AND IN OTHER NEWS: Looming Regional Uncertainty

March has been another month of uncertainty for Armenia. Its government is sending the strongest signals yet it could be leaving the ineffective Collection Security Treaty Organization, much to the displeasure of Russia. Instead, Armenia sees its place with the European Union, but the West has been sending signals it can only do so much for it, while Armenia’s needs are manifold. The country finds itself in an extremely vulnerable situation with little back-up and much work to do. 

Over the past weeks, the latest saga began to unfold with Azerbaijan demanding four border villages to be handed over immediately, which Baku says would fulfill its territorial integrity. This was also the justification for demanding Nagorno-Karabakh. Prime Minister Pashinyan has signaled he will give up the villages unilaterally, in hopes of averting another war. Yet many ask, how much further can a policy of unilateral concessions go? And will it even make a difference? 

Trust is at an all time low between the parties, while Azerbaijani President Aliyev seems hooked on seizing victory after victory for the sake of his personal glory and standing at home. All of Armenia is asking – where is this headed? 

It should be noted there is a great deal of confusion surrounding what exactly Azerbaijan is demanding from Armenia now. When it comes to disputes in this area, most people think of the ‘exclaves’, bits of land around formerly Azerbaijani-populated villages which were carved out of Soviet Armenia and controlled by it since independence, though they are considered to be within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Vital infrastructure for Armenia passes through them, making transferring them to Azerbaijan extremely complicated. There is also the Armenian exclave of Artsvashen inside Azerbaijan which is controlled by Baku. However, at issue in the current demand are four villages connected to mainland Azerbaijan but also controlled by Armenia, as the line of contact in the region dating to the first Karabakh war does not exactly confirm with the very convoluted Soviet border. 

A possible sign that things are escalating is this warning from the EU’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus. Toivo Klaar is known for his hesitancy to criticize Azerbaijan, and his tweets on the matter often completely miss the mark. Yet here he goes much further than usual by directly criticizing Azerbaijani media channels, which of course are all functions of the state’s policy. In particular, one such outlet had a countdown which appeared to threaten action against Armenia if it did not give up the four villages in question immediately as demanded. Over the past year, media broadcasts started making occasional references to the new notion of Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan,” but recently those have now become practically a daily occurrence, while events dedicated to “Western Azerbaijan” occur not just in Azerbaijan but European capitals as well. 

Azerbaijan’s most common term to describe the taking of territory is “liberation,” but the most recent Freedom House freedom rankings shows it is anything but. Not only did Nagorno-Karabakh experience the “most precipitous score decline of the year” since its brutal takeover by Azerbaijan, but it is now ranked by far the least free place in the world (yes, even North Korea scores better). 

President Aliyev keeps popping up in the empty city of Stepanakert to reassert his victory in increasingly profane ways about once a month. This most recent time in mid-March was to celebrate the holiday of Novruz, where he used rhetoric which many observers described as strongly resembling that of the Nazis. Western nations are finally taking notice of what they are dealing with in Aliyev, but now it’s too late.  

In that same vein, the entire scholarship and third party narratives around the conflict are being forced to shift. For years, in lieu of real solutions, much lip service was given to notions such as “reintegration” of Karabakh by Western mediators, while Azerbaijani analysts who purport to have some degree of independence from Aliyev actively promoted him as a peacemaker. In light of his behavior, this is no longer tenable, and while Western governments may be belatedly rethinking their approach, the same cannot be expected from the “moderate” Azerbaijani analysts. 

What is abundantly clear to observers is that Azerbaijan does not care about its reputation when it comes to human rights. What’s more, just weeks after one of his worst human rights violations, the total ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Aliyev was awarded with the huge international prize of hosting the COP29 global climate summit. It is international prestige, not a good reputation, that he desires. However, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo has announced she will not be attending because of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing policy. It remains to be seen whether others will follow her lead, but with Azerbaijan’s big platform comes more scrutiny than it might otherwise get. Where that might lead as the event draws closer is unpredictable and something the country is already extremely sensitive to.

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