Humanitarian ceasefire declared in Nagorno-Karabakh

The citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh will have a small wartime truce from this half-day. The clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, are causing numerous damages and casualties (both civilians and military). According to UN figures, at least 53 civilians and hundreds of combatants have died.

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinián, has asked for the whole week to resume the peace dialogues and to go to the Minsk Group. Meanwhile, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev declared that "there could only be a military solution to the conflict", rejecting the talks and increasing tension in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The city most affected by the clashes is the capital of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsaj, Stepanakert, where, since the beginning of the fighting on 26 September, unmanned drone attacks and a series of bombings have forced a large part of the population to abandon their homes.

But yesterday there was a change of course in the conflict and the foreign ministers of both countries decided to meet to talk under the umbrella of Russia. Both Zohrab Mnatsakanián (Armenia) and Jeihun Bayrámov (Azerbaijan) met yesterday in Moscow. The meeting was chaired by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, whose country has called on the parties, together with the whole international community in recent days, to declare a ceasefire as soon as possible.

The two former Soviet republics have decided to agree, at least on a humanitarian ceasefire to enable the civilian population to leave, to provide themselves with basic resources and to be able to visit their families and the dead. In addition to the exchange of prisoners of war, persons in custody and the bodies of the dead.

Nikol Pashinián said with relief that his country was ready to resume the peace process. "We are faithful to the principle of peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and are prepared to resume the peace process in line with the statements made in recent days by the presidents and foreign ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries," the Prime Minister explained.

However, the Azeri president is not following the same line of argument. Coinciding with the start of the meeting yesterday, Ilham Aliyev made it clear that "the conflict is now being settled by military means. Later it will be done politically". While the ministers were meeting yesterday, Aliyev announced the takeover of the strategic town of Hadrut, on the southern flank of Nagorno-Karabakh.
 

As in most conflicts, the intervention of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is crucial to ensure this type of humanitarian ceasefire. "A ceasefire is declared as of 12 noon on 10 October on humanitarian grounds for the exchange of prisoners of war and other detainees, and the bodies of the dead, under the mediation and criteria of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)," said Russian foreign minister Lavrov.

What is still unclear is how long the ceasefire will last and whether it will be final, as the last one agreed in 1994. The two parties also agreed to start "substantial negotiations in order to reach an agreement on the peaceful settlement of the conflict as soon as possible", the Russian minister stressed.

This process will be accompanied by the co-chairmen of the Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), after Armenia and Azerbaijan have ratified the format of international mediation, which means that no more countries will join the group of mediators.

The OSCE has been forced to take up the initiative of the Minsk Group, a body set up in 1992 to settle this territorial conflict. The co-chairmen of the Minsk Group are Russia, France and the United States. In addition, the group comprises Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Turkey, as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Turkey has openly criticised the inefficiency of this body, which it considers, as it is led by Russia, to have "paralysed the conflict rather than settled it". Turkey's intervention directly in the conflict by supporting the Azeris has made headlines and is causing discomfort within the international community.

In a veiled way it seems that Turkey has moved militias from northern Syria and Libya to Azerbaijan. This information has been confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and by Syrian President Bachar al-Assad. Moreover, from Armenia they claim to have information that Turkish troops are arriving in Nakhichevan and the Azeris are using Turkish military material.
 

The agreement was possible after Russian President Vladimir Putin took the reins on Friday and convinced both leaders of the need to send their respective foreign ministers to Moscow. Aliyev and Pashinian accepted Putin's initiative and, a few hours after a key phone call at the highest level, Bayramov and Mnatsakhanyan landed in Moscow to meet Lavrov.

The meeting raised hopes in the region, particularly after both sides had stated that it was not the time for a "face-to-face" meeting between the foreign ministers. Bayrámov travelled to Geneva on Thursday to meet the Minsk Group, but Yerevan preferred not to join the meeting.

Both positive and negative messages came out of both capitals yesterday, making it impossible to predict the outcome of the ministerial meeting. 

Mr Paschinián, who is seeing his military forces retreat and lose positions in Nagorno-Karabakh, stated hours before the meeting that his country was ready to resume the peace process.  

Aliyev, for his part, is disappointed. "For 30 years there were negotiations and we were not given an inch of the occupied territories. They could not force the aggressor to leave our land and comply with UN resolutions. Now the conflict is being decided by military means, and later it will be decided by political means," he said.

The Azeri President, supported by the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has conditioned the end of the war on a schedule of withdrawal by Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh. He reiterated this yesterday: "we are giving (Armenia) the opportunity to leave our territories by peaceful means. In any case, we will recover those territories and restore our territorial integrity," he firmly stated.

The territory of Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan and is a small enclave of Armenian population that wants to become independent and part of the neighbouring country (Armenia). With 140,000 inhabitants, 90% of whom speak Armenian, in 1991 they proclaimed themselves an independent state by creating the Republic of Artsaj.

To understand how this whole territorial conflict began, we have to go back to 1918, when Iosif Stalin, with the creation of the USSR, occupied the Caucasian region and divided the territory into three socialist republics: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. As in many other cases in the history of colonisation, the ethnic groups and religions that lived together in the area were not taken into account. This is how Nagorno-Karabakh remained within Azerbaijan despite being more akin to Armenia. For many years this uncomfortable situation was maintained without wanting to take it to the Soviet leadership.

But when the Soviet empire began to weaken, the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh began to demonstrate and Armenia, in an attempt to expand its territory, entered into a war with Azerbaijan that was to last eight years (1987-1994). This war took more than 30,000 lives and displaced around a million people.

Although the USSR tried to prevent this Armenian annexation, its priorities were beginning to focus on survival. This is how the Soviet regime began to deflate without being able to exert any kind of influence. In 1991, the Nagorno-Karabakh region proclaimed itself independent by creating the Republic of Artsaj. This new state shares administration and banks with the Armenian country, which also gained Azeri ground during the war by surrounding the eastern part of the newly proclaimed country.

The war ended in it with the Azerbaijanis as the big losers as they suddenly found 20% of their country invaded by Armenia and an independent republic proclaimed without their consent. About 800,000 Azeris were forced to leave the occupied area after the war. 

This state has not been recognised by any UN country, but diplomatic efforts to recognise the region have made (and continue to make) great efforts to achieve their goals. The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has proclaimed on several occasions that "their greatest enemies are the Armenians" and has given no sign of wishing to settle this conflict of which they feel they are historical victims.

On 26 September armed clashes resumed and, according to the Armenian prime minister, Nagorno-Karabakh "is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe.

In all, the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsaj acknowledges some twenty civilian deaths and Baku, the Azeri capital, 31, a figure which the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raised on Friday to 53, including children.

The soldiers who died in the fighting now number in the hundreds, while Azerbaijan has yet to report the number of soldiers killed in the ranks of its army, though Yerevan assures that there are thousands.