ARMENIA-AZERBAIJAN
Peace and Disquiet
Families in Armenia and Azerbaijan are turning to Facebook to find missing-in-action soldiers after the end of the recently concluded 44-day war between the two former Soviet republics.
Suladdin Yusifov’s 23-year-old son, Ali, is a lieutenant in Azerbaijan’s armed forces. His father hasn’t heard from him since Oct. 3. “If anyone knows people on the front lines, or has connections to hospitals, I am appealing to the people of Azerbaijan as a father – if you have any news please call me,” wrote Yusifov on the social network, according to eurasianet.
Azerbaijan won the war, reclaiming territory that Armenian forces had seized more than 25 years ago, the Associated Press reported. What they won is a mountainous Armenian ethnic enclave within Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh as well as surrounding lands. Azeri leaders described the victory as a new start for the country. For Armenia, it’s a disaster.
Meanwhile, the six weeks of fighting claimed the lives of almost 2,800 Azeri soldiers, wrote Al Jazeera. More than 2,400 Armenian troops perished. Russia imposed a peace deal on both parties, inserting 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops in Nagorno-Karabakh to prevent violence between local Armenians and the potentially 800,000 returning ethnic Azeris who had been expelled from the region after the Armenian conquest in 1994.
The Christian Science Monitor called the conflict a “diplomatic failure.” The territorial dispute between the two countries on the farthest frontiers of Europe and Asia was left unresolved. The violence escalated quickly. Now the strategic makeup of the region has changed almost overnight.
Turkey supported Azerbaijan. As a result, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a diplomatic victory in his quest to make his country’s influence felt throughout the Caucasus. Analysts in the region told the Financial Times in rather strident terms that the war is a clear win for Erdogan. His client state beat Russia’s client state – Armenia is a military ally of Russia, as Agence France-Presse explained.
Some observers at the New York Times noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin applied a “deft new touch” that he might have learned while employing his more customary “iron-fisted tactics” in other ex-Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine. Putin appeared to be using soft power and the threat of potential Russian intervention rather than the real thing, in other words.
Armenians, meanwhile, are disgusted with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, charging him with botching his nation’s response to the enemy threat, Reuters reported. Armenian forces were routed. People are taking to the streets of the capital of Yerevan calling for his resignation and decrying the ceasefire deal that signed away territory they considered their hard-won legacy.
On Tuesday, for example, hundreds chanted “Nikol, traitor,” during a demonstration after Pashinyan ignored a deadline set by the opposition for him to resign, Reuters reported.
Regardless of the politics, the key thing is that these neighbors have gone two rounds. The world should be thinking hard now about how to stop a third.
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