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How third parties’ neutrality
protracts the Armenia–
Azerbaijan conflict
DISCLAIMER:All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of
EURACTIV Media network.
ByFarid Shafiyev
10:34
September 30, 2020
File photo. Diplomats meeting during an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting, at the United Nations
headquarters in New York, 28 February 2020. [Justin Lane/EPA/EFE]
The so-called “balanced approach” under which Armenia and Azerbaijan take equal
blame for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has only perpetuated and protracted the
antagonism, writes Farid Shafiyev.
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Ever since the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan turned into full-fledged war after the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, international mediators, policy makers and experts have
pondered how to resolve it. Classic theories of peace negotiations focus on the necessity of
maintaining neutrality between the conflicting parties for the success of the mediation.
Subsequently, the road map of the peace process should understand the causes of the conflict and
embrace the grievances and goals of the conflicting parties. However, as I argue here, the so-
called ‘balanced’ approach, in some instances, acts only to protract conflict and serves the
interest of the party that is content with the current status quo.
When the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out, both republics were still part of
the Soviet Union. The slogan of the Armenian nationalists,, about the unification of the
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan with Armenia, first voiced in February 1988, met with
sympathy in Western media. This movement was presented by the Armenian ethnic lobby as a
liberation struggle from the yoke of a Stalinist arrangement made for the sake of a Muslim
republic to subjugate the Christian Armenian population that had suffered historically at the
hands of the Turks. The truth was far from these well-worn clichés, but they hit the target, as the
public in the West was overwhelmed by centuries-old stereotypes. For Western policy makers,
the idea of the rearrangement of the Soviet borders brought a flavor of the destruction of the
communist monster.
What evolved on the ground was a bitter and bloody war, full of massacres, expulsions and
occupation. American scholar Thomas Ambrosiotermedthis process ‘the permissive
international regime’ that allowed Armenia to occupy this part of the Azerbaijan’s territory.
Most Western experts in the field repeated the few available ‘historical’ facts without making
their own archival study. Therefore, stories tilted in favor of the Armenian narrative. The first
man to break this one-sided story was American journalist Thomas Goltz, a flamboyant
adventurer whom the Armenian lobby in Washington, DC, tried to portray as an agent of oil
interests. Cliché-making continued as other experts in the field were dubbed agents of the oil
autocracy or accused of ‘caviar diplomacy.’ Nevertheless, the well-documented facts and
eloquently articulated arguments, especially from international legal perspectives (in 1993 the
UN Security Council reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and demanded the withdrawal
of all occupational forces), found their way into academia and the media, though they remained
limited to a narrow circle of experts.
A new tone was given to the research by British journalist Thomas de Waal in his book
((2001), which unveiled the truth of the Kafan and Khojaly massacres, and others.
However, the fundamental principle of his approach was to find a ‘balance’: In such a
complicated and bloody conflict, both sides should be responsible. For example, Kafan was
countered by a discussion of the Sumgayit pogroms. This approach was continued by other
experts, including in the recent book#- by British
scholar Laurence Broers. The Great Armenia project (the recreation of a partly mythical country
between three seas) was compared to Great Azerbaijan, even though, in terms of scale and
impact, they were not comparable.
International NGOs dealing with conflict resolution, such as Conciliation Resources and the
International Crisis Group, took a similar approach. Their peacemaking efforts were directed at
the dialogue, and therefore the real developments on the ground were of secondary importance.
These and other NGOs made the ‘balanced approach’ the sacred cow of the peacemaking
process.
In the meantime, the fate of almost one million refugees from Azerbaijan’s occupied territories
remained uncertain as Armenia solidified the results of military control. Armenia began
resettling foreigners in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, extracting the natural resources,
and destroying the cultural heritage. Those narratives were countered immediately by accounts
of Azerbaijan’s misdeeds: the destruction of Armenian-cross tombstones (), the
murder of an Armenian officer by Azerbaijani serviceman Ramil Safarov, and others. It was a
propaganda war, and well-managed by the Armenian lobby in Western countries.
However, so-called ‘neutral’ experts in the relevant fields also played a role in perpetuating the
occupation of Azerbaijani territories. In particular, the Western academic press and mass media
tended to disregard many Azerbaijani claims in favor of Armenian ones. A few recent incidents,
which the author of this article has encountered, reconfirm the biases of the Western media.
Britain’s(8newspaper published apieceabout the Armenian, but refused to
take a look at the many destroyed or defaced Azerbaijani mosques in the occupied territories.
The Vienna-based International Institute of Peace published unconditionally anArmenian
authorbut made extensive comments on an article byAzerbaijani authors. The(,)
9 published, but then retracted, an article authored by an
Azerbaijani expert. Reputable journal8 ,%, which in itswriters’ guidelines basically
discourages any submissions on the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict, ran a piece written by a
Yerevan-based journalist presenting aone-sided reporton the recent Tovuz clashes in July.
In many discussions with Western media outlets, the buzzword ‘balanced,’ or, precisely, the lack
of balance, plays suspiciously against Azerbaijan. Even the agnostic nature of the author of this
piece forces consideration of religious and other cultural biases when it comes to the Western
coverage of the conflict. However, what is more problematic for Western societies, to the
detriment to their own interests, is the shrinking space of academic freedom versus well-
organized and xenophobic lobby groups such as the Armenian National Committee of America
(ANCA). Ironically, the motto of Washington Post – ‘democracy dies in the darkness’ – is
endangered in Washington by not only by state lobbyists, but also by so-called public advocates.
As for international mediators, the negotiations that began in 1992 proceeded against the
background of the complex geopolitical rivalries in the post-Cold War era, which made the
Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict appear less significant than those in the Middle East or the
Balkans. Finally, in 1997, three powerful actors – Russia, France and the United States – formed
the Co-Chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group to deal with the negotiations. Coincidentally,
all three countries host large Armenian communities. The principle flaw of the Minsk Group Co-
Chairs was the departure from the UN Security Council resolutions towards a new formula that
hinges on the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, which Armenia would
eventually like to annex, though Yerevan put forward the intermediate goal of self-determination
for local Armenians.
After several attempts to find a successful formula, the Co-Chairs, with the initial consent of
Armenia and Azerbaijan, unveiled the so-called Madrid Principles in 2007, further updated in
2009. The Madrid Principles stipulated a phased approach to the peace process; this involved the
de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, the return of refugees, and
the opening of communication and transportation links, but left moot the question of the status of
occupied Nagorno-Karabakh until the final stage. The philosophy of the peacemakers was to
create a long enough period for restoring confidence and beginning reconciliation in order to
resolve the territorial dispute. Since then, instead of the implementation of practical steps,
Armenia has insisted on some premediated modalities of the final status of the Nagorno-
Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Armenian lobby groups, including the ANCA, denounced the
plan that the US State Department had put so much effort into developing, and Russian
Armenians worked clandestinely through an ethnic network in the government, even though
official Moscow made probably the greatest effort among the three Co-Chairs to find a solution.
However, at the end of the day, the Co-Chairs, probably with the exception of Russia, have
shown no urgency for resolving the conflict simmering in their geopolitical backyard.
When Azerbaijan repeatedly, in 2005 and 2010, appealed to the Co-Chairs with regard to the
illegal activities in the occupied territories, including the resettlement process, they replied by
issuing ‘balanced’ statements. Moreover, in 2010, the Co-Chairs decided not to publish the
official results of their field mission on illegal resettlement, justifying this on the basis that it
would be detrimental to the peace process. In contrast with this ‘balanced approach,’ official
Yerevan has for all these years been working towards solidifying the results of the occupation,
hoping that, sooner or later, official recognition will arrive. Moreover, while 2019 was the most
peaceful year on the line of contact between the two armies, the Armenian leadership declared a
new(unification) with Nagorno-Karabakh and, in 2020, laid a territorial claim towards
Turkey as Armenian nationalists revived discussions about the centuries-dead Treaty of Sèvres.
As a result, the balanced approach of mediators and international experts has perpetuated and
protracted the conflict, which last erupted in July 2020. Moscow may believe that the frozen
status of the conflict serves its purpose of control over both republics, but the result is that there
is significant discontent in Armenia and Azerbaijan about the Russian role in the region. While
Armenian lobby groups rejoice over their successful campaigns in Washington or Paris, the
population size of Armenia is shrinking and its economy remains isolated and dependent on
Moscow’s life support. The ‘Velvet Revolution’ that brought current Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinyan to power effectively ended in July 2020 as he reaffirmed Armenia’s political–military
allegiance with Russia, in return for military support.
History has been repeated; in 1918–20, when three South Caucasian republics became
independent after the collapse of the Russian Empire, an Armenian military campaign against
Azerbaijan weakened both countries and the Bolsheviks later subjugated them. The first prime
minister of independent Armenia, Hovhannes Katchaznouni (1918–19) laterexclaimed: ‘A vast
state was being organized and demanded – a great Armenia from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean, from the mountains of Karabakh to the Arabian Desert. Where did that imperial,
amazing demand emanate?’ The similar campaign launched in February 1988 destroyed the
possibility of the peaceful development of the South Caucasus and the union of two peoples
bound by geography, culture, and history.
The winners of this conflict are the forces outside of the region – geopolitical actors, weapons
salesmen, state and ethnic lobbyists, and grant-seeking international experts. After twenty-six
years of ceasefire and negotiations, the ‘balanced approach’ has led to a dead end. BBC
HARDtalk anchor Steven Sackur, in an interview with Armenia’s Prime Minister, emphasized
that the current provocative actions and inflammatory rhetoric manifest an intention to dismantle
the negotiation process and secure the annexation of Azerbaijan’s occupied territories. It is likely
that international mediators and peacemakers are now reflecting on ‘balancing’ these facts – or,
more precisely, inventing mischievous behaviors on the part of Baku.
As for Azerbaijan, both its government and public have realized the dead end to the negotiation
process. The resulting frustration was visible during the mass rally in Baku on 14 July, when the
public demanded decisive military action to liberate the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Even
if the military option is not the solution under the current circumstances, many believe that
thewill change in the future.
In 1993, during discussions at the UN Security Council on the consequences of the occupation of
the Kelbajar region of Azerbaijan, Mr. Olhaye, the representative for the small state of Djibouti,
openly stated that ‘we all know only too well that the truth is that this is a conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan,’ and expressed hope that, in the near future, the Security Council
would be in a position ‘to call a spade a spade.’ In fact, legally, it took twenty-three years until,
in 2015, the European Court on Human Rights, in itsdecisionon,, explicitly
determined that the government of Armenia exercises effective control of the occupied territories
of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is now time to
call a spade a spade – and act accordingly.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/azerbaijan/opinion/how-third-parties-neutrality-protracts-the-
armenia-azerbaijan-conflict/