Union, the benign neglect of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians began to change into an open discrimination encouraged by Baku. The forced change in the demographics of the Nagorno-Karabakh escalated in 1960’s and 1970’s when a more nationalist-minded leader, Heydar Aliyev, took helms of power in Soviet Azerbaijan. Aliyev – who rose to become Politburo member and later President of Azerbaijan – would boast in August 2002, during a meeting with Azeri chief editors, that he had begun to actively settle Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1970’s so as to change the ethnic composition of the region.
While the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh continued to harbor hopes for reuniting with Armenia, such activities in the Soviet Union were invariably deemed as counter-government and anti-Communist propaganda, and severely repressed. Despite repeated appeals to Moscow to rectify the political status of Nagorno Karabakh, the matter remained unresolved until the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev announced the new policy of perestroika.
1988 – 1991: Achieving self-determination
On February 20, 1988, a session of the 20th convocation of District Council
(elected local legislature) of the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous District adopted
a resolution seeking transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh from Soviet Azerbaijan to
Armenia. The Assembly simultaneously appealed to the USSR’s Supreme Soviet
for endorsing this decision. The government of Soviet Azerbaijan attempted to
resolve the problem by pulling the power levers both in Nagorno Karabakh proper
and upon Armenians of Karabakh origin who were then living in Azerbaijan. Consequently,
anti-Armenian pogroms broke out in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait in February
1988, resulting in deaths of several dozens Armenian residents. More than 100,000
Armenians were deported from the capital of Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan
in 1988 alone.
The response of the central Soviet authorities ranged from incredulity to rejection of the Armenians’ right for self-determination. Very little was known about the nature of the Karabakh conflict, and the Moscow authorities were afraid to change the basics of the Soviet regime opting instead to preserve the status quo. The emissaries sent from Moscow urged the parties to the conflict to settle amicably on the basis of “Communist internationalism.” Soon, however, Moscow was forced to take sides. On June 13, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijani SSR denied the application of Karabakh District Council, while on June 15, Armenia’s Supreme Soviet approved Karabakh’s proposal and appealed to the Soviet government to resolve the matter. On July 18, 1988, the USSR Supreme Soviet invoked Article 78 of the Soviet Constitution that prohibited any territorial changes to a Union republic without its consent, and decided to leave Nagorno Karabakh as part of Soviet Azerbaijan. At the same time, it was acknowledged that Nagorno-Karabakh suffered from neglect and discrimination, and the Soviet legislature voted to allocate funds for development of the region.
The situation continued to deteriorate, as the Soviet Government of Azerbaijan resolved to tighten its control over Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian population continued to press for self-determination. Following the deportations of the Armenian population from Azerbaijan, the Soviet Government organized swaps of the Armenian and Azerbaijani populations in two republics, which by 1990 left only 50,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan, mostly in Baku (the Armenians remaining in Baku were destined to live through the horror of another massacre in January 1990). All in all, almost 350,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan were forced to become refugees, while over 100,000 mostly rural Azeris from Armenia were resettled in major cities of Azerbaijan.
Recognizing that the present situation was untenable, on January 20, 1989, the Soviet Supreme Soviet placed Nagorno Karabakh under direct control of the central government, establishing a special authority headed by a high-level official of the Communist Party, Arkadi Volsky. Since by the same decision the elected legislature of Nagorno-Karabakh was dissolved, the Armenian population formed National Council to formally represent Karabakh.
Beginning in 1988, the events in Nagorno Karabakh exposed the rotten structure of the Soviet Union which for seventy years had suppressed numerous domestic inconsistencies and conflicts. The policy of glasnost and perestroika unleashed the grievances and injustices accumulated during the seventy years of Soviet power, while the national revolutions in Eastern Europe showed that the Communist regime could be successfully replaced. In 1989, it became obvious that at least some of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union – the Baltic States, Georgia, and Armenia – would soon push for national independence. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, continued to be ruled by a pro-Moscow Communist regime.
Azerbaijan successfully lobbied the central government to abolish its special commission in Nagorno-Karabakh, which gave Moscow a pretext to punish Armenia for its pro-independence drive. On November 28, 1989, the Volsky Commission was liquidated and by another decision, on January 15, 1990, Nagorno-Karabakh was placed under Soviet Azerbaijan’s “Republic Organizational Committee.” The stated purpose of this body was to reestablish the erstwhile local “soviets” of Nagorno Karabakh. In realty, though, it was a scheme to do away with Karabakh’s autonomy, aiming to resolve the issue by ridding Karabakh of its Armenian majority, while taking measures to artificially increase the size of the Azerbaijani community in Nagorno Karabakh and alter the territory’s demographic makeup. A great number of residencies were built in Karabakh for Azeris who had left Armenia between 1988 and 1990.
As a consequence of this intentional alteration of the demographic balance combined with concerted military actions by the Azeri special police force and the Soviet Army detachments located in Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan placed more than half of Nagorno Karabakh’s territory under military occupation. Moreover, Shushi, Lachin, and other strategic settlements in and around Karabakh were transformed into Azerbaijani military outposts, seriously jeopardizing the existence of the isolated Armenian enclave. The Armenian-populated Shahumian region, adjacent to Nagorno Karabakh from the north but not formally part of the autonomy, was raided by the Azeri special police and Soviet troops to purge it of its Armenian residents.
In the summer of 1991, the Soviet Union was living its last days. The hard-line elements in the Soviet Army, KGB, and the Communist Party leadership staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in Moscow on August 19-21 to prevent the imminent dissolution of the Soviet Union. The coup leaders were eagerly supported by the Government of Azerbaijan and its leader, President Mutalibov. The coup failed miserably, and by the end of August, the Soviet Union government began to collapse rapidly and irreversibly.
Reversing its earlier dogged devotion to preservation of the Soviet Union, Soviet Azerbaijan’s Supreme Soviet declared Azerbaijan independent on August 30 and adopted “Declaration on Re-Establishment of the National Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic.” In turn, Nagorno Karabakh declared its independence on September 2, in compliance with international and domestic law, through the adoption of the “Declaration of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh” by the local legislative councils of Nagorno Karabakh and the bordering Armenian-populated Shahumian district. The only difference was that, for Karabakh, independence was declared not from the Soviet Union but from Soviet Azerbaijan. (This act fully complied with existing law. Indeed, under the 1990 Soviet law “On the Procedures for a Union Republic to Leave the USSR,” the secession of a Soviet republic from the body of the USSR allowed an autonomous district in the same republic’s territory to also trigger its own process of independence.) Thus, Nagorno Karabakh has never been part of the independent Azerbaijan Republic.
On October 18, 1991, the Azerbaijani Republic confirmed its independence by adoption of a “Constitutional Act” on national independence, and on November 23 of the same year annulled Karabakh’s autonomy. On December 10, Nagorno-Karabakh held its own referendum on independence in the presence of international observers and media representatives. The vote overwhelmingly approved Karabakh’s sovereignty, with 82.2 percent of Karabakh’s registered voters participating in the referendum and 99.89 percent of those casting ballots supporting its independence from Azerbaijan.
Thus, the Armenian people of Artsakh marked an important milestone in its efforts to achieve self-determination. The situation in the region has changed dramatically in three years, and the Soviet Union had been confined to the dustbin of history. Artsakh and Armenia now faced the challenge of independence while the Nagorno Karabakh conflict slowly became an international issue.
1991 – onwards: Independence, Military Conflict, and International Mediation Efforts
Military hostilities in Karabakh
As part of its path to full sovereignty, the newly independent Nagorno Karabakh Republic created legitimate government institutions. On December 28, 1991, elections took place for its parliament, and on January 6, 1992, the newly convened parliament of Karabakh adopted its Declaration of Independence on the basis of the referendum results. On September 20, 1992, the body petitioned the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and individual countries for recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic. In December 1994, Parliament adopted a resolution establishing the position of president of the republic.
The path towards self-determination, however, was not an easy one. Azerbaijan has resolved to destroy and expel the Artsakh Armenians by military force from early days of its independence. The military and police outposts established in Artsakh by Azeri forces in 1990 – 1991 were used to shell, bomb, and decimate the Armenian population in Stepanakert and other major cities of Karabakh. The independent state entity formed on the territory of Nagorno Karabakh has demonstrated its capacity to defend its own national, security, and economic interests. The Karabakh Army of Defense, having been formed against the backdrop of joint Soviet and Azerbaijani military operations, successfully breached Azerbaijan’s blockade in May 1992 by opening the Lachin Corridor to Armenia and the outside world.
Having benefited from the massive transfer of arms and ammunition from the former Soviet Army depots located in Azerbaijan in June 1992, the Azeri military units launched a military operation against Artsakh, while simultaneously shelling Armenian border regions alongside the state frontier in an attempt to draw the Republic of Armenia into the conflict. The Azeri military attacks were conducted with disregard for the safety of the civilian population and norms of warfare. Subsequently, in response to Azerbaijan’s incessant military strikes against civilian population centers and its occupation of northern Karabakh, in 1993 the Karabakh armed forces took control of Kelbajar, Agdam, and other Azerbaijani districts surrounding Artsakh. In so doing, it safeguarded Karabakh’s territory from external aggression and prevented a tragic repetition of history. This clearly was a case of reactive self-defense; the Armenians of Artsakh have never laid claim to the territories outside Mountainous Karabakh proper. The Azerbaijani districts under the control of Nagorno Karabakh are integral to the republic’s external security and their status will be determined during the final resolution of the conflict. It should also be noted that Azerbaijan controls a number of territories belonging to Nagorno Karabakh, including the Shahumian district (in the north) and some parts of Martakert district (northeast).
Better organization, military expertise, and superior morale of the Armenian forces of Artsakh were instrumental in prevailing over a much larger Azeri military. The incompatibility of two goals of subjugating the Armenians of Karabakh and transitioning Azerbaijan from Soviet to nominally democratic form of government proved too much of a strain on the nascent Azeri state, which went through 5 presidents in 2 years. The former Soviet-era leader of Azerbaijan, KGB General Heydar Aliyev returned to power in June 1993, and promptly authorized a major offensive against the Armenian forces in Artsakh in December 1993. Much like in summer 1992, this offensive was repulsed, and soon the Azeri military defenses were about to collapse on all fronts. Azerbaijan sued for peace in May 1994, and a protocol for permanent cease-fire was signed by the representatives of the Defense Ministries of Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. A more permanent framework protocol was signed by representatives of three parties to the conflict on July 27, 1994, establishing rules of procedure for maintaining the cease-fire regime. Despite the absence of any permanent international monitoring mechanism, the cease-fire regime held since 1994 as the line of contact is the result of and reflects the military-political equilibrium established in the region.
Lessons of the Conflict and Arstakh’s Position
Although a detailed accounting of human and material losses in this conflict
is yet to be drawn, the Armenian population of Artsakh and Armenia has paid
dearly for their freedom, while the people of Azerbaijan had to shoulder the
burden of the inability of their leaders to respect the self-determination right
of Karabakh Armenians. Thousands of soldiers and civilians perished on both
sides, hundreds of thousands of refugees had been relocated in Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Karabakh, and the economy suffered enormously. Most settlements in Karabakh
were partially or fully destroyed, and the people of Artsakh had to rebuild
their land from scratch. In this, they succeeded with major help from Armenia
and Armenian Diaspora communities, as houses have been rebuilt, factories and
farms have been put back into operation, and a new generation of Artsakhi children
has grown up without fear of foreign domination. The legacy of persecution and
neglect perpetrated by Azerbaijan during the Soviet regime, and the suffering
and human losses sustained in repulsing the Azeri military aggression are important
factors to consider in finding a durable settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict.
It is essential to understand the position of Nagorno Karabakh on this conflict. Stepanakert holds that any potential resolution that does not foresee the continued lawful existence and right of self-determination of Nagorno Karabakh Armenians is unacceptable. Stepanakert also maintains that it will not accept the transfer of the Shushi and Lachin districts to Azerbaijani control. Its position is that Shushi is an indivisible part of Karabakh. The issue, therefore, may be productively broached only in the context of refugee problems. For its part, Lachin is a humanitarian corridor opened by the Karabakh army, and it constitutes the new republic’s sole access to the outside world. As such, the question of the Lachin Corridor remains a critical component of a settlement.
Stepanakert further maintains the position that any modification of the conflict line as a result of the transfer of territories in either direction depends on international guarantees for the non-resumption of military operations. Nagorno Karabakh sees such a guarantee in the deployment of a multinational buffer force along the line of contact. As the result of arrangements mediated by the Minsk Group, in the summer of 1993 the parties to the conflict came to an agreement in principle on the deployment of CSCE peacekeepers in the conflict zone. The budget of the peacekeeping force was determined, and an expert group charged with preparing conditions for deployment was identified. A similar mandate had previously been approved for CSCE monitors.
The real crux of the negotiations is the ultimate political status of Nagorno Karabakh. While Azerbaijan objects to everything except the undefined “broad autonomy,” Stepanakert’s formula rules out any proposed solution by which Karabakh’s relationship with Azerbaijan is to be “vertical,” that is to say, subjecting it to direct Azerbaijani jurisdiction. Moreover, Karabakh insists on direct access to Armenia and the world as part of its status. In short, Karabakh will not accept any form of return to its past as an enclave as the constitutional system that existed before 1988 can find no basis in today’s political reality. In such circumstances, the status quo ante bellum cannot apply to the case of Nagorno Karabakh. From this perspective, as well as from that of Karabakh’s security, all suggestions to restore the prewar and especially the pre-1988 situation are unrealistic and unacceptable. Logic dictates that any solution must reflect the existing political realities.
The Nagorno Karabakh Republic has maintained an independent existence since 1991. It possesses all the essential attributes and institutions of statehood. Indeed, Karabakh’s de facto statehood satisfies the requirements of conventional and customary international law for de jure recognition. It is a definite territory with a permanent population that has elected a government, effectively representing it at home and abroad.
Whatever one’s interpretation, it is undeniable that the cease-fire over the last decade has rested on the political-military balance forged in the relations between the parties to the conflict. Thus, any unilateral measure that disregards the need for a comprehensive settlement risks breaching the established equilibrium and can spark resumption of military operations.
To date, however, no practical progress has been registered. The parties to the conflict continue to be far apart in the negotiations for a political settlement, even on the issue of who the actual parties are.
International Mediation Efforts: 1992-1997
The first international mediation effort to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict
was attempted by the Presidents of the not yet independent Russia and Kazakhstan,
Boris Yeltsin and Nursultan Nazarbayev, respectively, in September 1991. Their
visits to Baku, Stepanakert, and Yerevan, and subsequent talks between the leaders
of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Zheleznovodsk, Russia produced an agreement to
negotiate the conflict; this was negated by the government of Azerbaijan almost
immediately.
The international involvement in the resolution of this conflict began in earnest in 1992, after successor states to the Soviet Union had been admitted to the Conference (later Organization) for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The CSCE (OSCE) thus became the primary venue for the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, and remains so to this day. On March 24, 1992, a CSCE Council meeting in Helsinki decided to authorize the CSCE Chairman-in-Office (i.e., the presiding officer of the CSCE who is usually the foreign minister of the country presiding in the organization, based on rotation principle) to convene a conference on Nagorno Karabakh under the auspices of the CSCE. The purpose of the conference was “to provide an ongoing forum for negotiations towards a peaceful settlement of the crisis on the basis of the principles, commitments and provisions of the CSCE.” This decision launched the so-called Minsk Process, which spearheads the international effort to find a political settlement of the conflict. (The process is so named because the city of Minsk, Belarus had been originally selected as the site of the future conference on this problem.)
The objectives of the Minsk Process are to provide an appropriate framework for conflict resolution to support the negotiation process supported by the Minsk Group; to obtain conclusion by the Parties of an agreement on the cessation of the armed conflict in order to permit the convening of the Minsk Conference; and to promote the peace process by deploying OSCE multinational peacekeeping forces.
The Minsk Process has been supported by the Minsk Group, which included 11 countries: Belarus, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, the United States, Turkey, in addition to Armenia and Azerbaijan. The activities of the group has proved ineffective in the early years of the conflict, as the understanding of basic issues, realities, and determining factors of the conflict was inadequate. Azerbaijan has vacillated between intense opposition to and reluctant acceptance of Nagorno Karabakh’s direct participation in these negotiations. The international negotiations have intermittently accepted the reality that it is the government of Nagorno Karabakh, and not Armenia, which is the main party in the conflict with Azerbaijan.
As noted above, the Minsk Group nearly succeeded in mediating an end to the hostilities in summer of 1993, but the plan fell through. The United Nations Security Council, meanwhile, adopted resolutions on the conflict which, however, reflected the political realities of a period predating the hostilities and therefore failed to address the situation. Importantly, the United Nations provided the OSCE with a mandate to mediate the political settlement in Nagorno Karabakh. Eventually, the parties to the conflict negotiated a ceasefire agreement through the good offices of the Russian Federation in May 1994.
The next milestone in the international involvement was the Budapest Summit of the CSCE, which transformed the détente-era organization into the OSCE. The Budapest Summit reaffirmed the Minsk Group process, and on December 6, 1994, adopted a decision to establish a co-chair mechanism for the Minsk Group. The OSCE members also pledged to deploy multinational peacekeeping forces to enforce the political settlement of the conflict. This raised expectations that with the strong support of the international community the parties to the Karabakh conflict would reach agreement on settlement. If anything, the summit strengthened the commitment of the parties to maintain the cease-fire. In compliance with the decisions of the Budapest Summit, the OSCE Chairman-in-office (CiO) issued the mandate for the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group on March 23, 1995. In another significant decision, the Chairman-in-Office appointed a Personal Representative on the Conflict Dealt with by the Minsk Group to monitor the cease-fire regime periodically. To this day, the CiO Personal Representative and his field assistants comprise the only international presence in the area of the conflict; the Personal Representative conducts periodic monitoring of the line of contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan forces.
Negotiations between the parties to the conflict continued throughout 1995 and 1996, in many different formats: via visits of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs to the region, with Yerevan, Stepanakert, and Baku in their itinerary; through confidential negotiations between the advisors to the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and through Presidential meetings at the international fora. With the memory of the conflict still fresh on their mind, however, the parties to the conflict continued to differ on practically all aspects of the resolution.
In contrast, the Lisbon Summit of the OSCE was a setback for the process. The OSCE CiO issued a statement on December 3, 1996, which attempted to codify the legal status of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh ‘through high degree of autonomy within Azerbaijan’ without consultation, let alone agreement between the parties to the conflict. It adopted a formula advanced by negotiators for Azerbaijan without obtaining the consent of either Armenia or Nagorno Karabakh. As such, it attempted to predetermine the status of Karabakh, the very object and core of the dispute. Thus, the Lisbon statement failed to reflect the current realities on the ground, and was destined to remain an unworkable formula.
This and other developments significantly slowed the settlement process by early 1997. Another development in this regard was the introduction of the ‘oil factor’ in the region. Since 1994, Baku began to utilize the prospects of new Caspian Sea oil fields as a lever to impose an unacceptable settlement of the Karabakh conflict. While this oil diplomacy has gained favor among certain states in mid-1990’s, in the atmosphere of perceived antagonism between Russia and the United States, it is safe to claim now that the ‘oil diplomacy’ has not worked. The notion that Azerbaijan will prosper while Armenia and Karabakh will stagnate has not held true; the foreign investment in Azerbaijan financed the aging oil sector exclusively without addressing the massive poverty in the country. The lack of conflict resolution hinders the economic development of all South Caucasus countries equally.
Minsk Group Process: 1997 to present
In March 1997, the Minsk Process was revived after the OSCE Chairman-in-Office established a new Co-Chair mechanism, with France, Russia, and the United States assuming this major responsibility; this arrangement continues to this day. The new Co-Chairs represent three major powers that have interests in the region and are also permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Minsk Group Co-Chair mechanism established in 1997 has proved to be the most conducive to mediating the conflict, as it eliminated the unnecessary rivalries and misunderstandings that had so often plagued the Minsk Process since its inception. Another feature introduced by the Co-Chairs in 1997 – and still in effect today – was the agreement between the parties to the conflict to maintain complete confidentiality of the talks to facilitate good faith between the parties and prevent an undue manipulation of the public opinion in home countries.
By 1997, the Minsk Process has produced two alternative variants of the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, which hereinafter will be referred to as the ‘package’ and ‘phased’ solutions. The so-called package solutions favors a comprehensive settlement of the conflict, spelling out the status of Nagorno Karabakh, dealing with the Azeri regions under control of Karabakh, as well as the status of the Lachin Corridor, Shahumian region and a myriad of other issues. Conversely, the phased settlement provides for a more gradual – step-by-step – approach, dealing with the issues of Azeri regions, Lachin Corridor, refugees, etc., first and leaving the status of Karabakh for the next stage.
After several visits to the regions, the Minsk Group Co-Chairs formally presented the plans to the parties to the conflict. The plans were deliberated and discussed by the political leadership both in Armenia and Karabakh, which, unlike Azerbaijan, were not (and are not) monolithic authoritarian states run by one person. Eventually, disagreements within the Armenian political leadership led to resignation of then President Ter-Petrossian and election of Robert Kocharian as the new President of Armenia, in March 1998. In November 1998, the Minsk Group Co-Chairs presented a new plan to the parties, commonly referred to as the ‘common state’ proposal. It was in its essence a package plan providing for the establishment of a common state between Karabakh and Azerbaijan. This was a carefully crafted and very complex compromise between the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination. Unfortunately, it was rejected by Azerbaijan, which failed to meet halfway the concessions that Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh were prepared to make.
The next stage in the conflict settlement process, which ultimately proved effective, was a series of bilateral meetings between President Kocharian and President Aliyev. Almost twenty such meetings have been held since the first meeting on the margins of the NATO Summit in Washington in April 1999. The high point of the presidential summits were the meetings in Paris, hosted by French President Jacque Chirac, and the U.S.-hosted negotiations in Key West, Florida, in March and April 2001, respectively. During these meetings, the two Presidents achieved an understanding on a set of ideas to be used as the basis for the resolution of this conflict, which are called the Paris principles.
Unfortunately, Azerbaijan failed to make steps towards implementation of this agreement. Moreover, since 2001, the statements of President Aliyev, his Defense Minister, other members of the government, and the opposition parties raise serious concerns about growing intransigence and bellicosity in Azerbaijan. It is dangerous because the ceasefire regime on Artaskh-Azerbaijan line of conflict is based on the goodwill of all parties and the military balance of power, and the war propaganda in Azerbaijan will undermine the confidence in its ability to abide by the ceasefire regime. In an attempt to keep the Minsk Process flowing, a new format was introduced in 2002 to complement the presidential summit, in the form of Personal Representatives of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Minsk Process. The two presidents delegated their respective Deputy Foreign Ministers to fill this role.
The advent of the election season in Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2003 somewhat slowed the international mediation effort, but the negotiations are expected to resume in earnest soon after the presidential election in Azerbaijan in October 2003.
Conclusion
The Armenian presence in Karabakh dates to ancient times, and the objectives of the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh is to preserve their right to govern themselves and be safe from external aggression. Armenia and Karabakh remain committed to the peaceful settlement of the conflict, which has to reflect the realities on the ground, and are ready to compromise to achieve this goal. The best venue to achieve a political settlement is the Minsk process which provides the basis, in the event of constructive engagement of all the parties to the conflict, for achieving real progress in the resolution of the conflict.