No Azerbaijani-Armenian Treaty will Resolve All Issues, Leaders and Experts Now Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 11 – When Azerbaijani forces restored Baku’s control over Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian officials announced the dissolution of the breakaway regime of Artsakh, people around the world hurried to declare that this represented the end of what had long been known as the Karabakh conflict.

            Then, as Baku and Yerevan expanded their talks about a peace treaty, many of the same people concluded that this agreement would solve all the problems between the two countries and establish a genuine and stable peace in the region that all would benefit from. But now it is becoming clear that neither of these hopes is likely to prove true.

            On the one hand, the flight of the ethnic Armenian community from Karabakh is casting a shadow on the domestic politics of Armenia, something that is unlikely to change anytime soon; and the success of Azerbaijani military force in Karabakh appears to be leading many in Baku to conclude that using force may be its best tool to get what it wants.

            And on the other, both Azerbaijani and Armenian officials and experts are now acknowledging that no conceivable peace treaty that might be signed in the near future will address all the problems between them. Instead, it will leave many for the future and mean that “the Karabakh conflict” will continue long after many have proclaimed it over.

            Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev says the status of enclaves and transit are still open; and other Baku officials have said that a peace treaty now may be a single page with only four or five points far too few to address all the problems the two countries face and that might again lead to war (ng.ru/cis/2024-01-11/1_8920_baku.html and vz.ru/world/2024/1/12/1248265.html).

            Armenian commentators in turn acknowledge that not only are there many issues yet to be resolved and that some of them, including very different ideas on borders as such, have the potential to lead to a new upsurge in violence regardless of whether a “peace treaty” is signed or not (vz.ru/world/2024/1/12/1248265.html).