Chapter 2 Nagorno Karabakh: a War Without Peace
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Chapter 2 Nagorno Karabakh: A War without Peace Nicholas W. Miller I. Introduction Between 1991 and 1994, Nagorno Karabakh, a small enclave within the Republic of Azerbaijan, was the scene of one of the bloodiest of the conflicts to erupt follow- ing the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since 1994, Armenians and Azerbaijanis have remained in a constant state of armed hostility. Soldiers now face each other across a no-man’s land watched over by snipers, heavy artillery, and tanks. In the sev- enteen years since hostilities began, the international community and some of the world’s most powerful states have tried and failed to find a resolution for a conflict that has displaced over a million people,1 has created economic hardship for mil- lions more, and continues to cause instability in the strategically important Caucasus region. This chapter examines how the international community failed first to stop the fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis and has since failed to make peace between them. II. Background The Caucasus is a region between the Black and Caspian Seas that forms a land bridge between the steppes to the north and Anatolia, Persia, and Mesopotamia to the south.2 Geography gives the Caucasus an importance out of keeping with its small size, transforming it into a gateway through which peoples, traders, and armies without number have passed. The Armenians trace their arrival in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia to the sixth century B.C.3 The ancestors of the Azerbaijanis arrived 1 Estimates of the number of refugees vary. The International Crisis Group puts the number of displaced Armenians at over 400,000 and the number of displaced Azerbaijanis above 700,000. International Crisis Group, Europe Report No. 187, Nagorno Karabakh: Risking War 1 n.2 (2007). 2 The geopolitical label “Caucasus” is used in this chapter to refer to the region encom- passing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, an area that is sometimes known as the South Caucasus, Transcaucasus, or Trancaucasia. 3 Michael Croissant, The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications 4 (1998). For a more detailed account of the debates surrounding the origin of the Armenian people and their arrival in the region, see Stephan H. Astourian, In Search of Their Forefathers: National Identity and the Historiography and K. Eichensehr and W.M. Reisman (eds.) Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention © 2009 Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in The Netherlands.ISBN 978 90 04 17855 7. pp. 43-75. 44 Nicholas W. Miller in the Caucasus in the great Turkic migrations from Central Asia sometime before the eleventh century.4 Today, the Armenians and Azerbaijanis are the titular majori- ties in two of the three internationally recognized states in the Caucasus. Nagorno Karabakh is a territory of 4,800 square kilometers within the bor- ders of Azerbaijan.5 It lies on the eastern edge of the Armenian Plateau and is well watered, forested, and mountainous. The land falls off from the west to east and overlooks the hotter and dryer plains of Azerbaijan to the east, stretching away to the Caspian Sea. To the west, high mountains separate Nagorno Karabakh from the Republic of Armenia. Nagorno Karabakh is also divided from Armenia by political geography, lying entirely within the borders of the Republic of Azerbaijan and sepa- rated from Armenia by the Azerbaijani districts of Kelbajar and Lachin. III. The History of Nagorno Karabakh The first conclusive evidence of Armenian presence in mountainous Karabakh6 dates to the first century B.C.7 Armenian control over the area persisted until the late fourth or early fifth century.8 Relative Armenian autonomy remained intact in mountainous Karabakh even under successive rule by Mongols, Arabs, and Persians. By the fourteenth century, mountainous Karabakh lay on the frontier between the Persian Safavid Empire and Turkic kingdoms of Anatolia. During this period, a small number of princely Armenian families began to consolidate power in Karabakh. For centuries, these princes, known as meliks, exercised significant autonomy. Armenians credit the meliks with keeping alive their national traditions.9 By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the princely families had entered a period of decline.10 In 1747, following the assassination of the shah, Persian rule collapsed in the Caucasus. Small khanates, ruled by Muslim Azeri-speaking families, established themselves in the power vacuum.11 Panakh Khan, leader of the Javanshir dynasty, set Politics of Armenian and Azerbaijani Ethnogenesis, in, Nationalism and History: The Politics of Nation Building in Post-Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (David Schwartz & Razmik Panossian eds., 1996). 4 Christopher Walker, Armenia and Karabagh: The Struggle for Unity 74 (1991). 5 Croissant, supra note 3, at 10. 6 I will refer to mountainous Karabakh to distinguish the historic region from the larger and variable Karabakh and from the modern Nagorno Karabakh, the borders of which were defined by the Soviets. 7 Svante Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus 62 (2001). 8 Walker, supra note 4. 9 Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War 146 (2003). For a more extensive discussion of the meliks, their autonomy, and their territories, see Christopher J. Walker, The Armenian Presence in Nagorno Karabagh, in Transcaucasian Boundaries 89, 92-96 (John F.R. Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg & Richard Schofield eds., 1996). 10 Walker, supra note 9, at 96. 11 Cornell, supra note 7, at 67..