Azerbaijan and Armenia have accused each other of swiftly violating the terms of a ceasefire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, raising questions about how meaningful the truce, brokered by Russia, would turn out to be.
The
ceasefire, clinched after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President
Vladimir Putin, was meant to halt fighting to allow ethnic Armenian forces
in
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri forces to swap prisoners and war dead.
Under
the international law, Nagorno-Karabakh is recognised as part of Azerbaijan. But
ethnic Armenians, who make up the vast majority of the population, reject the
Azerbaijani rule and have been running their own affairs with Armenia’s support
since a devastating war in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Earlier
on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who helped mediate the
ceasefire talks in Moscow, said in a statement the truce had been agreed on
humanitarian grounds.
The
International Committee of the Red Cross would help make the truce work, he
said.
“The
specific terms of the ceasefire still need to be agreed,” said Lavrov, who said
the two rivals had also agreed to enter into what he called substantive peace
talks to be held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group.
However,
the ceasefire has been breached. To what level or extent is not immediately clear.
Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev, meanwhile, told Russia’s RBC news outlet that the
warring parties were now engaged in trying to find a political settlement, but
suggested there would be further fighting ahead.
Azerbaijan’s
Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov also said the “humanitarian ceasefire” would
only last for as long as it took for the Red Cross to arrange the exchange of
the dead.
Speaking
at a briefing in Baku, he complained that the status quo on the ground in the
mountainous region did not suit his country and that Azerbaijan hoped and
expected to take control of more territory in time.
As
a matter of fact, the ceasefire has not been welcomed by the Azeri people
either. They believe that after 30 years … this is the first time they have the
upper hand. The have military power with more sophisticated weapons. They
believe a long truce or long-term ceasefire will only help Armenians build
their positions.
Meanwhile,
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Russian counterpart discussed the
latest developments in Nagorno-Karabakh in a phone call on Saturday.
Rouhani
welcomed the ceasefire and said Iran continues to be ready to facilitate a
peaceful resolution, but repeated concerns about the reported deployment of
foreign fighters. “The presence of terrorists in the conflict can be dangerous
for Iran and Russia, and the entire region,” Rouhani said.
Vladimir
Putin, on the other hand, briefed Rouhani on Russian efforts to resolve the
conflict and said he understood Iranian concerns: “All neighbouring countries
must try to end war and bloodshed and strive for conflict resolution through
negotiations.”
As the all-out war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is still under way, what is becoming clear is that the repercussions of this war will be larger than the casualty count as a new regional framework is developing to deal with the conflict.
The thawing of the frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and
Azerbaijan has been months in the making. After border skirmishes between
Armenia and Azerbaijan in July, Ankara increased its rhetoric against Armenia
in August, on the centennial of the Treaty of Sevres, and in the wake of
Turkish-Azerbaijani joint military exercises in late July and early August. Subsequently, reports
of increased Turkish military support and the transfer of military equipment to
Azerbaijan began to circulate.
Speeches
at the 75th UN General Assembly by the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, only
days before the start of large-scale military operations on September 27, also
foreshadowed the escalation. In their speeches, both Armenia’s Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev used cautioning
language: the former aimed at the growing involvement of Turkey, the latter at
the lack of diplomatic progress and continued Armenian intransigence.
Since
the early 1990s, negotiations for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have
been deeply entrenched in the OSCE Minsk Process, a Euro-Atlantic framework
that also includes Russia and Turkey. However, by many accounts, the Minsk
Group has run its course without achieving any tangible results; moreover,
there is an increased perception, especially on the part of Azerbaijan, that
the Minsk Group is unable or unwilling to provide an effective resolution to
the conflict.
The
analysis of Russia and Turkey’s official reactions to the escalation provides observers
with a sense of how the latest violent thaw might be a prelude to a shift in
the framework of the conflict – from a Euro-Atlantic endeavour to a regional
one. In that shift, Turkey’s unequivocal support for, and military presence in,
Azerbaijan has been met with a relatively passive reaction from Russia,
manifested in the form of a call on both sides to restrain from escalating the
war – a position that puts the perception that Russia is Armenia’s strategic
ally in doubt.
Furthermore,
Turkey’s active (albeit seemingly tacit) participation in the conflict in a
region that Russia considers to be its back yard can be viewed within the prism
of Moscow and Ankara’s gravitation towards a synergy on several foreign policy
fronts. Thus, even as Turkey and Russia stand on opposite sides in the Syrian
and Libyan civil wars, they have both found some common ground in their mutual
distancing from Western political and even military (NATO in the case of
Turkey) paradigms. This shift might be explained by Moscow’s attempt to revive
the Primakov Doctrine (named after Russian former foreign and Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov), which speculates that Russia should form regional alliances
to resist the global hegemony of the US.
Many
outsiders are taking the view that the thawing of the frozen conflict in
Nagorno-Karabakh is a new chapter in the age-old proxy war between Moscow and
Ankara in the Caucasus. Yet, upon closer examination, it appears that both
sides are using this renewed conflict to work together to exert influence in
the region while excluding Western powers.
The
paradox of the Turkish-Russian love-hate relationship was most obvious when in
November 2015 Turkish jet fighters sgot down a Russian warplane over
Turkey’s border with Syria. Instead of being used by Moscow to escalate
tensions with Ankara, the incident was translated into increased Russian
bombardment of Turkey’s Syrian allies; and by mid-2016, it had ostensibly been
forgotten, as the two countries announced the reset of their relations. By
2019, Turkish-Russian relations were amicable enough for the two countries to
sign a military cooperation agreement paving the way for Ankara to buy Russian-made
surface-to-air missiles.
Other
than their combined suspicion of and adversarial posture towards the West, both
Russia and Turkey have taken advantage of several developments in the past
couple of years to increase their cooperation, especially in the South
Caucasus. Thus, the increased isolationism of US foreign policy and a lack of
interest by European countries in the region, coupled with the global COVID-19
pandemic’s shifting of most countries’ attention on domestic public health concerns,
have all provided an opportunity for Russia and Turkey to “hijack” the
Nagorno-Karabakh dossier from the Minsk Process and convert it into a regional
endeavour.
The
implications of shifting the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from the multilateral
OSCE Minsk Group’s framework to a Russian-Turkish regional one (with an Iranian
role possible but as yet unclear) could have major and lasting consequences. In
this context, Russia’s continued “wait and see” approach might pay off when
both Armenia and Azerbaijan find themselves in a military impasse, even if both
sides claim some variation of “victory”.
In
such a scenario, Russia would utilise its various levers against both Armenia
and Azerbaijan to ensure they accept a Russian-imposed ceasefire with a high probability
of Russian peacekeepers being deployed on the line of contact. Perhaps the
first step towards this goal is Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s
announcement (four days after the fighting started) that Moscow is ready to
host both Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the possible settlement of the
conflict “independently as well as
within OSCE Minsk group”.
From
Turkey’s perspective, Ankara’s “spoils” from the recent conflict and the
possible Russian unilateral/regional diplomacy to resolve the conflict can be
two-fold: a claim of military and diplomatic victory by Turkey’s President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and more importantly, the strengthening of Turkey’s
“mentorship” over Azerbaijan.
Despite
the UN Security Council calls on September 29 for containing the conflict and
continuing its mediation within the OSCE framework, it has become obvious that
the Minsk Process is no longer a viable option for the actors involved in the
conflict – especially Azerbaijan.
With
no end in sight to the military operations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the
possible shift of this conflict from a multilateral framework (OSCE Minsk
Group) to a regional one (Russian-Turkish-Iranian) is indicative that both
Russia and Turkey do not consider the West a relevant player in their back
yard. Whether by choice or by accidental convergence, the two regional powers
are ready to define and implement their own security strategies in the South
Caucasus bilaterally, with only token, half-hearted objections from the West.
PALESTINA
It is abundantly clear that Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has underestimated the seriousness of the challenges facing Palestine and the Palestinians.
The rushed agreement between his party, Fatah and Hamas in Istanbul on
September 24, and the Palestinian leader’s speech at the 75th
session of the UN General Assembly the following day, indicate that the
Palestinian leadership insists on operating within the stifling confines of the
Oslo accords and the dead-end road of the ‘peace process’.
Abbas
has spent most of his political career mastering an intricate balancing act,
one that would allow him to remain the favored leader of Palestinians – to the
West – while legitimizing his rule among ordinary Palestinians through a system
of political patronage – itself subsidized by US-led international funders.
The
outcome worked well for Abbas and a clique of Palestinians who became rich because
of their ties to Abbas’ Authority, but bode terribly for the Palestinian
people.
For a
quarter of a century, particularly since the establishment of the PA in 1994,
the Palestinian cause has subsisted in its darkest and most demoralizing
periods, one that is defined by extreme Israeli violence,
rapid expansion of
the illegal Jewish settlements, unhindered corruption among
Palestine’s political elite and unprecedented disunity among Palestinians everywhere.
The
PA’s scheme would have continued longer, were it not for US President Donald
Trump’s decision to disengage from
his predecessors’ previous strategies in the Middle East – foremost among them,
the fruitless ‘peace process’.
However, it was not the Trump administration that opted for an American
retreat from the Middle East, in general, and Palestine, in particular. Trump
merely accelerated what was becoming the new American foreign policy doctrine.
During the two terms of former President Barack Obama, Palestine featured
fleetingly in US calculations: in the early months, and again, when the ‘lame
duck’ administration refrained, in December 2016, from vetoing UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which
condemned Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements.
For many years, the ‘peace process’ existed nominally. On the ground, the
Oslo accords were transformed to that of technical security and financial arrangements between the PA’s upper echelon and the Israeli government.
When, in February 2019, Washington decided to cease its financial assistance to the Palestinian
leadership, Abbas and the PA understood this decision as a political declaration
that Washington and Tel Aviv no longer saw their ‘moderate’ Palestinian allies
as assets.
Bewildered by the abrupt American policy shift, Abbas sought alternatives.
Instead of offering an unconditional apology to the Palestinian people for his
leadership’s corruption, his personal failures, the factionalism and the
squandered opportunities to unify Palestinians around a new national liberation
strategy – one fueled by popular resistance and global solidarity – Abbas continued with the same old discourse,
unhindered.
At his UN speech on Friday, Abbas insisted on referencing the peace process
calling, again, for an international peace conference, among other fantasies.
Abbas’ references are both outdated and unfeasible, for Washington is now
turning to a new phase, one that is predicated on the complete disregard of
international law and the de facto acceptance of Israel’s colonialism and
occupation.
Aside from appealing to Western sensibilities, another crucial element in
the PA’s new balancing act is to reinvent itself among ordinary Palestinians
who, for decades, have felt abandoned and leaderless.
In his UN speech, Abbas labored to rebrand himself to these two different
target audiences. “We will continue creating life and hope under the flag of
national unity and democracy,” he said, adding “We will remain faithful to
peace, justice, human and national dignity under all circumstances.”
In fact, Abbas has neither committed to democracy nor to Palestinian unity.
He is currently unelected as his presidential mandate expired in 2009, and never in his 15-year rule did he earnestly opt for
inclusion or unity among his people.
The latest episode of the ‘unity’ saga took place in Istanbul on September
24. Despite the triumphant speeches afterwards, this too, seemed like a mere
self-serving exercise.
The expeditious declaration that rivals Fatah and Hamas are finally ready
for democratic elections, is a cunning but, ultimately, futile initiative. The
agreement will buy Abbas time to promote himself as a political moderate,
although free and democratic elections can never be held under occupation.
It is doubtful that any kind of elections, free or otherwise, is
possible. Following the agreement, Fatah representative at the talks,
Azzam al-Ahmad, declared that “without Jerusalem, there will be no elections.” In
other words, “there will be no elections.”
During Palestine’s first elections in 1996, Israel barred Jerusalemites
from participating, merely agreeing to very limited votes in areas located on
the outskirts of the city, and only through the post office. It is unthinkable
that Israel will allow for a mass Palestinian vote in Jerusalem now that
Washington has fully recognized the city as Israel’s capital.
What about Palestinians living in Areas B and C, which are, more or less,
under total Israeli military control? Will they be included in the vote? What about Palestinians trapped behind
the Israeli apartheid wall in the West Bank? In the ‘firing zones’? Or those
isolated in small pockets in the Jordan Valley, etc.?
Democratic elections are ideal under circumstances where a nation has true
sovereignty, legal and political jurisdiction, and territorial control. The PA
has none of this.
Moreover, insisting on elections, which, even if possible, will merely lead
to the overhaul of the Palestinian Authority, is equivalent to sustaining the
many illusions of Oslo and its adjoining ‘peace process’.
While Oslo failed Palestinians entirely, it was useful for Israel as it
brought to an unceremonious end the entire Palestinian national liberation
project, in favor of a ‘state-building’ program that had no tangible basis in
reality. If serious in its intentions, the Palestinian leadership must
demolish, not sustain the status quo.
Even successful elections within the Oslo framework would further divert Palestinian energies from their liberation project in favor of another political dead end, that will only protect the ‘gains’ of Palestine’s ruling elites, while selling more false hope that the coveted peace is still at hand to ordinary Palestinians.
INTERACTIVE: Palestinian Remix
Palestinian Center
for Human Rights
International Solidarity
Movement – Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom
Defense for
Children
Breaking the Silence
BRASIL
AOS
FATOS:As declarações de Bolsonaro, checadas
