Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 26 – In almost any project, the two most difficult times are the beginning when a decision to do something has to be taken and the end when the final details have to be worked out, with the latter typically far more difficult and time-consuming than any of the intervening periods.
So it is proving with negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan about border delimitation, with disputes about the exclaves that existed in Soviet times now fading but conflicts about “non-enclave” villages and the agricultural areas around them located along the border increasingly taking center stage where both sides are digging in.
Progress on the exclaves has been significant and much chronicled. (On that, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/more-than-qarabagh-other-ethnic.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/ethnic-exclaves-other-than-qarabagh-add.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/borders-and-enclaves-set-up-in-soviet.html.)
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has agreed to return to Azerbaijani control four exclave villages and their surrounding area but is refusing to return four additional “non-exclave” villages that Baku says belong to it. He adds that Armenia also wants effective control over 31 “non-exclave” villages now occupied or surrounded by Azerbaijani troops (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/398488 and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/398329).
The situation risks triggering an explosion because many Armenians believe what Azerbaijan is doing represents a laying of the ground work for another Baku offensive against the Armenian state and because residents of some of these villages are threatening protests or even violent actions to block any further concessions (jam-news.net/ru/о-требованиях-баку-мнение-немецкого-п/).
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