Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and India’s Standing

The tense conflict is escalating with each day passing in Nagorno-Karabakh, the border region claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, due to the failure of mediation efforts, increased militarization, and frequent cease-fire violations. In late September 2020, heavy fighting broke out along the border- the most serious escalation since 2016. More than three hundred soldiers and civilians have been killed, with hundreds more wounded on both sides. Although UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the UN Security Council, and countries like the United States and Russia have called for an end to hostilities, Armenia and Azerbaijan have rejected pressure to hold talks. Instead, they have pledged to continue fighting and have further escalated tensions by switching from cross-border shelling to the use of longer-range artillery and other heavy weaponry.

These recent hostilities follow a series of cross-border attacks that occurred over the summer, including four days of clashes and shelling in July 2020 that killed an Azerbaijani general and nearly twenty people.

Background

In the 1920s, the Soviet government established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region- where 95 percent of the population is ethnically Armenian within Azerbaijan. Under Bolshevik rule, fighting between the two countries was kept in check, but, as the Soviet Union began to collapse, so did its grip on Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh legislature passed a resolution to join Armenia despite the region's legal location within Azerbaijan’s borders. As the Soviet Union was dissolving in 1991, the autonomous region officially declared independence. War erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region, leaving roughly thirty thousand casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees. By 1993, Armenia controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied 20 percent of the surrounding Azerbaijani territory. In 1994, Russia brokered a cease-fire which has remained in place since.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been a frozen conflict for more than a decade, but artillery shelling and minor skirmishes between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops have caused hundreds of deaths. Early April 2016 witnessed the most intense fighting since 1994, killing dozens and resulting in more than three hundred casualties. After four days of fighting, the two sides announced that they had agreed on a new cease-fire. However, a breakdown in talks was followed by repeated cease-fire violations, and tensions have remained high.

Negotiation and mediation efforts, primarily led by the Minsk Group, have failed to produce a permanent solution to the conflict. The Minsk Group, a mediation effort led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), was created in 1994 to address the dispute and is co-chaired by the United States, France, and Russia. The co-chairs organize summits between the leaders of the two countries and hold individual meetings. The group has successfully negotiated cease-fires, but the territorial issues remain as intractable as ever. In October 2017, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Geneva under the auspices of the Minsk Group, beginning a series of talks on a possible settlement of the conflict. However, talks have yet to produce concrete results.

Because Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian military forces are positioned close to each other and have little to no communication, there is a high risk that inadvertent military action could lead to an escalation of the conflict. The two sides also have domestic political interests that could cause their respective leaders to launch an attack.

Concerns

Without successful mediation efforts, cease-fire violations and renewed tensions threaten to reignite a military conflict between the countries and destabilize the South Caucasus region. This could also disrupt oil and gas exports from the region, since Azerbaijan, which produces about eight hundred thousand barrels of oil per day, is a significant oil and gas exporter to Central Asia and Europe. Russia has promised to defend Armenia, Turkey has pledged to support Azerbaijan, and Iran has a large Azeri minority, which could escalate a crisis and further complicate efforts to secure peace in the region.

India’s Stand?

India does not have a publicly articulated policy for South Caucasus, unlike 'Neighbourhood  First', 'Act East' or 'Central Asia Connect' policies and the region has remained only on the periphery of its radar.

The author Achal Malhotra, who is a Former Diplomat and Foreign Policy Commentator writes; there is a visible asymmetry in India’s relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Armenia is the only country in the region with which it has a Friendship and Cooperation Treaty (signed in 1995), which incidentally would prohibit India from providing military or any other assistance to Azerbaijan in case Azerbaijan’s offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh spills over to the territory of  Armenia.

India has received three heads of states from Armenia but none from Azerbaijan or Georgia. Armenia extends its unequivocal support to India on Kashmir issue whereas Azerbaijan not only supports but also promotes Pakistan’s narrative on this issue.

The levels of India’s trade or investment with Armenia are, however, very low. In the case of Azerbaijan, the ONGC/OVL has made relatively small investments in an oilfield project in Azerbaijan and GAIL is exploring the possibilities of cooperation in LNG.

Azerbaijan falls on International North-South Transport Corridor route, connecting India with Russia through central Asia; it can also connect India with Turkey and beyond through Baku-Tbilisi-Kars passenger and freight rail link.

In view of Georgia’s foreign policy priority of integration with Euro-Atlantic structures and also in deference to Russia’s sensitivities, India has slow-peddled the development of its relations with Georgia with whom Russia’s relations are at a very low ebb. On the whole, India’s stakes in the region can be assessed as more or less peripheral.

India has adjusted its position as the conflict has evolved.

In the very initial stages of the conflict in 1993, India said it had “followed with great concern the escalation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh with considerable ingress of Armenian forces into Azerbaijan” and had called for “respecting each-others’ territorial integrity and inviolability of existing borders”.

In 2008, India joined Russia, the USA and France and voted against Azerbaijan’s resolution in UNGA which inter-alia demanded “the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan” For quite some time now, India’s emphasis is on peaceful resolution of the conflict through diplomatic negotiations.

India has every reason not to support Azerbaijan who has built its case on the basis of territorial integrity as Azerbaijan has shown scant regard for India’s territorial integrity violated by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. 

At the same time it is difficult for India to support Armenia and publicly endorse Nagorno-Karabakh’s right for self-determination in view of the possible repercussions it can have for India as its adversaries may misuse it not only by making erroneous demands to apply it to Kashmir but also to re-ignite secessionist movement in certain parts of India.

Under the circumstances India has adopted a balanced and neutral stance and made a politically correct statement in which it has expressed its concern, called for restraint and immediate cessation of hostilities and resolution of conflict peacefully through diplomatic negotiations.

In this context India has also expressed its support for the OSCE Minsk Group’s continued efforts towards peaceful resolution, implying that India is not in favour of the involvement of any other entity, including Turkey. Arguably, India’s statement should have also reflected its position on the alleged entry of mercenaries in the conflict.

In the latest developments, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that the co-chairs of the Minsk group were stalling in dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and repeated that the region should be given back to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia on Wednesday of trying to attack its gas and oil pipelines and warned of a “severe” response, as tensions mounted over a fraying Russian-brokered ceasefire in the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey has accused Armenia of occupying Azeri territory and vowed full support for Azerbaijan. Ankara has repeatedly called on the Minsk Group, formed to mediate the conflict and led by France, Russia and the United States, to urge Armenia to withdraw from the region.

“The United States, Russia and France are still putting this off with their stalling tactics,” Erdogan told members of his AK Party in parliament on Wednesday. “Just give them the occupied lands. Let them do what they want in their own lands,” he added.

“What you need to do is finish your negotiations and hand over the lands to their owners” he said, referring to 30 years of talks between the warring sides and the Minsk Group.

Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan under international law, but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians. The clashes have raised concerns that Turkey and Russia, which also back opposing sides in Syria and Libya, may get dragged in.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow disagreed with Turkey’s position and that a military solution was unacceptable. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Turkey should be involved in the talks.

Erdogan also denied reports that Turkey had deployed allied Syrian fighters to the region, an accusation denied by Baku too.

“You sent Syrian fighters there,” they say to Azerbaijan while remaining silent to all this other supply. They have work in their own country, they won’t go there,” he said.

The Civilians are bearing the worst side effects.

The tree-lined main street of Ganja, Azerbaijan's second-largest city was bathed in morning sunlight and carpeted in glass. Just behind it a cluster of apartment blocks had been ripped open like tin cans.

Ganja lies 100km (62 miles) from the frontlines of Nagorno-Karabakh, but on Sunday, the first full day of a shaky ceasefire - that wasn't far enough.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of firing a ballistic missile at a residential part of Ganja. Armenia accused Baku of shelling civilians.

60-year-old Nushabe Haiderova in her headscarf and slippers, with a cardigan over her night clothes. Her arms were slack with shock said, "This is how I ran out, with only what I was wearing. We barely escaped. It was horrible."

We picked our way through the debris in her damaged home, to the bedroom where her grandchildren had been sleeping. Their injuries were minor. But now a new generation - on both sides - is being scarred by this decades-old conflict. At times it feels like a mirror image.

"Armenians should leave peacefully," she said. "We don't want war. We just want to free our own motherland."

People here view Nagorno-Karabakh as a missing piece of their territory. That is both an article of faith and a well-rehearsed national narrative, which has the backing of the international community.

At 22 years old, Ihtiyar Rasulov has never set foot in the disputed mountain region. But the clean-shaven young man, with a boy-band look, says he's ready to die to get it back. When we met in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, he had just signed up to fight.

"I am ready to fight for my nation and my motherland with my soul and my blood," he said earnestly. "My father, my mother and my grandfather lived in those areas. My brother is fighting right now."

Ihtiyar lives in a rundown housing complex teeming with families who fled Nagorno-Karabakh, and surrounding areas, during the war in the early 1990s. He has been raised on the folk memory of lost land, atrocities and historic enmity with Armenia. It has been bred in the bone. That goes for many here.

"Karabakh is Azerbaijan," he said. "Armenians came there and they did a lot of bad things to our nation. Of course, I haven't witnessed it, but I have heard about it."

He also said he agreed with whatever Azerbaijan's President, Ilham Aliyev, had to say. In this tightly controlled country - where the presidency was passed from father to son - you hear that a lot.

One of Ihtiyar's neighbours rushed to show me his veteran's identity card. Asef Haqverdiyev, balding and animated, fought in the war for Nagorno-Karabakh last time around.

"I am 51 now," he said, "and I am ready to die for my country. I have sent my own son to the war, and he is fighting at the border. Even if my family dies, even if everyone dies, we are not willing to give one inch of our land."

We got a similar message from a grandmother in the frontline city of Terter. Despite rounds of shelling back and forth, Aybeniz Djaffarava refused to leave, though she did move underground. We found her in a makeshift shelter with several relatives, including her six-month old grandson Fariz, cradled in her arms.

"We have been waiting for this for 28 years," she told me, smiling in the half light.

"We are very excited about what's happening. My son and daughter are fighting on the frontline. We are staying in the shelter to wait for victory day and move to our land."

Few here expect the Russian-brokered ceasefire to last. Many don't want it to. Their troops have already recovered some areas alongside Nagorno-Karabakh. They have been primed for a victory on the battlefield and want their president to stick to his guns.