Wednesday, October 28 2015 09:54

 Nagorno-Karabakh, the former Soviet Union's oldest and most dangerous conflict, is waking up again. The 1994 ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan is under severe strain. Where there was occasional sniper fire two years ago, mortars are now being fired. Rockets are raining down on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the ceasefire line east of Karabakh itself. There have been around a dozen casualties in the last week, writes Thomas de Waal, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, expert on the unresolved conflicts of the South Caucasus, in his article "Losing control in the Caucasus." 

"But the leaders in both Baku and Yerevan are digging themselves into warlike positions that they will find hard to give up.

This is not about the "hand of Russia" - although Russia's behavior is not helping. The danger of the Caucasus is that no one is fully in charge and that Karabakh is becoming another link in a chain of disorder stretching from Ukraine to Syria, in which Russia meddles but is not fully in charge," de Waal writes. 

According to the expert, since the very beginning of 1994, Moscow has Russia never had a controlling hand. Since then the unresolved conflict has stunted development both in Armenia and Azerbaijan, yet neither is prepared to make the painful compromises that will lead to peace. "For the semi-democratic leaders of Armenia and the authoritarian ones of Azerbaijan, regime survival is the absolute priority. They fear change and periodically find it useful to play the "Karabakh card" to rally the nation round the flag," he writes. 

In the last two years, de Waal writes, President Ilham Aliev has turned Azerbaijan into the most authoritarian state in wider Europe, while upping his bellicose rhetoric and publicly calling Armenians "fascists" and "terrorists." On September 26, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan escalated his own political rhetoric by dropping his previous position of public ambiguity and categorically declared Karabakh an "inseparable part of Armenia," he writes. 

According to him, Moscow has also periodically used the conflict to win tactical advantages over both Armenia and Azerbaijan and to keep a foothold in the South Caucasus. "More recently, Russia has reinforced its long-term alliance with Armenia, signing a new lease on the Gyumri military base that lasts until 2044 and inviting Yerevan into the Eurasian Union. Simultaneously, it has grown closer to Azerbaijan and has started to sell the country heavy weaponry," Tom de Waal writes