A festering sore

By G.E. | TBILISI

IT IS 25 years since conflict broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region inside Azerbaijan, and 19 years since a shaky ceasefire came into effect. To much of the outside world, it is a “frozen” conflict that merits little attention. Yet as the International Crisis Group (ICG) shows in a recent briefing, the situation is much more fluid and unpredictable than that tag might suggest.

Skirmishes between the two sides are frequent, with hundreds, even thousands of ceasefire violations reported every month. Dozens of deaths and injuries occur each year. For years, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which is co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, has been trying to resolve the conflict. But with negotiations hitting deadlock in 2011, the geographical scope of the clashes has spread to places far away from Nagorno-Karabakh.

The arms race between the two sides continues. Oil-rich Azerbaijan’s defence budget for 2013 is $3.7 billion, almost one billion more than Armenia’s entire state budget. Armenia increased its own defence spending by 25% this year, to $450m. With the military balance shifting towards Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, each side’s rhetoric has changed. The Azerbaijanis talk increasingly of a military solution to the conflict; Armenians speak of a preventive strike.

The provocations go deeper. Just over a year ago, Azerbaijan secured the return of military officer Ramil Safarov from Hungary, where he was serving a 20-year prison sentence for murdering an Armenian soldier on a NATO-led language course. Yet far from serving out the remainder of his sentence in an Azerbaijani prison, he was released upon arrival in Baku, promoted and hailed as a hero. An outraged Armenia broke off diplomatic relations with Hungary.

Meanwhile, Armenians increasingly refer to the Azerbaijani territories that its troops occupy adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh as “liberated”. The Armenian capital Yerevan has said it will re-open a refurbished airport in Nagorno-Karabakh for fixed-wing flights, claiming it would be a humanitarian move to improve the lives of the region’s inhabitants. Baku responded by threatening to shoot such flights down.

Both sides may experience domestic political pressures over the next few months. Economic dissatisfaction and continued complaints over the elections in February 2013 have led to calls for political protests in Armenia. Although the re-election of Ilham Aliyev as president of Azerbaijan on October 9^th is almost a foregone conclusion, some post-election disorder remains a possibility. The danger, the ICG warns, is that such pressures could exacerbate the military situation and heighten the possibility of violent escalation.

There is only so much the outside world can do. Preventing the conflict from escalating is already an achievement, especially given the nightmare scenario that would draw in regional powers such as Russia, Turkey and Iran. Yet with the Minsk process looking distinctly tired, continued prevention (let alone conflict resolution) is not assured.

Russia’s desire to assert its hegemony in the South Caucasus complicates matters further. Earlier this year, its relationship with Armenia grew frosty over Yerevan’s moves towards an association agreement with the European Union. When Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president, rejected Moscow’s alternative Eurasian Union, Russia increased the price of the natural gas it sold to Armenia, and delivered $1 billion worth of weaponry to Baku. On a trip to Moscow at the beginning of September, Mr Sargsyan bowed to the Kremlin’s pressure and reversed his decision, throwing Armenia’s European aspirations into confusion.

Protracted conflict has high costs for both countries, including hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, bereaved relatives and closed borders. Thomas de Waal, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, describes another cost: “the more intangible toxic effect of war on political discourse and the media, the way it renders a society incapable of looking at the future, while it dwells on the past.”