The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh: From Secession to Republic

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh From Secession to Republic

Edited by Levon Chorbajian

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

Also by Levon Chorbajian READINGS IN CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY (editor) THE CAUCASIAN KNOT: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh (with Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian) THE HAND IN YOUR POCKET MAY NOT BE YOUR OWN (editor) STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE GENOCIDE (editor with George Shirinian) ARMENIA IN CRISIS: The 1988 Earthquake (translator)

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh From Secession to Republic Edited by

Levon Chorbajian Professor of Sociology University of Massachusetts Lowell Massachusetts USA

Editorial matter, selection and Chapter 1 © Levon Chorbajian 2001 Chapters 2–9 © Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–77340–3 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The making of Nagorno-Karabagh : from secession to republic / edited by Levon Chorbajian. p. cm. Proceedings of a conference held in Cambridge, Mass., in May 1998. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–77340–3 1. Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, 1988–1994—Congresses. I. Chorbajian, Levon. DK699.N34 M353 2001 947.54—dc21 2001021191 10 10

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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To colonized and genocided people everywhere

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Contents Preface

xi

Notes on Contributors

xiv

Map 1

2

xv

Introduction Levon Chorbajian

1

Background The establishment interpretation Dissent History The book

1 7 9 32 38

A People’s Will: Armenian Irredentism over Nagorno-Karabagh Lalig Papazian

54

Irredentism The case of Nagorno-Karabagh The challenge: Armenian nationalism versus Soviet structure Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabagh: an uneasy coexistence The crisis: description and analysis Situational factors Regional powers Domestic environment Conclusion 3

55 58 59 63 67 73 74 80 84

The Anguish of Karabagh: Pages from the Diary of Aramais (Misak Ter-Danielyan) April 26–July 26, 1919 Robert O. Krikorian

95

Introduction Biography The diary

95 96 98 vii

viii Contents

4

5

Background The diary continued Parallels and divergences Conclusion

99 103 105 113

Civil Society Born in the Square: the Karabagh Movement in Perspective Levon Hm. Abrahamian

116

“We Are Our Mountains”: Nation as Nature in the Armenian Struggle for Self-Determination, Nagorno-Karabagh John Antranig Kasparian Overview Exploring the “nature–nation” nexus Looking ahead

6

7

The Diaspora and the Karabagh Movement: Oppositional Politics between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Armenian National Movement Razmik Panossian

135 135 138 149

155

Introduction Historical context 1988: The diaspora’s reaction to the movement Armenia’s independence from the USSR Foreign relations and outlook The Armenian cause Solution to the Karabagh conflict Political and economic system Citizenship The role of the diaspora Events coming to a head The “why” question Conclusion

155 157 158 159 162 163 163 164 164 165 166 170 172

Betrayed Promises of the Karabagh Movement: a Balance Sheet Markar Melkonian

178

Introduction Balance sheet Political independence

178 180 180

Contents ix

8

Green demands “Renationalizing” culture Democratic reforms and human rights Prosperity Self-determination in Karabagh Conclusion

181 183 185 188 192 194

Possible Solutions to the Nagorno-Karabagh Problem: a Strategic Perspective Armen Aivazian

202

Introduction Sources of the conflict and international involvement The Armenian defense agenda The two pivots of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict The historical sources of Armenian mistrust The strategic world views of the parties to the conflict The major systemic–structural flaws of the OSCE Minsk Group peace plan for Nagorno-Karabagh Karabagh versus Bosnia: peacekeeping dilemmas Possible compromise solutions to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict The US–Armenian–Russian military alliance as the strategic solution to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict The US–Armenian–Russian defense alliance: its meaning and necessity Elements of a US–Armenian–Russian defense alliance The geostrategic significance of the US–Armenian–Russian military alliance Conclusions The feasibility of an impending peace settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict: a postscript 9

202 202 205 207 210 214 216 220 221 222 225 227 228 232 233

Nagorno-Karabagh: International Political Dimensions Richard Giragosian

240

Introduction The dilemma of ethnic insecurity The limits of international mediation Incentives to settlement Self-determination versus sovereignty Regional power involvement

240 241 241 243 243 244

x

Contents

The European powers in the region The USA and the Karabagh conflict The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) The United Nations Conclusion Index

247 248 249 251 251 254

Preface What is called the national question bedeviled Marxist theoreticians for over a century. Lenin and the other early Bolsheviks who took control of the multi-ethnic Russian Empire in 1917 had to confront this question of how to integrate both the Russians and the many other national groups into the world’s first “socialist” state. What evolved was a carrot and stick approach consisting of severe repression of any hint of a national agenda in all spheres of life including education and the arts along with a series of concessions made to the non-Russian nationalities. These concessions included broadly drawing internal boundaries according to ethnic settlement patterns and providing the symbols of national autonomy, if not their substance, in the form of flags, anthems, national universities, and cultural institutions (museums, film studios, opera companies, ballet troupes, and symphony orchestras). The tensions and contradictions engendered by this system lay largely dormant for decades. Only a few individuals, perhaps indifferent to their fate, dared express them. It was only with First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms of the mid 1980s that the repression was sufficiently loosened to allow large numbers of people to speak out as individuals and collectivities. The reforms were put to the test in 1988. In February of that year, mass rallies and demonstrations took place in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and the nearby Nagorno-Karabagh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) on a scale unseen in the Soviet Union since the formative 1920s. The issue was the NKAO. In 1921 this Armenian populated territory had been ceded to the neighboring republic of Soviet Azerbaijan at the initiative of Joseph Stalin after years of bitter, contentious struggle between Armenian and Turkish/Azeri forces. Stalin acted on the basis of political expediency and in defiance of history (there are documented Armenian settlements in the territory dating back over two millennia), demographics (the territory was over 90 per cent Armenian at the time it was assigned to Azerbaijan), and the wishes of the territory’s residents (it was their choice to be part of Armenia). This long-simmering issue was at the root of the 1988 demonstrations, in which an estimated one million Armenians took to the streets xi

xii Preface

of Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia – an unprecedented event – under the banner of the ‘Karabagh Movement’. Armenians sought union between the Armenian SSR and the NKAO, and Soviet Azerbaijan fiercely resisted. Within a year vicious pogroms had been carried out against the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan, party first secretaries in the two Soviet republics had been sacked, demonstrations and general strikes lasted for months on end, and there were forced expulsions of the Armenian minority from Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani minority from Armenia. Initially there had been great hope among Armenians that Gorbachev and his glasnost reform policy would allow a historical injustice to be redressed. However, Gorbachev’s refusal to transfer the territory and the use of repressive tactics caused his popularity among Armenians to plummet. By 1989 Gorbachev and the Soviet system had suffered a severe loss of legitimacy and there were concomitant losses for the Armenian Communist Party in the eyes of the Armenian people. Over the next decade the Karabagh Armenians and Armenia fought a costly war against Azerbaijan, the Soviet Union was dissolved, Karabagh declared political independence, and landlocked Armenia was placed under blockade by neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey. Meanwhile, many western oil firms have invested in Azerbaijan’s oil and natural gas fields, but hopes of rapid marketing and quick profits have floundered on political instability in the region (NagornoKarabagh, Chechnya and Georgia) and the inability of the parties to agree on a pipeline route or routes. These tensions are intertwined with and exacerbated by Russia’s own desire to claim a significant share in these energy resources, a desire that pits Russian interests against Azerbaijan’s and the West’s. Although a Karabagh ceasefire has largely held since 1994, the absence of a final peace agreement contributes to regional instability and plans for unfettered investment and economic development. With these competing economic and geopolitical issues and the Karabagh Movement itself in mind, the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation sponsored an academic conference to assess the Karabagh Question in the decade since the historic 1988 protests. The conference was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May 1998, and this volume brings together selected papers from that conference. The result is an interdisciplinary collection of original work by leading experts. It is hoped that this cutting-edge collection will stimulate discussion in scholarly and policy-making circles by bringing new perspectives and fresh ideas to the debates over the

Preface xiii

future of the Karabagh conflict, and the larger region. All parties and observers agree that a lasting peace in Karabagh is essential to the stability and economic viability of the strategic Caucasus region. Organizing a conference requires the contributions of many individuals. Kourken Sarkissian first conceptualized the idea for this conference and developed it with his colleagues at the Zoryan Institute to bring it to fruition. He also co-ordinated the fundraising efforts, with the assistance of the following committee members, who enlisted the support of many individual donors: Heratch and Sonya Doumanian in the Indiana and Illinois areas, Luther and Ida Gueyikian in the New York and New Jersey areas, and Migirdic and Ani Migirdicyan and Vazken and Lucy Terzian in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. We thank them for their vision and their generosity. We benefitted, as well, from Hratch Tchilingirian’s suggestions at the early stages of the Conference planning. Laura Yardumian ably managed the day-to-day affairs of the Zoryan Institute for many years, and she is a true master of conference logistics. Without her careful attention to hundreds of details, this would not have been the successful conference it was. We also recognize Asbet Balanian, Ruby Chorbajian, and Ken Martin for their invaluable work at the conference itself. Finally, we note the contributions of those scholars who presented their work at the conference but whose papers were not able to be included here: Stephan Astourian, Edmund Herzig, and Arthur Martyrossian. A number of individuals have provided assistance by commenting on the introduction to this volume. I have particularly benefitted from the suggestions of Armen Aivazian, Robert Krikorian, Levon Marashlian, Markar Melkonian, and Khachig Tölölyan. I have most often heeded their advice, and the time and energy they have expended have made for a stronger, tighter analysis. All responsibility for the final content rests, as it always does, with the author. LEVON CHORBAJIAN Cambridge, Massachusetts

Notes on Contributors Levon Hm. Abrahamian is an anthropologist with the Armenian Academy of Sciences. He has published widely on the Karabagh movement. Armen Aivazian is a senior researcher at the Matenadaran, the manuscript repository institute in Yerevan, and professor of political science at the American University of Armenia. He is the author of The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and The Threat of Genocidal Reprisal. Levon Chorbajian is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His most recent book is Studies in Comparative Genocide (edited with George Shirinian). Richard Giragosian is based in Washington, D.C. where he is the publisher of the monthly Transcaucasus: a Chronology. John Antranig Kasparian is an advanced graduate student in the geography program at Rutgers University. He has done extensive fieldwork in Nagorno-Karabagh. Robert O. Krikorian is a doctoral candidate in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at Harvard University and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies. He is also the director of the Institute for Armenian Studies and Research, NAASR, and the coauthor of Armenia: at the Crossroads. Markar Melkonian has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is currently completing a biography of his brother Monte Melkonian, and his most recent book is Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century. Razmik Panossian has completed his dissertation in political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has conducted extensive research on state formation in Armenia. Lalig Papazian is an independent scholar based in Montreal. She did her graduate work in political science at McGill University.

xiv

DAGHES T

Itchevan

Z

I

J

A

N

Sumgait

E

M

NAGORNO KARABAGH

r

ve

K

A R

Getashen

LA SE KE VA N

E

Y

N

A Ri

R

A

B

E GanjaR

U Hrazdan

YEREVAN

A

ra

S

T

Spitak

I A

E

G

Ku Gumri

A

N

G E O R

TBILISI

I A

Stepanakert

BAKU Aghdam

Shushi

N

Lachin Corrldor

A

Goris

Ghapan

r

I

ve

Ri

P

Nakhichevan

Meghri

I

A

N

xv

Map: Nagorno-Karabagh in geopolitical context Source: Zoryan Institute.

Lenkoran

R

C A

S

Arax

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1 Introduction Levon Chorbajian

“Soviet Reports Major Unrest in Armenian Areas in South” New York Times, February 24, 1988, p. A-1 “News Cut Off as Armenian Protests Continue” New York Times, February 26, 1988, p. A-6 “Gorbachev Urges Armenians to End Nationalist Furor” New York Times, February 27, 1988, p. A-1 “Soviet Reports a Major Oil Center in Azerbaijan Hit by Riots” New York Times, March 1, 1988, p. A-1 “Soviet Said It Used Troops to Quell Riots” New York Times, March 2, 1988, p. A-10

Background In February 1988, Nagorno-Karabagh rocked the Soviet Union.1 The above headlines were typical of the global attention that focused on Armenian protests which had no precedent in scale and intensity since the early years of the Soviet Union. Continuous mass demonstrations, marches, vigils, and hunger strikes along with Azerbaijani repression, placed Nagorno-Karabagh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan center stage. Yet few people had ever heard of Nagorno-Karabagh, the small, 4400 sq km Soviet enclave then known as the Nagorno-Karabagh Autonomous Oblast. And less was known about the forces that were driving people into the plazas, squares and streets of Yerevan and Stepanakert, the respective capitals of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh, by the hundreds of thousands. 1

2 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

For a time, Nagorno-Karabagh continued to be front page news, and justifiably so. In rapid succession beginning on February 13, there was the resolution from the region’s legislature, the Supreme Soviet, asking that the region be transferred from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. This reflected the desires of the region’s Armenian majority, a desire that had been thwarted in 1921 by the larger agendas of the early Bolsheviks.2 Then came the massive marches and demonstrations in Stepanakert and Yerevan. The Yerevan protests brought together hundreds of thousands of people in a day and on several days, reportedly, close to a million people.3 On February 26, Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev tried to calm the situation by asking for a moratorium on demonstrations for a one month period after which he would announce a policy regarding Nagorno-Karabagh. The Armenians agreed to suspend their protests. Repression soon followed on February 27, 28 and 29 in the Azerbaijani industrial city of Sumgait where a vicious pogrom was carried out against the city’s Armenian minority.4 As the weeks and months progressed, the scope of the challenge broadened and the crisis deepened, though media coverage became intermittent and reported only major dramatic events as they unfolded over the course of the spring, summer and autumn of 1988. In late March, Gorbachev announced that there could be no change in the status of Nagorno-Karabagh. In May, he expressed his displeasure at the continuation of general strikes and other protests by dismissing the first secretaries of the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs.5 On July 5, Armenian protestors employed a sit-in and mass demonstration at the Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan and briefly shut it down until dispersed by MVD security forces.6 On July 18, the Supreme Soviet convened in Moscow to discuss the question of national minorities and shattered any lingering illusions that the central government would authorize a transfer of Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia.7 Throughout the fall Armenia and Azerbaijan (excluding Karabagh) began to force out their respective Azerbaijani and Armenian minorities.8 The November 7 commemoration of the 71st anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution saw nearly one million Armenians turn out in Yerevan and jeer Communist leaders; at the end of the month, martial law was declared in Armenia.9 On December 7, a terrible earthquake struck Armenia’s second largest city Leninakan (now Gumri) and surrounding areas, killing between 25 000 and 100 000 people.10 Although Gorbachev cut short his visit to the United States at this time to rush back to Armenia; he, his reforms, the Soviet system and Communism, were thoroughly discredited in Armenia by his inability

Levon Chorbajian 3

to understand the centrality of the Karabagh issue for Armenians, and the refusal of the Party apparatus and the army to respond appropriately to the earthquake with cranes and other needed rescue equipment. A middle-aged man named Albert captured this for me in dramatic fashion on a warm sunny day in May 1989. He had survived the earthquake along with his wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, but his two adult sons had perished. Earlier in the day we had visited their grave sites and laid carnations. Later, as Albert drove us around what had been the downtown area of Leninakan, he pointed his finger to the rubble everywhere around us and said: Look at what we have after seventy years of Communism. Nothing! What do we have to lose? Maybe it is time for us to go our own way, to start over.11 I had rarely heard such sentiments during the ten months I had lived in Armenia in 1986 and 1987, but they were commonplace by the spring of 1989. What had taken place over the course of a year and a half was a startling turnaround. In the initial Karabagh demonstrations, one saw frequent images of Gorbachev carried by protesters. While these images were to some protesters mere cynical/manipulative public expressions of loyalty to the Soviet system, for many they expressed not only loyalty but also representations of hope and belief in the power of the Gorbachev reforms. In other words, people believed it was possible that Gorbachev would undo historical injustice by reuniting Karabagh with Armenia. Soviet leaders dissipated that faith. The failure to punish the perpetrators of Sumgait, the refusal of Gorbachev in March and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in July to transfer the territory, the repression at the airport, and the inability and refusal to respond adequately to the earthquake deeply alienated many Armenians from the Soviet system. When he was faced with mass protest from the grassroots, Gorbachev was unable to satisfy demands or to respond with adequate alternatives. Instead the Soviet leadership insisted on a status quo that had been experienced as unjust for 70 years and was being openly declared unacceptable. Gorbachev not only raised expectations he was not prepared to meet, but he was remarkably lacking in inventiveness in exploring and implementing a third way that could have satisfied Armenian demands. His half-hearted concessions to the Armenians alienated Armenians and Azerbaijanis alike. Gorbachev’s was the typical miscalculation of those accustomed to mastery – to solicit the views of subordinates when they think of openness and democracy at all and

4 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

to retain and employ the right of rejection of the responses from those below. In many instances the charges will simply keep their mouths shut or go away. In this case they did not. Protests escalated regionally and quickly throughout the Soviet system. Emblematic of these swirling changes was the Karabagh Committee. The Committee emerged early on in the struggle, and initially had an evolving membership of nationalists and dissident intellectuals. It came to center on 11 men, mostly academicians, who were perceived as honest, nationalist, and unaffiliated with the Party apparatus.12 The Committee represented the aspirations of the Armenian people in a program of democratization, anti-corruption, reunification of Karabagh, and environmental concerns focusing on the Medzamor nuclear power plant, the Nairit chemical complex, and the pollution and depletion of Lake Sevan. As Gorbachev’s ratings and Communist Party fortunes plummeted during 1988, the Karabagh Committee rose to levels of national hero status. By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution commemoration in November, the Party apparatus was thoroughly discredited in the minds of most Armenians, and it was the Karabagh Committee that took charge of earthquake relief.13 Gorbachev employed the cover provided by the tragedy to order the Committee arrested. The last Committee members were arrested in early January, and they spent months together in a Moscow prison. They were held without charge and released in late May without a trial. Their arrests backfired on Gorbachev and served to elevate the Committee members to even higher levels of national esteem. This strong popular base allowed the Committee to take an increasingly bold and independent course concluding in the vote for national independence and the election of Committee member Levon Ter-Petrossian as president of the independent Armenian republic.14 These developments not only had a profound effect on Armenia, but they impacted the Soviet Union as well. The first protests of the Gorbachev era were not in Armenia but in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan in December 1986. Unlike the Armenian protests, though, the Kazakh protests did not spread to other parts of the Soviet Union.15 Perhaps the protests were too quickly extinguished by Soviet forces, the time was not right, or the Baltic and other republics in the western USSR were disinclined to take their cue from Central Asia. Karabagh was different. It was the cue awaited by all discontented Soviet citizens who wanted to see if glasnost was real. Soviet citizens had long been wary of state initiatives encouraging openness only to impose sanctions. There was precedence for this in Mao’s 1957 Hundred Flowers campaign,

Levon Chorbajian 5

a free speech experiment wherein each flower was to represent an alternative voice. In actual practice, official encouragement served as a lure in a policy of government entrapment.16 Such a possibility was not missed by people. Was glasnost real? How could people know? Who would take the first step? Initially it was the Karabagh Armenians, followed right behind by those in the Armenian SSR. Events there made it clear that to a substantial degree glasnost was real as far as the central government was concerned. There were no disappearances of activists as in Argentina, nor their torture as in Brazil, nor government sponsored death squads as in El Salvador, nor severe police repression and mass deportations as in earlier Soviet history. In the language of Sovietologist Alexander Motyl, one did not need to be a martyr or fanatic to make one’s voice heard.17 To be a participant in urban demonstrations and general strikes, one had to be a person with grievances who was willing to face martial law, curfews, and perhaps tear gas and water cannon, but not torture, death, and Siberian exile.18 Sumgait notwithstanding, that was the lesson drawn from events in Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia. Before long the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia itself, and later other parts of the Soviet Union, including, eventually and to a more limited degree, Central Asia, were awash with mobilized and articulated grievances, that is, protest. Gorbachev clearly underestimated the depth of discontent among Soviet nationalities, and he misjudged the impact of his reform program. In December 1991, he paid the price with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that many current writers seem ignorant of the role played by Nagorno-Karabagh in that dissolution or choose to ignore it, it was the trigger that had begun the process in early 1988. The importance of Karabagh as a social movement, Karabagh’s impact on Armenia, the struggles of the Karabagh Armenians themselves, and the role of Karabagh in late Soviet history are all underscored by the lack of resolution of the conflict between Armenia and the Karabagh Armenians on the one hand and Azerbaijan, aided by Turkey, on the other. The two sides fought a bitter war between 1988 and 1994 for control of Karabagh. Since May 1994, a Russian brokered ceasefire has been in effect and largely held. However, without a permanent peace settlement, the unresolved Karabagh conflict contributes to the instability of the Caucasus region. The region itself is strategically located, and serves as a geographical center-point between Russia, and Iran and the Persian Gulf on the north–south axis, and Europe and Turkey and Central Asia on the east–west axis. There is a labor pool

6 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

and market of roughly 15 million people and various mineral resources, including Azerbaijani oil and natural gas deposits alleged by many experts to be large. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the region has been in turmoil – Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabagh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia – and this has denied the stability required for investment, development, and integration into the world economy. There are many interested players here, not all of the same mind. There are the Karabagh Armenians seeking security through de jure independence; Armenia seeking to aid Karabagh but also to end the crippling blockade of its economy by Turkey and Azerbaijan; Azerbaijanis, including refugees from Karabagh and surrounding areas, seeking the territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan within its “internationally recognized” borders; Russia, Turkey, and Iran competing for regional hegemony; and the western states coveting Azerbaijani energy resources and the stability required for infrastructure investment by states and profit-making investment by multinational firms. Whatever perspective one takes, and there is clearly more than one, the centrality of Nagorno-Karabagh in the southern Caucasus is not in doubt. It is appropriate, therefore, to consider, evaluate, and assess the Karabagh movement and its evolution in the dozen years since the 1988 protests. The chapters in this volume have been assembled with that objective in mind. In the remainder of this Introduction, I would like to address four issues. First, I would like to consider what I call the establishment interpretation of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh.19 I realize the term will evoke in the minds of some readers images of 1960s radicalism and social protest where the fabled “establishment” was targetted for mass protest. In my view, the term, if not its original nebulous usage, retains considerable utility in referring to the views that dominate in the foreign ministries of western states and in their academic and policymaking circles. The term assumes a transnational, globalizing, private and public sector interest bloc. Those in it are not necessarily of a single mind, nor is it the case that a certain amount of limited internal conflict and debate are absent. Nevertheless, there is a shared interest among top level corporate executives and board members along with government officials in the White House; State, Defense, and Treasury departments, and the national security agencies in employing diplomacy and selective force to gain favorable access to raw materials, labor and markets in other regions of the world. I call the worldview that emerges from this nexus of actors the establishment interpretation. It constitutes a central ideology that informs western diplomacy,

Levon Chorbajian 7

journalism, and peace mediation efforts, and serves to define the parameters of discussion on the resolution of problems. If one buys into the establishment interpretation, the independence of NagornoKarabagh or its union with Armenia become unreasonable ideas – particularistic, self-interested and banished to the margins of serious discussion. While academics and journalists seldom make their way to the top echelons of power, referred to in the sociological literature as the power elite or dominant class – Henry Kissinger is a notable exception – they do play a central role in articulating the policies that promote establishment objectives. I refer to this group of intellectual players as the establishment analysts and commentators. There are people, organizations, and nation states, dissenting from the establishment interpretation of the Karabagh conflict. Their critique, in particular the Armenian critique, is the second topic I will address. The third is the history of Nagorno-Karabagh because it is little known and because it is contested. As we shall see later, policy makers, peace mediators, and academicians often respond to contested realities either by dismissing both sides, seeing the truth as being somewhere in the middle or creating yet some other interpretation. These are erroneous paths in the case of Nagorno-Karabagh. I shall demonstrate how and why this is the case. In the final section, I would like to present a brief summary of each chapter in the volume and its contribution to the whole.

The establishment interpretation Various western and regional governments and international mediation organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have expended considerable resources in trying, thus far unsuccessfully, to negotiate a treaty resolution to the struggle over Nagorno-Karabagh. Although these efforts are publicly portrayed as objective and unbiased and in the best interests of all concerned, they are not necessarily perceived that way by the actual parties to the conflict, in this instance the Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabagh. On occasion, a western analyst or commentator will bring the broader objectives out in the open. One of these is the establishment analyst and author of numerous books, Neil MacFarlane. He writes: In its simplest sense, there is wide agreement in the West among both private and public actors on the agenda of political and

8 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

economic reform, the opening of the region to the international market, and sovereignty and regional stability. Most state and private actors would also embrace the objective of balancing Russia’s influence in the region either for geopolitical reasons or because it would facilitate other elements of the agenda. The agenda involves no less than a substantial reordering of the domestic affairs and international relations of the southern NIS (newly independent states) to render them democratic, liberal, integrated participants in a western-dominated political and economic order. The devil is in the details.20 Edmund Herzig writes in a similar vein. No regional power, especially Russia and Iran, should be allowed to exert disproportionate power in the region, and there should be peace and stability so that investments in petroleum can be made in a secure environment and the oil can be safely shipped out. There are a number of reforms that are seen as promoting these objectives: supporting the independence of the three Caucasian states; working to achieve conflict resolution, always at the expense of the dissident movements including the Karabagh Armenians; encouraging political, economic and military reform which means privatization and economic integration into the nexus of transnational commerce and the institutions of democratic decision making, especially through political parties and elections; and treating energy and the pipelines as a positive sum game in which all interested parties will be able to achieve some gain. Herzig concludes: If these objectives can be achieved, the region will be made secure from internal and external threats, and will become a friendly environment for the operations of western businesses.21 The approach of the establishment analysts and commentators very much reflect the establishment itself. That establishment consists of transnational corporate investors and the governments of western industrialized states. The objectives are externally generated by these public and private sector actors and imposed on the region. Various carrot and stick inducements, such as the promise of loans and other forms of assistance or their denial, are employed to nudge the regional actors along to compliance with the grander plan. In this interventionist framework, regional history and popular will are seen as impediments to success since they conflict with one another, often serve as the basis for conflict, present problems in reconciliation, and may lead

Levon Chorbajian 9

to unwelcome conclusions, for example, the Armenians have a very strong claim to Nagorno-Karabagh. The establishment approach is technocratic and the emphasis very much pragmatic. Do what works to get the job done is the order of the day – don’t let history, culture, or local needs interfere. MacFarlane makes this explicit: The fifteen republics of the former Soviet space exist in the territorial boundaries defined under Soviet rule, whether or not they make sense in ethno-geographical terms, or correspond to the aspirations of the people living in them.22 It is difficult to imagine a more transparent statement than MacFarlane’s to make the point that the “more-knowing-than-thou” posture of the establishment analysts and commentators is hardly objective and unbiased. In fact, it is so deeply steeped in the assumptions of the priority of western political and commercial interests that some analysts and commentators make no effort to conceal it.

Dissent The views of the Karabagh Armenians and their supporters differ substantially from those of the establishment analysts and commentators on seven separate dimensions. I will examine each as appropriate. The areas of disagreement are (1) territorial integrity versus self-determination; (2) the appropriate role of history; (3) the origins of the conflict; (4) the role of oil; (5) the Armenian lobby; (6) the world view of people who have suffered genocide; and (7) the assumption that the developed world is democratic and fair. It will be argued that together the establishment view on these seven items constitutes a particularistic, agenda-driven ideology that masquerades as objective and unbiased. This summary argument will be made in the last subsection, “Postcolonial colonialism and the posture of objectivity”. Territorial integrity versus self-determination From the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabagh protests in 1988, there have been claims and counterclaims concerning the transferability or independence of Nagorno-Karabagh under the principles of Soviet and, later, international law. The establishment analysts and commentators consistently argue that while both the principles of self-determination (invoked by the Armenians) and territorial integrity (invoked by the Azerbaijanis) are established principles in international law, territorial

10

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

integrity takes precedence. Nagorno-Karabagh must, therefore, remain within the borders of Azerbaijan. The reasons behind this line of argument are not difficult to discern. Ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious minorities are features of nearly all states, and partition by secessionist minorities is at least an implicit and unwelcome possibility for the leaders of such states. Consider the examples of the USA, Britain, Turkey, Iran, and Russia, five countries with interests in the Caucasus. Each faces threats of greater or lesser proportion from national minorities within its own borders, some of whom seek autonomy or even national independence – the USA from some African-American nationalists, Native Americans, and Puerto Rican separatists; Britain in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; Turkey and Iran from the Kurds; and Russia, catastrophically in Chechnya, and, in the future, very possibly elsewhere. An insistence on territorial integrity (NagornoKarabagh remains within Azerbaijan) contributes to the ideological repertoire of the USA, Britain, and the regional powers for the maintenance of their putative turf against the claims of their own minorities. Edmund Herzig, a leading establishment analyst, prioritizes territorial integrity and self-determination in his discussion of separatist movements in the Caucasus – Nagorno-Karabagh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia: The constitutional dispute boils down to a secessionist emphasis on the principle of self-determination, and a Georgian and Azerbaijani insistence on the principle of territorial integrity. While both principles are firmly enshrined in international law and treaties, their interrelationship and appropriate criteria and forums for resolving their frequent clashes in real political situations remain elusive to consistent or theoretical or practical solution. The relative clarity of the notion of territorial integrity and its obvious importance for the maintenance of international stability contrast with the vagueness of self-determination. (What does it actually mean? The right to full statehood and sovereignty or to some more limited form of selfgovernment? And who enjoys it? Does a small national minority constitute a “people” entitled to this right?) In practice most states and international organizations tend to prioritize territorial integrity – the final act of the 1975 Helsinki Conference, for instance, explicitly constrains respect for the right to self-determination with conformity with international principles and norms relating to territorial integrity. The inconsistency in the way these principles are understood and applied by the international community has engendered

Levon Chorbajian 11

confusion and cynicism towards international mediation among the parties to the conflicts.23 In common with much establishment writing on this issue, Herzig’s statement contains the veneer though not the substance of reason. It is certainly true that there are ambiguities in international law, but there is no reason, other than its compatibility with Herzig’s agenda, to argue for the “relative clarity” of territorial integrity versus the “vagueness” of self-determination. The following questions, if one were inclined to pose them, quickly diminish the “relative clarity” of territorial integrity claimed by Herzig and increase its “vagueness”: What does territorial integrity actually mean? Is territorial integrity absolute? Should territorial integrity be maintained if borders are drawn in disregard of the wishes of the residents? What levels of internal oppression, persecution, and neglect should be tolerated before a nation can be said to have abrogated its right to territorial integrity? The key to Herzig’s views on this issue is found in his reference to territorial integrity’s “obvious importance for the maintenance of international stability”. This means that goods, services, energy, labor, and capital should flow freely without interruption between nations, regions, and continents. This is not a foremost concern of national minorities or in the case of the Karabagh Armenians, majority groups who have had oppressive political arrangements imposed upon them. It is a foremost concern of transnational corporations and western industrialized states. In fact, the diplomatic and military apparatus of the latter are in the service of creating and maintaining the political conditions that maximize such movement by preventing or removing any obstacles imposed by troublesome ideologies of the left (socialism, communism) and the right (Islamic fundamentalism, militant nationalism), recalcitrant leaders, and dissident social movements. Herzig and other establishment spokespersons frequently present particularistic logics as universal ones, which require national minorities not only to agree to live under oppressive political arrangements but to concede their reasonableness, even though such arrangements are consistent with the larger objectives of the western establishment and not their own. A further duplicity, and a rather blatant one because it so directly furthers the agenda of existing states and transnational corporations, is found in Herzig’s statement concerning the Helsinki Agreements. Herzig writes that the treaty “… explicitly constrains respect for the right to self-determination with conformity with international principles and norms relating to territorial integrity.” If true, this would

12

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

make self-determination a principle secondary to territorial integrity. However, just as self-determination is qualified in the document as Herzig says it is, territorial integrity is also so qualified. In other words, there is nothing in the Helsinki Agreements that makes either principle primary over the other, and the document makes it clear that the invocation of either principle should not come at the expense of the other.24 This is a rather different outcome than the one alleged by Herzig. Herzig’s last sentence also calls for comment: “The inconsistency in the way these principles are understood and applied by the international community has engendered confusion and cynicism towards international mediation among the parties to the conflicts.” Indeed. The principles of international law on boundaries and peoples are often applied in a self-interested manner. African and Asian anti-colonial struggles after World War II were justified by appeals to self-determination. These same states now argue that the concept of self-determination ought to apply only to struggles against European colonialism.25 More important than these examples, because they originate with the nations which claim the moral high ground and the right to lead the way in upholding international law, are the inconsistencies of the western capitalist states themselves. President Woodrow Wilson, the “idealist” advocate of the self-determination of nations, demonstrated little regard for this principle in Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The later actions of such nations as Britain, France, and the USA in such places as Malaya, India, Kenya, Algeria, French Indo-China and the Belgian Congo, among others, indicates an unwillingness of colonial and neocolonial powers to abide by the principle of self-determination in the very context of anti-colonial struggles where the principle is today regarded by many as having the widest area of legitimacy. The contradictions are no less glaring when we consider contemporary events. The same international community that insists on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan has an entirely different standard when it comes to states that are fully integrated into the global alliance. Thus the western capitalist states have allowed the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus since 1974 and the Israeli occupations of the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. These are examples of what linguist Noam Chomsky refers to as intentional ignorance in the face of inconvenient facts.26 References to Turkish and Israeli occupations are conspicuously absent in the establishment literature. The major powers and their analysts and commentators prefer to ignore them while lecturing the Karabagh Armenians on the inadmissibility of self-determination. This

Levon Chorbajian 13

is despite the fact that the claim of the Karabagh Armenians to selfdetermination is stronger than many such claims in the 20th century and inferior to none. In such a context, cynicism among the Karabagh Armenians and their supporters is neither uninformed nor irrational.27 The arguments of the academic spokespersons for the western capitalist states highlight the flexible and self-interested manner in which these states deal with the tensions engendered by the principles of selfdetermination and territorial integrity. However, they do little to point the way toward a resolution of the Karabagh conflict. There can be no doubt that the issues of self-determination and territorial integrity raise some of the most difficult problems in international law. There is no simple resolution. Self-determination in the form of the creation of new states from the territories of existing states does challenge the principle of territorial integrity and must, therefore, meet the highest legal standard to be considered legitimate. The establishment analysts and commentators side step this option in favor of rejecting selfdetermination. The inadmissibility of self-determination, the position taken by the establishment analysts and commentators, effectively eliminates self-determination as a working legal principle by limiting its applicability to cases where both parties agree to separate, as in the case of the former Czechoslovakia. It is not unreasonable to ask, though, if both sides agree, what is the purpose of an international law? Law is specifically designed to address cases where there is disagreement between sides in conflict. In the case of Nagorno-Karabagh and other instances of the claim and rejection of self-determination by states and dissidents in conflict, there needs to be a serious examination of international law and its applicability to each case along with negotiation between the sides in conflict. But this is no where in evidence. What we have instead is (1) Azerbaijan’s rejection of the Karabagh Armenians as parties to negotiation; (2) the acceptance of this rejection by the industrialized states of the West; and (3) rejection of the Karabagh Armenians’ right to self-determination on the basis of self-interested arguments masquerading as universal principles, that is the alleged primacy of territorial integrity over self-determination.28 The appropriate role of history Establishment analysts and commentators treat history as an indecipherable minefield of claims and counterclaims. Considering archaeological accounts, one writer poses the question “… what makes some ‘nationalist’ and others more objective?” In his view, it is authorship. He suggests that the work of writers writing about a group they themselves

14

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

belong to ought to be dismissed.29 Others present the claims of each side without any attempt to sort out the accuracies from the inaccuracies, the truths from the falsehoods.30 Edmund Herzig takes this a step further by labeling Armenian and Azerbaijani positions mythical. These myths, writes Herzig, originate in Soviet samizdat literature and what appear to the outsider to be innocuous scholarly or cultural works “… advanced nationalist claims that were transparent to their intended audiences.”31 The selective use of sources, tendentious interpretations and deliberate falsifications promoted the construction of myths, as did “… the relative insularity of the republics’ official and dissident cultures, which were able to construct and reproduce historical myths without exposing them to external debate or criticism.”32 By virtue of his failure to assess the mutual claims of the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis, Herzig is able to dismiss both. This is one means by which he is able to claim the high ground for himself, and the right to make judgments on what is a fair and just resolution of the Karabagh conflict, namely that Karabagh stays within Azerbaijan, certain concessions are made to the Armenians, and the full integration of the Caucasus region into the global economy begins in an atmosphere of stability necessary for it to succeed. I would argue that there is an alternative route to the one Herzig and other establishment analysts and commentators choose, a route less direct and more troublesome, though one consistent with the canons of scholarship and the scientific method. That would be to investigate the Armenian and Azerbaijani claims regarding Nagorno-Karabagh. There is census data and other types of archival material. The architectural remains of medieval Armenian settlements are there for the viewing. Neither the circumstances under which Nagorno-Karabagh was assigned to Azerbaijan in 1921 nor the condition of the Karabagh Armenians under Soviet rule nor the settlement policies of the Azerbaijani SSR in the enclave need be matters of mythology or speculation. They are matters of historical record for those who wish to conduct the necessary research. The problem is that the information is discordant. It reinforces the Armenian position Herzig and others prefer to dismiss as merely another mythology. To do otherwise would be to threaten the Western–Turkish alliance wherein Turkey insists on maximalist positions on matters of the Armenian Genocide and NagornoKarabagh. It is also thought to endanger access to Azerbaijani energy resources even though Azerbaijan can neither extract nor market them without reliance on the West.

Levon Chorbajian 15

How did it start? The armed conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh in the early and mid 1990s was a serious war, and under certain circumstances it is one that could break out again. Nearly all writers put the fatality figure in excess of 20 000 and the number of refugees at over one million. One writer puts the number at 1.4 million – 850 000 refugees and internally displaced persons in Azerbaijan (Azerbaijanis), 400 000 refugees in Armenia (Armenians), and 100 000 refugees in Russia (Azerbaijanis and Armenians).33 Given the enormous level of human suffering, it might seem extraneous, even insensitive, to inquire as to how the conflict began. However, a consequence of not posing the question, as with the dismissal of history, is to place Armenian and Azerbaijani claims on the same plane. The argument being made here is that this leveling of history and responsibility erases the legitimate strengths of the Armenian position and provides legitimacy to the Azerbaijani position that would be belied by a closer examination. Armenians raised the issue of Karabagh in a peaceful manner during 1987 and 1988. They employed time honored means of non-violent resistance including petitions, marches, vigils, hunger strikes, demonstrations, rallies and general strikes. These actions were met with extreme violence, first in the Azerbaijani industrial city of Sumgait in late February of 1988. For three days Azerbaijani mobs rampaged through Armenian districts looting, raping, and murdering Armenians. Approximately three dozen Armenians were killed although some sources claim a higher number of deaths. The manner in which the Armenians were killed is significant. Avakian, Lola, daughter of Pavel, born 1961, living in Sumgait, Quarter 45, Building 10/13, Apartment 37. Attacked in her apartment on 29 February 1988, Lola Avakian was raped and then led nude through the street where she was forced to dance. She was stabbed with a knife, and her body had marks from cigarette burns. She was further mutilated and could only be identified by her little finger … . Melkoumian, Igor, son of Soghomon. Born 1967, living in Sumgait. Quarter 41A, Building 2B, Apartment 21. Second-and third degree burns over the entire body, carbon monoxide poisoning, contusions to the neck. After being beaten he was burned alive in the street. He was killed at the same time as his father, mother, brother and sister.34

16

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

The victims of these crimes are best seen as representatives of the Armenian people as a whole and not as individual Armenians. The killings of Armenians in Sumgait were, therefore, exemplary crimes and bear strong similarities to the lynching of African-Americans in the USA and the victims of other pogroms and genocides.35 In all these cases, even though the victims were individuals, the purpose of the crimes was to intimidate the entire community of people to which the victims belonged. The victims were chosen for who they were, in this case Armenians, and not for anything they may have done. The killings were a response to the protests in Karabagh and Armenia that challenged the hierarchy of ethnic relations and threatened to alter the subordinated status of the Karabagh Armenians. Armenians could live peacefully in Azerbaijan so long as they never challenged their subordinated status. When Armenians challenged that status in Stepanakert and Yerevan, the Armenian people had to be taught a lesson.36 Sumgait was designed to send the collective message that challenges would not be tolerated and that a stiff price would be exacted for them.37 The second round of pogroms took place in Baku beginning on January 13, 1990 and claimed over 50 Armenian victims. On the third day of attacks a state of emergency was declared. Soviet troops occupied the city on January 20, and 150 additional persons were killed, mostly Azerbaijanis, in the process of restoring order to the city.38 A third round of anti-Armenian violence began during the winter of 1990–91 and continued until the failed August coup that signaled the end of the Soviet Union. This program of ethnic cleansing was carried out in Karabagh itself and surrounding Armenian settlements to the northwest of the region. These intimidations, deportations and killings operated under the code name Operation Ring, and they differed from the previous instances in four ways. First, they were carried out in and around Karabagh itself and not in Azerbaijani cities with Armenian minorities. Second, the perpetrators were Russian and Azerbaijani military units and not incited mobs. Third, there was the deliberate intent of cleaning out Armenian areas, including Karabagh as a whole, of Armenians. The reigning slogan in the Politburo was “No Armenians, No Problem.” Finally, the Karabagh Armenians with assistance from Armenia organized a resistance that was effective in some instances.39 Operation Ring takes its name from its modus operandi. Soviet troops would surround targeted Armenian villages, this would be followed by Azerbaijani OMON or Black Beret forces entering the villages and forcing the Armenians to leave. Fortunately we are able to document these events through the reports of international human rights observers.

Levon Chorbajian 17

This description of events in the Armenian village of Getashen, to the northwest of Nagorno-Karabagh between Azerbaijan and Armenia was typical of what the observers found. During the deportations, there were numerous civil rights violations of several types. People were killed singly or multiply. There were beatings, rapes, forced abductions, and imprisonment. Property and livestock were stolen or bought for an insulting price, such as a car for two roubles. Voluntary requests to leave were obtained at gunpoint. Ears of girls were torn by forcible removal of earrings. We found no evidence, in spite of diligent inquiry, that anyone recently deported from Getashen left it voluntarily. Most of the witnesses told us that the beatings and killings were carried out by the Azerbaijani OMON (Azerbaijani Special Forces or “black beret units”). But the Soviet army organized the surrounding of the villages and taunted the villagers, “Why have you not left already?” Then they stood aside while the OMON terrorized the villagers. The villagers were left on the Armenian side of the border with only the clothes they were wearing.40 These events, like the earlier ones in Sumgait and Baku, were the context in which the self-determination movement of Karabagh was organized. As Azerbaijani attacks escalated and Karabagh forces began to receive assistance from Armenia and its diaspora, the Karabagh forces went on the offensive. In the desperate struggle that ensued, Azerbaijani forces employed long range artillery and GRAD missiles to destroy most of Stepanakert and to inflict heavy damage on surrounding Armenian villages. When the Armenian counteroffensive eventually succeeded, the retaliating Karabagh Armenians inflicted punishing damage on the retreating Azerbaijani forces and towns, like Aghdam, which are now essentially dynamited ruins. It is the case that Armenians killed civilians in Khojalu four years after Sumgait, occupied and held 10 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan, and created hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons.41 However, it was Operation Ring, Sumgait and Baku that escalated the conflict to the level of war. These events convinced the Karabagh Armenians that they had no future in Karabagh and could survive there only if they could successfully fight back to defend themselves. Once that conclusion was forced upon them, all of the consequences of war fell tragically into place.

18

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

These factors are concealed by western journalism and the establishment analysts and commentators. The exaggeration in the amount of Azerbaijani territory held by Armenian forces, the exaggeration in the number of Azerbaijani refugees, the failure to cite the existence and number of Armenian refugees, distortions in the history of NagornoKarabagh, the standing of self-determination in international law, and the use of individual case histories devoid of context all serve to shift the definition of the struggle for Nagorno-Karabagh from a legitimate struggle for self-determination to an illegitimate case of Armenian irredentism or yet another sad, inscrutable case of senseless ethnic bloodshed. In a work published at the height of the fighting in 1993, Caroline Cox and John Eibner avoid the package of errors that mar much western writing on Nagorno-Karabagh. They note that the Karabagh Armenians have contributed to the toll of human death and suffering. On the basis of the evidence, however, they conclude that there has been a tremendous asymmetry of violence in the struggle for NagornoKarabagh, and the Karabagh-Armenians have been the principal victims. They cite Azerbaijan as the primary aggressor and give five reasons for this conclusion: 1. Azerbaijan and the Soviet 4th Army carried out the deportations of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabagh and the Shahumian District. 2. Azerbaijan imposed economic blockades on Armenia and NagornoKarabagh. 3. Azerbaijan initiated the use of GRAD rocket launchers, which greatly escalated the level of civilian casualties and destroyed housing, hospitals, and other essential facilities. 4. Azerbaijan deployed 500 kg and cluster bombs against civilian populations. 5. Azerbaijan deployed missiles against civilian populations in Nagorno-Karabagh.42 Oil plays no role There is some debate as to how much oil and natural gas Azerbaijan possesses. Establishment analyst and commentator Ronald Suny offered this copious assessment: “One of the great underdeveloped oil reserves in the world lay under the Caspian Sea, and Azerbaijan stood to become a Caucasian Kuwait.”43 Azerbaijani ambassador to the US Hafiz Pashayev goes even further, claiming oil and natural gas reserves far in excess of anyone else’s estimates including western oil companies and the US government.44 Anatol Lieven edits Strategic Comments at the

Levon Chorbajian 19

International Institute for Strategic Studies and covered the Caucasus and Central Asia for The Times (London) in the early and mid 1990s. Lieven puts the oil resources at 2 percent of the world’s reserves and says the fields have significant disadvantages that are likely to result in extraction, transport, and marketing costs that will run at three times the world average.45 Others offer more sanguine assessments. The International Oil Agency says Azerbaijan “… could become a major oil supplier at the margin, much as the North Sea is today.” The agency sees this as strengthening western security by diversifying sources.46 Edmund Herzig thinks Azerbaijan is most likely to become a medium sized oil producing country. It is the last major unclaimed reserve, Baku offers attractive investment terms and the resource interfaces well with western strategic interests.47 MacFarlane cites Jan Kalicki, special counselor to the US Department of Commerce and ombudsman for the Central Asia energy sector, who echoes common themes in the interested western public and private sectors: We are interested in facilitating the development of this region’s oil and gas resources, which will be especially critical to meeting the world’s future energy demand and ensuring diversification of world oil supplies.48 The major disadvantage of the Caspian reserves is that there is no easy outlet to the sea. There has been much political jockeying back and forth to come up with a pipeline route or routes to be able to get the oil to market. Behind the scenes, Turkey vetoes a route through Armenia to the Mediterranean. Russia opposes the route favored by the USA and Turkey that would go through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean; the longest and most expensive route, and disadvantageous to Azerbaijan because of the high transfer fees it would have to pay to Turkey.49 The USA strongly opposes the cheapest and most direct route that would go through Iran to the Persian Gulf,50 while the USA and Turkey oppose a Russian route. Azerbaijani President Gaidar Aliev has been skillful at playing his oil resources to gain the maximum political advantage for his country. Aliev probably overestimates the role of oil in determining a Karabagh settlement fully to his liking, yet the oil does provide him with a political resource that he has skillfully employed in three areas: (1) to strengthen his bargaining power with the West; (2) to gain a greater measure of independence from Russia; and (3) to employ oil as a lure for negotiating the most favorable Karabagh outcome. The second instance is freely admitted by western

20

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

analysts and commentators since they share the objective of weakening Russian influence, but it is denied in the first instance and, especially, in the third. The Armenian lobby Writing on Nagorno-Karabagh contains references to an Armenian lobby that is said to influence US policy in Washington. It is implied that this is a large, influential lobby backed by a sizeable group of Armenian-Americans who employ their great wealth to pressure Washington decision makers. References are found in both the scholarly literature and the media to this lobby. In the media, the references are brief – “the Armenian lobby”, “a powerful Armenian lobby” – with the implication that this lobby backed by Armenian money is an effective tool in influencing US policy on Armenian issues. Academic references are often more detailed and sometimes, but not always, more tempered. Anatol Lieven cites the Armenian-American lobby as the only group with any serious interest in the region and argues that in any future Karabagh war the US would not be free to back Turkey against Russia (and, by implication, Azerbaijan against Armenia) because of this lobby. Lieven, however, neglects the oil companies – historically one of the most influential lobbies in all of Washington and their interests in the nation’s capital. He also ignores the fact that Turkey, in a very real sense, does not need to lobby as such, given Turkey’s longstanding links with the USA through the NATO alliance and secondary ties.51 Similarly, Neil MacFarlane argues that US strategic interests in containing Russia and Iran and gaining access to Caspian energy are frustrated by the Armenians. He writes: The development of such a policy has been substantially hampered by the existence in the U.S. of a very influential lobby committed to the cause of the Karabagh Armenians. The result has been incoherence. That American policy since 1995 has placed a higher priority than previously on relations with Azerbaijan is the result not so much of the assertion of strategic decision-making over domestic lobbying, but of the growing interest of another domestic lobby – the energy firms involved in Azerbaijan – and its capacity to balance the Armenian lobby. Although many see this as a battle to have been won to all intents and purposes by the energy companies, the continuing strength of the ethnic lobby was evident in 1998 in its capacity to kill efforts to repeal Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.52

Levon Chorbajian 21

At the deeper end of fantasy we have Mohiaddin Mesbahi on the Armenian lobby and Elizabeth Fuller on the prevailing worldview in Azerbaijan itself. According to Mesbahi “… Turkey’s historical friendship with the United States did not prevent Washington from taking a clearly pro-Armenian stand in the Azeri–Armenian conflict.”53 It is difficult to understand to what “a clearly pro-Armenian stand” refers. This is how Elizabeth Fuller describes Azerbaijan: … the emerging national consciousness tends to be defensive, suspicious, and embittered – emotions that have been compounded over the past seven years by the conviction that the Azerbaijani people are the victim of an Armenian lobby that determines the attitude and policies adopted by the international community.54 References to a powerful Armenian lobby serve to portray Azerbaijan as a victim of well-funded and well-connected Armenian efforts to promote its case in the centers of power while deflecting attention from the much better established connections of Azerbaijan’s ally, Turkey, as well as the resources and connections of Azerbaijan itself. Thus any resolution of the Karabagh conflict that might favor the Armenians, however slightly, is not on the basis of the strength of the Armenian case or the military victories of the Karabagh Armenians but because of a kind of conspiracy in which the Armenians always triumph over the victimized Azerbaijanis. That the case for a powerful Armenian lobby is a misreading becomes apparent when we consider what the Armenian lobby has been able to accomplish. There is an Armenian-American lobby represented in Washington by the Armenian Assembly and the Armenian National Committee. The leading successes of this lobby have been to secure a high per capita level of humanitarian aid for Armenia and to pass Section 907 that prohibits aid to Azerbaijan until such time as Azerbaijan lifts its blockade of Armenia. Section 907 has been challenged and attempts to overturn it have been gaining more and more votes, especially after former high ranking US government officials have been hired as lobbyists for Baku. It is difficult for the ArmenianAmerican lobby to compete with former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, subsequently with Halliburton Energy Services, and now VicePresident of the USA, telling Congress that “Azerbaijan’s very independence and survival are on the line.”55 For over two decades Armenian-American organizations have been attempting to persuade Congress to pass a resolution commemorating

22

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

the victims of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish Genocide of the Armenian people.56 For all of its alleged power, the Armenian lobby has never been successful in having such a resolution passed by both houses of Congress. These resolutions have been vigorously opposed by the Turkish government, the State Department, and every sitting US president, and the resolutions have been defeated year after year. There are two critical points to be made about the Armenian lobby. Both are consistently absent from journalistic and academic accounts. First, although the Armenian lobby is not without influence, it is hardly the Washington juggernaut it is implied or said to be. We can highlight this point by listing what a truly potent, well funded Armenian lobby would have accomplished. The Armenian Genocide resolution would have passed long ago; second there would have been intense pressure on Turkey and Azerbaijan to lift their crippling blockades on Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh; third, Turkey would have been pressured to admit that a genocide was committed against the Armenians during the years 1915 to 1923; fourth, the US would have extended diplomatic recognition to Nagorno-Karabagh; and fifth the US would be actively employing its influence in international mediation circles to promote Nagorno-Karabagh’s independence from Azerbaijan. The Armenian lobby has a limited agenda tailored to the resources available to it. Within this context, the lobby has achieved some notable success; however, the lobby lacks the resources to move very far from its agenda into new areas. That would require a clear paradigm shift in US foreign policy toward the region. In such a paradigm shift, the USA would have to adopt Armenia as its favored regional ally. This would require the USA to reverse five decades of favoritism toward Turkey over powerful Turkish opposition. It is simply out of the question for the Armenian lobby, with its limited resources, to even consider such an expanded agenda. The second and more important point is that the Armenian lobby, such as it is, is presenting a case that possesses inherent value and appeal. It is a case based on the historical record that overwhelmingly favors Armenian claims to Nagorno-Karabagh, it is a case that can make legitimate appeals to the values of fairness and justice, and it is a case based on military victories that have secured alienated lands and provided for their strategic defense. Attacks on the Armenian lobby serve to conceal the powerful Azerbaijani/Turkish and oil/petrochemical lobbies. They also conceal the legitimacy of the Armenian claim and encourage the view that even limited Armenian success in the nation’s capital is substantively baseless and a case of Washington hucksterism.

Levon Chorbajian 23

The world view of people who have suffered genocide In 1914 two-thirds of the world’s Armenians lived in territories now comprising the Republic of Turkey. Under the cover of World War I, beginning in the spring of 1915, a genocide was unleashed against those Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish state, led by the Ittihad ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress, Young Turks).57 Oneand-a-half million Armenians were killed in a premeditated policy of state extermination.58 Armenians in Soviet Armenia and the postSoviet Republic of Armenia were affected by events across the Turkish border in three important ways. First, the Republic of Armenia was invaded by Turkish military forces in 1918 and 1920, and each time those who were unable to escape were captured and slaughtered. These actions were a continuation of the 1894–96 Hamidian massacres and part of the larger genocide that culminated in 1915 and continued in the Transcaucasus, Smyrna and elsewhere through 1923. The Republic of Armenia, in other words, directly suffered Turkish genocide.59 Second, as many as 300 000 people from Ottoman Armenia fled across the border to safety from places like Van and other centers of Armenian population in the northeastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. There are many people in Armenia today who are the children and grandchildren of these terrorized refugees and survivors of 1915. They are keenly aware of 1915. They know that revitalized Turkish forces under Ataturk invaded and threatened to destroy the Armenian Republic after World War I, and they speak of the alliance between Turkey and Azerbaijan which was expressed in a pan-Turkic agenda to take Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia’s southern province of Zangezur. This is part of the consciousness of Armenia and Armenians. It was the backdrop for the massive, united demonstrations of 1988 that brought people on to the streets. No other issue resonated for Armenians like Nagorno-Karabagh because it was the only lost territory, of so many lost territories, that had not been cleansed of its Armenians and offered some reasonable hope to be reclaimed.60 The third factor has to do with the response of the international community to the Armenians after World War I. The Armenian genocide was a cause célèbre in the West at the time that it was going on, and there were calls for international intervention to provide justice to the Armenians.61 The first peace settlement with the defeated Ottoman Turks was the Treaty of Sèvres that called for an independent Armenian state created out of Caucasian Armenia and a portion of the Armenian territories in the former Ottoman Empire. The treaty became a dead

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

letter and was never enforced. It was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1923.62 Lausanne never so much as mentioned the Armenians by name. The Bolsheviks who conquered the southern Caucasus in 1920 and 1921, imposed their own policies on the region. Their decisions were highly detrimental to the Armenians who were weaker, and thus less able to defend their interests, than the neighboring Georgians allied with Germany, and Azerbaijanis aided by Turkey.63 Nor did Armenia have a regional ally to promote its interests as in the case of Turkey for Azerbaijan. The result for Armenia was further territorial losses. Under the Treaty of Alexandropol, forced upon the leaders of the postwar Republic of Armenia on December 2, 1920, after it had actually been deposed, western lands held by the republic were ceded to Turkey.64 In addition, contested territories inhabited by sizeable Armenian populations were given to Georgia, Nakhichevan went to Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabagh, despite its overwhelming Armenian majority, was also ceded to Azerbaijan. There is one sense in which the experience of Nagorno-Karabagh is different from the experience of the Armenian Genocide survivors and their descendents in Armenia. There was no genocide in NagornoKarabagh and few survivors settled there. Nevertheless, Karabagh Armenians have an awareness of the experiences of Armenians elsewhere. They also possess a well rooted and not irrational suspicion of outside powers and the longer term meaning of promises to protect the interests of the Karabagh Armenians. The betrayal by the British, the alliances of Azerbaijani leaders with Ottoman and republican Turkey, the massacres of Armenians in Baku and Shushi after World War I and the fact that the Azerbaijanis are a Turkic people, are historical lessons that continue to be current. To a degree, the commitment to self-reliance and suspicion of outside parties is shaped by the earlier experiences of the Karabagh Armenians. With the end of World War I, Nagorno-Karabagh was de facto independent. At this time British forces entered Azerbaijan from northern Iran and consistently promoted Azerbaijani interests with regard to Nagorno-Karabagh. This included a variety of interventions and duplicities that placed the territory under Azerbaijani control.65 Nowhere was this more apparent than in the fate of Shushi, the former capital city of Nagorno-Karabagh. The Azerbaijanis today promote the view, and it is often accepted by outside parties to the conflict, that Shushi is a uniquely Azerbaijani city. If Nagorno-Karabagh is to have autonomy within Azerbaijan, the argument is made, then an exception needs to be made for Shushi in

Levon Chorbajian 25

recognition of its special Azerbaijani character. There had been significant numbers of Azerbaijani residents in the city since the late 18th century, but to call the city Azerbaijani or uniquely Azerbaijani constitutes a perverse twist of history in a context where outside parties are typically uninterested in history. Shushi is an historically Armenian city. The first written record appears in a gospel copied there in 1428 by the Armenian priest Manuel, and the city was at the center of resistance to Turkic Muslim invasion in the 1720s. Armenians won a week-long battle against Turkish forces for control of Shushi November 15–23, 1726.66 At the dawn of the 20th century, Shushi was the third largest city in the Transcaucasus after Tbilisi and Baku, and it had an Armenian majority. The city boasted schools, churches, and an active publishing complex and theater life. On the eve of the Russian Revolution, Shushi published 21 newspapers and magazines, 19 in Armenian and two in Russian.67 The British intervened in Nagorno-Karabagh in various ways to increase Azerbaijani power at the expense of the Armenians. This included forcing the notorious Armenophobe Khosrov bek Sultanov on the Armenians as the governor general of Nagorno-Karabagh and Zangezur.68 The culmination of these events was the razing of the Armenian sector of Shushi in March and April 1920. Homes were sacked and burnt to the ground and thousands of Armenians massacred. In the words of the high ranking Bolshevik Sergo Orjonikidze, “I shudder to recall the images we saw in Shushi in May, 1920. The beautiful Armenian city was ruined, destroyed.”69 Orjonikidze’s words underscore the contrast between the pre- and postwar census figures for the city. In 1914 the city had a population of 42 130 of which 22 004 were Armenians. In 1922 the city had a population of 9223 of which 289 were Armenians.70 This is how Shushi became “an Azerbaijani city”. The history of genocide and the failure of larger powers to abide by their promises and commitments are part of the consciousness of Armenians in Karabagh and elsewhere. In some instances, though less commonly, lessons are drawn from other struggles. Around the time that OMON was really hitting the villages very hard – 1991 – and the fighting was going on, a friend of mine who’d gone to Karabagh and come back, and in those days they were rarer than they are now, had talked to someone about why do you resist, what keeps you resisting? … The answer was, “Well, who wants to be a Palestinian? Look at how everybody treats them. Look at how

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

even their fellow Arabs treat them. Who wants to be a refugee? It’s better to fight and die here.”71 In toto, the experiences of the Armenians at the hands of stronger powers and the experiences of other smaller, weaker peoples, provide a backdrop that calls for a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict bargained from strength and highly sensitive to security issues. Historian Richard Hovannisian captures these sentiments when he writes: The sense of being tricked and betrayed both in 1918 and 1920 now reinforces Armenian disbelief in any terms or truce that require withdrawal or disarmament prior to the implementation of firm and permanent guarantees.72 The contrast in positions can be seen clearly in attitudes toward two types of Karabagh settlement plans. One calls for a withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied territories prior to an agreement on the final status of Nagorno-Karabagh. The other calls for a withdrawal as part of a total, overall package settlement plan. First we have establishment analyst and commentator Ronald Grigor Suny: The emerging consensus was that a “phased” series of negotiated settlements, rather than a fully negotiated “package deal,” was the best way to achieve resolution of the conflict. A step-by-step approach – beginning with the withdrawal of the Armenian forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories outside of Karabakh – would build confidence on both sides that could lead to a long-term solution.73 Robert Kocharian, former president of the Republic of NagornoKarabagh and the second president of the Republic of Armenia, is reported to have said the following: If the Karabagh Armenians are required to retreat from the occupied territories before a formal peace settlement is signed, while the outcome of peace negotiations is still unclear, this will extend the length of the front three or four times. If demobilization is a component of the peace process, and the numerical strength of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces is reduced, what will happen if the peace negotiations come to a dead end and Azerbaijan launches a new offensive? The risk is simply too great.74

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Kocharian’s position is logical and realistic in terms of past history and the stated objectives of Azerbaijan’s leadership, but Suny refers to Kocharian as “more intransigent” and “far less willing to compromise” than his predecessor Levon Ter-Petrossian.75 This pejorative depiction of Kocharian’s Karabagh policy is a standard feature of Western analyses and commentaries. Their authors appear to be dimly, if at all, aware of the history and the issues raised by Kocharian. It is not, surprising, therefore, that their efforts at resolution have all met with failure. The assumption that the developed world is democratic and fair As we have seen the establishment spokespersons, be they academics, policy makers, or government officials, hold up western societies as democratic and fair, and contrast them to the societies of the Caucasus; riddled with corruption, in various degrees of authoritarianism, and prone to thorny ethnic conflicts. We can certainly agree that great differences between the Caucasian states and the western industrialized states do exist. However, while the latter are certainly more democratic in form, it is not at all clear that they are more democratic in outcome. What we are dealing with here is a kind of intellectual sleight of hand whereby the developed industrial world has an ideal of democracy which it often fails to achieve at the same time that it holds smaller nations such as Armenia and Karabagh to that same standard. The USA, for example, has two competitive political parties, but both are controlled through campaign contributions from corporations, industry blocs, and elite households. Thus they are parties of the center and the right, and they frequently engage in policies that are contrary to the wishes of a majority of the citizenry. Most Americans, for example, want some form of national health insurance yet they are compelled to live in the only advanced industrial nation that does not provide its residents with the right to health care. Polling results since World War II indicate that Americans oppose wars and foreign interventions by large majorities, yet the country is continually engaged in wars, police actions, and “humanitarian” interventions.76 There are many such examples, and they are not the benchmarks of democracy. On the issue of ethnicity and race, the history of the USA is widely known and does not require lengthy comment. It suffices to mention the slavery of African-Americans, the genocide of Native Americans, the barring of Asian immigration from 1885 and throughout much of the 20th century, and deep hostilities directed against Catholics, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the Middle East, and all of the current myriad related expressions of such practices in

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

law, private and governmental organizational policy and custom.77 We further note that various European nations, also considered strongholds of democracy, are now the home of growing fascist movements with openly racist ideologies and practices directed against immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Third World. A specific example from the establishment literature on the Caucasus should suffice. Neil MacFarlane, whose work we examined above, makes the point that the societies of the Caucasus are characterized by tremendous inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income. This is taken to be another symbol of the backwardness of these nations and their lack of democracy, compared, presumably, to the West. The data fail to support MacFarlane’s case. MacFarlane cites the following figure for Armenia: the wealthiest 5 percent of the population controls 70 percent of national wealth.78 He does not cite a figure for the US; I will cite it in his stead. The wealthiest 5 percent of the US population controls 60 percent of national wealth.79 There is no dramatic difference in the distribution of wealth between Armenia, ruled in MacFarlane’s view by a rapacious economic elite, and the USA seen as democratic and free. On income, MacFarlane says the richest 10 percent in Azerbaijan account for 24 percent of national income and the poorest 10 percent for 3.7 percent. In Georgia the top 10 percent garner 43 percent of national income.80 These percentages are actually very similar to income distribution figures for the US. In 1994, the top 5 percent of US households received 20.1 percent of national income. The bottom 20 percent received 4.2 percent.81 The position taken by the Western analysts and commentators that the western capitalist states are democratic and fair is not an end in itself. As we shall see below, it serves as the ideological basis for claiming the right to investigate, advise, and adjudicate, that is, to play a disproportionate role in making decisions for others. Postcolonial colonialism and the posture of objectivity From the moment of the Bolshevik Revolution, the western industrial states sought to contain and, if possible, reverse Soviet communism while the Soviets sought initially to expand their revolution and later, at least dominate in their own zone of power. Western attempts began with support for counter-revolutionary White forces and the dispatch of US and British fighting forces to the fledgling Soviet Union. Later, Soviet expansion and USA containment became the forces that shaped the cold war. In accomplishing its objective, the West employed numerous weapons, one of which emerged in the realm of ideology and

Levon Chorbajian 29

symbols out of the repressive history of the Soviet Union and the yearning of millions of Soviet citizens for political democracy. In particular, the image of the West as advanced, modern, sophisticated, democratic and free became a major symbol in the cold war, an especially effective one when middle and upper-class standards in the West were paired against the daily frustrations of Soviet life, along with Stalinism and the severe limitations it imposed on civil, religious, and political freedoms. In the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period, establishment analysts and commentators benefited from their associations with western universities, professional associations, research institutes, and governments that were often seen as superior by many of their Soviet counterparts and viewed as deliverers of hope and democratic change by millions of Soviet citizens. This unfolding of symbols of power, authority, and alleged and imputed knowledge of solutions to intractable problems constituted a form of mystification, not unlike the awe instilled in traditional colonial societies where people were encouraged to view the colonizing nation as superior in all dimensions – language, culture, science, art, and even landscape and terrain.82 The attitudes of the establishment analysts and commentators are most often representative of this kind of colonial mindset. They capitalize on the definition of the western nations they represent as democratic and free and ignore inconvenient historical facts and contemporary realities concerning them that would shed doubt on such views. This alleged democracy and freedom when contrasted with the many ills of the post-Soviet states – economies in free fall, declining living standards, unemployment, ethnic strife, and refugee flows – allowed western analysts and commentators, for a period of time, to present themselves and be received as the purveyors of hope and salvation. Mystification is not an unfounded word to describe this process; however, the policies and skills that are to be delivered are not presented as such but as objective, unbiased, disinterested, and the very ones that will bring peace and prosperity. The view that the western states are democratic and free lends strength to this claim of authority and wisdom. It enhances western power, and extends it to Turkey and Azerbaijan at the same time that Russia and Armenia are let in to the degree that they “co-operate”, while Iran is shut out altogether. The unspoken underlying reality is that terms like democracy and freedom, while having real value as substantive political practices, are operating here as ideological code language for a very different set of practices consisting of stable trade relations, penetration of markets, access to cheap labor, and, in the

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

case of the Armenian–Karabagh–Azerbaijani territorial conflict, in addition to the foregoing, the secure and expeditious extraction and marketing of petroleum. Each of the other issues examined in this section also contribute to the ideological strength and practical influence of the Western analysts and commentators and the public and private agencies they directly or indirectly represent. The stances taken by the establishment analysts and commentators accomplish this by helping to overcome what are seen as the ill-conceived, particularistic, and nettlesome positions of the parties in conflict, especially the Armenians and Karabagh Armenians. In their stead, they substitute allegedly grander interpretations of international law and objective analysis that favor Turkey and Azerbaijan, since the latter are seen as having more to offer than Armenia in terms of resources, markets, and favored regional political outcomes. The insistence that the territorial integrity of existing states carries equal weight in international law with self-determination sweeps aside three inconvenient realities: (1) Nagorno-Karabagh has been an Armenian territory throughout recorded history, (2) its current residents are Armenian, and (3) these residents are firmly committed to independence from Azerbaijan. The further insistence that self-determination can only be exercised under the condition that all parties agree effectively weakens self-determination as a principle of international law to the point where it offers no protection to minorities oppressed by larger states. Such is the position taken by establishment analysts and commentators who present themselves as objective and unbiased. Dismissing history eliminates one of the strongest arguments in favor of self-determination for Karabagh Armenians. It allows the connections between Nagorno-Karabagh and its overwhelmingly Armenian population and its origins in the ancient Armenian provinces of Artsakh and Utik to be ignored and for the decision to be made on the “objective” criterion of the primacy of territorial integrity. Indifference to how it began allows establishment analysts and commentators to ignore pogroms, the forced expulsion of Armenians, and Azerbaijani forced resettlement plans. By so doing it becomes possible to shift the focus to Armenian military actions that have secured nearly all of Nagorno-Karabagh plus 10 percent of Azerbaijani territory and to portray the Armenians as aggressors and the Azerbaijanis as victims. The agenda is further promoted by focusing exclusively on Azerbaijani refugees and inflating their numbers while failing to make any mention of hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees from the Shahumian district, Baku, Getashen, Sumgait and elsewhere in Azerbaijan.

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The claim that oil plays no role in the decision that NagornoKarabagh should remain within Azerbaijan is to insist on ignoring the obvious. By making this claim, establishment analysts and commentators can convey the appearance of being above material considerations. This further contributes to the appearance of objectivity and strengthens the claim of the western analysts and commentators to the right to adjudicate on the matter of Nagorno-Karabagh. Reference to an influential Armenian lobby reinforces the claimed legitimacy of the position that Nagorno-Karabagh should remain within Azerbaijan. This canard allows for the creation of a useful appearance – that the Armenian claim to Nagorno-Karabagh lacks intrinsic merit since it can be attributed to the public relations skills of a powerful Armenian lobby. Thus, whatever the Armenians have been able to achieve is due to the activities of this lobby that promotes Armenian interests, and, by implication, because of its alleged power, subverts legitimate Azerbaijani claims. As survivors of a catastrophic genocide within the last century and more recent attempts to cleanse Nagorno-Karabagh of Armenians, beginning with the pillage of Shushi in 1920, and Azerbaijani policies throughout seven decades of control of Nagorno-Karabagh designed to shift the population balance, Armenians could be expected to fight tenaciously. They could also be expected to view outside, western claims of security of their interests with extreme suspicion. It was the British after World War I who helped install Azerbaijani hegemony over Nagorno-Karabagh, it was the Bolsheviks who assigned NagornoKarabagh to Azerbaijan, and it was the Entente powers who failed to honor their commitments to the Armenians for a postwar settlement that included an Armenian state in the former Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many Armenians know this history well, and it is a backdrop to governmental decision making on the matter of Karabagh. It was also the precipitant to Levon Ter-Petrossian’s ousting as president when he appeared to waver on a Karabagh settlement that would have left Karabagh vulnerable to Azerbaijani repression and eventual full incorporation into Azerbaijan. The studied indifference of the establishment analysts and commentators to the 20th century Armenian history of genocide and duplicity on the part of outside powers, in some cases the very same powers who now push for a peace settlement, with regard to the protection of Armenian interests misses perhaps the dominant strain of Armenian thinking on the issue of a peace settlement to the Karabagh conflict. It fails to consider why the Armenians are so distrustful of any arrangement

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that leaves Nagorno-Karabagh within Azerbaijan, and it actually prevents a peace settlement the West desires in order to safeguard investments, open up markets and allow for the secure extraction and marketing of petroleum. Western analysts and commentators would have us believe that their positions are well thought out; based on a careful, objective consideration of all relevant factors; and free of bias. It is useful to ask in this context if other policy options are open to them? In other words, if establishment analysts and commentators wish to promote contrary views, can they? Can one promote the view that self-determination is a higher principle of international law than the territorial integrity of existing states, that the cause of the Karabagh-Armenians is just and ought to be recognized in the form of independent statehood, or that the past treatment of Karabagh Armenians at the hands of Azerbaijan is just cause for concluding that their continued forced inclusion in Azerbaijan, whatever the promised levels of autonomy, is an unviable solution that would inevitably open the way to catastrophe down the road, and still be rewarded by mainstream institutions (public and private sector) as establishment analysts and commentators are? The position taken here is that the establishment analysts and commentators considered here are, in fact, structurally unfree to adopt and promote such positions unless they are willing to be marginalized within their own professions, that is to forego their current prestigious academic posts for lesser ones along with their grants and consultancies with transnational firms, state departments and foreign ministries, and national security agencies; and their standing with international mediation organizations and the mainstream media as baptized experts.83 The links between the establishment experts and commentators and their careers are unpleasant ones to contemplate and stand at odds with the preferred image of the self-reliant, independent, and free-thinking western intellectual. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that such connections and their impact may remain hidden from the very consciousness of some of these experts and artfully concealed from the world at large.

History Historical materials are presented elsewhere in this introduction and in portions of the chapters themselves. Therefore, rather than attempting to cover the entire history of Nagorno-Karabagh in a few pages, it is more appropriate to consider a number of key issues and turning points in the history of Nagorno-Karabagh.

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Nagorno-Karabagh represents the eastern, mountainous portion of the Armenian plateau. With peaks of up to 4000 meters, the territory lent itself to small autonomous kingdoms, and that is the political form it often took throughout history. At other times it was part of a larger Armenian kingdom such as Tigran the Great’s in the first century BC. More specifically, Nagorno-Karabagh (at this time Artsakh, the term Karabagh came into wide use only in the 14th century) was part of the larger, ancient Armenian provinces of Artsakh and Utik that were defined by Lake Sevan in the northwest and the Kura and Arax rivers to the north and south respectively. At various times throughout recorded history the area has been conquered by the Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Mongols, Turkmens, Ottoman Turks, Safavid Persians, and, in the 19th century, the Russians. Nevertheless, the Armenian presence in the territory is ancient and continuous. This presence is characterized by the tradition of autonomous Armenian rule, made possible by the often rugged terrain. Although Karabagh was frequently incorporated into larger empires, it was ruled by autonomous Armenian nobles from the late first millennium AD through to the end of the 18th century. These nobles were called meliks by the Persians beginning in the 17th century, though the practice of incorporation into small autonomous kingdoms was much older.84 The Armenian claim to Mountainous Karabagh is strengthened further by the architectural remains of Armenian monastic complexes such as Dadivank and Gandzasar (13th century) as well as the many churches, fortresses, and khachkars (burial markers), some of them dating from the 6th to 8th centuries.85

The ancient history of Nagorno-Karabagh The controversy over the ancient history of Nagorno-Karabagh is linked to debates over the origins of the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples.86 Studies of Armenian ethnogenesis establish that by the 6th century BC there was a distinct people called Armenian and that the Armenians directly ruled Nagorno-Karabagh from the 4th century BC until the Arshaguni Dynasty was conquered by the Sasanid Persians in 424 AD.87 Among the classical writers, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Ptolemy, and Dio Cassius confirm this, as do Armenian historians.88

The Albanian connection Various experts consider Azerbaijani national identity to be a relatively recent development. Tadeusz Swietochowski, a specialist on Iranian

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

and Caucasian Azerbaijan, writes that: In 1905 Azerbaijan was still merely a geographical term describing a stretch of land partitioned between Russia and Persia. The only articulated group identity was that of being Muslim, and their collective consciousness expressed itself primarily in terms of the universalistic umma.89 Alexandre Bennigsen characterizes the “national consciousness” of the Muslim populations on the eve of the Russian revolutions of 1917 thus: A pre-revolutionary Muslim, nomad, or peasant, had absolutely no consciousness of belonging to a particular nation such as Turkmen, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Kazakh, or Karakalpak. The same may be said about the Volga Tatars or the Azeris. Even the names, “Azeri” or “Tatar”, were not applied this way before the Revolution. The Volga Tatars called themselves “Turks”, “Bulgars”, or simply “Muslims”; the Azeris called themselves “Turks”. So, for the public, the uniting bond was Islam.90 The Turkic presence in Karabagh begins with the Seljuk Turkic invasions of the 11th century. The descendants of these invaders of a millennium ago are one of the feeder groups, along with Iranian and other influences, that constitute the present day majority population of the Republic of Azerbaijan. However, these Turkic groups never ruled Nagorno-Karabagh except briefly in the second-half of the 18th century and the very early 19th century. Politically driven Azerbaijani historians are confronted with the problem of a much older and continuous Armenian presence in Transcaucasia, including Nagorno-Karabagh, and a much older tradition of statehood that was not established for Azerbaijan until 1918. Turkic peoples entered Nagorno-Karabagh in the 11th century, but a presence that dates a millennium is seen as insufficient when compared to the much longer Armenian presence, particularly since the early Turkic settlers failed to displace the autonomous Armenian nobility or produce an Azerbaijani demographic majority. The response of Azerbaijani historiography is to claim as Azerbaijani progenitors the Caucasian Albanians, a no longer extant people who lived in the south-central and eastern Transcaucasus from the 3rd century BC through the first millenium AD.91 The Caucasian Albanians were converted to Christianity by the Armenians in the 4th century

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and later conquered by the Arabs, Islamicized and eventually assimilated. Armenian historians acknowledge that the Caucasian Albanians in the eastern Transcaucasian lowlands were Islamicized and later Turkified, but they argue that those in the western Albanian regions, including what later became Nagorno-Karabagh, were largely absorbed by the Armenians and to a lesser degree the Georgians. In contrast to this, Azerbaijani historians view Caucasian Albania, in its entirety, as the precursor of modern Azerbaijan, and on this basis, they lay claim to all erstwhile Caucasian Albanian territories, including NagornoKarabagh.92 Stephan Astourian summarizes the dilemmas and contradictions of Azerbaijani historiography: Much as they have to face the reality that theirs is a recent national identity, Azerbaijani intellectuals have also felt the need to legitimize their nation as the offspring of old and indigenous Caucasian civilizations. They have had to juggle with their Turkic ethnic and linguistic roots, their predominantly Shiite religion … and their assertedly Caucasian ethnic and even linguistic origins. In order to represent themselves as an old, quasi-indigenous people of the Caucasus, the Azerbaijanis have developed a territorial conception of their ethnogenesis whereby they somehow consider tribal groups of Antiquity, living then on lands which presently form the state of Azerbaijan, as the ancestors of contemporary Azerbaijanis.93 The Treaty of Turkmenchai in 1828 In the second half of the 18th century, Turkic speaking Shia Muslims gained a foothold in Nagorno-Karabagh, and their leaders assumed the title of Khan. The first was Panah Ali Khan, followed by his son Ibrahim Khan. Their persecutions included the murders of several meliks and the regional Catholicos of Gandzasar. The years from 1780 to 1806, when Ibrahim Khan was himself murdered, were years of intense persecution and suffering. There was a serious, though temporary, depopulation of Armenians in Karabagh due to persecutions, famines, and massacres by Persian troops. Many Armenians fled to the safety of Ganja or to the southeastern regions of Georgia.94 Beginning in 1805, the year the Russians annexed Karabagh (the transfer was ratified by the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813), these Armenians began to return to their abandoned homes and villages in Karabagh. This is an important point because pro-Azerbaijani writers insist that Armenian majorities in Nagorno-Karabagh in the 19th and

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

20th centuries were artificially created by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchai between Russia and Persia. Prior to that time, it is claimed that NagornoKarabagh was a continuously Azerbaijani land, inhabited by Azerbaijanis and their alleged Albanian precursors. The Treaty of Turkmenchai concluded the second of two early 19th century wars between Russia and Persia. Russia gained control of the entire Transcaucasus with the boundary at the Arax River where it remains to this day. Article 15 of this treaty allowed Persian Armenians to cross the Arax into Russian controlled territory, and 45 000 Armenians did take advantage of this provision in 1828–29. However, very few of them settled in Karabagh, and the impact on the population balance of Karabagh was slight.95 Census figures bear this out. The Russian census of 1823, six years before Turkmenchai, reveals the five districts of Nagorno-Karabagh, roughly corresponding to the traditional melikdoms, to have been overwhelmingly Armenian: Jraberd, eight Armenian villages and no Tatar (Azerbaijani) villages; Varanda, 23 Armenian villages and one Tatar village; Dizak, 14 Armenian villages and one Tatar village; Khachen, 12 Armenian villages and no Tatar villages, and Talish (Gulistan), seven Armenian villages and three Tatar villages.96 Subsequent census figures in 1832, 1850, 1873, 1886, and 1897 show a steady increase in Armenian and Tatar populations with a strong Armenian majority throughout. From 1823 to 1897, the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabagh increased from 30 850 to 106 363 and the Tatar population increased from 5370 to 20 409.97 The 1918–1921 period This brief, tumultuous period between the end of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Sovietization of the Transcaucasian states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in 1920 and 1921 set the foundation for the later conflicts in the region that erupted in 1988 and after. Armenia was invaded by Turkey in 1918 and 1920, and Armenia was also involved in border disputes with Georgia and, especially, Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabagh, Nakhichevan, and Zangezur. At the end of the period, all the Transcaucasian republics were occupied by the Red Army. The Bolsheviks imposed internal boundary settlements and also agreed upon the borders between the fledgling Soviet Union (now including the Transcaucasus) and Turkey.98 Based on the actions of Britain and the Soviets in the Transcaucasus and the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Armenians developed a deep distrust of outside mediation efforts. In the post-Soviet period, that distrust is extended to Russia, the western industrial states and the

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OSCE. That distrust is not unwarranted. Numerous scholars recognize that the decisions to assign Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan were motivated by regional politics. For Shireen Hunter regional politics means “… notably the new Russian Soviet’s desire to reach an understanding with the nationalist forces in Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal … .”99 Alexei Zverev notes that the decision to assign Nagorno-Karabagh to Azerbaijan is frequently attributed to Stalin but actually stems from broader Soviet security issues. These include the desire to appease Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), to placate Muslim populations then being brought under Soviet rule, to give due consideration to Azerbaijan’s larger population and oil holdings, and to recognize that Turkey and Azerbaijan could play a role in promoting Bolshevism in the Muslim east.100 In an understated way, Edmund Herzig confirms this interpretation when he writes, “… the Bolsheviks were seeking rapprochement with Turkey and therefore tended to support Azerbaijan rather than Armenian claims … .”101 It is in this period that the Armenians were misled by the representatives of France, Britain, and the Bolsheviks concerning the future of these disputed territories. In the end, only Zangezur of the disputed territories went to Armenia. This was partly because the Armenians occupied and held on to Zangezur and partly because Stalin saw Zangezur as a way of preventing Azerbaijan and Turkey from being linked, and becoming, thereby, a potential threat. It was also a way to sow more seeds for later discontent in a strategy of divide and conquer in the Transcaucasus.102 We can also trace back to 1919 Armenian distrust of Azerbaijani intentions and a refusal to compromise on any settlement to the Nagorno-Karabagh dispute that leaves the territory within Azerbaijan. To cite but one example, in August 1919, under threat of invasion and massacre, the exhausted and beleaguered members of the 7th Congress of Karabagh Armenians agreed to submit to provisional Azerbaijani rule in return for Azerbaijani agreement to certain provisions. These included a council, an Armenian assistant governor, Azerbaijani garrisons at peacetime strength in Shushi and Stepanakert only, all movement of military forces by consent of the council, half of the council to be Armenian, no disarming of the population, and Azerbaijani guarantees of cultural autonomy and freedoms of assembly, speech and press. These provisions were almost immediately violated, especially the military ones. Within a few weeks, Azerbaijan invaded Zangezur in an attempt to forge a direct link from Nagorno-Karabagh through Nakhichevan to Turkey.103

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Autonomy was also a condition of the 1921 assignment of NagornoKarabagh to Azerbaijan. As a result of that “autonomy”, NagornoKarabagh was completely cut off from Armenia and dependent on the Baku government for all aspects of its administration. It was nothing less than the denial of autonomy that fueled the non-violent rebellion of 1988 and the war that ensued.104

The book Contrasted to the work of the establishment analysts and commentators, the chapters in this volume may be considered works in a different voice. Most of the authors are either natives of Armenia or they are people who have lived and conducted research there for considerable blocks of time. The chapters by Robert Krikorian, Levon Abrahamian, and John Antranig Kasparian are based wholly or in part on participant observation, a time consuming methodology that is rarely employed by establishment analysts and commentators. It requires that the researcher get right into people’s lives – to spend time with them in their kitchens, living rooms, courtyards, workplaces, classrooms and concert halls; to partake of their protests, celebrations and tragedies; and to attend to the details of their everyday lives. In skilled hands, it is a method that is a craft. It opens readers to worlds that would otherwise be inaccessible and unknown. Through the skilled application of this method, Krikorian, Abrahamian and Kasparian are able to provide nuanced analyses and interpretations that would be altogether missed by establishment analysts and commentators who rely to a far greater degree on government and NGO reports and brief interviews with government officials. The remaining chapters employ more traditional methods of analysis, yet they are characterized by another sort of difference. Although members of such institutions as the World Bank and the OSCE could profit from these chapters, the contributors are not writing exclusively for those constituencies. The commonplace, taken for granted assumptions of the establishment analysts and commentators are not so taken for granted here and often rejected in favor of alternative interpretations. These writers do not assume, for example, that territorial integrity has primacy over self-determination, nor is it taken for granted that Karabagh should be reunited with Azerbaijan. There is no presumption that time is on the side of Azerbaijan, and that oil revenues will make Azerbaijan richer and more powerful, leaving Armenia and Karabagh increasingly isolated and in ever weakened bargaining

Levon Chorbajian 39

positions. As Arthur Martyrossian has pointed out, oil revenues may leave Azerbaijan neither richer nor more powerful, as it is unclear whether the country will follow the Norwegian or the Nigerian model.105 If the latter, then time is not on Azerbaijan’s side as the establishment analysts and commentators insist. Freed of such ideological encumbrances, the contributors provide the reader with analysis, commentary, and, indeed, democracy in a different voice. They do this by offering voice to legitimate perspectives too often buried under the pretense of objectivity. In Chapter 2, Lalig Papazian’s “A People’s Will: Armenian Irredentism over Nagorno-Karabagh”, Papazian limits her study to the five year period 1988 through to 1993, yet she manages to cover a great deal of ground. Papazian begins with an examination of the political conditions under which secessionist and irredentist movements are likely to arise. She provides a good deal of historical material on Nagorno-Karabagh, some prior to 1920 and most covering Karabagh within the Soviet period, with a concentration on the contradictions that led to sustained protest under conditions of the late Gorbachev years. She then divides the first five years of the Karabagh movement into a pre-crisis period and four stages of crisis from February 28, 1988 to February 28, 1993 by which time Armenia, Azerbaijan and NagornoKarabagh were in the midst of full scale war. In the remainder of her chapter Papazian provides an analysis of the conflict and the role of the regional powers. Papazian ends with the observation that NagornoKarabagh is but one of many global examples of the struggles for selfdetermination. Because the prevailing rigid and uncompromising standard of territorial integrity dooms many of these peoples to lives of oppression or worse, it is her view that the standard of territorial integrity is going to have to give way to self-determination. As she puts it, “The alternative is too costly.” Robert O. Krikorian, like Papazian, is trained in political science. His chapter “The Anguish of Karabagh: Pages from the Diary of Aramais (Misak Ter-Danielyan)” is matched, in a sense, to Krikorian’s own Karabagh experiences in the late 1980s and 1990s when he lived and traveled in the region and spent time with combat units as an observer and researcher. Aramais was a Karabagh Armenian activist in the seminal post-World War I struggles over Karabagh. He had been a frontline fighter in the Armeno–Tatar War of 1905–06, and he later represented the Karabagh Armenians in direct negotiations with Azerbaijan and British occupation forces in Karabagh. Aramais’ 1919 diary serves as the backdrop for Krikorian’s analysis that provides us with historical

40

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

background, first-hand accounts, and comparisons between the earlier and later 20th century Armenian–Azerbaijani Karabagh struggles. Levon Abrahamian is an anthropologist. He was a participant observer in the 1988 Karabagh demonstrations in Yerevan in the fullest sense of the term as both a participant and a trained social science observer. Abrahamian examines nationalism, ecology, economics, and civil and authoritarian society within a framework for analysis that treats the movement as a fluid and unfolding popular struggle expressing historical themes and political tensions in Armenian and Soviet society. He employs the metaphor of a ball of yarn to consider the various political and cultural strands within the movement, some ephemeral and others longer lasting, and all constantly challenged by representatives of counter-trends of varying strength and longevity. “Civil Society Born in the Square: the Karabagh Movement in Perspective” treats the Karabagh protests in all their richness and diversity. It serves as a useful counterpoint to more mechanical, deterministic accounts that often lack the subtlety Abrahamian brings to his subject. Like Robert Krikorian, John Antranig Kasparian’s contribution is based on extensive fieldwork in Karabagh. Befitting a geographer, Kasparian is interested in the changing meanings of place in the context of armed struggle and social disorganization and reorganization. He makes the interesting observation that many accounts of the Karabagh struggle, including sympathetic ones, “… place Karabagh at the margins of its own struggle.” The territory is aided by Armenia, attacked by Azerbaijan, and negotiated over by world powers and mediation agencies. There is little attention paid to Karabagh’s own internal dynamic and direction. Kasparian redirects attention to Karabagh. He employs his encounters with three individuals to examine the changing notions of space and place, and he examines these local cases in terms of a theoretical framework drawn from earlier anticolonial struggles in the Third World. Armenia enjoyed far greater political stability than Georgia and Azerbaijan during the first five years of post-Soviet independence. Nevertheless, there have been serious political tensions in the country, opening the way to instances of political corruption and rising authoritarianism. Razmik Panossian examines one aspect of this erosion of democracy, the tense relationship between the Armenian Republic and the Armenian diaspora. Panossian focuses his attention on the first post-Soviet Armenian government of Levon Ter-Petrossian and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnaksutioun, the most important, powerful, and activist of the Armenian diasporan political

Levon Chorbajian 41

parties. Panossian analyzes seven areas of disagreement: Armenia and independence from the Soviet Union, Armenia’s relationship to Russia and Turkey, Armenian genocide recognition and reparations, the future of Karabagh, Armenia’s political economic system, citizenship rights for diasporan Armenians, and the role of the diaspora in national governance. Irreconcilable differences between the Armenian government and the ARF led to a serious political crisis in 1994 when Ter-Petrossian banned the ARF; accused top party officials of assassinations, drug running, and government destabilization; and had party officials arrested and tried. It was not until 1998 that the ARF was legalized under the presidency of Robert Kocharian. Panossian’s analysis brings to light the origins and details of this crisis that became emblematic of the sometimes troubled relationship between Armenia and its diaspora. In “Betrayed Promises of the Karabagh Movement: a Balance Sheet”, Markar Melkonian provides a thoroughgoing accounting of the degree to which the Karabagh Committee, subsequently the Armenian National Movement led by Levon Ter-Petrossian, lived up to its promises made to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who rallied in Opera Square, Yerevan in 1988. Melkonian divides those promises into five areas. These are national independence, reversing environmental deterioration, promoting democracy and human rights, creating economic prosperity, and enabling self-determination in Karabagh.106 Melkonian argues that all of these objectives were severely compromised through a combination of hostile exterior forces, miscalculations, and, above all, a commitment to unregulated free enterprise capitalism. The latter took the form of rapid privatization, a dismantling of the social safety net, deindustrialization, and disinvestment in health, education and other social services. Melkonian analyzes these processes and their economic, political, social, environmental, and gender consequences. In “Possible Solutions to the Nagorno-Karabagh Problem: a Strategic Perspective” Armen Aivazian addresses the reasons behind the failure of the OSCE Minsk Group to negotiate a successful solution to the Karabagh conflict. He attributes this failure to three factors: (1) theoretical misconceptions in the definition of the conflict; (2) the inability of the negotiators to consider the strategic needs of the parties to the conflict, especially Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabagh; and (3) structural flaws in the organization of OSCE itself that leave it woefully unable to enforce any negotiated settlement. Aivazian presents an alternative proposal that would provide Karabagh with de facto but not de jure independence and return occupied territories to Azerbaijan

42

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

while providing real security guarantees to all immediate parties to the conflict. Aivazian explains why such a solution requires permanent Armenian military control over Nagorno-Karabagh and the Lachin Corridor backed by a US–Russian–Armenian defense treaty protecting Armenia from possible Turkish–Azerbaijani aggression. He closes by assessing possibilities for reaching a durable settlement.107 Richard Giragosian complements Aivazian’s study by further situating the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict in the context of regional politics and major power rivalries. He critiques mainstream definitions of the conflict, the most common being that it is born of extreme nationalism stemming from “ancient hatreds”. Giragosian and Aivazian both share an emphasis on security issues and provide a critique of international mediation approaches. Giragosian goes further in introducing comparative materials from elsewhere in the world and a more detailed analysis of the roles of the regional and major powers, the United Nations and OSCE. No claim is made that this collection is complete. An analysis of the role and status of women in the Karabagh struggle and a dissection of petroleum politics are two topics not found here that would have been welcome. Nor is this collection a product, as some will claim, of group or Armenian-think. A diversity of methodologies is employed, and there are differences of interpretation and perspectives among the contributors. The claim that is made is the following: this collection adds to the diversity of viewpoints in an area of inquiry to a great degree constrained by the boundaries of officially sanctioned debate.

Notes 1. The name Nagorno-Karabagh is of Russian, Persian, and Turkish derivation. Nagorno is the Russian word for mountainous, and the territory is sometimes referred to in English as Mountainous Karabagh. Kara has Turkish roots while bagh is of Persian derivation. Karabagh is rendered as “black garden”. The Armenian name for the territory is Artsakh. We will be using NagornoKarabagh, or Karabagh for simplicity’s sake, throughout the volume because Nagorno-Karabagh has become the most common usage in English-speaking academia, policy circles, and journalism. In different historical periods the boundaries of the territory have varied. The first action of the Azerbaijan SSR upon receiving Nagorno-Karabagh in the early 1920s was to create the Nagorno-Karabagh Autonomous Oblast as an island within Azerbaijan. This was accomplished by reducing the size of the territory and incorporating directly into Azerbaijan those parts of Nagorno-Karabagh with large Armenian populations that were contiguous to Armenia. Those were territories to the northwest, west and southwest of the NKAO. When the reader comes across

Levon Chorbajian 43

2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

Karabagh in this volume, this should be understood to be synonymous with the territory Nagorno-Karabagh. This is an important point. NagornoKarabagh is the mountainous portion of the larger historic territory of Karabagh consisting of a mountainous sector and the Karabagh plain to the east. If we keep such matters in mind we are in a position to deconstruct Audrey Altstadt’s disingenuous statement that “Official tsarist population records indicate that the population of Karabagh, like other areas of Caucasia, was overwhelmingly ‘Muslim’ prior to the mass migrations of Armenians (numbering about 57 000) from Iran which were provided for in the Treaty of Turkmenchai which ended the Russo–Iranian War, 1826– 1828.” While Altstadt’s statement is correct as written, she ignores two essential points concerning Nagorno-Karabagh. The same Russian documents make it abundantly clear that nearly all of the Armenians in Karabagh, mountains and plains, lived in the mountainous portion and nearly none in the flatlands. This would give Nagorno (Mountainous) Karabagh an overwhelming Armenian majority. The second point is that few of the Armenians who crossed the Arax river from Persia to Russian Armenia settled in Karabagh. “Nagorno-Karabagh – Apple of Discord” Central Asian Survey, vol. 7, no. 4, 1988, fn. 18. Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian, and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: the History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh (London: Zed Books, 1994), pp. 134–7. An excellent account of the early Karabagh movement is found in Mark Malkasian, Gha-ra-bagh! (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996). A collection of eyewitness accounts is found in Samvel Shahmuratian, The Sumgait Tragedy: Pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan (New Rochelle, N.Y. and Cambridge, MA.: Aristide D. Caratzas and The Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation, 1990). See also Malkasian, chapter 3 and Pierre Verluise, Armenia in Crisis: the 1988 Earthquake (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), pp. 87–92. Joseph R. Masih and Robert O. Krikorian, Armenia: at the Crossroads (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999), p. 10. Malkasian, pp. 99–100. Masih and Krikorian, p. 11. Masih and Krikorian, p. 13. Masih and Krikorian, p. 13 and Verluise, pp. 97– 8. The 25 000 person fatality figure is now the most frequently used; one also sees 50 000. For the 100 000 figure and how it was derived, see Verluise, pp. 31–3. Verluise, p. xvi. Markar Melkonian’s chapter in this volume offers a detailed critique of the Karabagh Committee’s members who became part of independent Armenia’s first post-Soviet government, including Levon Ter-Petrossian. The major cause of death was the poorly designed and shoddily constructed buildings whose collapse brought instant death. Few survivors were rescued. The search for survivors and relief in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake was largely co-ordinated by the Karabagh Committee. For a description of the relief efforts and the Committee’s role see Verluise.

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The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

14. Masih and Krikorian, pp. 35–6 and Verluise, p. 114. 15. Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs, 2nd edn (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1995). 16. C.P. Fitzgerald, The Birth of Communist China (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), pp. 186–8. 17. Alexander Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), chapter 10. 18. I do not wish to imply that these tools of repression are to be taken lightly, only that they call for lesser levels of sacrifice and pain than more severe methods and, therefore, are likely to represent acceptable levels of risk for larger numbers of people. 19. The presentation conforms to sociologist Max Weber’s well-known analytical device of the ideal type. Ideal typical presentations are non-normative. They are ideal in the sense that they incorporate the essential features of the subject of analysis, in this case the analysis and ideological underpinnings of a group of writers I am calling the establishment analysts and commentators. The ideal type is the presentation of a phenomenon in its pure form, containing its essential features. Thus, not every analyst considered here would necessarily adhere to every position represented by the group as a whole or to the same degree. Each analyst and commentator would, however, adhere to a broad, common interpretation as well as to many of its details. On a related matter, I should point out that while the positions taken here are generally contrary to those of the establishment analysts and commentators, a distinction needs to be made between the factual information their writings contain and their writings as ideology. Thus at the same time that I present a critique of such writers and their interpretations and conclusions, I may at times rely on them for specific facts. See Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 59–61, 323–4. 20. Neil MacFarlane, Western Engagement in the Caucasus and Central Asia, (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1999), pp. 20–1. 21. Edmund Herzig, The New Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1999), p. 115. 22. MacFarlane, p. 4. 23. Herzig, p. 15. 24. The relevant statement from the Final Act is the following: “All the principles set forth above are of primary significance and, accordingly, they will be equally and unreservedly applied, each of them being interpreted taking into account the others.” Arie Bloed, The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Analysis and Basic Documents, 1972–1993, (Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 149. Two books that do attempt to preserve the right to territorial integrity while delineating those limited circumstances under which self-determination is a legitimate option are Haig Asenbauer, On the Right of Self-Determination of the Armenian People of Nagorno-Karabakh (New York: The Armenian Prelacy, 1996) and Otto Luchterhandt, Nagorny Karabakh’s Right to Self-Determination under International Law (Boston: Baikar Association, 1993). 25. Such a view is expressed by, among others, heads of state in India, a multiethnic state with good reason to be concerned about self-determination

Levon Chorbajian 45

26. 27.

28. 29.

although the concept was the mainstay of its own independence movement. This view also finds academic expression. See, among others, Alexei Zverev, “Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus, 1988–1994” in Bruno Coppieters, (ed.), Contested Borders in the Caucasus (Brussels: VUB Press, 1996), p. 16. Russia provides an example of a country that has fluctuated between its advocacy of self-determination and territorial integrity within a short time frame. When the agenda was the destabilization of Georgia, then selfdetermination for the Abkhaz and South Ossetians was the order of the day, but when it came to the rebellious Chechens and Russia’s own territorial integrity, self-determination was no longer the guiding principle. Vitaly Naumkin “Russia and Transcaucasia” Caucasian Regional Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1998, pp. 18–19. Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999), p. 5. I would be remiss in not calling attention to other relevant events since 1980 that reveal a rather one-sided approach to international law: the US invasion of the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, the US sponsored surrogate invasion of Nicaragua, the US invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, and the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. All of these were violations of a major document in international law, the United Nations Charter. We also note that two states have been created out of breakaway territories in recent decades and admitted to the community of nations. These are Bangladesh and Eritrea. The Asenbauer and Luchterhandt books attempt to assess the claims of the Karabagh Armenians in light of the principles of international law. Neil Asher Silberman, “Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples: The Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative” in Philip Kohl and Clare Fawcett (eds), Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 253. Silberman’s recommendation – by no means limited in real life to the assessment of works in archaeology – certainly has simplicity to recommend it, but it is inconsistent with a scientific approach that would call for an assessment of an argument on the basis of its merit. Silberman’s formula has two additional problems. First, it is colonial. Academics and researchers from the West are considered to be above bias and, therefore, positioned to judge the work of their presumed to be less objective colleagues from economically less developed regions. Second, although the standard may be applied to Turkish and Azerbaijani scholars, it is the Armenians, for the most part, who bear the greatest burden of it. There are several factors that feed into this. At the core are the existence of Turkey as an independent state throughout the 20th century and its membership in NATO beginning in 1952 that have allowed it to create alliances, institutional structures, governmental communications, and interpersonal networks, including scholarly and student exchanges, that have privileged Turkish perspectives and marginalized Armenian ones in scholarship and journalism on such issues as the Armenian Genocide and the Karabagh conflict. As a result, scholars of Armenian descent frequently face the curious situation wherein they and their work are stigmatized and suspect on the basis of nothing more than their ethnic origin. With less frequency and more privately than publicly similar such criteria are applied to

46

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh Afro-American, female, and Jewish scholars writing about their racial, gender, and religious groups. When such criteria are applied and it becomes known that they are applied, they are likely to be called by their correct names which are racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. Yuri Zinin and Alexei Maleshenko, “Azerbaijan” in Mohiaddin Mesbahi (ed.) Central Asia and the Caucasus after the Soviet Union (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1994) p. 105. Herzig, p. 10. Herzig, pp. 59–60. Pavel Baev, Russia’s Politics in the Caucasus (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1997), p. 15. Verluise, pp. 87–8. The parallels with lynching are found in Oliver Cromwell Cox’s discussion of that phenomenon. See Cox, Caste, Class & Race (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970 edition of the 1948 original), pp. 548–64. Cox’s elaborated definition of lynching is apt: “Lynching may be defined as an act of homicidal aggression committed by one people against another through mob action for the purpose of suppressing either some tendency in the latter to rise from an accommodated position of subordination or for subjugating them further to some lower social status. It is a special form of mobbing – mobbing directed against a whole people or political class. We may distinguish lynching from race rioting by the fact that the lynching mob is unopposed by other mobs, while it tends to be actuated by a belief that it has a constituted right to punish some more or less identified individual or individuals of the other race or nationality. Lynching is an exemplary and symbolic act. In the US it is an attack principally against all Negroes in some community rather than against some individual Negro. Ordinarily, therefore, when a lynching is indicated, the destruction of almost any Negro will serve the purpose as well as that of some particular one. Lynchings occur mostly in those areas where the laws discriminate against Negroes; sometimes, in these areas, the administrative judicial machinery may even facilitate the act.” Cox, p. 549. A variation on this interpretation is put forward by several authors who argue that the killings were engineered by the Kremlin and carried out by the Azerbaijanis. Alexei Zverev writes that Sumgait was prepared months in advance and conducted with extreme cruelty. The Azerbaijani police were conspicuously absent and calls to police and ambulance services went unanswered. Zverev also notes that leading Azerbaijani Communist Party functionaries took part in rallies prior to the killings and a local party boss even led the mobs. With KGB operations fully in place in Baku at this time, it is impossible that such preparations were not known to the authorities. Zverev also notes banners at later Azerbaijani rallies proclaiming “Glory to the Heroes of Sumgait”, pp. 21, 24. Also see Igor Nolyain, “Moscow’s Initiation of the Azeri–Armenian Conflict”, Central Asian Survey, 13 (4), 1994, pp. 541–63 and Thomas Goltz, “Letter from Eurasia: The Hidden Russian Hand”, Foreign Policy, Fall 1993, pp. 92–116. Masih and Krikorian, p. 18 and Malkasian, pp. 196–7. For a thoroughgoing description of Operation Ring see David Murphy, “Operation ‘Ring’: The Black Berets in Azerbaijan,” The Journal of Soviet

Levon Chorbajian 47

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Military Studies, 5(1), March 1992, pp. 80–96. For “No Armenians, No Problem”, see p. 91. “Report of an International Delegation from the First International Andrei Sakharov Memorial Congress to Armenia and Azerbaijan”, May 25–31, 1991, unpublished manuscript. Also see Caroline Cox and John Eibner, Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in Nagorno-Karabakh (Zurich, London, Washington, 1993), pp. 46–50 and Murphy, p. 92. It is a significant feature of reporting on the Karabagh conflict that the percentage of Azerbaijani territory alleged to be held by Armenian forces ranges from less than 10 percent to over 33 percent. The citations are: Edmund Herzig almost 15 percent, p. 68; Svante Cornell, almost 20 percent, “Geopolitics and Strategic Alignments in the Caucasus and Central Asia” Perceptions Journal of International Relations, IV(2), June–August 1999, p. 102; Elizabeth Fuller, up to 20 percent, “Azerbaijan at the Crossroads” in Roy Allison (ed.) Challenges for the Former Soviet South (Washington: Brookings Institute Press, 1996), p. 119; Ronald Grigor Suny, 20 percent, “The Fall of a President” AIM: Armenian International Magazine, vol. 9, no. 2, p. 14; Oles Smolansky, 20 percent, “Russia and Transcaucasia: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh” in Alvin Rubinstein and Oles Smolansky, Regional Power Rivalries in the New Eurasia: Russia, Turkey and Iran (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 203; Jonathan Aves, up to 25 percent, “Security and Military Issues in the Transcaucasus” in Bruce Parrott (ed.) State Building and Military Power in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 221; Leila Alieva, 25 percent, “The Institutions, Orientations, and Conduct of Foreign Policy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan” in Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha (eds) The Making of Foreign Policy in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 290; Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the US, Hafiz Pashayev, nearly 30 percent, “Shaping Azerbaijan’s Geopolitical Future”, CSIS: Summary of Remarks, July 19, 1999; Fereydoun Safizadeh, nearly 33 percent, “On Dilemmas of Identity in the Post-Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan”, Caucasian Regional Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1998, p. 42; Zinin and Maleshenko, “Over one-third … is affected … in one way or another”, p. 105. Herzig’s almost 15 percent figure is correct if one includes Nagorno-Karabagh; that is not the practice followed here. Elizabeth Fuller gets it right elsewhere: she cites 9 percent in “Azerbaijani Leadership Brooks No Opposition” Transitions, 3(2), February 7, 1997, p. 86. Cox and Eibner, pp. 66–7. Ronald Grigor Suny, p. 14. Pashayev. He claims 1 billion cubic meters of gas, for example, in the Shakh-Deniz sector. Anatol Lieven, “The (Not So) Great Game”, The National Interest, Winter 1999–2000, p. 71. International Oil Agency, Caspian Oil and Gas: The Supply Potential of Central Asia and Transcaucasia (Paris: OECD Publications, 1998), p. 3. Herzig, p. 134. MacFarlane, p. 20. Joe Barnes and Ronald Soligo, “Baku-Ceyhan: Bad Politics, Bad Idea”, Oil & Gas Journal, October 26, 1998, pp. 30–1. Barnes and Soligo argue that this pipeline would cost $3–4 billion to construct and would be disadvantageous

48

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh to the oil companies. This could be compensated for by US government subsidies though some estimate that these could be as high as $1 billion annually, p. 31. MacFarlane, p. 55. Lieven, p. 80. On the Turkish connection see Kevin McKiernan, “Turkey’s War on the Kurds”, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, March–April 1999, pp. 26–37. McKiernan writes that the US has sold or given Turkey $15 billion worth of weapons since 1980. Also, Jennifer Washburn, “Power Block; Turkey and Israel Lock Arms”, The Progressive, vol. 62, no. 12, December 1998, pp. 20–3. MacFarlane, p. 62. Mohiaddin Mesbahi, “Regional and Global Powers and the International Relations of Central Asia” in Dawisha and Dawisha, p. 237. Fuller in Allison, p. 151. Emil Danielian, “No War, No Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh”, Transitions, August 1997, vol. 4, no. 5, p. 47. A more complete list of former government officials with a vested interest in a particular sort of Karabagh settlement includes Richard Armitage, former Assistant Secretary of Defense; Howard Baker, former Senate Majority Leader; Lloyd Bentsen, former Secretary of the Treasury; Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor; Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State; Rosemary Forsyth, former National Security Council official now with Mobil Oil; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State; Greg Laughlin, former Congressman; Bob Livingston, former Speaker of the House; Jack Maresca, former US negotiator on the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict now with Unocal; Gerald Solomon, former Congressman; John Sununu; former White House Chief of Staff; and William White, former Deputy Secretary of Energy. These individuals play multiple, overlapping and complementary roles consisting of advising, introducing US corporate and governmental officials to counterparts in Azerbaijan for the purposes of promoting political and business agendas, conducting negotiations, and lobbying to promote the images of Turkey and Azerbaijan in Washington. They help bring about commercial contracts and overturn burdensome legislation such as Section 907. The ability to do this is based on interacting networks derived from years of corporate and government service as well as current positions and interests. Examples of the latter are Baker, Eagleburger and Sununu as advisors to Azerbaijani President Aliev; Baker and Eagleburger as board members of companies with investments in Azerbaijan (Pennzoil and Phillips respectively); Sununu’s ties to a firm with gold mining investments in Azerbaijan; Armitage and Brzezinski’s consultancies with oil companies and their dealings with Aliev on behalf of those clients; Armitage’s position as co-chairman of the US– Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce and Baker, Brzezinski, Kissinger, and Sununu’s posts on that organization’s advisory board. For fuller details and other personages see Peter H. Stone, “Caspian Wells Come in for K Street” The National Review, vol. 31, no. 11, March 13, 1999, pp. 680–5. The literature documenting the Armenian Genocide is large and growing. See Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995) and Dadrian’s Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of

Levon Chorbajian 49

57.

58.

59.

60. 61.

Turko-Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1999). A partial list of sources documenting the Armenian Genocide is found in Richard Hovannisian’s older but still useful bibliography, The Armenian Holocaust: a Bibliography Relating to the Deportations, Massacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People, 1915–1923 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Armenian Heritage Press, 1978) and the bibliography to Dadrian’s magisterial History, pp. 428–46. Thirty-seven thousand pages of documents from the US Archives have been compiled by Rouben Paul Adalian (ed.) The Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives, 1915–1918 (Alexandria, Virginia: Chadwyck-Healey, 1994). For additional archival material, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, “Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources” in Israel Charny (ed.) Genocide: a Critical Bibliographic Review (London and New York: Facts on File, 1991), pp. 86–138; and “Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources” in Israel Charny (ed.) The Widening Circle of Genocide, pp. 77–125. See also Permanent People’s Tribunal, A Crime of Silence: the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 1985); Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Naim–Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: the Anatomy of a Genocide”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986): 311–60; Vahakn N. Dadrian, “Genocide as a Problem of National and International Law: the World War I Armenian Case and Its Contemporary Legal Ramifications”, Yale Journal of International Law, 14 (1989): 221–334; Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province: an American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917, (New Rochelle, New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989); Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: an Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); and Raymond H. Kevorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Armeniens dans l’Empire ottoman a la veille du genocide (Paris: Editions d’Art et d’Histoire, 1992). Vahakn N. Dadrian has examined how the Young Turk Party infiltrated the Ottoman state apparatus and employed its own secret underground networks to organize and carry out the genocide. Dadrian, “The Convergent Roles of the State and a Governmental Party in the Armenian Genocide” in Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian (eds) Studies in Comparative Genocide (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 92–124. See note 56 above. For a fascinating account of a caught red-handed instance of Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide see Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9, no. 1 (1995), pp. 1–22. For a Turkish scholar’s interpretation of why the Turkish state denies that any genocide was committed against the Armenian people see Taner Akcam, “The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks” in Chorbajian and Shirinian, pp. 125–46. Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, chapters 19–20. See also Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1972). Subsequently published as Smyrna 1922. Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 7–8. For a compilation of articles see Richard D. Kloian, The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press (1915–1922) (Richmond, California: ACC Books, 1985).

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62. Levon Marashlian has written a thorough analysis of the treaties in The Armenian Question from Sèvres to Lausanne: Economics and Morality in American and British Policies, 1920–1923, Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1992. 63. For economic conditions in Armenia at the time see Richard Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia: 1919–1920, vol. II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 5–7. Also see pp. 92–3 and 128–30 on Armenia’s isolation from the western allies. 64. Richard Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia: Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization, vol. IV (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 391–403. 65. See Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 118–24 and Richard Hovannisian, “Historical Memory and Foreign Relations” in S. Frederick Starr (ed.) The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 237–76 passim. 66. L.S. Khachikian (ed.) The Colophons of the Armenian Manuscripts of the XVth Century, 1401–1450, vol. 1 (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1955), p. 384. Armen Aivazian, The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal (Yerevan: Center for Policy Analysis, American University of Armenia, 1997), pp. 20, 71. Also see A.Kh. Safastrian (trans.) Turkish Sources on Armenia, the Armenians, and Other Peoples of Transcaucasia, vol. I (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1961), pp. 158–9; Ashot Ioannissian, (ed.) Armenian-Russian Relations in the First Three Decades of the XVIIIth Century: Collection of Archival Documents, vol. II, part II (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1967), doc. 346, p. 286; doc. 350, pp. 290–1; doc. 356, p. 296; and S.M. Soloviev, History of Russia since Ancient Times, book X, vols 19–20 (Moscow: Social Economic Literature, 1963), p. 315. 67. Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 110–11. 68. Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 118–24. 69. Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, p. 127. 70. Stephan H. Astourian, “The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Dimensions, Lessons, and Prospects,” Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, Fall 1994, p. 90. 71. Related by Khachig Tölölyan. Since we have brought up the Palestinians, it is not inapt to consider how they have fared under a western brokered peace agreement, the 1993 Israel–PLO Declaration of Principles, better known as the Oslo Accords. It is instructive to see the effects of a western brokered peace agreement seeking to balance the interests of an oppressed people and a cherished ally. See Samih K. Farsoun and Christina Zacharia, Palestine and the Palestinians (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), chapter 7. 72. Richard Hovannisian, “Historical Memory and Foreign Relations” in Starr, p. 244. A thoroughgoing analysis of security issues and the failure of international mediation is presented in Armen Aivazian’s contribution to this collection. 73. Suny, p. 14. 74. Ara Tatevosyan, “Nagorno-Karabakh’s Army of Iron Will and Discipline”, Transitions, August 9, 1996, p. 23. 75. Suny, p. 14. For a critique of Suny see Levon Marashlian, “Policies Promoted by Prof. Suny Can Undermine Armenia’s Security and Transcaucasia’s Security”, The Armenian Reporter, August 28, 1999, pp. 6, 26.

Levon Chorbajian 51 76. The concept of humanitarian intervention is thoroughly deconstructed in Chomsky. 77. On the Irish, see Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995). On Native Americans, see Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998). On Afro-Americans, see Joe Feagin, White Racism (New York: Routledge, 2000) and Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2000). 78. MacFarlane, p. 47. 79. Edward N. Wolff, The Rich Get Increasingly Richer: Latest Data on Household Wealth during the 1980s (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 1993). 80. MacFarlane, p. 47. 81. US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 467. 82. For the classic literature see Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967) and Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965). 83. This is a short list of networks commonly possessed by establishment analysts and commentators. It should not be understood to mean that every establishment analyst and commentator is connected to larger institutions in all of these ways. 84. Robert Hewson, “The Meliks of Eastern Armenia”, Revue des Etudes Armeniennes, part I, vol. IX, 1972; part II, vol. X, 1973–74; part IV, vol. XIV, 1980. 85. Gharabagh, vol. 19, Documents of Armenian Architecture (Milan: OEMME Edizione, 1988). 86. A critique of Armenian and Azerbaijani theories of ethnogenesis is found in Phillip L. Kohl and Gocha R. Tsetskhladze, “Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology in the Caucasus” in Kohl and Fawcett, pp. 151–8. Kohl and Tsetskhladze’s critique has quite different implications for Armenian and Azerbaijani claims to Nagorno-Karabagh. In the Armenian case it is marginal since the bulk of it concerns the attempt by some Armenian writers to claim the Urartian empire, 9th to 6th centuries BC, as Armenian. This pre-dates established recognized Armenian ties to Karabagh, that are far older than any recognized claims that the Azerbaijanis can present, going back to the 11th century AD only. The authors shed serious doubt on Azerbaijani attempts to claim Nagorno-Karabagh on the basis of the prior settlements of the Caucasian Albanians. See also Stephan H. Astourian, “In Search of Their Forefathers: National Identity and the Historiography and Politics of Armenian and Azerbaijani Ethnogeneses” in Donald V. Schwartz and Razmik Panossian, eds, Nationalism and History: the Politics of Nation Building in Post-Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (Toronto: University of Toronto Centre for Russian and East European Studies, 1994), pp. 41–94. 87. Stephan H. Astourian, “The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict. … ”, p. 87. 88. Strabo, Geography, compiled and translated by F. Lasserre (Paris, 1975), book XI, chapter 14, 4; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book VI, chapter 15 (translated into French by A. de Grandsagne, vol. 5 (Paris, 1830)), p. 32; Plutarch, Lives, vol. VIII, Pompey, chapter 34, 1–4 (coll. G. Bude, Paris, 1973), pp. 206–7; Ptolemy, Geography, book V, chapter 12 (ed. C. Muller, vol. 1, part 2e (Paris, 1901)), pp. 931–2; Dio Cassius, Roman History, book

52

89. 90.

91.

92.

93. 94.

95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105.

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh XXXVI (English translation by E. Cary, vol. III (London, 1969), coll. Loeb), pp. 92–3. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 191. Alexandre Bennigsen, “Islamic or Local Consciousness among Soviet Nationalities?” in Edward Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 175, see also pp. 178–80. This reach-back is paralleled by similar efforts in Turkey where the Turks are relative newcomers compared to other national groupings. A favored tactic in this instance is to claim descent from the Hittites with whom the Turks have no historical connection. Tamara Dragadze, “Azerbaijanis”, in Graham Smith (ed.) The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union (London and New York: Longman, 1990), p. 164; Audrey Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1992), pp. xi, 2-6; Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 53–64; and Astourian in Schwartz and Panossian, pp. 58–61, 84–8. Astourian in Schwartz and Panossian, pp. 53–4. George Bournoutian, Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia: 1797–1889: a Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 1998), pp. 19, 480; Chorbajian, Donabedian, and Mutafian, pp. 74–6. Bournoutian, p. 480 and Chorbajian, Donabedian, and Mutafian, p. 77. Bournoutian, p. 278. Chorbajian, Donabedian, and Mutafian, p. 77. The meticulously detailed history of these events is found in the published work of Richard Hovannisian. See Richard Hovannisian, “The Armeno– Azerbaijani Conflict over Mountainous Karabagh, 1918–1919”, The Armenian Review, vol. 24, 2–94, Summer 1971, pp. 3–39; The Republic of Armenia: The First Year, 1918–1919, vol. I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 83–6, 88–90, and 156–89; The Republic of Armenia: From London to Sèvres, February-August 1920, vol. III (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 115–17, 131–72, 185–8, and 193–200. See also Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 113–41 and Astourian, “The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict. …”, pp. 88–90. Shireen Hunter, “Azerbaijan: Searching for New Neighbors” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras (eds) New States, New Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 444. Zverev “Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus, 1988–1994” in Coppieters, p. 19. Also see Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 136–7. Herzig, pp. 65–6. Hovannisian in Starr, p. 244. Hovannisian in Starr, pp. 245–7. A full text of the agreement is found in Hovannisian, vol. I, pp. 186–7. For more on Azerbaijani violations see Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia: 1919–1920, vol. II, pp. 211–12 and vol. III, pp. 132–3. On the failed autonomy promised in the early 1920s, see Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, pp. 141–56; and Luchterhandt. Related by Arthur Martirossyan.

Levon Chorbajian 53 106. Independence was not an original objective, but it emerged as the Soviet Union appeared and then continued to disintegrate. 107. Aivazian’s contribution is part of a growing body of research that begins to pay attention to the limitations of international peacekeeping. See Alan Tidwell, Conflict Resolved?: a Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution (London and New York: Pinter Pub. Ltd., 1999) and Dennis Jett, Why Peacekeeping Fails (New York: St. Martin’s Press – now Palgrave NY 1999). The authors of such work remain strong supporters of well thought out, historically grounded, and adequately supplied and financially backed peacekeeping efforts.

2 A People’s Will: Armenian Irredentism over Nagorno-Karabagh Lalig Papazian

The emergence of nationalist movements has reintroduced the polemic regarding the rationale for these crusades, and their potential to affect the stability of the states and regions inside whose boundaries they materialize. The post 1990 quasi-unipolar1 system structure, increasingly becoming hegemonic in the late 1990s, the formation of regional political and economic spheres of influence, and attempts to create a single, comprehensive culture adopted by all and unique to none have been powerful indicators that globalization and interdependence would redefine the concept of nation. A major factor overlooked in this equation, ethnicity, has become an impediment for this international metamorphosis. Nationalist movements, emerging in such a global reality, with the ability to threaten domestic and regional equilibria have attested to the rigor and seriousness of these campaigns and reiterated that the role of ethnicity ought not be trivialized or dismissed. Within the realm of nationalist movements, irredentism and secession are considered to be the most serious national objectives. Unlike movements that aim to improve a national minority’s status internally within the confines of a state (reforms, autonomy), irredentist and secessionist movements are more hostile and intend to alter the territorial unity of the state from which they claim territory or from which they plan to secede. The seriousness of such claims immediately produces a threat perception for the target state, which demonstrates its firmness by formulating a policy of deterrence or compliance in order to protect its territory, a core value. As a consequence, the greater the degree of resolve of the respective sides, the more unyielding their bargaining strategies, and the higher the probability of crisis escalation. The purpose of this chapter is to study the emergence of irredentist conflicts, and the role of ethnicity in the context of Armenian 54

Lalig Papazian 55

irredentist demands over Nagorno-Karabagh in 1988. At the time, Nagorno-Karabagh was an autonomous region inside the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Grievances by the Armenian majority led to irredentist demands and culminated in Armenian–Azeri conflict that escalated to become one of the most violent in the former Soviet Union.

Irredentism An ethnic conflict involving territorial demands can be identified as irredentist, when there is a “movement by members of an ethnic group in one state to retrieve ethnically kindred people and their territory across borders,”2 or “a historical claim made by a sovereign state to the land and people of another state with the justification that such a separation was forced and illegal”.3 “(I)t is an outcome of the acceptance of the principle of nationalism, the state in which ethnic, cultural and political boundaries coincide”.4 Irredentism is also referred to as “political efforts to unite ethnically, geographically or historically related segments of a population in adjacent countries within a common political framework”, stressing the importance of people and the land they occupy in the determination of the frontiers of a state.5 Such movements either attempt to detach land and people from one state and incorporate them into an existing state, or seek to detach land and people among several states to incorporate them in a new state.6 The former presupposes the existence of a state, while the second aims to establish one. Although territory by itself is sufficient to launch irredentist demands, as the original term “terra irredenta” – territory to be redeemed – suggests,7 most claims are mixed in nature and involve a retrievable population based on the principle of reuniting ethnic kin.8 The moral basis of an irredentist claim lies in identifying group legitimacy with territory, predicated on inheritance and indigenousness.9 Therefore, in addition to the existing core value, territory affect becomes another value of significance that includes the components of historic injustice, ethnic identity and culture. The claim to territory is based on transnational ethnic affinities, conditioned by the presence of cleavage between the minority in-group and its state-centre.10 Territory is demanded on the premise that it had either been or should have been an integral part of a state’s national heritage.11 When a conflict involves such critical values, it will be very resistant to settlement,12 involve very little negotiation, generate high levels of violence and promise to be easily internationalized.13 It will also be protracted.

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Affect, however, can be an asset or a liability to irredentism, both for the redeeming state and the retrievable territory. Although irredentism assumes the presence of two willing parties with similar ethnic affinities and interests,14 and a high level of public support both inside the irredentist state and the territory to be retrieved, there may be instances where the ethnic population of the retrievable territory refuses to be retrieved, or the irredentist state may not garner enough domestic support to launch or sustain the irredentist objective. Since group affinities across borders are variable,15 the ethnic affinity of the irredentist state may not necessarily extend to the people to be retrieved. The nationals of the irredentist state may perceive themselves as a better, purer ethnic collectivity in terms of preservation of their culture and identity than their co-nationals across the border, who may have been coerced to lose their cultural traits. Even if transnational ethnic linkage between two groups does not always guarantee mutual interest, the greater the number of shared ethnic features, the higher the affinity among them, the stronger the anticipated connection and the higher the probability of co-operation.16 An irredentist policy will be seriously challenged in a heterogeneous irredentist state with an ethnic majority and multiple ethnic minorities, who will perceive this policy as serving a purely ethnic political ideal, whose realization will create a massive ethnic influx into the state, produce demographic changes and shift the domestic balance of power in favour of the governing majority. A homogeneous irredentist state may witness less opposition to such national objectives, as the public will be more willing to support the state’s policy without perceiving any hidden political agenda. Homogeneity increases the importance of the affective component which is shared by the entire population and not merely a segment of the population. Mutual hatred between the ethnically distinct communities of the irredentist and target states, which stems from the target state’s occupation of the redeemable territory and the incessant irredentist attempts to alter the territorial unity of the target state, further intensify the conflict. However, even in such an environment ethnic homogeneity does not necessarily ensure an identical level of resolve from the entire population. Some segments will be active, others passive. Some will believe the irredentist policy to be a genuine attempt of reunification and support the government regardless of potential hardships. Others may perceive it as a self-serving government ploy, which by exploiting the emotion card can generate mass sympathy and secure future elections and the maintenance of power. Notwithstanding such internal discord, the principle that national and

Lalig Papazian 57

state boundaries should coincide and historical injustices should be corrected receives the highest support in this type of society. An interesting distinction of behaviour is noticeable between heterogeneous irredentist and target states. Whereas in heterogeneous irredentist states public loyalties will most likely be divided, in heterogeneous target states the public will tend to be united in its support of the government and form a united front against a common enemy. However, the inability of the government to handle this external threat adequately is likely to create domestic problems. Internal unrest and rioting may occur, political authority may weaken, and the government may be criticized for not dealing with the crisis efficiently and be forced to resign or be overthrown. Although dissatisfaction may still be present, the formation of a uniform and coherent anti-irredentist policy is more probable in homogeneous target states, because of a shared ethnic affinity and a higher degree of population support for the state’s anti-irredentist behavior, than in heterogeneous target states. The emphasis here is not on the absence of such a policy in heterogeneous target states, but on its inconsistency; that is pressure by different ethnic groups may force governments to amend their course of action, producing variants of influence strategies and weakening their bargaining power. While a target state is more likely to adopt a bullying strategy, it may also exercise a more flexible approach, especially if the state’s economic and military power (a relational property) is inferior to that of the irredentist state. Such a policy may include cultural autonomy for the retrievable national group, a better educational system and promises of economic prosperity, or even a limited political autonomy of the redeemable territory. This flexibility may not work if the irredentist state perceives such gestures as signs of weakness and bullies further. An unanticipated situation arises when the ethnic group of these “occupied territories” is apprehensive about annexation and unwilling to be retrieved.17 Although the group shares a common kinship and cultural characteristics, its existence outside the homeland may have reshaped its collective political interest and behavior. There is no definition as to what constitutes a perfect ethnic identity against which a specific group’s level of consciousness can be compared and classified. The group’s passivity with respect to irredentist policies does not imply the termination of irredentist demands. Given the fact that these conflicts are protracted, the political convictions of the ethnic group may be altered during future generations, or through external nationalist campaigns and persuasions. Similarly, the group’s choice to keep

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its status quo does not nullify the irredentist demands; it merely postpones their realization. While irredentism is rarely successful,18 the devastation caused can be extremely high in terms of physical, psychological, political and economic costs for all parties involved. The wars produce extremely high death tolls and destruction,19 central governments of both sides weaken and cease to perform effectively, and continuous stress, fear and wartime conditions debilitate the population.

The case of Nagorno-Karabagh Armenian irredentism demanding the reunification of the NagornoKarabagh Autonomous Region, a territory inside the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan, with Armenia, has been a protracted militarized crisis with various levels of intensity, emerging in a region with a colonial legacy and historical animosity.20 The Armenian claims within Soviet reality can be classified as involving three different, yet sometimes overlapping, stages: those related to the past (history); to the present (economy, culture, ecology); the future (political status).21 Although demands to change the political status of the region existed prior to and throughout Soviet rule, the study focuses on post 1987 claims and is complicated for two reasons: first, since militarized inter-ethnic crises have been virtually non-existent in the former Soviet Union, no patterns or blueprints have been designed to help the analysis of such a case; second, the struggle does not qualify as an interstate crisis, as neither Azerbaijan nor Nagorno-Karabagh was an independent state at the onset of the crisis. To understand the underlying reasons for the crisis, it is necessary to provide a snapshot of the historical setting and the domestic environment that affected the emergence and vigor of Armenian irredentism. The discussion of the crisis will be preceded by an overview of Armenian nationalism within the context of Soviet structure, and a summary of Armenian and Azeri coexistence in Transcaucasia. Due to the protracted nature of the crisis, this study is limited to a five-year period between February 1988 and February 1993, which encompasses the inception of the crisis and its escalation to militarization and war. A few clarifications are necessary regarding the usage of certain terms and the coverage of certain events. First, to avoid overcomplication, “Armenia” and “Azerbaijan” will denote both Soviet and independent republics. Second, although there is little documented

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proof of official Armenian military aid to Nagorno-Karabagh, it cannot be asserted with certainty that the defense of Nagorno-Karabagh, or its offensive against Azerbaijan, was manned by Nagorno-Karabagh exclusively. A similar argument can be made for Azerbaijan. Therefore, since the objective is not to determine the composition and sources of weaponry of respective military units, the study opts for the use of the generic terms “Armenian and Azeri forces”.22 Finally, given the span of the period covered, not every political announcement, peace initiative or military activity can be included. As the study is not a historical account of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis, but rather a political analysis of its emergence and escalation, only important events pertinent to these phases are highlighted.

The challenge: Armenian nationalism versus Soviet structure Many territorial and ethnic disputes during the late 1980s had been the consequence of Soviet style nation building, where the systematic displacement of national groups had resulted in the distortion of the ethnic balance,23 established artificial borders, divided ethnically homogeneous groups and contributed to inter-ethnic tensions. Soviet nationalities policy had aimed to assimilate all national groups under the guise of Soviet structure, based upon the dictum “national in form, socialist in content”.24 The constitution25 of the Soviet Union had granted Union Republic status for those national groups who formed a majority in their territories with a population of at least one million, on the condition that each republic shared at least one foreign border.26 The Constitution had simultaneously allowed and prohibited the secession of union republics, as article 72 endorsed their free secession and article 78 conditioned the alteration of boundaries on mutual agreements between the concerned republics, subject to ratification by the USSR.27 Only 15 nations became entitled to this status, while other national groups were assigned lower positions inside union republics and became directly accountable to them. Based on this configuration, four types of actors can be identified: the Center, Soviet power; first order titular nationality, union republics; second order titular nationality, autonomous republics; non-titular nationality, unempowered people (regions, areas).28 The creation of cadres in each republic, drawn from the indigenous people but controlled by Moscow, succeeded in

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maintaining inter-ethnic peace between republics.29 As such, Ukrainians or Georgians could not become members of Kazakhstan’s cadres. This, however, did not prevent Moscow from assigning Russians to the positions of First or Second Secretaries of union republics as a type of control mechanism. Although the lower ranking republics represented regional, ethnically based administrative units, they received no political recognition as nations.30 This was a political arrangement, where an ethnic group was subsumed into an ethnically non-akin republic, and its cultural development was restricted in favor of forming a single overarching republican identity.31 Even if these lower-level republics or ethnic groups were essentially entitled to some of the economic and cultural benefits that union republics received, such a practice, which implied a reduction of resources for the titular nationality, was not realized. Domination became the preferred option.32 Union republics not only did not grant the national minorities living inside their borders the right of political expression, but perceiving these ethnically homogeneous, and in principle autonomous regions as threatening, they limited their cultural and economic growth, and implemented policies of forced migrations and resettlements.33 The involuntary accountability of lower-ranking republics, their placement under the tutelage of union republics and the uneven distribution of resources were enough to produce dissatisfaction. This reality, accompanied by animosity developed as a consequence of colonialism, were sufficient to cause inter-ethnic conflicts.34 The underlying principles of Armenian nationalism with respect to Nagorno-Karabagh had been the pursuit of the region’s reunification with Armenia and reactions to real and perceived Azeri threats. Whether in Armenia or Nagorno-Karabagh, Armenians have pursued a nationalist agenda even during the most brutal periods of Stalinist repression. Underground movements in the late 1920s, such as the “Karabagh to Armenia” society, distributed leaflets demanding reunification. In 1936, during the introduction of border changes, Armenia’s First Secretary, Aghassi Khanjian, raised the question of Nagorno-Karabagh; he was killed shortly afterward in Georgia.35 By the early 1940s, it had become apparent that the Soviet policy of national and cultural integration had failed to produce the intended outcome, and there was a need for a new scheme to crush the nations and save the Union. Extensive Russian migration into the republics, indoctrination through schools and youth groups, the cooptation of religious institutions, and mass purges were followed by the dissolution

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of some national territories. Russia was made the leading nation of the state, thus creating a hierarchy against the principles of egalitarianism.36 The Khrushchev years allowed limited national expression that brought forth more vocal political demands both in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh. Three forms of nationalism can be identified during the 1960s: the official nationalism within the Party and state bureaucracy, sanctioned among the intelligentsia and the population; a dissident nationalism, expressed by human rights activists and revolutionary separatists; and counternationalism, manifested by the minorities within republics and aroused by perceptions of discrimination.37 There are several qualifying examples of these types of Armenian nationalism. The march of April 24, 1965 in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Genocide was a type of official nationalism. On the other hand, Nagorno-Karabagh’s petition to Khrushchev on May 19, 1964 regarding infringements of individual rights and regional administrative autonomy, and the lack of economic development in Nagorno-Karabagh, followed by an appeal to Armenia on September 19, 1967 asking for salvation from Azerbaijan,38 represented a mixture of official and counternationalism. Dissident nationalism was expressed by the formation of the National Unity Party in Yerevan in 1967, calling for an independent Armenia that would include the western Armenian territories occupied by Turkey, as well as Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan.39 It was the Brezhnev era, with the relaxation of Moscow’s tight grip on the republics and the introduction of a limited decentralized policy, that allowed the emergence of a controlled nationalism, which challenged the Center in three different areas: demands for broader political autonomy, demands for greater investment in individual republics, and demands to defend and promote national cultures.40 The cadres in the republics became increasingly trapped between their indigenous population pushing for reforms and the pressure from the Center which, regardless of this relaxation, could not allow a sudden and substantial decentralization. Therefore, while Moscow allowed the republic leaders greater leeway to pursue individual agendas, it simultaneously bought their loyalties through economic incentives and political status to guarantee compliance. This situation also produced intra-republic national stratification between the “haves” and “have nots”, undermining the ability of nationalities to act as unified groups and defend their national interest.41 As a consequence of their predicament, republican cadres adopted a carrot and stick policy with their populations, sometimes allowing limited expressions of national

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discontent and sometimes containing them. However, what occurred in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh surpassed Moscow’s conception of limited expression. Hence, in 1966 the First Secretary of Armenia was removed from office and almost a decade later, the republic’s Second Secretaries, all native Armenians until then, were replaced by Russians in 1973.42 With Gorbachev’s rise to power, national and ethnic groups in the country hoped for an improvement in their socio-economic status, but the periphery’s perceptions and Gorbachev’s agenda with respect to the future of the Soviet state were contradictory. His objective was the transformation of the Soviet Union as a single unit, and the republics’ contribution was expected for the development of an integrated economic complex. The emphasis continued to be on the Soviet people, and many large-scale expensive projects that would benefit the periphery more than the Center were either abandoned or given a lower priority.43 For him, the importance of ethnic cultures could not be primary to their integration into the common ideology, and national loyalties should be toward the wider Soviet society and not individual ethnic ones.44 If Gorbachev’s plan disappointed the union republics, it caused a virtual disarray among lower-level republics and non-titular nationalities. The reduction of Moscow’s financial aid implied serious cutbacks to subject republics, which even in better economic times had not enjoyed an enviable status. Furthermore, the perception that the need for resources could lead union republics to exploit their agricultural, technical and economic assets and infringe on their “autonomy”, produced value threats for these republics in areas of economic welfare and administrative autonomy. Ethnic dissatisfaction became more expressive. In cases where reactions to such threats were swift, or when dissatisfaction converged with the irredentist or secessionist goals of these aspiring nations, the probability of inter-ethnic crises increased. If during the 1960s and 1970s, only peaceful political and public dissatisfaction could be voiced, the late 1980s radically altered the manifestation of such discontent. If “perestroika” meant that everything could be restructured, and if “glasnost” allowed legitimate expression of dissatisfaction, then nationalist demands became experiments to test this rhetoric. Conflicts arose between the Center and the Periphery (Moscow–Baltic republics); within republics (South Ossetia– Georgia, Nagorno-Karabagh–Azerbaijan); between republics (Armenia– Azerbaijan).45 The Nagorno-Karabagh case incorporates all three levels of conflict.

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Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabagh: an uneasy coexistence Of all the ethnic peripheries in the Soviet Union, Transcaucasia had been the most linguistically and culturally diverse, housing people with different levels of internal cohesion and economic development. Their three thousand years of uninterrupted presence in the region had made the Armenians the oldest ethnic group in the Soviet Union.46 The roots of the Karabagh issue date back to the partition of Armenia between the Persian and Roman Empires in 385 AD. The subsequent detachment of Karabagh from the country led Armenian princes to set up kingdoms and maintain an autonomous status in Karabagh until the 17th century.47 The region came to be known as the Kingdom of Five – “Melikdoms of Khamsa” – reflecting the five families who retained power and protected the territory and its cultural identity.48 Following its attack on Persia, Russia annexed Karabagh in 1813 and, in an attempt to curtail any nationalist aspirations, incorporated the region into the mostly Tatar Elizavetpol province which later became Azerbaijan.49 Although some areas of Karabagh became largely populated by Turkic-Tatars, the mountainous area (today’s disputed territory) remained an Armenian stronghold.50 Azerbaijan, like Armenia, had been subjected to Persian, Arab, Seljuk, Ottoman and Russian invasions, but had mostly remained under Persian rule until the Russian invasion of Transcaucasia in 1770 which brought some parts of Azerbaijan under Russian occupation.51 Under the terms of the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan, Persia ceded to Russia the northern regions of what currently constitute Azerbaijan,52 but retained two thirds of the territory, known today as Iranian Azerbaijan. When Azerbaijan declared independence in May 1918, it claimed Karabagh as an integral part of its territory, a decision rejected by Karabagh Armenians, who formed the Peoples’ Government of Karabagh and refused to allow Turkish troops inside the region. This precipitated the September 15, 1918 massacre in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, which was followed by Karabagh’s submission to Turkish troops on September 25. Armenians accepted the provisional authority of Azerbaijan on August 22, 1919 pending the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference.53 Following a short-lived independence between 1918 and 1920, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia joined the USSR as members of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Republic and became Union Republics in 1936.54 The Baku Soviet’s announcement on December 1, 1920 that Armenian territories of Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Zangezur would

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remain part of Armenia55 was overturned by Moscow, whose reluctance to offend Turkey and oil-rich Azerbaijan resulted in the return of these territories to Azerbaijan; Kars and Ardahan to Turkey; and Akhalkalak to Georgia.56 Moscow justified this policy reversal by insisting that Azerbaijan, because of its economic situation, was better positioned to “help” Karabagh than Armenia. A more viable reason that would explain Moscow’s turnaround could have been Turkey’s preference for common borders with Azerbaijan. Considering the Armenian territories bestowed on Turkey and the decision to hand over Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan, separated from Azerbaijan by Armenia, reiterate Moscow’s willingness to accommodate Turkey.57 As for Akhalkalak, it was a whimsical offering by Stalin to his native land. On July 7, 1923 Azerbaijan officially incorporated Karabagh, which received the designation of an Autonomous Region accountable to Azerbaijan.58 Nagorno-Karabagh’s situation had been an anomaly in the Soviet Union, as it was the only autonomous region ethnically akin to a neighboring republic and yet incorporated into a different republic.59 This decision has never been accepted by Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, and demands for reunification have existed ever since. The determination to reunite Nagorno-Karabagh with Armenia has been also reinforced by the demographic status of Nakhichevan.60 There was overwhelming evidence demonstrating the existence of anti-Armenian policy in Nagorno-Karabagh sanctioned by Azerbaijan. Accounts of forced migrations and resettlement were substantiated by the decreasing and increasing percentage of Armenians and Azeris respectively in the population.61 The lack of economic development and demographic manipulations had been accompanied by cultural suppression. In the 1930s, 118 Armenian churches were closed, clerics arrested and textbooks on Armenian history banned from schools. During the 1960s, 28 Armenian schools were closed, churches and cemeteries destroyed and Azeri was imposed as the official language of the republic.62 During the late 1960s and early 1970s, cultural ties with Armenia were severed and Azeris began to be appointed in Nagorno-Karabagh’s law enforcement and economic bodies.63 If national goals and threat perceptions are necessary to launch nationalist movements, then national characteristics become equally crucial in determining a group’s internal cohesion and its level of commitment to the collective objective. In the case of the NagornoKarabagh crisis, except for their respective levels of homogeneity, Armenians and Azeris shared no cultural traits. The defense and promotion of Azeri interests at the expense of the Armenians’ and the

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existence of cross-cutting cleavages increased the likelihood of interethnic conflict.64 Situated in eastern Transcaucasia and encompassing an area of 86 600 km2 (including Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan) and rich in mineral resources, Azerbaijan has a population of about seven million, of whom 90 percent are ethnic Azeris, and 93.4 percent are Muslim (70 percent Shiite and 30 percent Sunni).65 Most Armenians, who make up 2.3 percent of the population, live in Nagorno-Karabagh, and a rich minority resided in Baku. According to 1990 estimates, Azerbaijan’s labour force counted 2.8 million people, of whom 32 percent were employed in agriculture and forestry, 26 percent in industry and construction, and 42 percent in other sectors. More than half the population was urban and the personnel available for defense was two million. Moreover, 58 percent and 10.5 percent of students completed secondary and post-secondary education, respectively. The relatively high percentage of ethnic Azeris, retention of the national language and religion, high levels of education and urbanization, which are important factors in the formation of national elites, could lead one to expect a strong Azeri identity and political unity. However, the existence of non-Turkic speaking minorities, like the Talish, Kurds, Armenians and Lezghis, who were drawn to their kin outside Azerbaijan, divisions between secular and religious nationalists, each pursuing a different political platform, and sectarian differences between the mostly Shiite south and the Sunni north had prevented the creation of political consensus and internal cohesion.66 These, in turn, produced an inconsistent resolve, as different factions tried to influence the population and secure their allegiance. With their presence in Transcaucasia dating back to the 6th century BC,67 with a unique alphabet belonging to the Indo-European language group and a distinct church, Armenians are culturally different from Azeris. According to a 1989 census, Nagorno-Karabagh, with an area of 4388 km2, had a population of 188 000 of whom 158 000 were Armenian.68 Although the population decreased over the years, NagornoKarabagh still maintained a predominantly Armenian composition with a high level of homogeneity. By 1976 estimates, 42.5 percent of the population was employed in the agriculture sector, 21.3 percent in industry and construction, and 20 percent in science and health services.69 As for Armenia, it was the smallest, the southern most and ethnically the most homogeneous republic of the former Soviet Union, covering an area of 29 800 km2 with a population of 3.5 million.70 Apart from boundaries, it shared nothing with its

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neighbors in terms of ethnicity and culture. Almost half of the Armenian labour force (42 percent) was employed in the domain of industry and construction, while 18 percent worked in the agricultural sector. Sixty eight percent of the population was urban.71 The extremely high percentages of ethnic, religious and linguistic affiliation (93 percent, 94 percent and 96 percent, respectively) resulted in cultural and ethnic homogeneity, and have been responsible for the molding of a strong national identity. Ever since its incorporation into Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabagh has never abandoned the objective of reunification with Armenia. The ever-present irredentist goal, which has been accompanied by demands for political, economic and cultural reforms to improve the worsening conditions of the population, was reinforced by fear and hope.72 As an Armenian region inside a foreign republic and subject to discrimination, Nagorno-Karabagh had nothing to gain by remaining under Azeri jurisdiction, but much to lose. It also feared that its fate could be similar to that of Nakhichevan, another Armenian stronghold under Azeri rule, whose population decreased drastically while that of Azeris increased as a result of demographic manipulations. Reunification would also satisfy the primordial and instrumental needs of the population, as it would reunite the historically Armenian territories, would end foreign domination and would improve the material well being of the people. Both in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh, the collective consciousness of Armenians, which emanates from the attachment to their homeland and their national heritage, was strengthened by Azerbaijan’s abuse of Nagorno-Karabagh. The absence of intranational linguistic or sectarian divisions, and the preservation of the unique culture had created a tightly woven collective identity and secured the survival of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabagh. This strong group identity was instrumental in mobilizing and politicizing the masses and maintaining a high degree of resolve throughout the crisis. The reality of Azeri oppression and the potential of future threats reasserted the national objective and reinforced the collective resolve of the population. Azerbaijan’s political and cultural mistreatment of Nagorno-Karabagh for decades, the inequitable distribution of economic resources, demographic manipulations and infringements on regional administration (autonomous in principle), the severance of cultural ties with Armenia, and perceptions of threats to the physical security of Armenians deepened the cleavages between them and the Azeris, creating stratified ethnic groups. Nagorno-Karabagh was also at

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a disadvantage with respect to other demographic characteristics. Historically an intellectual center with numerous high level learning institutions, Nagorno-Karabagh lost this stature following Sovietization to become a mostly rural region with a limited, Soviet style education system. In contrast, Azerbaijan proper was in general an urban, industrial republic with multiple educational establishments. Had Azerbaijan’s treatment of the region been less harsh, had Nagorno-Karabagh’s population been content both as individuals and as an ethnic group, and had the region enjoyed true autonomy, the probability of Armenian irredentism could have been lower. The absence of political, economic and cultural constraints could have significantly decreased Armenian threat perceptions. In the absence of real or perceived threats, the emergence of nationalism becomes exclusively dependent on the national goal, which makes the mobilization and the politicization of the masses difficult. Even if in such a scenario Armenian nationalism had materialized, it would have been limited in duration, with a less significant impact and without the vigor and militarization that the post-1988 period witnessed.

The crisis: description and analysis One of the difficult tasks in the analysis of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis is determining the initiator and target sides. Who was perceiving a threat? Who was posing a threat? Both actors had threatened one another during various phases of their coexistence. Since the Karabagh issue dates back centuries, and since in protracted conflicts the trigger side may become the target at a certain stage, it becomes important to respect the period between 1988 and 1993 to avoid entrapment in the maze of trigger–target situations. There is ample evidence of the region’s mistreatment until and following 1988, and the reasons that precipitated the interethnic conflict have been discussed already, but the political analysis attempted here is limited to a specific period. Therefore, although the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabagh was subjected to cultural, economic and political suppression, encountered physical danger and thus, had been the target of Azeri-triggered policies, it was Nagorno-Karabagh that triggered a threat perception for Azerbaijan in February 1988. The crisis was intrarepublic in nature with two non-state actors: Nagorno-Karabagh and Azerbaijan. Armenia, as a redeeming party officially became involved in June 1988. The following

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is the classification of crisis periods and stages: Onset Phase Pre-Crisis Period October 1987– February 19, 1988

Escalation Phase Crisis Period February 20, 1988-February 28, 199373

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

February 20, 88 to February 27, 88

February 28, 88 to November 27, 89

November 28, 89 to November 25, 91

November 26, 91 to February 28, 93

The onset phase The pre-crisis period: October 1987– February 19, 1988 The pre-crisis period is marked by events inside and outside NagornoKarabagh. Demands to annex Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia were renewed in October 1987, when members of Armenian political and intellectual elites raised the issue in letters and appeals directed to Moscow, which were followed by a petition signed by a hundred thousand Nagorno-Karabagh Armenians demanding the region’s reunification with Armenia.74 These, in turn, were accompanied by the public statements of noted Armenians, like Sergei Mikoyan – historian, journalist and member of the USSR Academy of Sciences – who stated in October 1987 that “glasnost” would provide the opportunity for the return of Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia,75 and Abel Aganbegyan – then senior economic advisor to Gorbachev – who announced on November 16, 1987 that Nagorno-Karabagh’s and Nakhichevan’s return to the administration of Armenia could be solved within the context of “perestroika”,76 referring to these regions as “historic Armenian territory”.77 Predating such announcements by several months was the European Parliament’s resolution on June 18, 1987 recognizing the political rights of Armenians in the Soviet Union.78 In the meantime, on October 17 and 18, demonstrations were held in Yerevan against the construction of a chemical factory and demanding the closure of the existing “Nairit” plant.79 The environmental concerns were propagated by reported cases of cancer, abnormal births and mental retardations that had reached critical proportions in Armenia.80 The ecological manifestations coincided with the Chardakhlu incident, a small Armenian village in Nagorno-Karabagh, whose population was opposing the nomination of an Azeri as Kolkhoz president. The news that the village was being subjected to punitive measures in retaliation

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for its audacity, transformed the ecological demonstration to an irredentist rally81 with slogans like “one nation, one republic”.82 Even in the pre-crisis period, the spillover of issues is relevant. On February 11, 1988, posters appeared on the streets of Stepanakert, NagornoKarabagh’s capital, demanding the region’s reunification with Armenia, followed by mass demonstrations two days later.83 On February 18, 1988 Moscow rejected the October 1987 Armenian appeals and refused to implement any border changes, a decision which would have serious consequences for both Moscow and Azerbaijan. The escalation phase: the crisis period First stage: February 20, 1988–February 27, 1988 Following Moscow’s announcement, Nagorno-Karabagh Regional Council’s vote on February 20, 1988 to request the transfer of the region to Armenia,84 triggered a crisis for Azerbaijan which perceived a threat to its territorial unity. Prior to 1988, Armenian demands had not presented a basic value threat for Azerbaijan since a change in the political status of Nagorno-Karabagh, to favour the Armenians, was highly improbable. What prompted Azerbaijan not to dismiss these demands was the nature of their expression. The independent announcement of the Regional Council, in defiance of Azerbaijan and the Party line, and the civil disobedience in the form of mass demonstrations were unprecedented, and it was this slim probability of territorial revisionism that produced a threat perception to Azerbaijan’s domestic stability and territorial integrity. Strikes and protests intensified in NagornoKarabagh and Armenia, as both Moscow and Azerbaijan announced that territorial revisionism was impossible.85 Second stage: February 28, 1988–November 27, 1989 An Azeri rally organized in Sumgait, a Caspian sea port, against Nagorno-Karabagh’s campaign for reunification allegedly incited the participants against Armenians for raising the issue of Nagorno-Karabagh and for committing atrocities against Azeris.86 As a result, Sumgait Armenians, who constituted 9 percent of the city’s population, became targets of Azeri violence on February 28, 1988. The killings were described by Soviet officials as pogroms – the organized persecution of a minority.87 Thus, while Nagorno-Karabagh triggered the crisis with a political act on February 20, Azerbaijan escalated it with a violent act on February 28. The target of the first stage became the trigger to the second stage. What really triggered the massacres remains unknown, but it became the turning point for the radicalization of Armenian nationalism

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both in Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, and contributed to the militarization of the crisis. Sumgait reminded the Armenians of the events of 1915 and the massacres of Baku in September 1918,88 not only because of the horror, but also because of reports suggesting the premeditation of the crime.89 The Armenian Genocide of 1915 has become a central element of Armenian identity,90 as no event prior to or following this crime has wounded the Armenian psyche so deeply. The collective consciousness that emanates from this experience would ascribe to the Armenian–Azeri conflict an intensity that goes beyond what would be expected from one specific incident.91 On March 17, 1988, Nagorno-Karabagh’s Communist Party called for reunification with Armenia, a resolution rejected by Azerbaijan’s Supreme Soviet on June 17.92 In the meantime, on June 15, 1988, Armenia’s Supreme Soviet had voted to incorporate Nagorno-Karabagh into Armenia.93 A month later, on July 12, Nagorno-Karabagh’s Regional Council voted to secede from Azerbaijan and reunite with Armenia, a decision this time rejected by Moscow on July 18.94 The summer and fall of 1988 witnessed intense political and military activities and were characterized by numerous resolutions by NagornoKarabagh, Armenia and Azerbaijan, each demonstrating its commitment to its cause, replacement of First Secretaries of the two union republics, votes for secession, Armenian and Azeri mutual attacks, and the dispatch of Soviet troops to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh in an attempt to contain the mass demonstrations. Uncertain of how to handle the situation, Moscow decided to place Nagorno-Karabagh under its direct administration on January 20, 1989. Other significant events during summer and fall of 1989 were the railway blockade imposed by Azerbaijan, producing major food and energy shortages for NagornoKarabagh and Armenia,95 the mutual attacks, and the formation of nationalist parties in Azerbaijan and Armenia, whose leaders would become the presidents of the future independent republics. Third stage: November 28, 1989–November 25, 1991 If Moscow’s administration of Nagorno-Karabagh pleased the Armenians, its decision on November 28, 1989 to end this arrangement and return the region to Azeri control – on the condition that the socioeconomic situation of Nagorno-Karabagh was to be improved – angered both sides. Soviet Interior Ministry troops were dispatched to the region to oversee this enactment and while Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia felt betrayed, Azerbaijan perceived the presence of Soviet units as an infringement of its republican rights.96

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This decision, along with demonstrating an incoherent Soviet policy, negatively affected Armenian–Soviet relations, as Armenia and NagornoKarabagh reversed their behavior toward Moscow. If the Russians were not to protect them from the Turkic threat, then there remained no reason to endure the drawbacks of such protection. It was in November 1989, therefore, that Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, the most loyal Soviet republic, turned against Moscow.97 The Armenian Parliament defied Moscow’s decision and on December 1, 1989 voted to annex Nagorno-Karabagh.98 This was followed by legislation incorporating the region into the 1990 socioeconomic plan for Armenia. Although deemed unconstitutional by Moscow, Armenia asserted its right to override national laws that affected the republic.99 Another major anti-Armenian rampage occurred on January 13 and 14, 1990 in Baku. The dispatch of Soviet troops did not prevent the violence from spreading to engulf the Armenian–Azerbaijani border.100 On February 2 and 3, unprecedented peace talks between leading Armenian and Azeri nationalist organizations began in Riga, but failed to lead to a ceasefire.101 A new wave of violence began in March when Armenian forces attacked Azeri villages. The USSR Supreme Soviet ordered Armenia and Azerbaijan to enter into dialogue, and, as a result, the prime ministers of the two republics met for preliminary negotiations in Tbilisi on March 30.102 In the spring and summer of 1990, nationalist leaders in Azerbaijan and Armenia were elected president by their respective parliaments.103 The following year witnessed more intercommunal fighting, more unrespected ceasefires, and declarations of independence by both republics. The year culminated with Azerbaijan’s revocation of NagornoKarabagh’s autonomous status. Fourth stage: November 26, 1991–February 28, 1993 Azerbaijan, which until now had been reacting to Armenian demands, took the initiative and hardened its position on November 26, 1991 when it revoked the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabagh and voted to sever its economic links with Armenia.104 The same day, the Armenian Parliament called on Azerbaijan to reach a negotiated settlement.105 On December 9, reports that Azerbaijan was forming an army and recruiting all males over age 16,106 prompted Nagorno-Karabagh to appeal to Azerbaijan to stop the aggression.107 This marked a significant and an inexplicable retreat, albeit temporary, in Armenian bargaining strategy in the face of increasingly negative inducements from Azerbaijan. However, the situation changed drastically on December 23.

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This became the turning point that escalated the militarized crisis to war. Nagorno-Karabagh’s Regional Council reasserted its right to defend its national goals and end the Azeri aggression,108 and declared independence on January 6, 1992.109 Shortly afterward, the Nagorno-Karabagh Regional Council’s Armenian officials began to be replaced by Azeris.110 There was another political retreat by Nagorno-Karabagh on February 11, 1992, when it extended an olive branch to Azerbaijan and signalled its readiness to negotiate. Adding to this confusion had been Armenia’s declaration on January 31 that it had no territorial claims against Azerbaijan.111 Yet another shift in Nagorno-Karabagh’s strategy occurred in February 1992, when Armenian forces launched the strongest antiAzeri offensive both inside Nagorno-Karabagh and inside Azerbaijan proper. Between February and May 1992, Armenian forces attacked Azeri towns inside Nagorno-Karabagh, captured the strategic town of Lachin, creating an open corridor between Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, and attacked Azeri positions in Nakhichevan.112 It was war with all its attributes of human and material devastation. By May 1992, the Armenian offensive had achieved overall control of NagornoKarabagh for the first time. The region’s Azeri population had left either voluntarily or coercively, and the speed and extent of Azeri territorial losses had produced more political unrest in an Azerbaijan already beset by domestic instability.113 On June 13, 1992 Azerbaijan launched a counteroffensive recapturing most of the territories it had lost in Nagorno-Karabagh. Armenian losses affected Nagorno-Karabagh’s relatively strong political situation and the government resigned under pressure on August 15.114 Another Azeri attack began on September 18, only to be countered by Nagorno-Karabagh on February 6, 1993. Notwithstanding appeals to end the bloodshed and despite multiple ceasefire attempts, full scale war continued until a ceasefire in the spring of 1994.115 It is very hard to comprehend and thus explain the see-sawing of Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia between bullying and reciprocating, even appeasing, strategies during late 1991 and early 1992.116 Whether this non-uniform and unbalanced foreign policy was an intentional strategy to sow confusion, or whether it suggested the absence of a well-planned and coherent decision-making process remains unclear. From a rational point of view, it was too late to attempt to introduce positive inducements to an adversary which was rapidly hardening its position, considering the fact that both Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia had maintained an overall bullish stance between 1988 and 1991. What triggered such a reversal is unclear, and how Nagorno-Karabagh

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shifted so quickly and successfully from one policy to the next remains surprising. What began as an Armenian political demand in 1988 had not only become militarized, but had escalated to war, a situation that prevailed in late February 1993. There were no signs of de-escalation or constructive negotiations. The convergence of Armenian irredentism and real and perceived Azeri threats had produced a very dangerous nationalism, which due to certain conducive situational factors, had become militarized and escalated to war.117

Situational factors Nationalism is affected by systemic, regional and ments that accelerate or impede the realization agenda, and shape the nature of its manifestation. historical animosity and diaspora, contribute to internalization of a movement.

domestic developof the nationalist Two other factors, the intensity and

System structure Although nationalism can emerge in any global system structure, its manifestation depends on systemic conduciveness. It can be argued that multipolar and polycentric system structures118 are more conducive to the development and vigor of movements due to their less rigid power configuration and decision-making centers. Flexible alliances in such systems reduce the extent and the effectiveness of major powers over the behavior of lesser powers. State actions are not closely monitored, and the multiple decision-making centers increase the potential number of dyads. Of the two, “polycentrism provides the most conducive setting for new system member … and … this is so because polycentrism accords legitimacy to the quest for sovereignty by weak nationalities”.119 Bipolarity, on the other hand, involves a system where power and decision making are concentrated in two dominant actors, where each would zealously guard its sphere of influence, be wary of involvement in regional conflicts in order not to escalate tensions, and restrict territorial revisionism. It is an arrangement with two camps, identifiable friends and foes, where security of clients is provided by either superpower, and the scope for revisionism is very limited. Nationalist manifestation is likely to be minimal, especially when it occurs inside the superpower blocs, or in regions where such outbursts may diminish their influence. In reality, however, serious

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ethnic conflicts increased during the cold war.120 Therefore, system bipolarity did not necessarily make the world crisis immune. How much did the system structure contribute to the emergence and escalation of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis? Although Armenian nationalism, as an ideology, existed prior to and during Sovietization, the absence of a nationalist outburst prior to 1988 can be attributed more to the structure of the Soviet state than to the systemic power configuration. Communist ideology did not tolerate any expression of national dissatisfaction and immediately suppressed the movements and purged their leaders. Thus, it was the relaxation of the domestic constraints and attitudes that allowed such nationalist articulation. Emerging inside the boundaries of a superpower, the nature and manifestation of Armenian irredentism was conditioned and facilitated more by the internal mutation of the Soviet Union, than by its international demeanor. After all, Armenian irredentist demands were present prior to 1988 during bipolar structure. The crisis merely coincided with an alteration in the global power configuration, and the militarization was due to the conducive domestic situation of the Soviet Union.

Regional powers The emergence of the conflict and its rapid and unexpected escalation produced confusion in three regional actors (Soviet Union/Russia, Turkey, and Iran) in terms of its management. Their concern was with the evolution and outcome of the crisis, which would have an impact on their domestic situation, their credibility as major regional powers, and the overall stability of the area. Of the three, Turkey was in an alliance with Azerbaijan, Iran was neutral, and the Soviet Union swayed from neutrality to a conditional alignment with Armenia or Azerbaijan. Their foreign policies were shaped by their responsibilities as allies, by internal constraints, and by concerns that any forced or negotiated border changes could set a precedent and affect their territorial integrity, since all three were equally involved in territorial disputes.121 Whatever their individual predicaments, the regional powers shared a common interest: they all preferred the maintenance of the pre-1988 status quo. The Soviet Union’s/Russia’s politics of confusion The chaotic situation produced by the crisis was compounded by the absence of a uniform crisis management strategy by Moscow, as neither Soviet experience nor the Soviet constitution provided tools to deal with such a problem. Between 1988 and 1993, Soviet and Russian crisis

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management alternated between different influence strategies. In 1988, Gorbachev was still committed to preserving the existing state structure and opposed proposals that either challenged the country’s territorial integrity or questioned the legitimacy of Soviet socialism.122 His belief in the alliance and integration of various nations in order to create a unified economic system was merely a variant of his predecessors’ policy.123 Ironically, his policies provided the means for the periphery to air its grievances and demands, and to destroy the very system that he wanted to protect. What began as a typical Soviet “nyet” in 1988 gradually gave way to more flexible yet disorderly policies when it became obvious that the traditional method of problem solving had become ineffective. On February 23, 1988 the Communist Party asked both republics to adhere to Leninist doctrine and strengthen the heritage of socialism and the friendship of Soviet ethnic groups. Gorbachev reiterated this statement on February 26, adding that the situation in Nagorno-Karabagh needed improvement within the context of the existing structure.124 This was followed in May 1988 by the dismissal of the First Secretaries of Armenia and Azerbaijan for mishandling the situation, and another statement by Gorbachev regarding the inviolability of the Soviet structure.125 Moreover, the arrest of “Karabagh Committee”126 members soon after the December 1988 earthquake that devastated northwest Armenia did not win Gorbachev any merit points. Similarly, the placement of Nagorno-Karabagh under Moscow’s administration in January 1989, its return to Azeri control in November 1989, and the dispatch of Soviet troops to Armenia, Nagorno-Karabagh and Azerbaijan produced anti-center resentment among Armenians and Azeris. Gorbachev’s oscillation between policies that sometimes sided with Armenians and sometimes with Azeris, gave the adversaries both hope and rage and produced mistrust toward the center.127 Moscow also adjusted its policy by reacting to developments inside Azerbaijan. The presence of hard-line nationalist and anti-Russian Azeri presidents led Moscow to support Armenia. It was implied that any aid to Armenia extended to Nagorno-Karabagh as well.128 On the other hand, moderate and pro-Russian Azeri presidents produced pro-Azeri Russian behavior. For instance, during the presidency of Abulfez Elchibey in 1992, a staunch nationalist and the leader of the Azerbaijan Popular Front (APF), Moscow adopted a pro-Armenian policy, but with the coming to power of Gaidar Aliyev in 1993, who announced the enrollment of Azerbaijan in the CIS,129 Russia signed a security treaty with Azerbaijan.130

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It was the need to remain the chief regional decision maker that prompted the Russian government to oscillate between management strategies. The best method to navigate in an uncharted territory was to adopt a trial and error strategy, to adjust moves to Armenian and Azeri reactions to its inducements, and to buy time in order to formulate a more stable scheme. Since border readjustments were not an option, alignment with either side would antagonize the other. Moscow’s concern was to defuse the crisis without completely alienating the parties involved, as everyone still needed to coexist.131 A negotiated solution was not feasible given the unyielding positions of Armenians and Azeris. Supporting Armenia could have instigated a full-scale war had Turkey decided to become involved to defend its ally, Azerbaijan. Furthermore, one border change would have generated a chain reaction as other nations and ethnic groups would have vied for independence. On the other hand, siding with Azerbaijan would have gone against traditional Russian and Soviet policies to maintain a buffer zone in Transcaucasia against the potential danger of pan-Turanism. Suppression was undesirable, for Russia was trying to improve its image and democratize. Non-intervention was equally unacceptable, since as a major regional player (and still a nuclear superpower), it had to intervene in disputes that could affect the borders of Russia, and which could spill over to other countries and create regional destabilization. Although the maintenance of the pre-1988 status quo was preferred, the prolongation of the crisis became the second best option, which prevented its immediate resolution and exhausted the warring sides, without producing long term winners and losers. Turkey’s cautious alliance Turkey’s ambition to become the regional power broker was made more difficult by the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis, as it tried to balance its support for Azerbaijan with its need to manage its image in the West.132 Domestic pressure to support Azerbaijan and its goal of membership in the European Community compelled Turkey to adopt an assortment of policies that varied from appeasing both Azerbaijan and Europe, being firm toward Nagorno-Karabagh, and acting firmly yet flexibly toward Armenia. It, too, preferred the maintenance of the status quo, because if Nagorno-Karabagh succeeded in reuniting with Armenia, it would leave Turkey vulnerable to Armenian territorial claims. In terms of European participation, Turkey favored the OSCE, an organization which excluded Iran and one where Turkey could most effectively assert its influence.133

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Until 1991, Turkey adopted a defensive and non-interventionist policy, accepting events in Azerbaijan as “an internal Soviet affair”.134 Following 1991, anxious to prevent Azerbaijan from tilting toward Iran and influenced by external and internal factors, Turkey adopted a more assertive policy with respect to the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. It aimed to reaffirm its status as an important regional player, which was reinforced by its role as a major partner in the western coalition against Iraq during the second Gulf War of 1991. Driven by political and economic considerations, Turkey wanted to support Azerbaijan without totally alienating Armenia. Its interest to explore and export Azeri oil demanded the construction of a pipeline in Iran or Armenia, but given Western opposition to the Iranian option, Turkey had no choice but to turn to Armenia. Therefore, its ambition to become a principal regional player, and its economic interests, made inevitable its involvement in the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. However, domestic pressure demanding a more active pro-Azerbaijan involvement made relations with Armenia more difficult.135 Responding to internal pressure, Turkey recognized Azerbaijan’s independence on November 9, 1991, and provided it with military and economic assistance; soon afterward Azerbaijan revoked the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabagh on November 26, 1991. Simultaneously, Turkey limited Armenia’s involvement in the crisis by offering economic incentives, something that Armenia desperately needed as a consequence of its blockade by Azerbaijan.136 A substantial hardening of Turkey’s policy was brought about by Nagorno-Karabagh’s offensive into Azeri territories on February 26, 1992. Its disapproval of Nagorno-Karabagh’s offensive resulted in the partial mobilization of Turkish troops, which prompted a warning by Russia to refrain from any involvement.137 Turkey’s political attempts at influence began in March 1992 with three major announcements by the country’s leaders. Prime Minister Demirel stated that “Turkey could not remain indifferent to operations threatening regional stability.” Foreign Minister Cetin, in turn, announced that the struggle over Nagorno-Karabagh had become a regional conflict and invited all interested regional parties to a conference, although adding that Turkey would provide unilateral assistance to Azerbaijan. Finally, President Özal stated that Turkey “should scare the Armenians a little bit by blocking aid shipments over its land border, or by other measures”.138 A few months later, on May 11, 1992 Turkey warned Armenia against further attacks stating that border changes through coercion were not acceptable.139 This indirect threat is interesting for it implied the possibility that Turkey would be willing to accept negotiated border changes.

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Iran’s neutrality Iran’s involvement in the crisis was characterized by wariness of other regional players’ motives, and by its role as a mediator between Nagorno-Karabagh and Azerbaijan in an attempt to reach a negotiated settlement. During the escalation of the crisis, Iran was in the midst of its own internal problems, having signed a ceasefire agreement to end the first Iran–Iraq war, and later was confronted by the transition period following the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Therefore, it was cautious and regarded the Nagorno-Karabagh issue as a Soviet internal affair, a policy that continued until 1991.140 Different factors influenced Iran’s policy response to the crisis. Territorial contiguity with Azerbaijan made it vulnerable to Azeri refugees. The redrawing of borders could induce similar irredentist movements in Iranian Azerbaijan. Moreover, violence in Azerbaijan would increase the probability of Russian or even NATO peacekeeping forces close to its borders.141 Alignment with either side was not an option either. Siding with Azerbaijan would have produced domestic pressures from the rich and influential Armenian community, as well as create regional and international outrage since such a move would have been interpreted as religiously based and criticized. Alignment with NagornoKarabagh was even less probable. A radical Islamic government was not about to defend a Christian actor against a Muslim republic. Neutrality seemed the safest option, and Iran continued to maintain a balanced foreign policy even during extreme anti-Iranian behavior by Azerbaijan.142 Iran condemned aggression and tried to broker ceasefires and negotiations. Iran’s mediation efforts intensified after February 1992. On March 15, 1992 it brokered a mediation for a ceasefire, an exchange of hostages and an end to the anti-Armenian Azeri blockade. This was signed in Teheran by representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan. On March 20, an Iranian delegation arrived in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabagh’s capital, to mediate negotiations. On April 1, another initiative brought together representatives of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Iran in Itchevan, Armenia. On May 8, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Iran as an observer, signed an agreement in Teheran to end the crisis.143 The Armenian diaspora and anti-Turkic animosity The moral, political, and economic assistance of the Armenian diaspora cannot be discounted. Unlike Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia benefitted from the support of organized and active Armenian

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communities around the world. Even during the pre-crisis period, Nagorno-Karabagh’s demands were upheld by the diaspora’s political and religious bodies, associations and communities through letters and petitions to Gorbachev. Following February 20, 1988, the political demands became more vocal with simultaneous rallies and demonstrations in major western cities, broadening the scope of protest and inviting the attention of foreign states.144 The lobbying of near foreign governments and international organizations to seek pro-Armenian resolutions and secure financial aid, and the creation of funds to help the blockaded or war stricken areas, boosted the collective determination of Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia. With the escalation of the crisis, the breadth of political activities widened in an attempt to seek a more active pro-Armenian disposition by foreign governments. The numerous solidarity visits by Baroness Caroline Cox, Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords of Great Britain, to Nagorno-Karabagh, the introduction of legislation in the United States Senate to restrict trade with Azerbaijan, until the cessation of aggression against Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, and the European Parliament’s resolution expressing concern and its decision to dispatch a fact finding mission145 are a few examples of political pressure that diasporan Armenian political elites exerted on western governments to compel Azerbaijan to end the hostilities and reach a negotiated settlement. The Armenians’ identification of Azeris as ethnic Turks increased their animosity. Their historical and political experience under Ottoman rule, and their familiarity with Azeri violence prior to and during Sovietization, explained this enmity and accounted for Armenian tenacity and the intensity of violence. The deep-seated hatred emanated from the Armenian memory of being victims of Turkish and Azeri resentment, persecution, and massacres. The presence of this hatred and the determination not to be vulnerable to such humiliations produced bullish Armenian behavior and increased the level of violence. It is important to stress that anti-Turkic animosity is not religious, but rather political in nature. The acceptance by Middle Eastern states of Armenian refugees and survivors in 1915 and the subsequent coexistence of Armenian and Muslim communities have demonstrated that religion has not impeded the relationship of these nations. On the other hand, the political decisions of the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in the 1894–96 massacres and the Genocide, or the Transcaucasian massacres of 1905–07 and that of 1918 by Azeri Turks in Baku, have undoubtedly generated Armenian hatred against the Turks.

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Domestic environment Nagorno-Karabagh’s internal constraints Nagorno-Karabagh’s resolve, both at public and official levels, increased steadily from February 1988 onward. Political leaders, with the support of the population, defied Azeri rule and Soviet decisions. Nagorno-Karabagh’s political defiance and military successes demonstrated the overwhelming support enjoyed by the government and the virtual absence of constraints. A homogeneous irredentist actor and the principal target of Azeri economic sanctions and violence, NagornoKarabagh maintained a high degree of resolve. Stepanakert was governed by a wartime regime; every male between the ages of 18 and 45 was enlisted; everything was subordinate to the needs of the army; and the military and the economy functioned as a single mechanism.146 This collective awareness, the determination to overcome discriminatory policies and the perseverance to reunite with Armenia demonstrated a pattern of sustained political behavior. Although the Nagorno-Karabagh Defense Committee sometimes collided with the Nagorno-Karabagh Regional Council and later with the Nagorno-Karabagh Parliament, and although the government resigned in August 1992 under pressure, Nagorno-Karabagh was virtually constraint free when compared to Armenia and Azerbaijan. It is interesting to highlight how certain tangible or intangible national characteristics compensate for the relative weakness of other attributes. Although Nagorno-Karabagh was at a disadvantage in terms of size, urbanization, and education, it still managed to launch and sustain an irredentist demand because of its high ethnic affinity, collective identity, and determination.

Armenia’s internal constraints Armenia’s involvement in the crisis did not follow a uniform pattern: it fluctuated between active association with Nagorno-Karabagh during the pre-independence years and cautious behavior following its independence. Armenia was itself experiencing national discontent over ecological problems as Nagorno-Karabagh prepared for political upheaval. The switch from environmental issues to supporting Nagorno-Karabagh’s aspirations was not unexpected or surprising. As noted, whether in Nagorno-Karabagh, Armenia or the diaspora, Armenians constitute a single nation and, as far as territorial claims are concerned, present a

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united front. Armenian mass mobilization was extremely rapid and successful, and large scale demonstrations became a daily occurrence. The activists and organizers of these demonstrations formed the “Karabagh Committee” in May 1988, which, unfortunately, could not agree upon a single political agenda as it was created by intellectuals, professors and environmentalists with different views and approaches to issues. The evolution of events necessitated the adoption of a concrete political platform and an identifiable leader. This was partly accomplished in November 1989 by the formation of the Armenian National Movement (ANM),147 which eventually became the ruling party, but only after a process of factionalism with respect to goals and strategies, which still continue to divide the political elite in Armenia. Despite significant political disagreements, Amenia’s cultural and ethnic homogeneity led to relative political stability.148 Still a Soviet republic, Armenia defied the official Party line on June 15, 1988, when its Supreme Soviet voted to incorporate NagornoKarabagh into Armenia, and in December 1989 to annex the region. Throughout the crisis, Armenia received its share of Soviet and Azeri fury, in terms of the Soviet military presence in its capital, economic consequences of the Azeri blockade, the flux of refugees from NagornoKarabagh and Azerbaijan, and fighting along the republic’s border. Independence for Armenia on September 23, 1991 forced nationalist leaders to face the responsibility of governing a state with domestic and foreign policy constraints, including economic problems, housing for refugees, and coexistence with neighboring states. NagornoKarabagh, although still a major concern, could no longer remain the only item on Armenia’s political agenda. The country’s geographical location and the economic dependence on its neighbors forced it to exchange its bullish redeeming stance with firm yet flexible behavior. This shift sometimes produced serious deviations from established norms. One example is President Ter-Petrossian’s announcement on March 3, 1992 that Nagorno-Karabagh was “Azerbaijan’s internal affair”, and Armenia made no territorial claims against Azerbaijan.149 As a consequence of such critical policy aberrations, Armenia experienced internal political turmoil. The government was criticized by opposition parties for mismanagement and insufficient involvement in the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis, for accommodation with Turkey to secure economic support, and force the slow process of democratization. By 1992, the rigid anti-Azeri position had given way to an unidentifiable strategy: Armenia renounced territorial claims against Azerbaijan in March 1992, but threatened direct intervention to defend the rights

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and security of Nagorno-Karabagh on June 14, 1992; yet it signed a ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan on September 19, 1992 without the representatives of Nagorno-Karabagh.150 The rapprochement with Turkey, as indicated by Armenia’s abstention from any territorial claims against Turkey in February 1992,151 and the arrival of a Turkish delegation in Armenia on August 25, 1992 for bilateral discussions,152 further provoked opposition parties. By February 1993, Armenia pursued a very inconsistent policy toward Azerbaijan. The government faced the responsibility of housing and feeding refugees from NagornoKarabagh, Azerbaijan, and Armenian towns bordering Azerbaijan, while challenged internally with respect to its foreign and domestic policies. One can speculate about Armenia’s post-independence policies toward Nagorno-Karabagh. Armenia either had truly opted for rapprochement with Turkey and thus had to relinquish its role as the redeeming state, or was pursuing a dual policy of openly appeasing Turkey because of much needed economic assistance, but covertly helping Nagorno-Karabagh and the irredentist cause. If the latter is true, it is an astute approach to a complicated issue, which can both be beneficial and harmful. The intention might have been to reinforce Armenia economically, but simultaneously persuade Azerbaijan and Turkey that the republic had abandoned Nagorno-Karabagh’s struggle. This would produce a relaxation in anti-Armenian Azeri and Turkish activity and allow Armenia to strengthen itself politically and economically. Certain events in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh contribute to this conjecture. While in early 1992, Armenia was publicly distancing itself from Nagorno-Karabagh and drawing closer to Turkey, NagornoKarabagh was launching the fiercest offensive yet against Azerbaijan. If this was a coincidence, and Nagorno-Karabagh was attacking Azeri territories without the political consent or military assistance of Armenia, then it had the unilateral might to be involved in a war against Azerbaijan. Such a situation would also imply Armenia’s renunciation, albeit temporarily, of its role as the redeeming state, which could seriously affect the future of Nagorno-Karabagh’s struggle, since in the absence of a supportive redeeming party an irredentist objective would simply cease to exist. On the other hand, the notion that Armenia could forsake the irredentist struggle was highly implausible, given the national zeal and commitment to this objective. If collective resolve had kept this goal alive in the diaspora and in the former Soviet Union, it was extremely improbable that it could be abandoned by an independent Armenian republic.

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Azerbaijan’s internal constraints Azerbaijan’s domestic situation had been the most problematic among all the actors in the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. The inability of successive governments to resolve the Nagorno-Karabagh question had produced public dissatisfaction and a series of power struggles. Until 1991, most Azerbaijani policies had been reactions to events or declarations by Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia.153 It was only in November 1991 that the government became the activist by revoking NagornoKarabagh’s autonomous status. Azerbaijan’s preoccupation with Nagorno-Karabagh made it difficult for the government to shift its focus toward other national problems. While the main nationalist party, APF, was concerned with political, cultural, economic and environmental issues, it had no choice but to concentrate on the Nagorno-Karabagh problem almost exclusively, which not only threatened the future status of Azerbaijan but its current stability as well. The flood of Azeri refugees from NagornoKarabagh and Armenia into a republic already plagued with unemployment and housing shortages, coupled with the human and territorial losses incurred during the crisis, made the Nagorno-Karabagh issue the primary item on Azerbaijan’s agenda.154 Multiple dismissals and resignations of Party First Secretaries and later Presidents could also be attributed to the crisis. The presence of Soviet troops in Azerbaijan did not help the situation. This reality did not improve after February 1992, when Azerbaijan desperately needed internal stability and a united front to fend off the Armenian military offensive. The political paralysis continued with a discredited government, escalating tensions between the latter and the APF, the arrest of opposition leaders and frequent changes of presidents.155 Although Azerbaijan was troubled with sectarian divisions, its homogeneity helped it retain an unyielding anti-Armenian stance. It needs to be specified that public dissatisfaction inside Azerbaijan was not with the type of policy adopted, but rather with the degree of intensity of that policy. There was never any opposition to the overall bullying strategy of the government, only the perception that this was a “soft” bullish position and a more severe attitude was essential to repel Armenian advances and re-establish the pre-1988 status. Had Azerbaijan experienced less domestic turmoil, it could have been better positioned to deal with the crisis politically or militarily. Internal cohesion and the maintenance of a single government would have resulted in a more stable republic determined to contain the crisis and either suppress the national uprising or negotiate a settlement, more beneficial options

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than the instability and chaos brought about by war. Power struggles and public discontent resulted in successive leadership changes and prevented the formation of a uniform political strategy to deal with the issue. Internal factionalism, the lack of a uniform policy, and incessant leadership changes were major constraints that produced the least stable actor in the region, one incapable of effective crisis management and mass mobilization, creating confusion and occasionally leading to miscalculations like the underestimation of the Armenian offensive into Azeri territory.

Conclusion On February 26, 1993, the fifth anniversary of the Sumgait massacres that triggered the escalation phase, the situation in Nagorno-Karabagh was one of war. Efforts for ceasefires and negotiations had failed; human and material casualties were at their peak; political and economic instability prevailed, and there was no hope for resolution. What began as Nagorno-Karabagh’s political crusade to realize its irredentist objective had been transformed into a militarized crisis and had escalated to war. The perception of each side that its loss represented the enemy’s gain, the identification of one’s struggle as just, the resolve to alter or safeguard the status quo, compounded by a colonial legacy and historical animosity, contributed to the environment of full-scale war and demonstrated that the pre-1988 reality could no longer be maintained. What also contributed to the crisis, both in terms of opportunity to air nationalist demands and in terms of increased threat perceptions, were Soviet policies. It was Gorbachev’s call for “openness” and “restructuring”, with the right to publicize corrupt practices and allow national expression, accompanied by reduction in state sector employment and cutbacks in center–periphery financial flows,156 that produced the opportunity to express dissatisfaction, challenge the corrupt cadres and raise ethnic demands. Gorbachev’s conviction that the republics must participate to establish a Soviet economic complex, and his position that the general interest of the country was higher than the ethnic interests of various nations clashed with the nationalist demands of the republics.157 The republican cadres, who had enjoyed privileged positions both in terms of status and material rewards, vehemently resisted change to safeguard their power,158 but were confronted with criticism and opposition. Thus, they were caught between two contradictory Soviet policies: the right to criticize, challenge and demand, and the allegiance to the Soviet state.

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Moscow’s disposition with respect to the republics not only troubled the latter, but the lower-ranking republics as well. From NagornoKarabagh’s perspective, Azerbaijan would most likely further exploit the region’s economic potential to meet Moscow’s demands. This would be accompanied by major financial reductions to already deficient Armenian educational and cultural institutions and the possible resettlement of workers. The potential for such outcomes was sufficient to produce threat perceptions for Nagorno-Karabagh. Whether Azerbaijan would have realized Nagorno-Karabagh’s fears is not known. However, the republic’s previous record of mistreatment and the circumstances in Nakhichevan intensified Armenian threat perceptions. On the other hand, Moscow’s official permission to air national grievances gave impetus to Nagorno-Karabagh’s irredentist objective, which was sufficient to generate threat perceptions for Azerbaijan to initiate a crisis and to create an unprecedented nationality problem for Moscow. If it is not logical for an economically or militarily inferior party to initiate serious claims against a more powerful enemy, then NagornoKarabagh’s 1988 demands defied logic. If one takes into account that Nagorno-Karabagh, with a non-existent military and a mere 8 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, under the latter’s jurisdiction, was mostly a rural region whose natural resources were exploited to satisfy Azerbaijan, and was completely surrounded by a rich enemy territory, then the region’s irredentist demands were irrational. Furthermore, NagornoKarabagh was aware of Turkey’s alliance with Azerbaijan and of the limited economic and military support that Armenia could extend, as a weak Soviet republic bordering a historical enemy, Turkey. With the cards stacked against it, why would Nagorno-Karabagh initiate such demands? The answer lies in the convergence of national goals and perceived threats, the necessary and sufficient conditions for nationalism. The dream of reunification, compounded by Azeri policies and the potential for more serious threats, and the opportunity provided by the new Soviet policies, culminated in active Armenian irredentism. This demonstrates the importance of collective awareness and resolve in the development of nationalism. In the absence of such consciousness and determination, the political, economic, and military reality of NagornoKarabagh would have inhibited it from undertaking such an ambitious and dangerous initiative. The radical behavior of Nagorno-Karabagh and Azerbaijan rapidly militarized the crisis. Although the presence of more moderate elites on both sides could have defused the tensions, it is questionable

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whether Armenian irredentism could have been pursued by moderate Armenian elites, and its realization prevented by their moderate Azeri counterparts. What was at stake necessitated the involvement of radical leaders on both sides. Nagorno-Karabagh’s pursuit of a national objective could have only been realized, and Azerbaijan’s perception of a core value threat could have only been repelled, by radical elites. Any relaxation on either side would have been interpreted as a loss of resolve and could have created a win–lose situation. Azerbaijan had no choice but to match the bullying initiative of Nagorno-Karabagh if it were to resist any border changes. The irredentist goal, the existence of radical elites, and the adoption of rigid strategies made militarization almost inevitable. What the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis demonstrates is that nationalist movements may involve the states against whom they have grievances in lengthy and sometimes violent crises. These movements and the crises they generate will not be short-term challenges that states can ignore or even suppress. Such crises will linger, exhaust the populations of the states and aspiring nations, preoccupy the governments with the nationalist struggle, threaten the territorial unity of the states and, if militarized, cause massive human and material casualties. Armenian irredentism over Nagorno-Karabagh has demonstrated the impact of nationalism in a Communist country in a state of transformation. The Basque and Québec cases represent types of nationalist expression in western democracies. The secessionist movement in northern Somalia and the creation of Somaliland, and the ongoing struggles in Tibet and East Timor are but a few examples that attest to the determination and resolve of the nations and elites who are spearheading these movements, and demonstrate the vigor and protraction of these crises. Ethnic bloodshed and the devastation in former Yugoslavia remain vivid. What becomes apparent from these cases is that the uncompromising concept of “territorial integrity” will sooner or later recede in favor of “self-determination”. Whether or not every stateless nation should become a sovereign state is a question we do not address in this chapter. Is the belief in, and the right to be sovereign, sufficient to attain sovereignty? What are the criteria for statehood? Why can the Vatican or San Marino be sovereign states and how could Ukraine and Belorussia be members of the United Nations without being independent states? The prevailing modern belief is that cultural homogeneity is essential for industrial societies, but could this be truly accomplished without triggering national discontent? After all, cultural homogeneity

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implies the assimilation of multiple cultures for the creation of a single overarching one. However, since the coercive assimilation of national groups with a sufficient degree of collective self-consciousness is unlikely,159 and since nations with moderate or high levels of animosity may experience peaceful coexistence only when historical, political and human injustices have been addressed and adequate compensation rewarded, then it becomes necessary to find lasting solutions to national discontent. The alternative is too costly.

Notes 1. Michael Brecher, Crises in World Politics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993), p. 56. Brecher identifies the 20th century system structure as multipolar (until 1939), bipolar (1945–62), polycentric (1962–90) and quasi-unipolar (after 1990). 2. Donald Horowitz, “Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology 32, 1–2 (1992): 119. 3. Karen Von Hippel, “The Resurgence of Nationalism and its International Implications”, The Washington Quarterly 17, 4 (Autumn 1994): 185. 4. Hedva Ben Israel, “Irredentism: Nationalism Reexamined”, in Naomi Chazan, Irredentism and International Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991), p. 32. 5. Chazan, pp. 1–2. 6. Horowitz, p. 119. 7. David Carment, The International Politics of Ethnic Conflict: The Interstate Dimensions of Secessions and Irredenta in the Twentieth Century, a Crisis-Based Approach (Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1994), p. 23. 8. David Carment and Patrick James, “Secessions and Irredenta in World Politics: the Neglected Interstate Dimension”, in David Carment and Patrick James, (eds), Wars in the Midst of Peace (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), p. 200. 9. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 201–3. 10. Carment, p. 23; Carment and James, “Secessions”, p. 214. 11. Hedva Ben Israel, p. 24. 12. Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: a Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993), p. 313. 13. David Carment and Patrick James, “Internal Constraints and Interstate Ethnic Conflict: Toward a Crisis-Based Assessment of Irredentism”, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, 1 (March 1995): 83–4. 14. Horowitz, Ethnic, p. 127. 15. Horowitz, Ethnic, p. 123. 16. Carment, p. 100; Carment and James, “Secessions”, pp. 211–12. 17. Carment, p. 103. 18. “Successful” in this context denotes the actual detachment of territory from one state and its incorporation into another.

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19. Gurr, p. 295. 20. Armenian irredentism is a combination of both the ethnic group and the state-oriented perspectives. The ethnic group approach explains irredentism as a movement by an ethnic minority in the redeeming or the redeemable state to reunite a given territory and its people with the homeland. In contrast, the state-oriented perspective, a more limited definition, asserts irredentism to be an attempt by an existing state to retrieve a territory and its people that it considers to be an integral part of its national heritage. For analyses of these approaches, see the contributions of Donald Horowitz, Shalom Reichman, Amon Golan, as proponents of the ethnic group perspective, and Benyamin Neuberger and Hedva Ben-Israel, as defenders of the state-oriented approach in Chazan. Armenian irredentism over Nagorno-Karabagh, whether launched in Nagorno-Karabagh or Armenia proper, has been a symbiotic phenomenon during and following Soviet domination. Therefore, it is not surprising that the 1988 movements in Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia began almost concurrently, each side’s actions motivating the other and increasing the momentum of the movement. 21. Claire Mouradian, “The Mountainous Karabagh Question: Inter-ethnic Conflict or Decolonization Crisis?”, Armenian Review 43, 2–3 (Summer/Autumn 1990): 15. 22. Confirmed and unconfirmed reports have accounted for “external forces” and mercenaries fighting for both sides and the supply of weapons by regional and non-regional powers. Some reports indicate that while the Soviet Union/Russia armed both sides and Turkey provided assistance to Azerbaijan, non-regional powers like Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to reinforce Turkish–Israeli relations against Iran. Covcas Bulletin: Nationalities, Conflicts and Human Rights in the Caucasus II, 31 (November 5, 1992): 77. 23. Shireen Hunter, The Transcaucasus in Transition: Nation Building and Conflict (Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994), pp. 13–14. 24. Gregory Gleason, “The Evolution of the Soviet Federal System” in Rachel Denber (ed.) The Soviet Nationality Reader: The Disintegration in Context (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 114; Ian Bremmer, “Reassessing Soviet Nationalities Theory” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, (eds) Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 10. 25. The reference here is to the Constitution adopted at the 7th Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, October 7, 1977, also known as the Brezhnev Constitution. Overall, the Soviet Union has had four constitutions: a Treaty of Union in December 1922, a second Constitution in January 1924, a third one in December 1936 also known as the Stalin Constitution, and the fourth in October 1977, which did not bring about any relevant changes to its predecessor. Gleason, pp. 108–14. 26. Bremmer, p. 5; Donald D. Barry and Carol Barner-Barry, Contemporary Soviet Politics: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982), p. 104. 27. Barry and Barner-Barry, pp. 373–4. 28. Bremmer, p. 5.

Lalig Papazian 89 29. Philip G. Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization” in Denber, p. 148. 30. Bremmer, pp. 5–6, 22. 31. Mark Saroyan, “The ‘Karabagh Syndrome’ and Azerbaijani Politics”, Problems of Communism 39 (September–October 1990): 15–16; Saroyan, “Beyond the Nation-State: Culture and Ethnic Politics in Soviet Transcaucasia”, Soviet Union/Union Soviétique 15, 2–3 (1988): 223. 32. Bremmer, p. 16. 33. Ronald G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 102–12. 34. Although ethnic minorities in Union Republics were not subjected to the institutionalized discrimination that Autonomous Republics, Regions or Areas endured, they did nevertheless face an ethnic division of labor, where indigenous nationalities usually acquired high level jobs, while minorities were employed as blue-collar workers. See Victor Zaslavsky, “Success and Collapse: Traditional Soviet Nationality Policy” in Bremmer and Taras, p. 39. In rare instances, where the situation was reversed, it produced understandable tension and enmity between the indigenous population and the ethnic minority. The situation of rich Armenians in Baku demonstrates this point. 35. Mark Malkasian, “Gha-ra-bagh!” (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), p. 25. 36. Hélène Carrère-D’Encausse, The Nationality Question in the Soviet Union and Russia (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), pp. 28–9; Bremmer, p. 11. 37. Ronald G. Suny, “Transcaucasia: Cultural Cohesion and Ethnic Revival in a Multinational Society” in Lubomyr Hajda and Mark Beissinger, (eds), The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 241–3. 38. Gerard J. Libaridian, The Karabakh File (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation, 1988), pp. 42, 47. 39. Nora Dudwick, “Armenia: the Nation Awakens” in Bremmer and Taras, p. 272. Nakhichevan is another Armenian territory under Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction, but is a higher ranking republic. 40. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR”, in Denber, pp. 400–1. 41. Roeder, pp. 152–7; Zaslavsky, p. 33. 42. Suny, “Transcaucasia”, p. 242; John H. Miller, “Cadres Policy in Nationality Areas: Recruitment of CPSU First and Second Secretaries in Non-Russian Republics of the USSR” in Denber, p. 189. 43. Graham Smith (ed.) The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States (New York: Longman, 1996), pp. 13–14. 44. Carrère-D’Encausse, p. 40. 45. Lee Dutter, “Territorial Perspective on Ethnic Political Behaviour in the Soviet Union”, Journal of Conflict Resolution 34, 2 (June 1990): 313. The 14 non-Russian republics can be regionally identified and classified as Baltic (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania); non-Russian Slavic (Belarus, Moldavia, Ukraine); Transcaucasian (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan); Central Asian (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizia).

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46. Libaridian, p. 3; James Olson (ed.) An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 39. 47. Christopher J. Walker (ed.) Armenia and Karabagh: The Struggle for Unity (London: Minority Rights Publications, 1991), p. 74. 48. Walker, p. 79; Libaridian, pp. 3–4. In Arabic, “melik” means king and “khamsa” is five, hence the identification. 49. Karabagh’s incorporation into the Russian Empire preceded that of Yerevan and Nakhichevan, which were only ceded in 1828 under the Treaty of Turkmenchai. Chronologically, therefore, it was impossible for Karabagh to join these not yet annexed Armenian territories. See Libaridian, p. 4. 50. Walker, pp. 79–84. 51. The Economist Intelligence Unit, 1995–1996. Country Profile: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan (London, UK: 1996), p. 52. 52. Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (United States: Human Rights Watch, 1994), p. xiii. 53. Libaridian, p. 5. 54. Oles M. Smolansky, “Russia and Transcaucasia: the Case of NagornoKarabakh” in Alvin Z. Rubenstein and Oles M. Smolansky (eds) Regional Power Rivalries in the New Eurasia: Russia, Turkey and Iran (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 201. 55. Libaridian, p. 33. 56. Olson, p. 47. 57. Shireen T. Hunter, “Azerbaijan: Search for Industry and New Partners” in Bremmer and Taras, p. 247. 58. Suny, Revenge, p. 133. 59. Suny, “Nationalism and Democracy in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union: the Case of Karabagh”, Michigan Quarterly Review 28, 4 (Fall 1989): 483–4. 60. Data regarding the ethnic composition Nakhichevan, another historically Armenian territory under Azerbaijani control, show a significant decrease of the Armenian population with the simultaneous increase of Azerbaijanis. Census results indicate that while 11 300 Armenians lived in Nakhichevan in 1926, this number was down to 3400 by 1979. However, during the same period, there was a notable increase in the Azeri population from 93 600 to 229 700. Such a drastic change in a region’s ethnic composition makes the possibility of demographic gerrymandering highly plausible. Mouradian, p. 7. 61. In 1926, Armenians represented 89 percent of Nagorno-Karabagh’s population, while Azeris constituted 10 percent. In 1979, the figures had changed to 76 percent and 23 percent, respectively. (Malkasian, p. 27; Suny, “Nationalism” in Denber, p. 488). Although some relocations could have been voluntary, the anti-Armenian Azeri policies in other areas raise considerable doubt about the voluntary nature of such demographic changes. 62. Malkasian, pp. 27–9. Azerbaijan’s Supreme Soviet had made Azeri the republic’s official language in August 1956. See Hélène Carrère-D’Encausse, “When the ‘Prison of Peoples’ was Opened” in Denber, pp. 96–7. 63. B.S. Mirzoian, “Nagornyi Karabakh: Statistical Considerations,” Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology 29, 2 (Fall 1990): 23. 64. Adapted from Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),

Lalig Papazian 91

65.

66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

p. 198. Lijphart discusses intergroup relations in general, but his arguments with respect to cross-cutting cleavages are applicable to this specific case. Statistical data on Azerbaijan are from The Europa Yearbook, 37th edn (London: Europa Publications, 1996) pp. 468–76; The Economist Intelligence Unit, pp. 55–6; Stephen K. Batalden and Sandra L. Batalden, The Newly Independent States of Eurasia: Handbook of Former Soviet Republics (Phoenix: Oryx, 1993), p. 95; CIA World Factbook on http://www. odci.gov/cia/ Hunter, Transcaucasus, p. 64. The first recorded reference dates back to 520 BC in the inscriptions of Darius I, who speaks of the Persian King conquering the Armenians with great difficulty. Ronald Suny, Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 7. Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, Artsakh: Histoire du Karabagh (Paris: Sevig, 1991), p. 10. Libaridian, p. 134. Data retrieved from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise specified. The Economist Intelligence Unit, p. 37. Pursuing an irredentist objective as well as seeking reforms may seem contradictory at first. However, since nationalist movements encounter high–low cycles during their struggle that may stretch over decades, and are affected by multiple internal and external factors that may suspend their activities or impact their resolve, then it becomes difficult to maintain the same vigor. This does not imply that the nationalist objective has ceased to exist; it has merely become temporarily dormant. Therefore, the pursuit of other objectives, like internal reforms, does not contradict or negate the existence of the more serious national goal. While this stage continued after 1993, the reference signifies the chronological limit of this study. Walker, p. 120. Libaridian, p. 69. Tamara Dragadze, “Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijanis” in Graham Smith (ed.) p. 283; Libaridian, p. 70. Malkasian, p. 28. Claire Mouradian, De Staline à Gorbachev, Histoire d’une république soviétique: l’Arménie (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1990), p. 474. Facts on File 47, 2458 (December 31, 1987): 987. Malkasian, p. 133. Mouradian, “Mountainous”, p. 15. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), SOV-88-036, February 24, 1988. Facts on File 48, 2466 (February 26, 1988): 127–8; Libaridian, p. 152. Malkasian, p. 5–6. FBIS, SOV-88-036, February 24, 1988. Malkasian, p. 51. Facts on File 48, 2467 (March 4, 1988): 146; Facts on File 48, 2469 (March 18, 1988): 191. Suny, “Nationalism” in Denber, p. 493. Hélène Carrère-D’Encausse, The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 53–4. There were reports that

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90. Azeris from areas outside Sumgait were brought in and the crowd was further agitated by alcohol, turning it into a mob. 90. Edmund M. Herzig, “Armenia and the Armenians” in Smith (ed.) p. 250. 91. Hunter, “Azerbaijan”, p. 249. 92. Facts on File 48, 2471 (April 1, 1988): 225; Facts on File 48, 2482 (June 17, 1988): 435. 93. Azerbaijan, p. 1. 94. Facts on File 48, 2486 (July 15, 1988): 518. 95. Facts on File 49, 2544 (August 25, 1989): 624; Facts on File 49, 2548 (September 22, 1989): 700; Facts on File 49, 2561 (December 22, 1989): 950; Facts on File 50, 2565 ( January 19, 1990): 25. 96. Facts on File 49, 2561 (December 22, 1989): 950. 97. Carrère-D’Encausse, End, p. 58. 98. Facts on File 49, 2561 (December 22, 1989): 950. 99. Facts on File 50, 2565 ( January 19, 1990): 25. 100. Facts on File 50, 2565 ( January 19, 1990): 25. 101. Facts on File 50, 2569 (February 16, 1990): 109. 102. Keesing’s Record of World Events 36, 3 (1990): 37323. 103. Ayaz Mutalibov in Azerbaijan and Levon Ter-Petrossian in Armenia. Kessing’s 36, 5 (1990): 37 460; Facts on File 50, 2595 (August 17, 1990): 608. 104. Facts on File 51, 2666 (December 31, 1991): 973. 105. Covcas Bulletin I, 1 (November 28, 1991): 2 106. Covcas Bulletin I, 3 (December 12, 1991): 5–6. 107. Covcas Bulletin II, 1 (January 2, 1992): 2. 108. Covcas Bulletin II, 1 (January 2, 1992): 2. 109. Azerbaijan, p. 108. 110. The Europa Yearbook, p. 407. 111. Covcas Bulletin II, 4 (February 7, 1992): 11. 112. Facts on File 52, 2678 (March 19, 1992): 194; Facts on File 52, 2687 (May 21, 1992): 366. 113. Azerbaijan, pp. 5–6; Keesing’s 38, 5 (1992): 38925–38926. 114. Facts on File 52, 2701 (August 27, 1992): 634. 115. Keesing’s, 38, 9 (1992): 39109; Keesing’s, 39, 1 (1993): 39285; Keesing’s, 39, 2 (1993): 39 333. 116. For a more detailed examination of influence strategies, see Russell J. Leng, Interstate Crisis Behavior 1816–1980: Realism versus Reciprocity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 136–90, and more particularly pp. 141–5. Leng identifies five influence strategies. Bullying involves escalating negative inducements, demonstrating an actor’s resolve and confidence to prevail, where noncompliance with one’s demands precipitates harsher reactions. Appeasing is the opposite of bullying, where noncompliance produces more positive inducements. Trial and error strategy involves frequent switches between escalation and de-escalation and is mostly used for bargaining in uncertain environments. Stonewalling ignores all inducements of one’s opponent without introducing any inducements of one’s own. This either implies indecision or the hope for third party intervention, or demands unworthy of bargaining. The reciprocating strategy is a variant of tit-for-tat, but unlike the latter it does not have to issue the first co-operative move. It demonstrates firmness in the

Lalig Papazian 93

117.

118. 119. 120.

121.

122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136.

face of negative inducements and flexibility in the face of positive ones; positive and negative inducements are reciprocated. As mentioned earlier, this date indicates the limit of this study and does not mark the end of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. The full scale war continued until 1994, its cessation did not signal crisis termination; it merely brought about a stalemate. The section on system structure is borrowed from Brecher, pp. 29, 56–7, 143. Brecher, p. 56. Edward E. Azar’s data presented in his Conflict and Peace databank demonstrate a sharp increase in protracted socio-ethnic conflicts between 1945 and 1972, specially in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Also, Ted Robert Gurr’s Minorities at Risk databank accounts for an escalation of serious ethnopolitical conflicts between 1945 and 1989, with the most significant increase occurring during the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, conflicts that emerged after 1987 were not particularly more intense than their pre-1987 counterparts. (Azar, Jureidini and McLaurin, “Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Practice in the Middle East”, Journal of Palestine Studies 8, 1 (Autumn 1978): 47–8; Ted Robert Gurr, “Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System”, International Studies Quarterly, 38 (September 1994): 350–1. The Soviet Union had its own share of ethnic groups and subordinate republics that aspired to self-determination like Abkhazia and North/South Ossetia. Iran could be involved in a dispute with Azerbaijan over its northern territories, known as Iranian Azerbaijan. Turkey would be vulnerable to Armenian land claims. Graham Smith, “The Soviet State and Nationalities Policy” in Smith Nationalities, p. 16. Carrère-D’Encausse, Nationality, p. 40. Libaridian, pp. 98–9, 102–3. Keesing’s, 34 (July 1988): 36033. A nationalist group formed in Yerevan in May 1988, whose members were activists during the early stages of strikes and demonstrations in Armenia. Carrère-D’Encausse, End, p. 70. Smolansky, “Russia,” p. 211. Azerbaijan and Armenia joined the CIS on December 21, 1991. Azerbaijan quit in mid 1992, but rejoined in late 1993. Andrew Wilson, “The Post Soviet States and the Nationalities Question” in Smith (ed.) Nationalities, p. 27. Smolansky, “Russia,” p. 212. Smolansky, “Russia,” p. 226. Hunter, Transcaucasus, pp. 162–5. Covcas Bulletin II, 17 (June 2, 1992): 4. Hunter, Transcaucasus, p. 163. Hunter, Transcaucasus, pp. 163–5. Armenia’s economic dependence on Turkey generated immense criticism against the government. Opposition parties argued that Armenia should seek alternatives to Turkish economic offers and believed that any pact with Turkey was politically counterproductive and morally wrong. Such arrangements would not only limit Armenia’s options with respect to the crisis, but they would also hurt the Armenian land claims against Turkey.

94 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

156. 157. 158. 159.

The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh Keesing’s, 38, 5 (1992): 38926. Covcas Bulletin II, 9 (March 12, 1992): 29–30. Covcas Bulletin II, 15 (March 21, 1992): 55. Emphasis added. Hunter, Transcaucasus, pp. 171–2. Hunter, Transcaucasus, pp. 171–5; William Maggs, “Armenia and Azerbaijan: Looking Toward the Middle East”, Current History ( January 1993): 11. Hunter, Transcaucasus, p. 173. Covcas Bulletin, II, 10 (March 26, 1992): 34, 35, 37; Covcas Bulletin, II, 14 (May 11, 1992): 52. Libaridian, pp. 107–18. Covcas Bulletin, II, 3 (January 31, 1992): 9–10; Covcas Bulletin, II, 5, (February 14, 1992): 15. The Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1994. Keesing’s, 35, 11 (1989): 37044. Hunter, Transcaucasus, pp. 25, 30. Keesing’s, 38, 3 (1992): 38827 Covcas Bulletin, II, 18 (June 18, 1992): 9; Covcas Bulletin, II, 27 (September 24, 1992): 59. Hunter, Transcaucasus, p. 45. Covcas Bulletin, II, 25 (August 27, 1992): 44. Hunter, Transcaucasus, p. 67. Saroyan, “Karabagh,” pp. 22–4. Initially, the discontent of the Soviet central authority with Azerbaijan’s handling of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis resulted on May 21, 1988 in the replacement of its First Secretary Kyamran Bagirov by Abdul-Rahman Vezirov, who in turn was replaced in January 1990 by Ayaz Mutalibov. The pattern continued following the independence of Azerbaijan on August 31, 1991, with the period between September 1991 and June 1993 witnessing four presidential changes, each with a different ideological orientation. Thus, when Mutalibov became president on September 8, 1991, he was drafted from Communist Party cadres. Ironically, he was considered to be soft and compromising in the face of Armenian demands and was replaced by Yagub Mamedov in March 1992. Mutalibov was reinstated in May 1992, if only for a day, and was forced to flee, ceding presidency to Abulfez Elchibey, the leader of the APF and a staunch nationalist, on June 7, 1992. One year later, Elchibey was to flee following a coup on June 18, 1993 by Gaidar Aliyev, a former Communist Party leader and First Secretary of Nakhichevan. Data gathered from Facts on File, 48, 2482 ( June 17, 1988): 435; Facts on File, 51, 2651 (September 2, 1991): 671; Facts on File, 52, 2678 (March 19, 1992): 194; Facts on File, 53, 2743 (June 24, 1993): 472; Keesing’s, 38, 3 (1992): 38827–28; The Europa Yearbook, p. 469. Bremmer, p. 19. Carrère-D’Encausse, Nationality, pp. 40–1. Roeder, p. 152. Wilson in Smith (ed.) Nationalities, p. 37.

3 The Anguish of Karabagh: Pages from the Diary of Aramais (Misak Ter-Danielyan) April 26–July 26, 1919 Robert O. Krikorian

Introduction Karabagh’s drive for self-determination since 1988 is only the latest manifestation of a struggle that has been going on intermittently for several hundred years. From at least the 17th century, Karabagh has been involved in Armenia’s largely unsuccessful attempts to gain some control over its fate. The unsuccessful attempts of Israel Ori, Davit Bek and Joseph Emin foreshadowed the work of such national figures as Andranik, Dro, and Nzhdeh for the preservation of Armenian Karabagh, Artsakh.1 Since 1988, commentators and analysts have taken only a cursory look at the history of Karabagh, in order to make some sense out of the conflict. But the search for the roots of the present conflict usually begins only in 1923, when Stalin decided to “award” Karabagh to Soviet Azerbaijan.2 This decision, however, was not made in a vacuum; and events that took place in the post-revolutionary period of 1917–21 had a profound impact on Bolshevik motivations. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a small, personalized piece of historical background that will attempt to place the last ten years of conflict in a historical perspective. The diary of Aramais Ter-Danielyan, written between the end of April and the end of July 1919 is used to illustrate some of the continuities in the Karabagh conflict as well as to highlight the human dimension of the conflict. As a plenipotentiary from Karabagh, he was invested with the complicated task of negotiating directly with the Azerbaijani government representatives in Baku and Shushi as well as with the British forces occupying certain strategic points in the Transcaucasus after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 95

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World War I.3 National interests, geopolitics, and strategic concerns are themes that appear abundantly in this diary. Comparisons with recent events are sometimes striking as Aramais struggles to reconcile himself with the sad reality of Karabagh’s geopolitical situation. Despite similarities between past and present, there also are instances where the lessons of the past were learned and mistakes were avoided. The continuities and discontinuties between past and present will be presented below. Many of the observations of the modern period are based on my own experiences as a resident of Armenia from 1988 to 1991. The chapter itself represents a work in progress. It will be necessary to undertake considerable archival work in Armenia before Aramais’ diary can be translated and published, which is the ultimate goal of this research project.

Biography Aramais, born Misak Gabrieli Ter-Danielyan, was a prominent literary and cultural figure whose public life spanned a half-century, beginning in the late 1800s.4 His literary, cultural and political activities took place in the context of the political, social and economic situation of the western Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the context of increasing tension between the Imperial Russian authorities and the eastern Armenians living in the Caucasus. Misak Ter-Danielyan had numerous aliases, including Aramais, Mahik, Matador, Aram, Garo, Gyughatsi (villager), Manyan, Gnduni, and so on.5 His literary works were published in various newspapers and journals, including Nor Tar, Mshak, Aghbyor, Taraz, Murch, Gorc’, Nor Xosk, Xatabala, Bakvi Tsayn, Arev, Areg, Droshak, Harach, Horizon, and Alik. His facta (The Horrible Crime), published during based novel, Zarhureli Vochire World War I, was translated into French, German, Italian and other languages.6 Aramais was born on July 17, 1874 in the Karabagh village of PirJamal, to a priestly family. His father passed away while Aramais was still young, and his older brother, the teacher in the local parish school, educated him. In 1885, he was accepted to the Shushi diocesan school, where he was influenced by the writings of the well-known Armenian author, Raffi. Beginning in 1889, his works of poetry, short stories and other literary items began to be published. In 1891, Aramais’ older brother passed away, and as the only breadwinner in the

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family, his death forced Aramais to leave school and find work in order to feed his mother and siblings. He decided to try his fortune in Baku. He began work in the Balakhani oilfields as a common laborer and eventually was transferred to the front office. From 1893 to 1896, Aramais also periodically worked in his relative Mirza Danielyan’s office, located in Ashgabat. During this period, a Hnchak Party member, Martiros Sarukhanyan (Martik) created an armed unit in Baku, whose goal was to cross the Arax river into western Armenia and aid the western Armenians in their liberation struggle. The unit was made up almost entirely of men from Karabagh, including Aramais. He participated in battles in the Arax Valley, Van, Shatakh and other places, returning to Baku, wounded in the leg. Forced to recuperate, Aramais used this time to engage in self-study, and at some point after this, and it is not clear thus far exactly when, Aramais became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.7 During the 1905–1906 Armeno–Tatar clashes, instigated by the Tsarist authorities, Aramais was in Karabagh helping organize the selfdefense operations of his fellow citizens. Mikayel Varandian in the first volume of his History of the ARF mentions the bravery of Aramais in directing operations against the Tatars.8 In 1907, his memoirs of the Armeno–Tatar clashes were published in Tiflis.9 Subsequent years were fruitful for Aramais in terms of his literary output, and he would often meet with political and literary figures including the great Armenian historian Leo and the Armenian Bolshevik Stepan Shahumian. In 1913 Aramais became a member of the Caucasian Association of Armenian Writers and in 1920, the Armenian Writers’ Union. Beginning in 1917, when Armenian National Councils were formed in Baku, Tiflis, Shushi and other cities, Aramais was actively involved in the work of the Baku Armenian National Council.10 As national republics were established in the Transcaucasus in 1918, Aramais became alarmed at Azerbaijani attempts to occupy Karabagh and force it to submit to their authority. He was active in Karabagh in 1919, at which time he kept a diary, and when he returned to Baku in the spring of 1920, he was arrested along with other Armenian political activists and was thrown into the notorious Bailov prison. While in prison, a mob burned his apartment, destroying his entire library and all of his writings. He somehow managed to escape from prison and fled to Sukhumi where he worked until 1923 in the local Armenian school as a teacher of the history of literature. From 1924 to 1936, Aramais was once again working in Baku, as a translator for the paper Kommunist, where he was able to have many of

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his own writings published. But in 1936, during the Stalinist purges, he lost his job and was forced to retire. In 1949, a new wave of Stalinist repressions, orchestrated by Azerbaijani Communist Party First Secretary Bagirov, occurred. On the night of June 13 and early morning of June 14, thousands of Armenian families were exiled to the Altai Mountains. Among them was the 75 year-old Aramais. Withstanding five years of extreme hardship, Aramais finally succumbed and passed away at age 80 on June 5, 1954 in the village of Tupchikha, Parfinovsky Raion, Altai Oblast. On September 4, 1970, the Azerbaijani SSR Supreme Court re-examined Aramais’ case, found absolutely no evidence against him, and rehabilitated him posthumously.11

The diary In April 1919, the Armenian National Council of Baku sent Aramais to Karabagh in order to help the local Armenian community organize its self-defense. He remained there until July of that year. In June 1919, the 6th Assembly of Karabagh Armenians sent a delegation headed by Aramais to Baku with the purpose of finding a peaceful solution to the Karabagh problem through negotiation with the Musavatist government of Azerbaijan.12 At the end of these negotiations in late July, he left for Yerevan where he reported personally to the Armenian government and the bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Aramais kept a diary of his experiences, a variant of which was entitled “The Tragedy of Karabagh: a Summation for History” and in October 1919 it was sent to the Armenian historian, Leo. The historians H. Abrahamyan and R. Grigoryan discovered a copy of this diary in the files of Leo stored at the archives of the Historical Institute of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. Abrahamyan and Grigoryan published the diary in 1993.13 These historians became intrigued with this discovery and decided to do further research in order to ascertain the authenticity of the diary. After more searches in other archives they came to the conclusion that this particular copy of the diary was not the original manuscript. They discovered that in 1934 Aramais sent a copy of his diary from Baku to the director of the Alexander Miasnikian Public Library in Yerevan. The author requested that the envelope in which the diary was sent not be opened for ten years. From other documents it was discovered that in 1937, the Institute of Party History was sent another copy of the diary, which led Abrahamyan and Grigoryan to search for the original in the Party Archives where it was finally discovered. On the envelope, an official during the Stalin era

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had written, “The Dashnak author is preaching the independence of Karabagh from Azerbaijan and with chauvinistic poison is cursing the working class of Azerbaijan.”14 The diary opens with the following words: I was determined to write a history of the latest events in Karabagh and was working towards that goal, but on August 17 in Tiflis, I was informed that officials of the Karabagh Compatriotic Union were collecting materials in order to write a complete history. But I was convinced that this worthy initiative would remain unfinished, as would so many others; and decided not to disrupt them, but leave them to their work. Nonetheless, I was committed to writing my memoirs in the form of a diary, believing that this material as well could serve to clarify the question of the tragedy of Karabagh.15

Background In order to put Aramais’ diary excerpts in perspective, it would be helpful to briefly sketch the development of the Karabagh conflict in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolutions and the establishment of independent republics in the Transcaucasus. Until 1918, the Transcaucasus remained outside the major battle zones of World War I, in which the powers dividing Armenian lands, Russia and the Ottoman Empire were fighting on opposite sides.16 Beginning in 1915 in western Armenia, the Armenian inhabitants were subjected to genocide, while the eastern Armenians had to cope with a huge influx of refugees.17 In March 1917, in the midst of the war and with Russian Imperial Armies having penetrated deep into western Armenia, the Russian autocracy was suddenly overthrown and replaced by a provisional government. The peoples of Transcaucasia pledged loyalty to the provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer who had once defended ARF political prisoners accused of terrorism by the Tsarist authorities.18 This uncertain situation was replaced by even more uncertainty as the Bolsheviks under Lenin overthrew the provisional government in November 1917 and declared that they wanted to bring Russia out of the war and make a peace based on new principles, foregoing annexations and indemnities.19 For the Armenians, the prospect of Russian withdrawal was nothing short of disastrous, in the light of the Turkish destruction of western Armenia and their possible advance into Transcaucasia, where it was rightly feared that they would put their genocidal policies, honed in Anatolia, into practice against the remaining Armenian population.

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At this point it should be stressed that the other peoples of the Transcaucasus had very different perspectives regarding their attitudes towards Russia as well as the perceived Turkish threat. The Georgians, although Christian, did not have the same visceral fear of the Turks, as did the Armenians. This was due in part to their geographical position in western Transcaucasia and in part to their hostility against the Russians who were viewed as being responsible for taking away Georgian sovereignty in the previous century.20 The other major people of the region, the Azerbaijanis, were connected to the Ottoman Turks through linguistic and ethnic ties as well as sharing a common religion, albeit the Azerbaijanis were predominantly Shiite Muslims whereas the Turks were Sunni Muslims. It would hardly be surprising that the Azerbaijanis would favor their Turkish kinsfolk over the Russians.21 For a while during 1917 and 1918, the three peoples, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians, were able to co-operate to some degree, despite their very different outlooks and visions for the future. Pressures began to mount however, especially from Turkey in the wake of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed with Bolshevik Russia, which ceded large tracks of Armenia to the Turks.22 The Turks demanded that Transcaucasia declare itself independent of Russia if it wanted to negotiate with Constantinople. Thus reluctantly, Transcaucasia declared itself an independent entity titled the Transcaucasian Federation in April 1918. Unfortunately the internal contradictions and mutually exclusive political inclinations of the Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis proved too powerful and on May 26, 1918, Georgia, having secured German backing, declared itself an independent country. Azerbaijan, similarly having obtained Turkish assurances, followed suit and declared itself independent the next day. With no other course of action open, the Armenian National Council in Tiflis took upon itself the task of creating an independent Armenian state on May 28, 1918. From the outset, the three independent countries found themselves at odds over boundaries, and the division of Imperial Russian material left behind as the Russians retreated from the region. One of the most serious boundary disputes was between Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding the areas of Nakhichevan, Zangezur and Karabagh. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed these territories on either demographic or economic grounds. Throughout the period of independence, these boundary disputes drained tremendous material and human resources from the respective countries, and made them less able to resist the external pressures that would eventually conspire to destroy their independence.

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Since October 1917, Karabagh had been de facto independent. An interesting alliance developed between Azerbaijanis and Armenians at the Council of Commissars. Three congresses were held in Shushi and a fragile peace held until the summer of 1918. As expected, some incidents did occur between the two ethnic groups, and as a precaution the Armenians organized a Union of Karabagh–Zangezur, headed by the historian Leo. The situation changed for the worse in the summer of 1918, as Ottoman forces moved into Transcaucasia after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March. Enver Pasha, Ottoman minister of war and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide, sent Nuri Pasha to Elizavetpol (renamed Ganja).23 This city was the temporary capital of Azerbaijan, because Baku was occupied by a Bolshevik– Dashnak alliance known as the Baku Commune at this time. Nuri Pasha was sent in order to help the Musavatist government consolidate its hold over the country and to organize an “Army of Islam”. On August 5, 1918 in Shushi, the First Congress of Karabagh Armenians declared Karabagh independent.24 Representatives of the villages of Karabagh formed a National Council that tried to organize the population to defend itself as the Ottoman Army swept by on its way to help destroy the Baku Commune. In order to isolate the Armenians of Karabagh the Azerbaijanis began to attack the villages separating Karabagh from Zangezur. Villages were systematically destroyed and the inhabitants massacred. The Armenians sent a delegation to General Andranik, who had entered Nakhichevan, to seek his help in defending their land. Andranik left Nakhichevan and entered Zangezur where he organized a successful local defense, thus denying the region to the Musavatists. He delayed his entry into Karabagh because there were numerous Azerbaijani villages in Zangezur who were in open rebellion against Armenian authority.25 Hoping that General Andranik would arrive soon, the Second Congress of Karabagh Armenians convened in late September 1918, where they once again refused to submit to Azerbaijani authority.26 A Third Congress met in special session on October 1. It tried to negotiate with Nuri Pasha who had arrived in the city of Aghdam with thousands of Ottoman troops. This Congress reluctantly agreed to the viewpoint of the urban dwellers, who were particularly poorly armed and thus more vulnerable, and allowed Ottoman troops to enter Shushi in return for certain security guarantees. The Armenian villagers, however, refused to submit and fought the deployment of Ottoman troops; the Ottomans then entered Shushi where they massacred, pillaged, plundered, and subdued the Armenian residents.27

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The other districts of Karabagh were not as willing to submit, understanding well the fate that awaited them should they be defeated. The on-going massacres of Armenians by the Turks were enough to convince the villagers of the need to resist the invading Ottomans. Fighting took place throughout September and October 1918. Armenian victories over Ottoman troops at Martakert and Varanda bought them some time to organize their defense and come up with a strategy to deal with the on-going threats from Azerbaijan and Turkey.28 Fortunately, the Turks were defeated by the Allies and signed an Armistice in late October 1918. With the Ottoman defeat, Armenian hopes were raised that finally they would receive their just rewards for having sacrificed so such for the Allied cause.29 International politics was to determine otherwise for the Armenians. The Turkish drive towards Baku alarmed the British. Realizing that the Turks were aiming to seize the oil of Baku to fuel its war machine, the British dispatched troops from their Mesopotamian theater of operations and sent them north to Iran and then to Baku. With the defeat of the Turks, however, British strategists shifted their attention onto another enemy, the Bolsheviks, who were engaged in a Civil War against counterrevolutionary White Russian forces, under the command of General Denikin.30 The Allies had tacitly agreed among themselves that the Caucasus would essentially be a British sphere of influence and the British wasted little time in filling the role of colonial power. British policy had two goals, sometimes contradictory, and both motivated by anti-Bolshevism: to assist the White Armies of Denikin in the north and to help establish a pro-British Azerbaijan in the south. The disposition of oil resources was an important factor in British strategy. One of the first demands of the British was for the submission of Karabagh to the authority of Azerbaijan. The Karabagh Armenians refused and sent urgent word to General Andranik in Zangezur, who marched out of Zangezur in late November 1918 and fought his way into Karabagh. But instead of proceeding to Shushi, Andranik was urgently contacted by the British authorities who demanded that he halt his advance. He was told that all outstanding questions regarding borders would be discussed at the upcoming Peace Conference and that any further action on his part would be considered a direct assault on His Majesty’s forces. Andranik, hopeful that the Armenian Question would finally be solved to the advantage of the Armenians, was hesitant to defy the British.31 This was a decision he would regret. He returned to Goris, while Azerbaijani forces took advantage of British

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interference to liquidate the remaining Armenian villages between Karabagh and Zangezur.32 Over the following months, it became increasingly clear to the Armenians that the British were determined to see Karabagh attached to Azerbaijan. In January 1919, any pretense of British neutrality was shattered when they supported the appointment of Khosrov BekSultanov as the Governor-General of Karabagh and neighboring districts, including Zangezur. His notorious Armenophobia and participation in anti-Armenian pogroms in Baku were well known to all.33 He assumed his duties in February with a determination to solve the Karabagh problem by force of arms if necessary. In this dire predicament, the Fourth Congress of Karabagh Armenians convened in Shushi, where they again refused to submit to Baku and protested against the appointment of Sultanov.34

The diary continued Aramais’ April 30 entry describes the atmosphere of the day and more importantly what was to be expected in the future. He writes: Today in the morning, an urgent message was received from the aide to the commander of the Dizak region that the Turks [Azerbaijanis] have attacked in great force the Armenian village of Dolanlar and the battle is continuing into the third day. That attack is an answer to the decision of the congress that they do not want to recognize Azerbaijan and a signal that from now on the attacks against defenseless, isolated Armenian villages would become systematic in their attempt to break the stubbornness of Karabagh.35 The confusion in British policy is evident from this entry. Aramais writes: It has to be said that when the English entered Gharabagh, military commands existed in the Armenian parts, in Dizak, Varanda, Khachen, and Jivanshir. The English mission accepted the presence of these military commands, but on the other hand was also abetting Sultanov’s gradual establishment in the heart of Karabagh.36 Whenever the Armenians were having difficulties with the Azerbaijanis, they applied to the British mission. According to Aramais, the usual answers were: “Write to Governor-General Sultanov”, or “We will write

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to Sultanov about these things”, but always with the addendum of “Every active step directed against Azerbaijan will be considered directed against the government of Great Britain.” Aramais’ confusion regarding British policy is evident in the following entry: But now the opposite was occurring [meaning Armenian expectations of the British]. The enemy, Azerbaijan, was now full, well-armed and the object of special concern by the English, and the Armenians, who were allies, were again starving, unarmed and subjected to pressure by both Azerbaijan and the British command. And on top of all this, a boycott, which has placed the Armenians in very narrow straits.37 Karabagh Armenians’ suspicions were even further aroused when the representative of the British mission announced that Armenia had renounced all claims over Karabagh and, therefore, the Karabagh Armenians were no longer in a position to defy British and Azerbaijani rule.38 Although eventually revealed as false, the confidence of Karabagh was shaken that its supposed ally Britain would stoop to the spreading of such falsehoods. A more critical blow, however, was the British decision – despite the objections of the Armenians – to allow the stationing of Azerbaijani troops in the heart of the Armenian quarter of Shushi. This was done under the pretext of protecting the Azerbaijani treasury and then ultimately transferring it to the Azerbaijani section of Shushi. This decision caused considerable concern among the Armenians, because, according to Aramais: a) almost all the employees were Armenian; and b) 95% (600 000 rubles) of all the notes with any value belonged to Armenians as well as a sum of 3 million rubles worth of savings deposits; c) it was at the expense of the Armenians that such as amount had accumulated; and d) if the treasury were to be removed to the Tatar quarter, who among the Armenians would dare go there.39 The Armenians had requested the stationing of British troops there instead and when the appointed hour approached, the British did indeed enter the Armenian quarter, but hardly in the manner expected by the Armenians. The British troops, positioned at either end of the column, escorted the Azerbaijani soldiers into the Armenian quarter,

Robert O. Krikorian 105

thus protecting them. And once they were well established in their positions, the British withdrew, to the consternation of the Armenians.40 The situation of Karabagh, surrounded by hostile Azerbaijani forces aided by regular Turkish Army troops who refused to return to Turkey after the Armistice, was desperate. This situation was compounded by the openly pro-Azerbaijani position of the British authorities; the actual stationing of Azerbaijani troops under the command of Sultanov; and the inability of a weak Armenian government in Yerevan to take active measures. To make matters even worse, the Armenians of Karabagh suffered from an almost total lack of supplies. The Azerbaijanis enforced a blockade against Armenians by refusing to sell them produce as well as attacking villagers as they tried to bring in the harvest. The almost complete lack of weapons and especially ammunition drove the Armenians to distraction. Despite the gravity of the situation, Aramais was able to keep some of his sense of humor as evidenced by the following story. On May 9, he wrote: Yesterday a funny thing happened in Khankend (Stepanakert), the details of which only became clear today. The story is as follows. At dusk, the cattle of Pahlul and Krkzhan villages were coming down from the mountain back to the village. And because they had to descend one by one down the narrow mountain path, one behind the other, in the darkness of the evening they appeared like a long caravan. A few of the Azerbaijani soldiers in Khankend, seeing this and assuming that they were Armenian cavalry coming to Khankend in order to attack, they sounded the alarm. They lifted up their binoculars, their agitation increasing, and brought out their artillery and machine guns towards Aghdam, in order to save them from capture. The soldiers were falling over each other in confusion while the Russian officers appealed to the Armenians, “for the love of God, defend us, we are not to blame, a matter of survival forced us to serve Azerbaijan!” This incident shows clearly that Karabagh could by force of arms honorably separate Azerbaijani pasturage from Armenian Karabagh, if only there were no pressures from the English mission, and if our complete lack of arms were not so widely known.41

Parallels and divergences This scenario is reminiscent of a scene enacted 72 years later, in 1991.42 On the border between Zangezur and Nakhichevan, intermittent fighting

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and raiding had been going on since 1988. Whenever the Armenians tried to go out into the fields and tend their crops they were attacked by troops of the Azerbaijan Popular Front and their Soviet army allies. After a few skirmishes, a no-man’s land between the two sides had been established, but agricultural work was still precarious at best. In the spring of 1991, while the Azerbijanis, in collaboration with Soviet Internal Ministry Troops (MVD), were deporting Armenians from Getashen and Martunashen, tensions rose along the Zangezur– Nakhichevan sector as well. Everyone was on high alert and expecting trouble. Because borders were ill defined, one day an Azerbaijani shepherd strayed onto Armenian territory. Members of the Armenian volunteer militia stopped him and took his herd away from him, in compensation for the theft of Armenian livestock the previous season. They gave him a rap upside the head, let him go, and fired a few shots behind him to hurry him on his way. This incident occurred at the precise time that other members of the Armenian volunteer militia were reconnoitering the no-man’s land. The Azerbaijanis and Soviets saw this and assumed that a concerted Armenian attack had begun. They immediately panicked and sounded the alarm. Through my binoculars I could see the neighboring Azerbijani village. Buses pulled into the village square and all civilians were evacuated. The aftermath of that event was the arrival of special Soviet MVD troops to reinforce the positions along the border. A certain amount of pride was evident among the Armenians for having been able to frighten the Azerbaijanis so inadvertently. The situation in 1918–19 is strikingly similar to that of late 1988–91 in other respects as well. There are several areas in which it appears that history has repeated itself, but perhaps more importantly, there are crucial areas where it would seem the lessons of history have been absorbed and critical mistakes avoided. First, the similarities will be discussed and then the differences between the Karabagh conflict in 1919 and in 1988–91. Azerbaijani tactics were similar in both cases. In 1919 and to some extent in 1988–91, although less so, there was a fundamental conflict between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis in terms of lifestyles and livelihoods. The Armenians were more involved in the agricultural sector while the Azerbaijanis made a living by herding livestock. These two lifestyles have been in conflict for centuries, as the tensions between farmers and ranchers in the American West will attest.43 The Armenians frequently complained that the Azerbaijanis would tend their flocks on Armenian agricultural land, thus destroying the crops, impoverishing the local Armenians, and exacerbating relations between the two peoples.

Robert O. Krikorian 107

The Azerbaijanis began by isolating outlying Armenian villages and then systematically attempting to destroy them. This was especially important in the areas between Zangezur and Karabagh. The systematic nature of the destruction and depopulation of these villages is attested to by Aramais as he recorded numerous meetings with Armenian villagers who were under constant attack and pleaded for both weapons and ammunition or reinforcements to allow them to fight off the attacks. We see the success of de-Armenization during the Soviet period in the creation of the Lachin district in the 1920s and its brief designation as a Kurdish Autonomous Region within the Azerbaijani SSR. The Kurds – a non-Turkic people – were eventually denied the opportunity to express their identity and were largely assimilated by the Turkic Azerbaijani population.44 Economic blockades and boycotts against Armenians were also instituted with the hope of forcing the Armenians to abandon their struggle. Basic commodities such as flour, vegetables and meat were denied to the Armenians in order to starve them into submission. The desperation of the Armenians is captured by Aramais in this passage: The inhabitants of Khachen, unable to withstand their hunger, uttered the name of God, and gathering in a big group, took the road to Aghdam, trying to perhaps buy some flour and grain, despite the strong boycott declared against them. They arrive at Aghdam, but from the very first steps, the Turks begin to curse them in the most crude manner, saying, “Son of a bitch Armenians, why have you come? You don’t accept Azerbaijani rule yet you come here wanting food from us. Go, get lost while you still have a head on your shoulders … . We have to slaughter you like dogs with this famine … . You danced when the English came. How is it now? Have you eaten? You are so despicable that even your sought-after Englishmen won’t listen to your cries.” The Armenians are forced to turn back empty-handed, as well as a bit frightened. But hardly having left the vicinity of Aghdam, the Azerbaijani soldiers block the road and demand that the Armenians clean away the garbage in front of their barracks. And there was so much trash collected there in the last few months, that even when I saw it one month ago, it would have taken a hundred men a week to clean. The Armenians in order to save their necks, collected more than 400 rubles and handed it over to the soldiers in order to free themselves.45 In conjunction with the above, the Azerbaijanis resorted to terrorizing the peasants working in the fields so that the crops could not be

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harvested, thus further exacerbating the food supply situation. Aramais speaks of receiving delegations from the outlying villages who were pleading for protection because whenever they went out to the fields, Azerbaijanis attacked them.46 In this latest round of the conflict, a favorite Azerbaijani tactic was to set up snipers in the no-man’s land between Armenian and Azerbaijani villages and shoot at anyone trying to till their fields.47 To complete the isolation of the Armenians of Karabagh, a strict blockade of roads was introduced. No Armenian traveler was safe from attack by Azerbaijani troops or irregulars. In the earlier conflict, we learn from Aramais’ diary that the Azerbaijanis liked to stop Armenians on the road and confiscate their goods and especially their horses, donkeys, and so on, by claiming that these items had been stolen from them by the Armenians and they were merely reclaiming what was rightfully theirs.48 This can be paralleled with the Azerbaijani raids on Armenian livestock holdings in Karabagh and Zangezur in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A major area of continuity is the Azerbaijani reliance on outside forces to accomplish the disarming and submission of the Karabagh Armenians. In 1918–19, the Azerbaijanis used outside forces to try to consolidate their control. They enlisted the aid of both Nuri Pasha and his Ottoman forces and later the British to enforce Baku’s rule in Karabagh. Many Ottoman Turkish soldiers remained in Transcaucasia even after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and made up an important component of the Azerbaijani Army.49 The pan-Turkist ideology of the Young Turks was still alive in Transcaucasia. Aramais also mentions Russian officers in the Azerbaijani Army, who lamented this fact to Aramais but pleaded that they had little choice as the Azerbaijanis paid them well for their services. There were also numerous mounted Kurdish irregular units organized by Baku that engaged in plundering and terrorizing the Armenian population.50 As for British involvement, Aramais’ diary is filled with disheartening entries on their duplicitous behavior. One such example is found in his June 2 entry: Yesterday, the English mission called eight people “on official business”. Today, six of the eight men went to the mission. After a few minutes of idle chit-chat, the mission’s representative produced a signed document declaring that henceforth they shall not engage in political work and every week, on Monday, they must go to the mission and present themselves. We were astonished. This was the

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exact work of Tsar Nicholas’ gendarmes. As if Sultanov’s cruelties were not enough, our supposed allies were making our situation even worse.51 In the past decade we have witnessed Soviet troops acting on behalf of the authorities in Baku, most notably during “Operation Ring”, in spring 1991, when Soviet troops rounded up and deported the Armenians of Getashen and Martunashen.52 The Azerbaijanis have also enlisted Chechen and Afghan fighters to aid them and have contracted the services of mercenaries with connections to the international oil business. As an interesting side note, both the Chechens and the Afghans did not last long in Azerbaijan because they quickly became disgusted with the attitude of the Azerbaijanis who were more than happy to let these mercenaries do much of the fighting for them.53 The presence of significant energy deposits in Azerbaijan was a factor in British involvement in Transcaucasia at the end of World War I, just as it is a factor today in the new Great Game. The British from the outset were interested in denying Baku’s oil to the Turks and later the Bolsheviks, and they employed whatever means necessary to safeguard this oil for themselves and their allies. There is also evidence that the British wasted no time in shipping Azerbaijani oil to the Georgian port of Batumi and then on to the international market, without any payment having been made.54 In connection with international oil interests, a similarity is noted in terms of the financial resources available to the opposing sides in the Karabagh conflict. Aramais makes numerous mention of the largesse of the Azerbaijani authorities in their attempt to buy the co-operation of the Armenians. He contrasts this situation with the poverty of the Karabagh Armenians themselves and the inability of the Armenian government in Yerevan to subsidize the liberation struggle and counter Azerbaijani efforts. In fact, Aramais is frequently lamenting the lack of funds with which to buy arms and ammunition. On May 4 he writes: We requested from Misha that when he goes to Goris he bring back with him the one million two hundred thousand rubles which Armenia had sent for Karabagh and which was being held in Goris for the last several months. It was necessary because we are sitting here without money while Sultanov has entered Karabagh with 25 million rubles, which will be disbursed from the Azerbaijani treasury when military force needs to be deployed for the occupation of

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Karabagh. It is not enough that our cries for help do not reach the ear of the Armenian government, but our money which is still held up in Zangezur is not being forwarded to us. And there is a terrible need for money. After all this, Misha came back and announced that “They did not give the money saying that we didn’t give them any documentation,” while our liaison M. Esayan, until my arrival in Shushi, was still in Goris and had taken with him all the necessary documents.55 During the early days of the recent struggle, the acquisition of arms was a major preoccupation. Men and women would go to great and various lengths to procure arms, from producing them in home factories, to stealing and to bribing Soviet officials. In short any and all methods were considered legitimate in the procurement of arms and ammunition. Just as in 1918–19, Armenians were forced to make each bullet count as the paucity of ammunition was sometimes overwhelming; orders went out both in 1918–19 and in the latest struggle for the conservation of ammunition – shots were not to be wasted. In fact it was frequently the case that units never had enough weapons for each member and even those weapons that did exist did not have enough bullets to sustain a lengthy engagement. Aramais summarizes in his June 4 entry: I got up early and went to the office of the Karabagh National Council. My heart was saddened, I saw very clearly that the crisis is approaching, that the fist was being raised to strike us on the head and we did not have the opportunity to push it back. A little while later, a few of the other members of the Council showed up. We sat down to discuss the situation. All of us were disheartened. The information we had received was threatening. Azerbaijan had deployed its forces to force Karabagh to succumb. The regions stood firm. Only parts of Khachen and Varanda were without weapons and afraid. The other part of Varanda, Dizak and Jivanshir had a certain amount of weapons, therefore their attitude was war-like. An armed man’s attitude is different. When you take a weapon away, he loses his spiritual balance. The regions that had weapons were prepared to bare their chests like men, and if only we had 300 rounds for each weapon, we could conduct pre-emptive strikes on all fronts, with the hope that before Karabagh dies, it could give a mortal blow to the blood-lusting enemy. If only we heard some sound of hope from the outside …56

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Despite the similarities between 1918–19 and 1988–91, there were significant differences as well; differences which perhaps were the result of a reading of history. For example, in 1918–19, there was an important difference of opinion between the urban inhabitants of Karabagh and the peasantry. The city-dwellers were more inclined to compromise with the Azerbaijanis and trust their assurances whereas the peasants were much more skeptical of Azerbaijani promises and more willing to take up arms for the defense of their physical security. Aramais mentions numerous instances where the villagers and the citydwellers argued over the proper course of action within the assembled congresses. The peasantry was better armed than the city-dwellers and this fact played an important role in determining what each considered the best course of action. When the conflict erupted in 1988, this division between rural and urban had minimized. Years of Soviet industrialization, urbanization, and universal education closed the gap between town and village in Karabagh. Connections between the two seemed firmer than before and thus there was less room for misunderstanding and distrust. This time the inhabitants of Karabagh, regardless of where they resided, spoke with a united voice. The divisions of the past had weakened the liberation struggle and this lesson was known to many of the leaders of the democratic movement. Very little was heard regarding urban–rural discord. Another important difference between 1918–19 and 1988–91, was the position of Armenia. In 1918–19, the Republic of Armenia was in a disastrous situation. Burdened with hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and left with almost no infrastructure to speak of from the Tsarist period, the government in Yerevan could barely cope with the daily operations of government. In addition, Armenia found itself in hostile relations almost immediately with its neighbors: Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia. Yerevan was quite limited in its ability to aid the Armenians of Karabagh as they struggled to free themselves from Azerbaijani domination. In addition, it was hoped that the Paris Peace Conference would address Armenian concerns and that a united and integral Armenia was only a matter of time.57 Throughout Aramais’ diary he is quite critical of the Armenian government’s seeming unwillingness to help Karabagh in its struggle. Despite these accusations, Aramais does acknowledge that Yerevan sent a considerable amount of money to Karabagh but it never made it past the officials in Zangezur, who laid claim to it for their own defense

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needs. His distress is palpable as he questions the motivations of Armenian government leaders, many of whom he has known personally from his early days in the liberation struggle. At the conclusion of his diary, however, Aramais travels to Armenia to report personally to the government and to the Bureau of the ARF on conditions in Karabagh. He was hoping that his personal intervention would somehow persuade Yerevan to be more active in its defense of Karabagh. He sees with his own eyes the conditions within Armenia and becomes extremely depressed. Although he realizes that Armenia is not capable of doing much, as many of the people responsible are more concerned with their own interests than with the fate of the people, he nonetheless remains bitter. He ends his diary with curses against himself for having been so naïve and for not realizing that his efforts would be in vain. He was especially disappointed by the way his former friends treated him. None ever concerned himself about the fate of Aramais’ family in Baku or inquired as to who was watching over them.58 The harsh realities of geopolitics and economics were to prove disastrous for the Armenians. Their supposed allies in the West – USA, Great Britain and France – had abandoned the Armenians for the sake of political expediency and economic interests elsewhere. Considered lucky to have escaped total extermination, the Armenians had time to absorb some of the lessons of the past as they developed within the confines of the USSR. When the conflict began in 1988, Armenia was better prepared and able to come to the aid of Karabagh. Although a republic of the USSR and ultimately responsible to Moscow, Armenians, either as individuals or as officials, made an effort to assist their kinsfolk in Karabagh. Supplies were ferried to Karabagh over treacherous roads and by air as surreptitiously as possible. A common refrain in those days was never again would Armenia stand by and allow Karabagh to face its enemies alone. Frequent mention was made of General Andranik’s disastrous decision to forego entering Karabagh because of the hollow promises of the British. The willingness of Armenia to aid Karabagh despite the negative repercussions was a critical factor in the success of the liberation movement today. Without the support and aid of Armenia, Karabagh most likely would have been unable to withstand Azerbaijani pressure to capitulate. As a corollary to the above, it is important to mention the realism of the Armenians, both of the Republic and of Karabagh. Despite repeated assurances of an improvement of their situation, from Moscow, Baku and elsewhere, the Armenians remained steadfast in their conviction that they could no longer rely on any third force for

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the resolution of their problems. This realization, perhaps learned from the lessons of the past, saved Armenia and Karabagh from falling victim once again to international intrigue and international economic interests.

Conclusion I have attempted to draw comparisons between the Karabagh liberations struggles at either end of the twentieth century. I have tried to personalize these comparisons by utilizing the diary of a direct participant in the struggle in 1918–19 and comparing them with my own experiences in Armenia and Karabagh from 1988 to 1991. Although many questions remained unanswered and much research needs to be done, the conclusion that the Armenians have studied their history and have tried to draw relevant conclusions appears valid. The connection between past and present is crucial to any understanding of the current crisis and deadlock in the Karabagh negotiations. The diplomats and politicians of today would be well advised to read history, and it is with that goal in mind that I intend to translate Aramais’ diary and make it available to a wider audience. Aramais devoted his life to the cause of Armenian liberation and in the end he paid for it with his life in the wastes of Siberia. His personal experiences can provide valuable insight on the attitudes of both Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

Notes 1. There are numerous books available regarding the situation in Karabagh and neighboring regions in Eastern Armenia before the Russian incorporation of the Caucasus. See H. Knyazyan, Azatagrakan Paykar Davit’ Beki Glxavorut’yamb (Yerevan, 1963); A. Abrahamyan, Israyel Ori (Yerevan, 1978); V. Barxudaryan (ed.) XVI–XVIII Dareri Hay Azatagrakan Sarznumner ev Hay Gaght’avayrer (Yerevan, 1989); Armen Aivazian, The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal (Erevan, 1997); Joseph Emin, The Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, an Armenian, Written in English by Himself (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1918, 2nd edn). For the evolution of the national liberation struggle in the last two centuries, see Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963); Manoug Somakian, Empires in Conflict: Armenia and the Great Powers, 1895–1920 (London: I.B. Taurus, 1995). 2. On the controversial decision on the delimitation of borders between Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan and its background, see Richard Hovannisian, “Mountainous Karabagh in 1920: an Unresolved Contest”, Armenian Review 46, no. 1–4 (1993): 1–36; Richard Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971),

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3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

pp. 156–96; vol. 2, pp. 168–206; vol. 3, pp. 113–72; Jirair Libaridian (ed.) The Karabagh File (Cambridge, MA: The Zoryan Institute, 1988), pp. 34–7; Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: the History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh (London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1994), pp. 109–39, 178–9. On British policies in the Transcaucasus, see Artin Aslanian, “Britain and the Transcaucasian Nationalities during the Russian Civil War”, in Ronald Suny (ed.) Transcaucasia: Nationalism and Social Change (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), pp. 259–92. The following section on the life and work of Aramais is largely drawn from Aramais, Gharabaghi Tagnap (Patmutyan Hamar) Oragrutyun (26 Aprili– 26 Hulisi 1919 t.), (Yerevan, 1993). Hereafter referred to as Aramais. Aramais, p. 3 Aramais, p. 3. I have been unable to locate a copy of this work in any of its forms. Aramais, pp. 3–8. Mikayel Varandian, H. H. Dashnaktsutyan Patmutyun (Paris and Cairo, 1932), vol. 1. Aramais, pp. 3–8. I have been unable to obtain a copy of this work. On the formation and work of the Armenian National Council, see Richard Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967). Aramais, pp. 3–8. On the formation of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan and its ruling Musavat Party, see Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: the Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Aramais, pp. 3–8. Aramais, p. 8 Aramais, p. 9. For a concise study of the geopolitical situation of Armenia at the turn of the century, see Somakian. See Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995) for details on the Armenian Genocide. Vartan Gregorian, “The Impact of Russia on the Armenians and Armenia”, in Wayne Vucinich (ed.) Russia and Asia: Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 215. On the foreign policy objectives of the Bolsheviks, see Richard Debo, Revolution and Survival: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1917–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979); Jon Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). On the position of Georgia during this period, see Zourab Avalishvili, The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918–1921 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, reprint of 1940 edition). Azerbaijan’s position during this period is examined in Swietochowski. J. Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk, The Forgotten Peace (London: Norton, 1938). Chorbajian et al., p. 114.

Robert O. Krikorian 115 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Chorbajian et al., p. 116. On the situation in Zangezur, see Hovannisian, vol. l, pp. 156–96. Chorbajian, et al., pp. 114–27. Chorbajian, et al., pp. 114–27. Chorbajian, et al., pp. 114– 27. On the expectations of the Armenians after World War I, see Somakian. See Aslanian in Suny Transcaucasia, pp. 259–92. Somakian, pp. 204–10. Hovannisian, vol. 1, pp. 156–96. Chorbajian et al., pp. 120–7. Hovannisian, vol. 1, pp. 164–5. Aramais, p. 21. Aramais, pp. 21–2. Aramais, pp. 27–8. Aramais, pp. 28–9. Aramais, pp. 25–6. Aramais, pp. 25–6. Aramais, pp. 29–30. The incident described here was witnessed by the author. For the conflicts between sedentary and nomadic populations, see Anatoly Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). On Red Kurdistan, see Robert Krikorian, “Red Kurdistan and the Struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 6 (1992–93): 61–81. Aramais, pp. 45–6. Aramais, p. 41. The present writer witnessed this tactic numerous times along the Armenian– Azerbaijani border in the period 1989–91. Aramais, pp. 65–6. Swietochowski, p. 161. On the presence of Kurdish troops under the command of Sultanov, see Hovannisian, vol. 4, p. 65. Aramais, pp. 52–3. On “Operation Ring,” see Joseph Masih and Robert Krikorian, Armenia: at the Crossroads in History (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999), chapter 2. Masih and Krikorian, chapter 4. Swietochowoski, pp. 143–4. Aramais, pp. 23–4. Aramais, pp. 55–61. For Armenia and the Paris Peace Conference, see Hovannisian, vol. 1, chapter 4. Aramais, pp. 109–13.

4 Civil Society Born in the Square: the Karabagh Movement in Perspective Levon Hm. Abrahamian

Karabagh and Armenia were constituent parts of the Soviet Union, and more than ten years have passed since the stormy 1988 upheavals there brought life to many dormant undercurrents in the larger Soviet empire. The fall of the Soviet Union less than four years later took many western political scientists by surprise, and in the intervening years the collapse of the Soviet empire has become yet another banal historical fact, among others, for former Sovietologists, now experts in post-Soviet studies. Similarly, the mass rallies in Armenia have also been reduced to just one of a series of upheavals that took place all over the USSR in its last years. This change in perception and definition has been so dramatic that very few analysts can now appreciate the unique role played by the Armenian protests in the late 1980s for the future of Armenia and the peoples of the larger Soviet Union. Many analysts now adopt a kind of fatalistic approach to the events that they failed to foresee in the first place. Either this or some other event might have happened, they say, but the result would have been the same. I am not going to assert that the history of the past ten years would have been quite different if only one single event had or had not happened, but I do believe that historians and political scientists should know what kinds of possibilities were hidden in events that were a defining moment in Soviet history. And the Karabagh movement was a defining moment. The first mass meetings in February 1988 can best be understood, perhaps, through the metaphor of a ball of yarn made up of strands representing diverse possibilities and trends. Each “thread” in the ball of yarn later emerged or failed to emerge depending on the conditions of the moment. Among the possibilities were nationalism in its various forms and gradations, an ecological movement, shadow economics, 116

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a criminal world, Communist and anti-Communist ideologies, embryonic economic and military forms of struggle, and civil and authoritarian societies. In this chapter I will try to demonstrate how each of these threads was managed or failed to be managed, and, in some cases, how it was knotted or hopelessly frustrated in the process of emerging. The main thread was the Karabagh issue, and other threads were added to it in various proportions. It was the Karabagh question that initiated the whole process. It should be noted that the Karabagh movement was represented by two major streams, one reflecting the movement in Karabagh and the other in Armenia. During the first stage of the movement, that is from February to May 1988, both streams reflected fundamental differences which continue into the present. Despite this, political scientists usually consider the Karabagh movement to be a single, unified phenomenon, and politicians attribute the difficulties the Armenian government has always had with the Karabagh leadership to a kind of conspiracy of diplomatic maneuvers.1 This difference is based on the different models of societies and social struggle in Karabagh and Armenia. In Karabagh the movement was typologically close to the national-liberation struggle the Armenians of Karabagh had fought against Turkic Muslim invaders since late medieval times. In the 18th century, for example, the Armenian feudal lords in Karabagh, the meliks, had fought against Pannah Ali Khan and his seminomadic fellow tribesfolk, the ancestors of the present day Azerbaijanis in Karabagh. In this struggle, they sought help from the Russian tsar, and they were supported by all their vassals, actually the entire population of Karabagh – which, by that time, was purely Armenian. During the upheavals of the late 1980s, the Soviet “feudal lords” of Karabagh led a national liberation fight against Azerbaijanis, whom Armenians traditionally call “Turks”.2 In this fight the “Soviet lords” were again totally supported by their “vassals” – the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabagh – and were looking for help from Gorbachev – the last Russian “tsar”. At the same time Gorbachev’s policies of democratization, glasnost and perestroika were used in Karabagh as a legitimization for the national-liberation struggle. In Armenia, on the contrary, the Karabagh issue was used as a base for further social changes to achieve the democratization, glasnost and perestroika declared by Gorbachev. Communist and Soviet leaders were seen by the movement as conservative representatives of the old regime and Moscow’s pro-Azerbaijani policy. Thus, Armenia’s wing of the movement was fighting against local “feudal lords”, while the Karabagh wing was led by precisely such “lords”.

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The Karabagh nationalist model in Yerevan developed into a social one in May 1988, and the two representatives of the Karabagh wing, Igor Mouradian and Gagik Safarian, who were, not surprisingly, of Karabagh descent, were expelled from the Yerevan based “Karabagh Committee”.3 This was symbolic, in a sense, of the “non-Karabagh nature” of the Karabagh movement in Armenia. Of course, it remained a “Karabagh movement” and the Karabagh issue appeared constantly, ranging from a main to a secondary to a background theme in the political agenda of the movement, depending on the current situation.4 That is, the structure and aims of the Karabagh movement in Armenia were constantly changing, but in Karabagh, the aforementioned feudal model, in fact, never changed. Here I refer to the model only, since the situation underwent dramatic transformations from peaceful demonstrations to bloody war to unrecognized yet de facto independence. The “feudal” authoritarian structure was even hardened here as a result of war, which, naturally, has never been a favorable time for democracy. The only democracy here, if any, would be the so-called military democracy.5 As a rule the leadership group can reveal the underlying structure of the society and the political movement this group is heading. It may even reveal some of the future social changes the society is going to face. Thus in Karabagh, the banned “Krunk” Committee was replaced by the Director’s Council.6 It is no wonder that when the Kremlin decided to repress the dangerous nationalist movement in Karabagh, it arrested Arkadi Manucharov, the leader of these two successive organizations, by charging him with corruption – an archetypal crime for any director in the Soviet economic system and political hierarchy, which, in turn, served as the basis for the Soviet “feudal system”.7 Even the fact that Robert Kocharian, the second and current president of Armenia and the former president of the Karabagh Republic, used to be a Communist secretary at a Karabagh plant in Soviet times, is emblematic of his Karabagh “feudal background”. It serves as a sign in the semiotic forecast, foretelling a possible return of Armenian society to some of the same feudal values it challenged at the beginning of the Karabagh movement. The structure of the “Karabagh” Committee is itself very informative on this issue. In contrast to the leaders in Karabagh, the Yerevan leaders were, we can say, non-aristocratic intellectuals opposed to the Communist regime. There were only two Communists among its 11 members, but one, Ashot Manucharian, was soon expelled from the

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Party, and the other (Babken Ararktsian) resigned. Oddly enough, each member represented one or another future trend in the development of Armenian society, although in 1988 these trends were not yet explicit. Thus Levon Ter-Petrossian, the future president of Armenia, in a sense represented the constitutional path to development of the republic. We can say this on the basis of a content analysis of his speeches during the meetings of 1988–90. Later, heading the Parliament of the Armenian SSR, he insisted on the constitutional route to Armenia’s secession from the USSR. Today, when all former Soviet republics have independence – some as the result of a long dramatic struggle, others as a sudden gift out of the blue – political analysts usually neglect this context, considering it, perhaps, of little importance after the collapse of the USSR. The importance of this neglected aspect of the Armenian “revolution” is that it contains the inner logic of the movement and, perhaps, its lost or unrealized possibilities, which might reveal some essential aspects of Armenian national identity and history as well. The constitutional road chosen by Armenia’s leader and the Armenian people was in fact a continuation of the constitutional non-violent movement in Armenia in the late 1980s.8 This fascinated Russian democrats, including academician Andrei Sakharov, precisely because this feature stood in such stark contrast to the ubiquitous anti-constitutional history of the USSR. However, this constitutional secession went unrealized due to the failed Moscow coup d’etat of August 1991. After the coup, Boris Yeltsin was all too eager to legitimize the symbolic image of the Russian king he had enjoyed during the days of resistance to the coup and the artificially accelerated demise of the USSR.9 The rapid collapse rebounded in Armenia where independence led many to doubt the constitutional road that the Karabagh movement, and especially Levon Ter-Petrossian, were advocating. In any case, Ter-Petrossian’s faith in constitutionalism was so great that even the authoritarian presidential power he wanted ratified in the new constitution of Armenia had to be approved by a referendum in 1995, which foreign monitors classified as “free but not fair”.10 Ashot Manucharian, another member of the “Karabagh” Committee, who later became an active opponent of the first president’s policy, represented democratic trends in Armenian society. Actually the movement transformed from a national to a social one due to Manucharian’s socially directed speeches and activism. I would like to stress that I am not analyzing here whether this leader was really democratic, or the

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degree to which he was democratic. Nor am I concerned with the authoritarian trends in the president’s personality and other trends in the personalities of the other members of the Committee. Yet even if these features are alleged or rumored, they do reveal certain general trends in Armenian society. Hambartsum Galstian, to a degree, represented the same trends as Ashot Manucharian, but at the same time manifested certain nationally oriented trends, for example, in the sphere of education. His speech on the issue of bilingualism during a meeting in the summer of 1988 was actually the first strike in the struggle for national schools in Armenia.11 Much later, in the 1990s, Galstian became a businessman, and this career change lends support to the view that the vanguard group might even express future trends in society. However, this change was an unfortunate one for Galstian personally as it eventually led to his as yet unsolved assassination in 1994. Anti-Soviet (that is, anti-Russian) and, to a degree, secessionist trends were expressed by Vazgen Manoukian in his speeches as early as the first meetings in February 1988. Not surprisingly, he tried to put his anti-Russian feelings (expressed as “There are neither eternal friends (Russians), nor eternal enemies (Turks).”) into action through the failed pro-Turkish and anti-Russian policy he initiated soon after becoming the first prime minister of the newly formed Republic of Armenia. His personality also reveals some of the narcissistic features sometimes found in Armenian society. Thus, in the early 1990s Manoukian was promoting Armenia and Armenians as a “world nation” with a definite, though undefined, mission, while Levon Ter-Petrossian was promoting the Armenian people as an ordinary people. Although this nationalist trend later changed into a more moderate national program, one has to be aware of its implicit presence in Armenian identity to avoid possible adventurist and isolationist political policies in the future. Pure secessionist trends were most clearly present in the personality of Paruyr Hayrikian, the dissident advocate of political self-determination. During the first February meetings his secessionist ideas were not supported by the “Karabagh” Committee or by a majority of the Armenian people. The independence thread was pulled from the yarn ball much later when the Kremlin authorities left no other constitutional avenue for national self-determination open. Hayrikian, however, often proclaimed his authorship of this tricolor strand. Ten of the eleven members of the “Karabagh” Committee were young. Some saw their age reflecting possible revolutionary changes in society. Others generally prefer to interpret the young age of the new

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rulers from a traditional and more philosophical and pessimistic stance. Unchanging and entrenched power needs young sincere “revolutionaries” to mold them into older conservative rulers.12 Whether the rallies of the late 1980s were a kind of revolution13 or something more akin to a carnival like festival, after which society returned to its everyday hierarchies complete with new rulers who just took the place of the old ones, is a theme of special interest.14 We will return to it a little later when we consider the thread of civil society that was present in the original allegorical yarn ball. The only middle-aged person on the Committee was Rafael Kazarian, a physicist with an advanced academic degree.15 Although other Committee members were also physicists and mathematicians, Kazarian seems to have been the only academician who returned to his career after briefly experiencing the political limelight. He symbolically represented on the Committee the ancient tradition of scientific thought in Armenia (cf. his “old” age). The relatively high percentage of representatives from the exact sciences (five of the 11 Committee members) inspired a Polish journalist who visited Armenia and Karabagh during the stormy events of the late 1980s to refer to the “revolution of mathematicians”.16 The active representation of mathematicians in the movement might give us a base for another typological comparison. Mathematicians, as a people minimally bound to the material world (to the “soil”), can be compared with Jews. They were very active during the October Revolution of 1917 and also minimally bound to the soil, in this case literal soil, due to the anti-Semitic policies of the Russian Empire. In this sense advocates of the revolutionary nature of the Karabagh movement might find some basis for their theory. The specialties of the remaining half of the Committee – humanities – is also semiotically significant. The most revealing is the profession of Levon Ter-Petrossian since the leader of a society, the president, the king, the chief, the First Man has concentrated in his personality many implicit characteristics of the nation, tribe, or group he represents. Thus, from the Karabagh movement’s focus on ancient and modern history one could forecast that the historian-philologist Levon TerPetrossian was fated to become the first president of the newly independent Armenian state as much because of his specialty as because of his political and personal characteristics. A similar process unfolded in Azerbaijan where Elchibey was also fated to be a specialist in dead languages, since both national movements often appealed to ancient written sources and “dead” witnesses. Even Georgia’s first president Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s putative expertise in Georgian philology and history

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correlates with Georgia’s “historically based” attitude toward Abkhazians and Ossets. A similar pattern unfolded in Baltic Estonia where President Leenart Meri’s expertise in folkloric studies strangely correlates with the “folkloric” characteristics of the Estonian national movement.17 One might also be tempted to see the corruption that is much discussed in the republic as reflecting the personality of Vano Siradeghian, the former minister of the interior. We can apply our method here irrespective of whether his corrupt behavior was real or only alleged, since the post of interior minister is traditionally assumed to be corruptive by definition.18 And finally, the peaceful and non-militant “Karabagh” Committee contained the seed for the future guerrilla war with Azerbaijan. It was represented by the Committee member Samson Ghazarian who left the constitutionally oriented committee to form one of the first military detachments fighting in Karabagh. In the Yerevan demonstrations that became international news, partly, because of their non-violent nature, the future war was already present from the very first demonstration in February 1988. It was reflected in the fedayee songs that had been banned in Soviet times because of their Dashnak origins. For nine months, from February to late November, the peaceful crowds in the streets and squares of Yerevan were singing the most popular song “Who Are We?” and answering “We are the fedayee”. Later, the fedayee movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s became the basis of military resistance in Karabagh and the regions of Armenia bordering with Azerbaijan. It has to be stressed that this implicit psychological and symbolic preparation for war ran parallel with the construction of a civil society of which we will speak a little later.19 One of the most visible threads in the yarn ball was represented by the ecological movement which is often seen as the immediate progenitor of the Karabagh movement.20 Yet, actually it was not. In Armenia, as in other former Soviet republics, the ecological movement was one of the few allowed. In Yerevan there was even a mass meeting just a year before the Karabagh rallies, and a “green” march preceded the first February meeting of 1988. But it was not the case that the ecological movement developed into a national movement as was the case, for example, in Estonia.21 In Armenia, ecological meetings and demonstrations played the role of herald, informing participants and the curious hanging out nearby, of the Karabagh meeting that was scheduled for the next day. The frequently invoked large ecological meeting of 1987 was followed by an unsuccessful minor demonstration related to

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a local conflict in Karabagh. Perhaps this strange linkage of the two movements on two occasions led analysts to think of them as causally related. However, that would be simplistic, since the ecological movement was just one of the threads in the ball of yarn. The closeness of the two movements is well illustrated by the fact that one of the most popular activists in the ecology movement was Khachik Stamboltsian. He was arrested together with the Karabagh Committee members and shared with them the same five months in Moscow jails at the beginning of 1989 even though he was never a member of the Committee. The actual leader of the ecology movement was Karen Simonian. Judging from the semiotic context of his speeches during the Karabagh rallies, he seemed to try his best to assume a leading role in the Karabagh movement. His only appreciable gain was support from the movement to obtain the vacant position as Armenia’s deputy representative to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a position he never used effectively. Some hunger strikers, usually Stamboltsian, made ecological demands, thus adding an ecological motif to the variegated carpet being woven from the various threads from the yarn ball. Sometimes the ecological agenda was used by the mainstream Karabagh movement as a strategic weapon for achieving other types of demands. This happened, for example, when “Nairit”, the synthetic rubber complex that had all-Union significance at the time, was closed due to the common efforts of ecological and political activists. Later, as the leader of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian admitted in a television interview that they had used the issue of the “Nairit” plant to seize power, and now that the plant belonged to the Armenian people, and not to Moscow, it had to be reopened. Ecological fanaticism, a feature of ecological movements everywhere (and not only in Armenia where it caused, perhaps, an even greater disaster than the war), is absent here. Ecological vandalism (for example, the complete destruction, without any environmental restoration, of the copper works in Alaverdi) was in a sense “supported” by the disastrous earthquake of December 7, 1988, which forced the Armenian authorities to collaborate with the ecologists in closing the nuclear plant in Medzamor.22 Gorbachev and his analysts represented another yarn thread, by seeking out the secret sources of the Karabagh movement in the underground, shadow economy. The February mass demonstrations in Armenia appeared to be so well organized that suspicious Russian communists were forced to attribute them to powerful and sinister forces. Such communists could hardly imagine a crowd without much accompanying drunkenness and disorder. Since supporters were distributing

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free sandwiches and mineral water to the people during these early demonstrations, they were pinpointed as the organizers of these unprecedented mass national demonstrations. Communist leaders saw them as the vanguard of the capitalist system and hence the true enemies of socialism. But the real reason for their presence during the mass rallies had nothing to do with conspiracy theory. It was a common feature of ancient festivals – the intense feeling of solidarity experienced by the participants.23 This same conspiracy theory presented itself in Moscow in August 1991.24 Gorbachev’s error in equating underground Soviet-era shadow economics with capitalist structures was later repeated by the leaders of the newly independent states. The first Armenian Prime Minister, Vazgen Manoukian, for example, seemed to think that Armenia emerged with fully formed latent capitalist structures in the shadow economy. All he needed to do was to legalize these structures. Manoukian’s appointment of one of the underground “capitalists” as his main deputy supports this supposition. In reality, Soviet-era underground capitalism only worked in the Soviet system since it was a parasitic form feeding off of the Soviet economy. It contained all of the latent tendencies one would expect to find in a Mafia type system that could not tolerate any competition. Thus, it was opposed to the main principles of the market economy. Even the criminals were present in the initial yarn ball, although they were not acting as such, demonstrating a rare manifestation of solidarity during the festival-like mass rallies. A popular joke at the time noted that Armenia’s thieves went on strike together with the rest of the country. And it was not just a joke. The minister of the interior reported in a television interview that during the first February meetings the Yerevan crime rate was fantastically low, approaching zero. During the first hunger strikes at Theater Square in Yerevan, several Armenian criminals actually went on hunger strikes in their respective jails, in solidarity with the political hunger strikers. Of course, such solidarity could not be sustained, and before long criminals and their victims reverted to a more “natural” state of homeostasis. An interesting case from the first hunger strike in Theater Square in June 1988 showed how the yarn ball model was working. When I asked “Karabagh” Committee member Hambartsum Galstian who those hunger strikers were, he answered that they were just some extremists. He used the same label employed by the Moscow and Communist mass media to attack an alleged group of protesters in Armenia, and this was immediately picked up by opponents to designate the

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entire Armenian nation. The young hunger strikers were wearing orange shirts and performing some picturesque rituals. The people, many of whom were going to the square especially to see their heroes, admired them. A famous poet wrote a poem dedicated to Shant (“lightening” in Armenian), one of the hunger strikers. Only later did we learn that these protesters were Armenian Fascists. In September they were already wearing the “Armenian swastika” on their sleeves – two s-shaped crossed curves. This same Shant Harutiunian went on another hunger strike a little later, now under an undisguised Fascist swastika, protesting against the ban on his party’s openly Fascist newspaper. Fortunately, this orange thread with a brownish hue, which charmed everybody in June 1988, was short-lived and did not roll out into something more significant.25 The most important component of the tangled yarn ball, however, was something quite opposed to the short, bizarre fascist strand of society. As an anthropologist I had a unique chance to observe and analyze how this phenomenon was born and shaped, step by step. The streets and squares of Yerevan became the setting for my intensive fieldwork from 1988 to 1990.26 Although the stormy February 1988 demonstrations were mostly dedicated to the Karabagh issue, the embryo of civil society was conceived at the same time. Thus, among the posters and banners mostly related to the Karabagh issue,27 there were a few posters demanding that a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR be convened to approve a resolution on reuniting Nagorno-Karabagh with Armenia. I saw the first banner on February 21, 1988, when it was being prepared at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography where I am employed. Since I witnessed this process and did not participate in it actively, I can consider it a case study and not just merely a personal experience. This banner, painted in white on red fabric – all they could find at the Institute – looked very much like the traditional banners with various Communist slogans which had to be carried during official Soviet demonstrations. These banners were usually read neither by those who carried them, nor by the audience to whom they were addressed. They were, in a sense, invisible.28 But this new banner was supposed to be quite visible. That was the reason why my colleagues carried it to the Theater Square where the meetings were taking place. They placed it under their coats to save them from possible confiscation during the passage through alien territory. During the first two days of the February demonstrations the streets had not yet been added to the ritual festive territory of the square. Within a few days, when nearly the entire city had been

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claimed as an area for political expression, people had no such problems with the posters. From this time on, a unique “poster workshop” began in Yerevan and lasted until 1990. What we might call the golden age of posters lasted until September 1996 at a meeting called in support of Levon Ter-Petrossian’s second presidential campaign. The numerous posters on display that day made it clear that posters had reclaimed their invisible status of Communist times gone-by. Once again the banners’ texts appeared in the form of cliches penned by the hand of censorship, and once again those who carried the banners were not aware of what they were forced to carry. I dwell on the political banner because its multiple and more sophisticated versions crowded the square by mid June 1988 and demonstrated the birth of civic society. It began with an appeal to the legislative body, about which people had only the vaguest notions at that time. In fact, it was Karabagh that was further along the road to civil society, since it was the people there who organized a de facto referendum by collecting signatures approving secession from Azerbaijan and unification with Armenia, in late 1987. A parliamentary session – a kind of functional equivalent with the same goals – was held in February 1988, and secession was approved at this time by the Karabagh Armenian deputies. The Karabagh movement and all of the upcoming dramatic events waiting to unfold had their source in this single democratic event. Although the revolution was democratic, the road by which it came about did not reflect civil society in Karabagh. Karabagh society, as we have seen, was structurally more closely akin to late medieval society than to modern civil society. Even the democratic resolution of the Karabagh deputies was, in fact, a kind of petition to the Russian tsar, where the entire Armenian populace of Karabagh expressed its loyalty to the imperial power and its “alien invaders”. The “referendum”, which delighted many Russian democrats and which deserves to be described in an epic novel and action screenplay, was planned and organized from above by the loyal Soviet “meliks”. It was democratic centralism at its finest, created and willingly carried out by all levels of hierarchical Karabagh society in order to fit in with the new Soviet “democracy”. In short, the “meliks” planned, organized, and told the populace to perform a democratic action, and they did. The resolution, which immediately became a new page in the history of the Armenian national liberation struggle,29 was actually a petition not just in form (as were the subsequent resolutions adopted by the Armenian and Azerbaijani parliaments, since they both appealed to the Supreme

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Soviet of the USSR for similar, though opposite, decisions on the Karabagh issue), but mainly in spirit. This spirit was also present in another unprecedented petition by the Karabagh Armenians to the two envoys sent by Gorbachev to settle the unrest. People who were gathered in front of the building where the “tsar’s” envoys were staying, who were mainly women, knelt collectively to show the “tsar” how greatly they needed his support. Some Karabagh Armenians living in Armenia are inclined to consider this merely as a rumor or a kind of political folklore.30 But even if this typical royalty inspired gesture was just a rumor, it does not fundamentally change our analysis, since rumors are often anthropologically more informative than the real facts they reflect. In this case it stresses that the sacramental resolution of the oblast session was a true collective petition to the Russian “tsar”, which was reinforced by a corresponding collective action. Posters in Karabagh also accented the loyalty of the Karabagh Armenians by using the “tsar’s” perestroika agenda in their favor. For example, one such poster contrasted the “good” triad of Lenin–Party–Gorbachev as opposed to the “bad” triad of Stalin–Beria–Ligachev.31 The logic of the posters created in Armenia was quite different. Even in cases when a poster used Gorbachev’s words to support Armenian nationalist demands, it used them as a semiotic text, and not as a sign of servility.32 In Armenia, the sit-down and hunger strikes of June 1988 also had another logic. The participants represented the lower level of the social hierarchy, and their aim was to assert their civil rights and to force the higher level, the parliament, to defend these rights. People learned about their civil rights step by step in the square – through and due to demonstrations and meetings that were taking place there. One of the paradoxes of the Soviet system was that Soviet constitutions, including Stalin’s constitution from the dark 1930s, had many features found in constitutions from civil societies although these provisions were never enforced. In 1988, people in Yerevan’s squares started their democratic education by becoming aware of this fact, and within several months, they could use the constitution well enough to legally win a number of electoral campaigns, which were also something new in the Soviet context. The Communist authorities seemed to be so shocked by the people’s rapidly accelerating legislative experience that they failed to create effective legal barriers to resist popular activities. In the old days, they used to appoint deputies rather than elect them. As a result, at least some of the deputies of the old Soviet parliament (the appointed ones), (mostly simple workers and intellectuals) also learned about their rights

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as deputies.33 This was not, of course, a smooth process since many deputies were Communist functionaries, careerists or simply conformists, some of whom never understood that they were supposed to be elected by the people and, therefore, had obligations to them. During this transitional period the political education and activity of the electors exceeded those of the deputies. This became known as the time of the “deputy hunt”. Constituencies were seeking out their deputies and presenting them with their collective petitions, related mainly to the Karabagh issue.34 As for Parliament, a real revolution took place there when two vacant seats were occupied in autumn 1988 by Ashot Manucharian and Khachik Stamboltsian, the Karabagh movement activists who became the first deputies elected democratically in Armenia. The presence of these two deputies acted as a catalyst that accelerated political reactions inside parliament to create a new product – a primitive democratic institution that had never been present in Soviet times. This miraculous change was sufficiently advanced to reveal that political struggles in the future would undoubtedly take the shape of parliamentary debates. This represented an important step toward civil society. Members of the “Karabagh” Committee were convinced in those days that their successful experience had become a model for the other democratic movements throughout, and even outside, the USSR. Thus, Lech Walesa, the leader of the Polish “Solidarity” movement, was thought to have accepted the parliamentary mode of political struggle that he had previously rejected because he was impressed by the Armenian experience. It was this new orientation that helped him to become the president of Poland.35 As I have already mentioned, the orientation toward parliament is a measure of society’s development in the direction of civil society. This is the case even if elections in independent Armenia were “free but not fair”, as foreign monitors have labeled them on the basis of the few violations they managed to catch and the many they did not. I am not going to discuss the various violations, ranging from crude to sophisticated, that have marked elections in recent years. The important point for our discussion is the fact that in order to seize power, the new politicians have had to engage in dubious practices to capture the democratic institution of parliament, and not just ignore it, as their Communist predecessors had done. Skeptics might say that the result is insufficiently democratic, but I think that the potential inner democratic structure is more important than its temporary undemocratic abuse.

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The success of the first electoral campaign in the fall of 1988 was a result of effective work by certain structures originating in the festive square. Analysts failed to notice them, or at least they forgot about them, as the movement evolved into politically more developed stages. These structures were the so-called constitutional groups that spread like mushrooms in the square and in the adjacent streets, as if the sacred center transmitted some of its fertilizing properties to the surrounding soil. This is not just a metaphor – these groups were using small tables, and their spread closely resembled mushrooms spreading over a field. Sitting at these mushrooming tables were the newly emerging experts on constitutional rights. From them any citizen could get all the written and oral information they wanted about elections, deputies, registration rules, electoral and polling districts, suffrage, and many other useful details a citizen had to know about his or her constitutional rights. The members of these groups were not only sources of information but also promoters of social change. Without their careful routine, and often thankless, work, the early elections could not have been won by the movement. From this perspective the tables really were a kind of seed of civil society.36 Constitutional groups were one of those products of the political “festival” of 1988 that stepped out from the festive square into everyday life. The other products of the “festival” (solidarity, reversal or reevaluation of the main social opposition groups, and so on) disappeared as the “festival” in the square came to an end.37 The fight for civil society may be considered to have peaked on November 24, 1988. A session of the local Supreme Soviet was planned by the movement for that day to discuss some urgent problems. Being already well educated in civil law and having a good number of experienced experts on constitutional rights, the movement collected the required number of deputies’ signatures to have the right to call such an extraordinary session. But the Communist authorities banned it. The movement nevertheless defied them and called it on the very spot it had claimed from the municipal authorities – Theater Square. The deputies were asked to gather at the Opera house in the square. We can assume that not every deputy was eager to come voluntarily, although the planned session in the square was quite constitutional. The “hunt for deputies” peaked this same day. A high ranking official deputy, for example, was spotted in his office at the ministers’ building in Lenin Square and brought to Theater Square in his official car. By way of mockery or because they could not find his personal driver, the car was not driven but pulled by a group of young men, possibly the electors of

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this deputy. This strange escort was greeted and applauded by joyous cries from the crowd all the way from official Lenin Square to the lowly people’s Theater Square. When the car reached the square, the deputy was asked to go a short distance to the Opera House on his own, but he did not, either because he refused or was fearful to appear in front of his electors or Communist superiors. His escorts then held him under his armpits, and with his feet hardly touching the ground, delivered him to the session. Of course, this carnival passage hardly represented the highest degree of democracy, but people were absolutely convinced that when a legitimate session is called, the deputies should not refuse to participate in it. Such extreme instances of street democracy were actually rare. The majority of the deputies came to the Opera House voluntarily, helping this unprecedented session to take place on the same spot, where nine months before the first seeds of civil society had been planted. One can say that on this day the strand of civil society had been fully extracted from the initial yarn ball after successfully passing through many tangled knots. However, it was a kind of carnival civil society, and, as with everything else produced by the festival, this important outcome was doomed to vanish. Real civil society must be constructed brick by brick and incorporated into everyday routines of society. It cannot emerge full-fledged from a festival with its short-lived feelings of justice and solidarity. It is not accidental that this birth of civil society in Yerevan’s squares coincided with the first instances of national violence against local Azerbaijanis in several regions of Armenia. As we have seen, the possibilities for peace and war, civil and totalitarian societies are equal, and the choice is not only made within the society. That is why I noted at the beginning of this study that the potential possibilities held within Armenian society (as well as the entire Soviet Union) depend both on the current situation and external forces. By the end of September 1988, after the first stage of the Karabagh movement and the Sumgait pogroms, Gorbachev had two opportunities for the development of his country: the direction of civil society or the direction of national violence. He chose the second. Armenian communist authorities also rejected civil society, or rather its festive manifestation by declaring the session in the square illegal and choosing oppression and violence. Deputies were still sitting in the sparse session hall when a state of emergency was declared in Yerevan. This state of violence in the center coincided, as we have already noted, with popular national violence in the periphery of the republic.

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After independence, which was in a sense an offspring of the festival in the square, one of the first parliamentary sessions of the new republic reasserted the resolutions of its festive progenitor, thus taking upon itself the difficult task of constructing, step by step, a real, and not a festive, civil society in Armenia.

Notes 1. The former president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, noted this point in his interview of September 1997 (Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, September 27, 1997) (in Armenian), not suspecting at the time that this difference would bring his political career to an end within a few months. 2. At first it was the leader of the Oblast Communist Party, who was followed by the head of the Directors’ Council, both being typed Soviet substitute figures from feudal hierarchies. 3. The precipitant cause was Igor Mouradian’s attempt to organize a meeting in support of Karen Demirchian, the Communist leader of Armenia, whose dismissal was being planned by the Kremlin at that time. 4. A dramatic semiotic sign of the impossibility of completely purging the Karabagh issue along with the Karabagh representatives in the “Karabagh Committee” was the fact that Igor Mouradian was arrested and later released from jail in parallel with the members of the Committee. This also shows that Moscow never saw differences between the Karabagh and Armenian wings of the movement. 5. In the Marxist theory of social evolution this term designates the transitional state from classless societies to an early class society, this transitional state being marked by primitive democracy within military units used by the new men of high rank in their quest for power. 6. The crane in Armenian (krunk) stands as a traditional symbol of homesickness. Here the yearning is for a native Armenian land in alien Azerbaijan. 7. On the archaic social structure hidden behind the Armenian Soviet reality see Levon Abrahamian, “The Secret Police as a Secret Society: Fear and Faith in the USSR”, Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia 32, 3 (1993–94): 12–31. The Central Asian Soviet republics provided another striking example of adaptation of the feudal system into Soviet structures. This problem, together with post-Soviet regionalism and regress to feudalism instead of imagined progress to capitalism, is a separate theme of special interest that cannot be addressed here. 8. According to the last version of the Soviet constitution, a constituent Soviet republic could secede if a referendum on secession was positive (as the Armenian referendum of 1990 was) and a subsequent referendum yielded the same result five years later. These years were supposed to be used to resolve all issues connected with the upcoming “divorce”. There was another, less popular, project at the same time – immediate independence by non-constitutional means – advocated by Paruyr Hayrikian. The idea of immediate independence can be compared with the “here and now” mentality associated with many archaic rituals.

132 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh 9. See A. Borodatova and L. Abrahamian, “August 1991: a Festival that Failed to Unfold”, Ethnograficheskoe Obozrenie 3 (1992): 53–6 (in Russian). 10. This faith in constitutionalism, that is, in the written word, might be a reflection of the former president’s secular profession, textology of Syriac written sources. On other aspects of the president’s career, especially on his knowledge of written languages see Levon Abrahamian, “Lingua materna: culta à la traduccion y nationalismo linguistico in Armenia”, Revista de Antropologia Social 6 (1997): 29–51. Servicio de Publicaciones, UCM. 11. As in the president’s case, this was also a reflection of the revolutionary leader’s secular career. Galstian was an anthropologist and his dissertation dealt precisely with the problem of bilingualism. On the paradoxes and misleading models of language policy and nationalism see Abrahamian, “Lingua materna …”. 12. In its universal folk version of the dragon, the immortality and invincibility of the dragon results from the inevitable transformation of the young brave dragon slayers into new dragons. It was used allegorically to refer to some members of the “Karabagh” Committee by Ashot Manucharian in his “monological interviews” of 1994. By that time, “the dragon has become three-headed”. Golos Armenii (March 19, 1994) (in Russian). 13. This position is put forward by Harutyun Marutyan. 14. On national rallies in Armenia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union from the perspective of the anthropological theory of the festival, see Levon Abrahamian, “Ritual, Proto-Theater, and Theater Square”, Bem 1 (1990): 7–19 (in Armenian); and “Chaos and Cosmos in the Structure of Popular Demonstrations”, Mshakuyt 2–3 (1990): 14–21 (in Armenian). The English versions of these articles appear in Soviet Anthropology & Archeology 29, 2 (Fall 1990): 45–86. See also “The Karabagh Movement as Viewed by an Anthropologist”, The Armenian Review 43, 2–3/170–71 (1990): 67–80; Borodatova and Abrahamian, op. cit.; and Levon Abrahamian, “The Anthropologist as Shaman: Interpreting Recent Political Events in Armenia”, in G. Palsson (ed.) Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation, and Anthropological Discourse, (Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1993), pp. 100–16. 15. This was the degree preceding the highest degree of the Academician. It was abolished in 1996, and those who held it automatically assumed the rank of Academician. 16. Ryszard Kapuscinski, “Revolution of Mathematicians”, Europe & America, 1 (1991): 36–43 (in Russian). 17. On the objectives of a national movement and its correlation with its semiotic characteristics and even the name and features of the site of the first rallies, see Levon Abrahamian, “The Anthropologist as Shaman. …”, op. cit., pp. 110–12. 18. Interestingly, such rumors circulated not only during Ashot Manucharian’s brief tenure in his position in 1991. In a joke from that period (and jokes are the most sensitive indicators of the leaders’ personalities) a traffic police officer complains that instead of taking bribes from drivers, as is usually the case, he has to call their parents. (The joke refers to the interior minister’s former occupation; the schoolteacher required to call in parents of problem students.)

Levon Hm. Abrahamian 133 19. On internally directed aggression in Armenia, which changed into externally directed aggression in nine months, see Levon Abrahamian, “The Nagorno-Karabagh Conflict: A Fight for Symmetry and Asymmetry”, Synopsis, 3 (1995): 102–20 and Levon Abrahamian “Typology of Aggressiveness and National Violence in the Former USSR”, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 4, 3–4 (1996–97): 263–78. 20. Paul Goble, “Ethnic Politics in the USSR”, Problems of Communism, 38, 4 (1989): 1–14 and Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward Ararat (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 196. 21. In Estonia the ecological movement was directed, in fact, against ethnic Russians, who were seen as precisely those who polluted the Estonian environment since it was native and migrant Russians who worked in ecologically dangerous mines and other enterprises introduced into Estonia on Moscow’s initiative. 22. The plant was reopened in 1996 to overcome a severe energy shortage. Regarding the reopening, an informant confided in me that he would prefer to be a radioactive corpse than a frozen one. 23. See note 14 on the festival-like nature of mass rallies. 24. See Borodatova and Abrahamian, op. cit. 25. This party has several hundred members. Its name, Tseghakron, means “Religion of the Tribe”. The party promotes a pagan (tribal) religion as opposed to Christianity (the world religion). The name and some of the ideology of this party are borrowed from Karekin Nzhdeh, a prominent Armenian military officer who is better known in Armenia for his heroic defense of the strategic southern region of Zangezur during the first Republic (1918–20), rather than for his later advocacy of Fascistic national ideology. 26. On the methodology of anthropological field work during political rallies see Abrahamian, “Anthropologist as Shaman …”, op. cit. 27. See H.T. Marutyan and L.H. Abrahamian, “The Portrayal of Armenian Identity: an Analysis of One Group of Posters of the Karabagh Movement”, Hayatsk Yerevanits Hayagitakan, (The Armenian Center for National and International Studies) 3, 4 (1997): 55–68. 28. They were “visible” and actually addressed the Communist leaders who took part in the parades, who from their elevated tribunals inspected the ritual offerings from the people to them, and to the monuments of their legendary Communist ancestors. I borrowed this idea from Gayane Shagoyan’s unpublished manuscript on Soviet festive parades, which she kindly allowed me to use here. I personally doubt that the leaders on the podium were reading the texts of the banners. Only sometimes, during critical situations, did they become active readers, when the people presented texts especially addressed to them. For example, during the official demonstration of May 1, 1988 participants suddenly unfurled banners they had been hiding under their coats and gave the Communist leaders of Armenia a brief opportunity (before the “exhibits” were confiscated by the police) to read texts addressed to them personally. One such poster read “Salute to the opponents of perestroika!” But as a rule, during peaceful Soviet times, the leaders simply viewed the banners from the height of their official podium without reading, just as the experienced censor does not need to read the full texts of what he is inspecting. One can say that the texts, at least the

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29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

bulk of them, were addressed and thus were visible primarily to the abstract ‘high gods’ of the Communist system – much the same way in which the mandala shape of the Borobudur temple can only be seen from heaven. See Nagornyi Istoricheskaya spravka (Mountainous Karabagh: Historical Information). Yerevan: IZD. AN ArmSSR (1986) (in Russian). I should note that this information was greeted in Armenia with amazement and not reproach. Lavrenti Beria – infamous chief of the KGB from 1938 to Stalin’s death. Yegor Ligachev – conservative Politburo member disliked in Armenia for his alleged pro-Azerbaijani orientation on the Karabagh issue. Although these two posters were exhibited in Yerevan’s Theater Square, it was easy to recognize their origins in Karabagh not only by their inner logic but also by the topography of the demonstrations. The Karabagh Armenians, like other groups, had their favorite spots. See note 27 for details. The Soviet parliament had to represent all social groups. In Karabagh we had the polar opposite. There the deputies initiated the political process. I received this information from Hambartsum Galstian. Interestingly, the new and primitive market economy also appeared at first in the shape of vendors’ tables that spread in Yerevan’s streets like mushrooms. Thus the table played the role of a minimal structural invariant which was used in the language of both the social and economic transformation in Armenia. For a fuller discussion of this phenomenon, see the sources in note 14. Ironically, Arshak Sadoyan – the leader and one of the organizers of these first constitutional groups – eight years later, in September 1996, himself violated the Constitution by participating in seizing Parliament during the demonstrations in protest at the unfair presidential elections. This reflects the fact that the civil society in the square, or at least many of its characteristics, were just a festive product of the square and was doomed to disappear after the festival.

5 “We Are Our Mountains”: Nation as Nature in the Armenian Struggle for Self-Determination, Nagorno-Karabagh1 John Antranig Kasparian

The abyss surrounds you on all sides, Your roads are all closed, Dark clouds have gathered above you in the sky, Your adjoining settlements have been abandoned, Yet you remain and always will, Eternal Getashen. “Ode to Getashen”, composed in Nagorno Karabagh following the battle of Getashen, 1991 The task of critical analysis is not, surely, to prove the impossibility of foundational beliefs (or truths), but to find a more plausible and adequate basis for the foundational beliefs that make interpretation and political action meaningful, creative, and possible. David Harvey2

Overview This chapter forms part of a larger research project in which I seek – through participant-observation – to reveal the Karabagh movement as a living, breathing struggle on the ground; one involving not only a struggle for territory, security, and self-determination, but also a struggle over the exercise and interpretation of national identity.3 As such, the Karabagh movement has involved not only armies, diplomats, and policymakers, but a variety of social actors, operating at various scales of resolution, who collide and collaborate in many different ways. 135

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In attempting to map out such a project, I consciously critique and oppose several prevailing ways of telling the Karabagh story. Among these, foremost in my mind are the widespread western accounts, beginning in 1988 and continuing to this day, that have tended to place Karabagh at the margins of its own struggle; that is portraying Karabagh – its society, its economy, its politics – after a few, initial self-generated sparks, subsequently as an inert recipient: of aid (from Armenia, Moscow); of attack (from Azerbaijan, Turkey); or as a hot potato juggled as part of larger, superpower manipulations.4 In my view, such mistreatments stem from three principal sources. Part of the problem lies with studies of former Soviet nationalities; studies that often suffer still from the legacies of cold war-era sovietology, especially its longstanding reliance on top-down, state-centered interpretations that rarely venture beyond political–economic elites found in the metropolis. Perhaps the most egregious example of such an approach comes from American writer Thomas Goltz, who in an article in Foreign Policy entitled “The Hidden Russian Hand”, claimed that Karabagh and other ethnic hot-spots in the former Soviet Union were basically acts of puppetry; that is, solely the result of Russian instigations plotted in Moscow.5 Within such frameworks, real actors, real decisions, real power and agency are most often to be found elsewhere, frequently in far-off capitals, rather than directly on the scene of combat.6 Second, with regard to Karabagh specifically, there has been a persistent conflation, even by sympathetic critics, of self-determination efforts taking place in Karabagh and solidarity efforts taking place in the name of Karabagh; for example, those that took place beginning in 1988 in Yerevan, the capital of neighboring Armenia. Indeed, even some of the friendlier academic treatments of the Karabagh conflict still at times offer little more than a cursory look at some of the early developments on-the-ground, and then swiftly shift – often irrevocably – to other arenas of conflict such as Moscow, Baku, and especially Yerevan, where early Karabagh solidarity movements drew worldwide attention as tests of glasnost and perestroika, but which gradually metamorphosed into movements of urban elites whose primary agenda became the seizing of state power.7 By the early 1990s, this objective had rendered Karabagh’s liberation as at best a complement, at worst a hindrance, to a newly emerging policy line in Armenia. The result has been a shift in focus, whether witting or unwitting, by many observers and analysts who have largely ignored Karabagh’s indigenous, often more radical voices in favor of more traditional, state-centered interpretations

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that privilege narratives of national liberalization over those of national liberation.8 This issue, in turn, connects to a third source of difficulty, one operating perhaps on a more practical level: for much of the past ten years, Karabagh has endured geographic isolation and turbulent, often hazardous political conditions. As such the region has not been readily amenable to conventional academic inquiries, such as archival research. Accordingly, even when investigators do refer to the “factson-the-ground”, as it were, they largely base their accounts on Soviet census data, formal decisions taken by legislative or executive bodies, or occasional interviews granted to the international press by official spokespersons.9 While such work offers much valuable data, the result again, however, is to reinforce a view of Karabagh that is official, distant, impersonal, and often abstract. In this light, then, my aim has been to reassert Karabagh’s central role in shaping its own destiny, even while allowing for its embeddedness within a hierarchical nest of power relations, tying together disparate actors, locations, and scales of resolution. In performing such a revision, I will of course offer my own versions, my own stories and representations, regarding Karabagh. But my intent above all is to help restore voice to the Karabaghtsis* themselves, thereby reinforcing the notion of nationalism being an ongoing process of social creation – from “above” as well as from “below”. This work also grapples with the tendency – by Armenian and nonArmenian scholars alike – to treat nationalism in fixed, insular, seemingly self-sufficient terms. In the Karabagh case, this has been expressed in studies that seem often to take Armenian nationalism for granted, as somehow an unproblematic expression of a unified cultural identity, a longing for historical justice, territorial redress, and so on. While these factors undoubtedly form part of the picture, today I believe we must seek out a more thoroughly relational approach10 – that is, viewing Armenian nationalism as partly hybrid, constituted not only by internally coherent or pre-existing parts, but also by what it opposes, struggles against, or intermingles with; for example, Azerbaijani nationalism, western oil interests, or for that matter, the globalization of capital. Such an approach should provide a truer, richer, more dynamic portrait that ties Karabagh in to larger regional processes and problems. While this approach may be far off in most cases, I nonetheless believe that a relational approach to nationalism will attain increasing importance in coming years, as Azerbaijan’s oil boom and its attendant developments – the growing largesse now filling the

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coffers of Baku’s state apparatus, the social dislocations of converting to a predominantly oil-based economy, the vulnerabilities of such an economy, and so on – may very well result in the resurgence of an aggressive Azerbaijani nationalism, one that Armenians and others will have to deal with creatively. And now to look briefly at the different ways in which nature, or metaphors of nature, have been deployed as weapons, as resources in the service of the nationalist movement in Karabagh. To get at this question, however, we should begin with some preliminary remarks.

Exploring the “nature–nation” nexus The Karabagh struggle has passed through various phases, beginning in 1988 with widespread Armenian protests, and followed by Azerbaijani state-sponsored repression, ensuing guerrilla warfare, regionalization of the conflict, and eventually a string of Armenian military victories in the early 1990s leading to de facto independence and a ceasefire which holds to this day.11 Throughout the struggle, the force of nationalism has been overriding. Whether expressed “from below”, through Armenian calls for self-determination, or “from above”, through Azerbaijan’s insistence on its territorial integrity, nationalist imagery and rhetoric have offered compelling calls-to-arms for participants on both sides. On the Armenian side especially, a powerful ideology of nature, captured in the Karabagh motto “We Are Our Mountains”, depicts human nature, as embodied in the nation, as isomorphic with physical nature, thus exerting a tremendous sense of strength and permanence amidst duress and rapid change. This has served the self-determination movement remarkably well, and has aided Karabagh Armenians – a heretofore dispossessed people – in the recovery of their own history and geography as sources of identity. At the same time, such appropriations of nature, in particular, superimposing “nature” upon “nation” – is fraught with pitfalls and contradictions. In particular, a disabling conservatism can arise from reifying or “fixing” identity and environment, collapsing numerous forms of social differentiation upon an elemental, all-consuming nation, and shedding the strategic aspects of essentialism in favor of an inert organicism. My aim here, then, is to examine – through vignettes, narratives, and assorted experiences – how “nature” in its myriad forms has been appropriated by various actors in the struggle. In doing so, I will also address how this process may be facilitated by material practices embedded in Karabagh’s own condition – rural underdevelopment,

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the recent political struggles on the ground, as well as broader intellectual trajectories that tie in to aspects of identity in Karabagh. Before moving to the vignettes, I also wish to note that the nation concept itself is greatly amenable to being naturalized. As a number of authors have pointed out, nationalism’s particular force and galvanizing power often lies in its apparent naturalness; in the nation’s seeming immutability and limitless extension into a hallowed and primordial past.12 This is so even though nations are primarily social constructions of recent origin, with the vast majority of nations today having existed for no more than two or three centuries, and in many cases much less. It appears, then, that while social theorists are progressively deemphasizing primordialism as a grounding concept, it yet remains difficult to consider nationalism’s operative force without some sort of theory regarding origins, regarding nature, if you will.13 Add to this the substantial role that landscape has actually played as a material resource and as a metaphor of strength and permanence in the Karabagh struggle, and it becomes readily apparent that nation and nature, in fact, may come to reinforce, even to resemble one another in Karabagh’s public image. In fact, they are often superimposed to form a single identity, with the most famous example being “We Are Our Mountains”, which is embodied in the well-known icons of babig and dadig found on the hills overlooking the airstrip in Stepanakert, Karabagh’s capital.14 Both motto and icon have become powerful symbols representing not simply nationalism, but the synergy of nature and culture in the Karabagh struggle. And yet, they are not unproblematic. Such symbolism, in fact, has been open to appropriation by a wide array of social actors representing divergent, often conflicting positions and perspectives. For example, the famous Guinean revolutionary Amilcar Cabral produced a number of speeches and essays entitled “Our People Are Our Mountains”, in which he took an actively radical, anti-imperialist consciousness and sought to fuse it, or at least articulate it, with national identity.15 Others, however – for example Nazi ideologists of the 1930s – have used similar language and imagery to talk about der erde, der folk (“the land, the people”), in order to invoke blood, soil, and tradition, as part of a racist programme that sought to purify the nation, often through the most brutal means. The invocation of nature, therefore, is replete with pitfalls as well as possibilities. Certainly in the Karabagh case, the equation of landscape with people has been enormously empowering, particularly in the early years of struggle, when fresh images of landscape helped to give

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shape to a resurgent national imagination.16 In fact, for Karabagh Armenians the mere display or utterance of “We Are Our Mountains” has been part-and-parcel of the act of reclaiming, of repossessing a history and territory that had been denied to them for many years. Of course, this is not all that happened. If they are to aid in fostering cultural resistance to aggression, protective images of landscape must be tied in some manner to material practices operating on the ground. In the Karabagh case, such practices, for example guerrilla warfare as cited by its practitioners, once again reveal a special human relationship with the environment; one that interweaves with the process of liberation and which thereby bolsters the Karabaghtsis’ claims to land. To paraphrase the words of a leading partisan, now deceased: “We deal with this land creatively as a material resource, we know its nooks and crannies, we use it to outwit our adversaries … this land is ours.”17 Wartime is an incredible time for so many reasons, not least because boundaries of all sorts – physical, conceptual, territorial – are asserted, shaken, redrawn, and reinforced. And yet, this moment of spatial resurgence takes place precisely when life, in so many ways, has never been so fluid, so hybrid, so interpenetrating. It is a time when the borders of human experience, simultaneously real and imagined,18 are perpetually torn down even as they are erected, in an amazing display of creative destruction. And so it has been in Karabagh, where the Armenian selfdetermination struggle – initially an assertion of presence, of being, of self-definition in the face of suppressive colonial rule – has facilitated a “breaking out”, a collective becoming; that is, the reimagining and reintegration of mind, body, and environment, through the crucible of struggle. Working to transform one’s environment, it would seem, is also about self-transformation. These revelations would seem to point toward a more fluid, dialectical form of human–environment relationship. And yet this is not always the case. Many movement participants continue to assert identity in fixed terms – “we are who we are who we are, and have been”,19 in so many words – seemingly bending materiality to their will, even as life’s conditions change about them in innumerable ways. Hence we see textbooks, newspapers, even kiosks that regularly advertise the nationalistic motto “We Are Our Mountains”, in an emblematic, astonishingly willful display of rootedness and fixity, even while thousands of postwar refugees, itinerant laborers and others now criss-cross the Transcaucasus with increasing regularity in search of livelihood and basic sustenance, (demonstrating that perhaps we are not our mountains after all … or that’s not all we are!).20

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Put differently, we might say that the late 1990s have become a time of immense contradiction for the people of Karabagh. For as the former Soviet sphere opens to the unprecedented penetration of raw, transnational capitalism, it appears that Karabaghtsis are negotiating its circuitry with ever-increasing regularity precisely at a time when rootedness and fixity have become pervasive forms of consciousness. Meanwhile, as Karabagh now seeks to consolidate its de facto independence through linkage with neighboring Armenia, new and often intraethnic forms of capital, class-cleavage, and state intervention begin to make their appearance in the region, gradually and inescapably transforming that which has seemingly been liberated. Purity amidst hybridity, nationalism amidst the transnational moment. Here then are a series of vignettes which portray, in some small way, various experiences bound up with these concerns. They may thereby serve as a basis for further discussion and elaboration. Vazgen and Robert Born in 1962, Vazgen is an ex-freedom fighter, a veteran of the famed battle of Shushi (which is often cited as the turning point in the Karabagh war). He was among those who successfully scaled the rocky cliffs leading from the Armenian village of Karin Tak, well below the peaks of Shushi, and who helped to drive out Azerbaijan’s main occupation forces in May 1992. He did so, however, at the cost of a mutilated foot, and has since retired from active duty. Vazgen has since re-emerged as a “forester” of sorts, living and working in a small Armenian village near the hills of Khojalu, a former Azerbaijani launching point. During the summer of 1995, in a quiet moment during an otherwise raucous celebration, he took me to a window of his home, extended his hand into the air toward the surrounding forest, intoning almost religiously: “Do you see all of this beauty? All of this grandeur? This is what we have fought for. This is what we live for.” This statement, in fact, was one of many I encountered, particularly following the ceasefire, in which Karabagh’s rural landscapes were depicted as somehow in harmony with Armenian society, almost as a matter of destiny or inevitability. Contrast this rural scene, if you will, with the comparatively more urban setting of Stepanakert, where I met Robert, a painter and sculptor, who was much more attuned to the daily ebb and flow of society and environment. In Stepanakert, war has brought flux to many lives, not least to those who concern themselves with culture. On the one hand, the expulsion

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of the Soviet–Azerbaijani administration has meant the lifting of suffocating, burdensome restrictions on Armenian creative expression – particularly when applied to ethnonational themes. On the other hand, however, the daily business of war and its aftermath have brought about an uneven mix of responses from individual cultural producers. Of those who have survived, many have entirely dropped their vocations in favor of active military duty or other, “practical” pursuits. Others have blended their talents into the movement, as has painter and political leader Emil Abrahamian, who continues to devote spare time to rendering portraits of fallen comrades, often presenting his finished work to the family and friends of the deceased. Still others have taken to their art with renewed focus and vigor, using the struggle variously as a thematic tool, as an inspirational resource, or simply as a promotional gimmick in their quest to secure livelihoods. Robert is of the latter variety, a curious and contradictory mix of warm generosity and avid self-promotion, homespun wisdom and soapbox shtick; one who extols the virtues of blood, soil, and tradition while scrambling for a seat on the train to commodification. During the summer of 1993, he had spotted me taking a few snapshots during a Yerevan–Stepanakert bus ride, and before I knew it, we were fast engaged in swapping biographies. As it turned out, he was an artist, newly returned from France where he had exhibited and toured with the newly formed Karabagh national dance troupe. Evidently this exposure had opened to him the possibilities of diaspora, for when he learned that I was an Armenian-American writer, well … it was all settled: I was coming to dinner the following day, to chat, to visit the wife and family, but above all to conduct an interview and survey Robert’s collection. “Don’t forget to bring your camera”, he reminded as we parted company upon arriving in Stepanakert. The following afternoon, I wound my way through Stepanakert’s central square, looking to keep our appointment. Huge administrative buildings, now charred and gutted, loomed to my left, in stark contrast to the scenes of teeming life before me – packs of young street-urchins milling about, errand bound fighters on leave from the front, vendors shuttling their wares to market, self-important young guardsmen “guarding” the provisional government headquarters. I began to wonder whether these might form the subject of our lunchtime discussion. I soon found Robert’s neighborhood, a string of wooden houses located just downhill from the square. Eventually I stumbled upon his residence, a single-floor apartment which he shared with his wife and

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four-year-old daughter. (There had been a second daughter too, but she was killed in a missile blast in 1991, as she ran outside the house to play. Nearly no one, I came to learn, has remained unscathed by the difficult early years of struggle.) After a hearty welcome, Robert and his wife Shushan sat me down for a leisurely session of fried string beans and endless philosophizing. We wore an unhurried path through a host of topics – the meaning of art, nationalism, the natural environment, as well as stories of petty, everyday racism Armenians had endured amidst Azerbaijan’s enforced cultural superiority. Soon enough, I began to sense that Robert’s leitmotif was nature – nature as key toward unlocking the secrets of Karabagh-Armenian identity, indeed toward revealing the essence of humanity. I egged him on, at times unwittingly, alternately praising the countryside and decrying the alienation, fragmentation and individualism of the city. He responded in kind: A photographer may capture what’s on the outside, but a painter feels what’s inside … . Here the mountains have heart, a language of their own, which can teach much to those who listen. My spirit is drawn from these lands, these mountains. The rest is technique. I’ve tried living in Yerevan, but I’ve found that I must live here if I’m to capture the essence of my art … . The mountains, they can feel as well what is happening. When the fighting escalated last year, suddenly huge amounts of wheat emerged from the soil. This can be no coincidence. Did he really believe all that? Or was this some way of generating good copy – telling a writer, still halting and unsteady on only his second day in the war zone – what he likely wanted to hear? I listened some more: I’m nourished by this water. It may be dirty, it may not be cold, but it’s what I’m made of. I grow better here, can create something of value here. We could have emigrated, as many others have done, but you can’t bring your soil with you, wherever you go. Our ties to this land are part of who we are. Fact or fiction? Myth or mystery? It really did not matter, because in the end the “truth” was to be found in his creative output. Robert showed me his vast collection of paintings, sculptures and etchings which he would attempt to sell in Yerevan, Moscow, and elsewhere (but rarely in

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Stepanakert). Most dealt with themes and forms that explicitly and without mediation tied the nation to a stark, elemental nature. This was not simply about the organicism of the countryside; here was big nature – mountain peaks, cliffs and valleys – that morphed into people and then back again. From portraits of dadigs composed entirely of mountainous rock, to fidayin21 sprouting from the soil, nation and nature, it seemed, were indissoluble, collapsible, a perfect fit. And yet when Robert told me the story of his most recent adventures in France, the irony of it all began to dawn on me. Here was a celebration of insularity, of essence, of anti-modern anti-cosmospolitanism, if you will, and yet accomplished through that most modern of processes, the transnational commodification of art. Even more, here he was invoking and exporting an idealized, naturalized Karabagh – clearly for those diasporans and others who would fulfill a romantic desire to possess, to consume a bit of Karabagh, even while supporting it – precisely at a time when the land is being denaturalized, even commodified, in unprecedented fashion. Indeed, Robert himself was part of that process, helping to produce a Karabagh that was slowly slipping out of reach, even as he produced it. The artist-as-consciousness-raiser, who held an important message, to be sure, nevertheless had come into conflict with the artist-as-producer. I note all this here not to condemn, per se, nor to stress the uniqueness of the case. Rather, Robert’s situation speaks to a larger theme of contradictions, namely, the dilemmas of social activities which embrace, even reinforce, their opposites. This applies, of course, not only to the commodification of art, but to the creeping commodification of landscape, of daily life itself – whereby “We Are Our Mountains” becomes yet another advertising slogan to be embossed on T-shirts, sold (to those who can pay) and displayed alongside the increasingly present Snickers bars and Coke cans, themselves reflective of an opening up of commercial borders even as political borders seemingly have been secured. Much more remains to be said on this matter. Elsewhere in my research, in fact, I explore how a reified, muscular nature – one made to carry the weight of social relations – has become possible particularly in Karabagh, at this particular time and place. For it is a time–space in which ideology – not nationalism per se, but ideology as a phenomenon – has rebounded with a vengeance, seemingly filling a vacuum in numerous minds and hearts that had been let down, disappointed, or had never come to terms with the empty abstractions, the wooden hypocrisies that so often stood in under the name of “socialism”, over so many years. But that story must be told another time … ***

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I saw Robert once or twice more that summer, and later, as promised, sent to him the photographs I had taken of his work. Upon my departure, he offered me a gift of a miniature handcarved doll, in return for my promise to stay in touch. I have since given the doll away, and have not seen him since. Not all promises are meant to be kept. Oosda Rubik22 One of today’s booming industries in the former Soviet republics is tobacco production and distribution. With high consumer demand in both rural and urban areas and few impediments in terms of production criteria, health or safety regulations, Philip Morris and other transnational giants have rushed in, buying formerly state-owned companies, setting up factories of their own, importing surpluses of selected “western” product lines as well as merging them with existing supplies to produce highly profitable “mixed blends”. The latter, especially, have caught on tremendously (for those who can afford them) and have led to a corresponding decline in demand for traditional Soviet-era brands such as Cosmos and Astra.23 These developments became a topic of lively discussion one day during the summer of 1995 at the ARF party headquarters in Stepanakert.24 I remarked to my comrades that unlike Yerevan and Moscow, where I had spent time during my earlier visit, Stepanakert still seemed to possess a large number of Cosmos smokers and suppliers, and I wondered as to possible political–economic reasons why this might be the case. I then proceeded to declare my personal bias against Soviet-era cigarettes, upon which the conversation ensued somewhat in this manner: [me] But as bad as they are, Cosmos are nothing compared to that old brand with that sickening smell I found here two years ago. I don’t see much of that around anymore. Which cigarettes are you referring to? [me] They looked and smelled of cow dung – in fact, they probably should have been used for heating fuel. You know, in those brittle cardboard boxes that are always falling apart, just like the cigarettes? Ohhh. You mean “Kazbek”. [me] Kazbek! That’s it. Kazbek … only other men smoke Kazbek [we all laugh].25 Rubik Babayan was one such man. Seemingly otherworldly in tastes and appearances, Rubik possessed smoking habits that were accompanied by a big flowing beard that covered his mouth, a rambling,

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mumbling style of speech, a foul stench and an overall disheveled appearance that would seem to indicate an obliviousness to one’s surroundings. And yet, in myriad other ways that mattered, Rubik was very much in tune with the world, a craftsman plying the trade of national liberation, you might say, for whom Karabagh was not so much a prize to be fought over as it was a laboratory, a workshop, a realm of possibility. Born in 1947 in Hadrut, the village-capital of Karabagh’s southernmost province, Rubik belonged to an extended family with more than a century of ties to this rural locale.26 And yet, after displaying early aptitude as a mechanical engineer, Rubik moved out of Karabagh – as did much of the emerging professional/managerial strata of his time – to Tashkent, in search of educational and career opportunities. Eventually, however, Rubik returned – to his same family plot, in fact – and took up a job in the Hadrut district administration, leading a relatively unremarkable life until February 1988, when national unrest first broke out. It was then that “Oosda Rubik” was born. Along with a group of similarly positioned young men (artists, historians, agronomists and others who had traversed the circuits of Soviet imperial geography), Rubik sensed the historic opportunities afforded by glasnost and perestroika, and worked to organize the district’s Armenian majority, in parallel with similar developments in Stepanakert and Yerevan, to voice Armenians’ collective demand for self-determination. This was carried forth through unprecedented shows of peaceful protest: rallies, petitions to Moscow, open-air mass meetings, as well as an occasional show of civil disobedience. Rubik became involved, however, not through any charismatic organizing presence or oratorical skill, but rather as one who took charge of logistics, as when he took it upon himself to climb the largest tree in Hadrut’s crowded central square, where he quickly and quietly unfurled atop its outstretched branches the Armenian tricolor flag – the long taboo nationalist emblem symbolizing Karabagh’s aspiration to reunite with Armenia – only to escape as police tried in vain (for several days!) to remove the unwanted albatross.27 During the summer and fall of 1988, as tensions palpably grew in Hadrut, KGB operatives initiated a hunt, seeking to decapitate the nascent resistance and to stifle popular morale. Clearly targeted, Rubik and friends quickly took flight to the surrounding hills and forests, often for weeks at a time, while their relatives and friends were interrogated, harassed, and in a few cases tortured. It was here – amidst the shifting, nomadic life of guerrilla in hiding – that Rubik began to earn

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his reputation as “the master”, aiding in the development of makeshift munitions factories and attending to many immediate, logistical concerns – fashioning rifles out of truck driveshafts, grenades out of bedsprings, for example – that earned him a reputation for resourcefulness that he carried for the rest of his life. I first met Rubik, in July 1993, during the height of the war, when I was carrying out a series of freelance investigative assignments. Rubik was among those who offered me eyewitness testimony regarding the recent course of the Karabagh movement, and following our successful completion of the assignment, he invited me to stay with him that evening. I heartily agreed, only to find that my welcome mat had been prepared not at Rubik’s conventional home, a small and crowded dwelling near Hadrut’s main riverbed, but at his second home, a remote cave tucked away in the side of one of the surrounding mountains. The cave itself was a remarkable feat. Far from some crude or primitive cubicle, it had been converted into a sparkling, lantern-lit apartment, sparsely but invitingly furnished with hand woven rugs and cushions, and divided into two rooms, one serving as a makeshift kitchen and supply room, the other as a combined living room, dining room, and bedroom. Even more remarkable, however, was the story behind the cave, which Rubik proceeded to relate in detail as we prepared and devoured a customary supper of tomatoes, scallions, cucumbers, bread, cheese, and the ever-present jug of homemade vodka. The cave, he told me, had been discovered by his grandfather, himself a local nationalist leader, during the Armeno–Tatar wars of 1917–18 and had been used as a secret arms depot, supply storehouse, as well as a hideout for local villagers. Moreover, he admonished, the cave could be reconverted to such use, at a moment’s notice, should the need ever arise again.28 We stayed up for hours, discussing the war, our personal histories, our hopes and aspirations. It was a warm, free-flowing and comradely conversation, and yet not without its difficulties. Linguistically I had to struggle to penetrate a dense thicket of local dialect, admixtures of Turkish and Russian terminology, and Rubik’s own less-than-polished diction (a struggle that was complicated by his typical insistence that I drink until the vodka supply had been exhausted). But on a more profound level, I had to struggle with the jarring, heady sensation of meeting history and geography head-on; that is, being forced to confront the idealized, romanticized notions of Karabagh that I, and so many diasporan Armenians, had nurtured for so long. Yes, here was nation as nature – “We Are Our Mountains”, if you will – but not in some static or fetishized sense, not subject to the tourist gaze of detached

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observation, but rather experienced as a living, breathing reality, forged in the crucible of struggle, of which I was now a part. This national liberation story, personified in Rubik, indeed revealed such potent integrative forces that myriad once fixed boundaries and categories began to blur, to dereify before my blurring eyes. “Home?” I wondered. “What was home anyway?” The extended family in the small house by the riverbed? Or was it the forest, with its mantle of security and secrecy? Or perhaps it was right here, in this cave, hewn out of the side of a mountain and yet serving as a domestic space as well, where the sound of distant rocketfire, the story of old and new battles won and lost, and the looming presence of a landscape harnessed to the carriage of national struggle, all produced an inescapable feeling of oneness.29 Home, it seemed, had become fluid, relational, defined as much by where you are going as by where you are at, even as it formed part of a larger struggle seeking not to jar but to stabilize, to preserve and protect, a fiercely elemental, rooted, and place-based notion of identity. The same may be said for “nature” itself. Right here, sitting before me, was not the stereotypical “peasant” or “mountain man” of western lore, the supposed carrier of tradition and insularity, who was somehow in organic, unchanging harmony with nature. Rather, here was someone who had experienced life beyond the periphery, who had been able to apprehend the degree of subjugation and underdevelopment his people had undergone, and who had returned to place his skills at the service of his people. In doing so, he became bound up with a struggle in which casually-made distinctions – between mind and body, work and play, business and pleasure – quickly dissolved, marking a different sort of human–environment relationship, one in which the content of the struggle, in effect, defined its form. This, too, was “nature”, it seemed to me, but a nature that comes to life precisely at the moment when it dies as a sanctified category of inquiry/experience. And during the long moments of reflection that have followed this experience, it continues to strike me that “nature”, in this context, could be construed as a code not for that which constrains us but that which liberates us – from alienation, from oppression – as part of an open-ended process of recovery, discovery, and regaining of wholeness. *** Rubik and I awoke early the following morning and traveled to visit his wife and in-laws back at the “other” house. After regaling each other with more stories, toasts, and family/marital histories, we parted company and met only intermittently thereafter. Following my departure in 1993, I never saw Rubik again. He was killed in a

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landmine blast while on a hunting expedition, sometime during the ensuing winter. Other reflections Moving aside from these vignettes, I should also note that while western notions of social construction are certainly not very popular in a place like Karabagh, there are a number of exceptions to the rule. For example, the people I encountered who were perhaps most palpably aware of the unnatural aspects of the nation – the fact that the nation is a constructed, variegated entity, made up of different groups marked off by gender, class, and other social categories – were often the women. This was so particularly among women who had taken the bold step of joining fighting battalions – sometimes meeting acceptance, other times rejection – and who often reacted to the latter by forming their own battalions. These women tend to look at social change not only in abstract or strictly defined “national” terms, but in other ways as well. In fact, many have seen and also promoted the shifting of gender roles during various points in the struggle. For these people, along with the growing class of postwar itinerant laborers, refugees, and other “interstitial” people, the contradictions involved in holding together the nation as a stable, undifferentiated entity are all too apparent, and now emerge as subjects for discussion and critique. This would seem to offer hope for change, not by dismantling Karabagh’s nationalist project, but by reworking and thereby strengthening it, by developing a more supple nationalism that can enable Karabaghtsis to evaluate and act upon their current predicament with greater clarity and breadth.

Looking ahead Dealing with the “nation–nature” nexus is fruitful and also somewhat daunting at this particular time. Why? Because the utility of nature – so clearly demonstrated during earlier phases of the struggle – is now accompanied by a sense of limitation, even contradiction, as Karabagh undergoes postwar transition. For although Karabagh Armenians have achieved de facto independence, much still stands to change and in fact is changing in Karabagh on a daily basis. Class cleavages appear to be widening, social and economic insecurity have increased, and democracy is a looming concern. Ironically, land, once the most basic and communal of resources, has become increasingly subject to the transformations wrought by privatization and commodification. Hence, although war has ended for now, Karabaghtsis today often find themselves waging equally heroic struggles on other fronts.

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Given these concerns, it would appear that Armenians – in Karabagh, Armenia, as well as in the diaspora – have much difficult learning to do if they are to make sense of their predicament at this time in their history. For one, Armenians must seriously look at the pitfalls, alongside the possibilities, of naturalizing the nation at what appears to be the transnational moment – at which borders of all kinds appear to be opening up precisely at a time when firm and fixed political borders would seem to have been secured. At the same time, perhaps the time has come for Armenians to look at Azerbaijan with new eyes, seeking out a more fine grained view of the dynamics of Azerbaijani society, keeping in mind that its ebb and flow, particularly in relation to oil, will likely affect and in some ways constitute Armenians’ own national condition and identity. After all, identities, national or otherwise, are never formed in a vacuum. And finally, a caveat. Today, there seems to be a fairly widespread nostalgia, both in Armenia and in Karabagh, for more secure, orderly days. This nostalgia is entirely understandable, given the social and economic hardships of war, now compounded by a host of postwar privations.30 And yet, it may be particularly dangerous to look backward at a time when the rules of polity and society may be changing beyond recognition. For as Armenia and Karabagh become integrated into the circuitry of transnational capital, increasingly we may find that nationalism, by itself, may be insufficient for making sense of and acting upon a rapidly changing world. What may be called for, rather, is a new brand of socialism; one that takes its class politics seriously, but without ignoring or distorting those forms of identity that remain essential to social life, using as its model not the pre-1988 Soviet Union, but movements of other exploited or marginalized groups who are now experiencing the same moment in other contexts.

Notes *

The suffix “tsi” in Armenian refers to a person who resides in or hails from the place in question. In this case, Karabagh.

1. This chapter was written originally in the spring of 1997, and has been modified periodically thereafter. In producing it, I was greatly aided by a writing fellowship granted by the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University. Grateful acknowledgement is made for this assistance. 2. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996), p. 2.

John Antranig Kasparian 151 03. This chapter is part of my dissertation work exploring the dynamics of nationalist struggle in Nagorno-Karabagh. My research is based primarily on participant observation conducted during my two extended trips to the region, once in 1993 during the height of the fighting and again in 1995 after a ceasefire had been declared. Sources include diaries recording my personal experiences and observations, interviews with participants variously placed within the struggle, as well as various primary and secondary documents collected during and following these visits. 4. Such (mis)treatments have arisen not only in scholarly forums, but also in mainstream media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. See, for example, Bill Keller’s article entitled “General Strike Fails to Take Hold in Armenia” New York Times, March 27, 1988, p. 1 and Gary Lee’s “Armenians Say Soviet Force Discourages Planned Protest” Washington Post, March 26, 1988, p. 1. These articles represent a larger output which, after February 1988, increasingly presented Yerevan as the focal point of the Karabagh movement, with only residual attention devoted to goings-on within Karabagh itself. 5. Thomas Goltz. “Letter from Eurasia: The Hidden Russian Hand,” Foreign Policy, 92 (Fall, 1993), pp. 92–116. 6. This problem may also stem from other sources, for example, the persistent discrimination faced by rural populations within the former Soviet Union. One of the legacies of Stalinism has been the reluctance of Soviet political elites to treat the peasantry as a viable political force, often reducing them to the status of objects to be managed by the center. See Alvin W. Gouldner, “Stalinism: a Study of Internal Colonialism”, Telos, 34, pp. 5–48. The Soviet failure to take rural agency seriously has proven convenient for the development of distorted images – for example, Karabagh as “hot potato” – that have crept into the views of many western opinion makers. 7. Nora Dudwick, “Armenia: the Nation Awakens” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, (eds), Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 261–87 and Claude Mutafian, “Karabagh in the Twentieth Century” in Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: the History and Geopolitics of NagornoKarabagh (London: Zed, 1994), pp. 109–70. 8. See Igor Muradian, “Artsakh: the Situation, The Decisions,” Horizon Weekly, March 12, 1990, p. 9. 9. Levon Chorbajian, “Introduction”, in Chorbajian, Donabedian and Mutafian, op. cit., pp. 1–48 and Nora Dudwick, “The Cultural Construction of Political Violence in Armenia and Azerbaijan”, Problems of PostCommunism (July/August, 1995), pp. 18–23. 10. In recent decades, geographers have substantially explored the concept of relationality in their efforts to improve spatial theory. This concept holds that space is not absolute, fixed, or containable, but rather, fluid and dialectically tied to social process. As such, space is contained in objects only insofar as objects contain and represent relationships to other objects. See David Harvey, Social Justice and the City, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) and Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989). Over the same period, relationality has gained similar footholds in other scholarly realms

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11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

such as discourse analysis, state theory, and the analysis of state formation; however, relational theories of nationalism have been slower to reach academia. In fact, relational nationalism has received explicit, scholarly attention only in the past few years. See Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation”, Cultural Studies, 7, 3, 1993, pp. 349–63; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “The Black Nation, or: Home through Zion’s National Geographies”, unpublished manuscript; Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Geoff Eley and Ronald G. Suny, “Introduction” in Geoff Eley and Ronald G. Suny (eds), Becoming National: a Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Yet much of the substance may be detected in the work of an earlier generation of scholar–activists who sought to investigate nationalism through a wedding of theory and practice. See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967); Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Writings of Amilcar Cabral, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Gwyn A. Williams, The Welsh in Their History, (London: Croom Helm, 1982), and Ronaldo Munck, The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism (London: Zed, 1986). For a succinct account of the first five years of the Karabagh struggle see Stepan H. Astourian, “The Nagorno Karabagh Conflict”, Mediterranean Quarterly, 5, 4, 1994, pp. 85–109. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1991. See, for example, the New Left Review’s interview with Regis Debray, “Marxism and the National Question”, 105, 1977, pp. 25–41, where he tells Marxist theorists that they cannot fully understand nationalism without an adequate theory of nature: “We must locate the nation phenomenon within general laws regulating the survival of the human species. This survival is won against death. Against entropy, that is … ” (p. 27). Similarly, although in a more balanced way, Frances Fox Piven invokes nature as she situates nationalism within the broader, recent resurgence of identity politics around the world. This resurgence, she argues, relates not only to emerging processes such as globalization and capitalist restructuring, but also to basic human needs: “Identity politics is almost surely inevitable, because it is a way of thinking that reflects something very elemental about human experience … attachments to the group, attachments that are common to humankind and that probably reflect primordial needs that are satisfied by the group, for material survival in a predatory world, as well as for recognition, community, security, and perhaps also a yearning for immortality …” (“Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics”, The Socialist Register 1995, London: Merlin Press, p. 103). These discussions reveal much about how “nature” may creep into the cultural realm. And yet, neither Debray nor Piven examines the specific reasons why the nation, and not, say, the region or locality, has been selected so persistently and so preeminently as a “natural” site of belonging. In Armenian, “grandfather” and “grandmother”. Cabral, op. cit.

John Antranig Kasparian 153 16. For more on this subject see Daniels for whom the utilization of landscape is part of a broader galvanization involving the “symbolic activation of time and space” on the part of resistance movements. Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in Europe and the United States, (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1993, p. 5. 17. Foremost in my mind is Garen Yegparian’s moving interview with partisan commander “Armencho” shortly before the latter’s death in combat. See Armen Gasparian, “My Story”. Interview with Garen Yegparian in Togh village, Hadrut region, Nagorno-Karabagh, June 1993, unpublished. 18. The term “real-and-imagined” is adapted from Tölölyan’s usage. Khachig Tölölyan, “The Nation State and Its Others: In Lieu of a Preface”, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1, 1, 1991, p. 4. 19. The underside of which is often “A Turk is a Turk is a Turk …”. 20. During the phase of guerrilla struggle, landscape undoubtedly served as a dynamic, material force – not fixed, not idealized – that served as a powerful tool in reasserting claims to history and territory. Yet, during later phases and particularly during the postwar years, what we often encounter is an inert, not dynamic, nature. Clearly, strands of the “new ecology” of western academia have yet to touch Karabagh’s mainstream. Such concepts as hybridity, dynamism, and the dialectical aspects of natural processes are not applied to Karabagh. Rather, the environment is often viewed – by fighters, artists, parliamentarians, and academicians alike – in fixed terms, dictated by notions of category, of strict boundaries and borders, harmony and organicism, and an elemental, unchanging essence that translates very neatly into “nature:culture”. See Karl Zimmerer, “Human Geography and the ‘New Ecology’: the Prospect and Promise of Integration”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84, 1, 1994, pp. 108–25. 21. “Guerrillas” or “freedom fighters” in Turkish. 22. “Master Rubik” in Turkish. 23. For more on this development, see the informative and quite entertaining piece, “Watching the Demise of a Stinky Soviet Staple”, Moscow Times, July 1, 1993, p. 20. 24. The reference is to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnaktsutiun, which was an important presence in the early years of the Karabagh movement and which remains active in Karabagh to this day. 25. The Armenian word for other – ooreesh – was used in this case, but the reference is clearly to special, otherworldly men. 26. Discussed elsewhere in my research, Hadrut was (and is) probably the most isolated, underdeveloped and culturally repressed zone of Karabagh, and from which emerged many of the leading and most militant elements of the struggle. 27. Much of my source material here comes from Emil Abrahamian, Rubik’s close friend and comrade, who was one of the chief architects of the Hadrut uprising and remains an active party leader to this day. Rubik himself was rather reticent when it came to discussing his own accomplishments. 28. This story, and many others like it, attests to the persistence of memory in offering nourishment to the emerging nationalist struggle. While memory is never transparent and is certainly open to reinterpretation, Rubik’s

154 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh redeployment of a decades-old historical consciousness nonetheless offers serious challenges to Suny, Slezkine and others who emphasize how nations were “made”, rather than submerged or repressed, during the Soviet era. Ronald G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) and Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularlism”, in Eley and Suny, op. cit., pp. 203–38. 29. For more on dereifying place through armed struggle/guerrilla warfare, see Fanon, op. cit., pp. 126–7, 134–6 and Gerard Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa: with the Guerrillas in “Portuguese” Guinea, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), pp. 55–6, 83–4. 30. These privations are associated mainly (though not exclusively) with the austerity programs Armenia now endures as part of its gradual incorporation into the sphere of capitalist development.

6 The Diaspora and the Karabagh Movement: Oppositional Politics between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Armenian National Movement1 Razmik Panossian

Introduction “At this stage [March 1995], it is possible to assert with a clear conscience that the situation would have been preferable (to the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrossian) if Armenia was directly occupied by Turkey … .” This is not a quote from the Turkish or Azeri press. It is from an article published in a diasporan Armenian-language Dashnak2 newspaper at the height of the Ter-Petrossian–ARF antagonism in early 1995.3 This is a far cry from the euphoria of 1991 when the diaspora and the homeland were metaphorically presented as two wings of the same bird. In four or five short years relations between the newly independent homeland and a significant element of the diaspora had disintegrated to the level of declaring the rule of Armenia’s first post-Soviet President as worse than Turkish occupation. Of course, one can over-generalize from a single case. Levon TerPetrossian was not and is not Armenia, and the Dashnaks do not embody the heterogeneous diaspora, with its many ideological, cultural, and geographic divisions. My focus is on the politics of the homeland–diaspora relationship from the late 1980s to the resignation of Ter-Petrossian as President in the “constitutional coup” of February 1998. Furthermore, the diaspora I have in mind is the “western” diaspora of North America and Europe, and to some extent the Middle East. Even so, the topic remains broad, and as a result, some omissions and generalizations are required. I will spend more time on the 1988 to 1991 period because this is when the foundations of the relationship 155

156 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

were laid. Ultimately, I want to address two simple questions, which call for complex answers. First, what were the basic differences in approach between the homeland and the diaspora on a number of fundamental issues? Second, why did the differences between the homeland and the diaspora lead to such sharp divisions and open antagonisms? In this context, the main dynamic to be discussed is the relationship between the ARF and the Armenian government. Hence, most of the research is based on Dashnak publications, most notably Droshak [Flag], the official party organ published in Athens. I will briefly cover the Ramgavars, but not the Hnchaks4 (the latter have all but disappeared as a significant political force, except in some communities in the Middle East). Despite the objections of non-ARF diasporan parties and organizations, I believe this focus on the Dashnaks is justified. There are four reasons for this: 1. The ARF is the most significant party when it comes to diasporan relations with Armenia in the realm of politics. 2. It is the most significant “diasporan” party operating within Armenia after 1990;5 and, organizationally, it was probably the second most powerful party in the republic after the ruling party during Ter-Petrossian’s presidency. 3. It initially had a special, almost “mythic”, place in the imagination of the Karabagh movement and Armenian nationalists in the republic, even during the Communist period, and hence much was expected of it in the early years of the national movement. 4. In terms of highlighting differences between the Armenian government and the diaspora, the ARF’s position is the most extreme, and therefore, in terms of comparative methodology the most revealing. On the homeland side, I will exclusively examine the position of the Armenian National Movement (ANM) which became the postCommunist governing party, and on Ter-Petrossian. I am fully aware that many in Armenia, including founding members of the Karabagh Movement and the ANM, did not share the subsequent views of this organization, but Armenia’s policy was set by the ANM, and hence I am more concerned about its views. I will briefly allude to more general issues, but for the most part, these are the parameters within which this chapter is written. It is, in essence, an analysis of ARF–ANM relations, that is, the core of the political dynamic between the homeland and the diaspora.

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Historical context Since the 1920s, there has been a fundamental split within the diaspora, based on a political division over how to relate to the Sovietized homeland. The Dashnak bloc did not consider the Soviet regime legitimate and had very little contact with the Armenian SSR. There was, overall, an antagonistic relationship between this part of the diaspora and Armenia, especially until the late 1970s. In the post-World War II period, and particularly after the formation in Armenia of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Diaspora Armenians in 1964, the nonDashnak bloc had friendly relations with the republic; there were frequent contacts in the realms of culture, education, official visits, and so on. Ironically, after 1990–91, a very similar dynamic emerged between the now independent homeland and the diaspora. The second point is that despite this profound division, there had emerged a general consensus in the entire diaspora that Soviet rule was essential for Armenia’s security in relation to the Turkish threat. It is crucial to note that this view, which had become “conventional” wisdom in the diaspora, was accepted by the ARF as well. This was a reversal of the party’s position between the 1920s and the early 1960s regarding Soviet Armenia. The logic of the security argument came from the Soviet authorities, but it was accepted, and even internalized, by the entire diaspora. Hence, the Dashnaks had reoriented their position from seeing Soviet Armenia as an illegitimate entity to its acceptance as a, if not the, homeland, albeit imperfect and territorially incomplete. Consequently, their criticisms of the Soviet Union as a whole had substantially decreased, to being virtually nonexistent by the 1980s.6 This attitude, as will be shown, stayed with the party until the collapse of the USSR; instead of the Soviet regime, pan-Turkism was conceived to be the real evil to be combated.7 Third, the Armenian SSR was ideologically constructed to be the “homeland” of the diaspora, even though in reality the post-Genocide diaspora did not have too many “real” or historical links with it. The diaspora was mostly from western/Ottoman Armenia, and not from Sovietized Russian Armenia. Hence, the emotional, social and subjective links of the diaspora were not, in essence, with the surviving republic. The location of the “imagined homeland” lay elsewhere, in the lost lands. In short, the “Soviet Armenia as homeland” view is a creation of intellectuals since the 1920s. Its roots lie in the propaganda of the Armenian Aid Committee (HOK), Soviet Armenia’s tool in the 1920s and early 1930s for generating diasporan aid for the republic.

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Interestingly, by the 1950s and 1960s the logic of aid was reversed, but the logic of “Soviet Armenia as homeland” was strengthened: rather than being a homeland in need, the republic was recast by its leadership as a homeland which not only was the sole bastion of true Armenianness, but was the one to help Armenians in the diaspora to maintain their identity and community. Furthermore, the diaspora was viewed as an abnormality, as a negative experience of exile. The logic was that the diaspora is a mere appendage to the Soviet Armenian homeland, and not a legitimate entity in its own right that could survive. These notions were eventually accepted and internalized by the vast majority of diaspora Armenians as well, both in the Dashnak and non-Dashnak blocs.8 The fourth and last point is that despite various links and contacts between the homeland and one side of the diaspora, there was a profound ignorance among Armenians of the homeland and abroad. Linked to this was also the wide gap which existed between them on the terrains of culture, politics, world outlook, language (dialect), and so on. These four historical factors dating from the Soviet period had profound ramifications on subsequent relations between the Karabagh movement, and the ANM (Ter-Petrossian) government which emerged out of it, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the diaspora with its many organizations. With these issues in mind, let us now turn to developments in and after 1988.

1988: The diaspora’s reaction to the movement The diaspora was caught completely off-guard when the Karabagh movement exploded in February 1988. It did support the movement but Armenians abroad could simply not envision any demand broader than Moscow joining the Mountainous Karabagh Oblast to Soviet Armenia. They consistently remained a few steps behind the evolution of political thinking in the homeland. Meanwhile, the Karabagh movement in Armenia had great expectations of the diaspora, especially from the Dashnaks with their nationalist rhetoric of liberation. For the Armenian masses and intellectuals in the nationalist movement, the ARF was the embodiment of their ideals. According to one analyst, “The feelings of the people toward the Dashnaktsutiun [i.e. the ARF] in 1988–89 had reached the level of religious reverence.”9 By extension, the diaspora, especially the Dashnak bloc, was revered for its nationalist ideals.10 But with great expectations came great disappointments. Dashnaks misjudged the mood of the country, making some major

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mistakes, and, ultimately, did not bring their views in line with the basic thrusts of the nationalist movement. By 1994–95 there was heated conflict between the ARF and the ANM in the Dashnak side of the diaspora, leading to the mentality encapsulated in the opening quote. During the summer and autumn of 1990, all three diasporan parties established themselves in Armenia with much fanfare. They began to publish newspapers, to hold meetings and to set up various affiliated organizations. Once it became obvious that the Communists were doomed, the Ramgavars and Hnchaks came to the staunch support of the ANM leadership (based on their traditional belief that they should be on the side of whatever government ruled in Armenia). However, both of these parties failed to build a mass base. In the minds of most Armenians in the homeland, they were tainted by their association with the Communist regime. The Dashnaks, on the other hand, became a major oppositional force as they set their sights on obtaining power from the ANM, and began to organize and mobilize for that purpose.11 I will now turn to some of the key issues on which the ARF and the ANM differed.12 These differences can be summarized in Table 6.1. Note that I have also incorporated the Ramgavars as an additional point of comparison.

Armenia’s independence from the USSR The issue of Armenian independence represented the most critical difference between the Karabagh movement/ANM and the ARF after the summer of 1989, and it set the stage for subsequent conflict. The movement did not begin as a drive for independence, but within six months, as it became clearer and clearer that Moscow was not going to transfer Karabagh to the Armenian SSR, a clear pattern of thought began to emerge which conceived of the USSR as an empire detrimental to the interests of Armenia. The earliest proponent of this was Paruyr Hayrikian of the National Self-Determination Union, but by the end of 1988, the “mainstream” intelligentsia in the national movement began to see independence as a precondition for solving Armenia’s problems, be it the Karabagh issue, economic mismanagement, social concerns or the environment. Such ideas were crystallized by late 1989–90, reaching their clearest expression in articles by Rafael Ishkhanian, “The Law of Excluding the Third Force” (October 1989) and Vazgen Manukian “It Is Time to Jump Off the Train” (May–June 1990).13 Related to this anti-USSR approach was the delegitimization of Gorbachev and of the Communist leadership in Armenia under Suren

Issues

ANM

ARF

Ramgavar

Independence

As possible. First step in solving problems. Up to 1991: Anti-USSR; it is the root of our problems. After 1991: More balanced, within Russian security zone. Normal relations with Turkey. Pan-Turkism not a threat.

Later, when country is ready.

An ideal.

Armenian cause

Claim to be “realist” and focus on the present republic. Recognition of Genocide and land claims secondary. Self-reliance.

Hard-line. Policies must reflect wider cause re. Genocide and land claims. Reliance on USSR/Russia.

Land claims secondary to economic development, albeit not forgotten

Karabagh

Must be secure. Status secondary to peace. Agreement as soon as possible.

Must be part of Armenia or independent. Continue struggle.

Must not be sacrificed. Armenia should recognize its independence.

Political/economic system

Liberal democracy. Market orientation and privatization.

Social democracy (“soft” socialism). Mixed economy.

Citizenship

Dual citizenship first promised but then denied

Dual citizenship for diasporan Armenians.

Diaspora’s role

Diaspora is an external element. No active role in politics of the republic since the core of the nation is Armenia. Limited to economic assistance.

Diaspora is an integral part of the nation; homeland’s policies must reflect this.

Liberal democracy. Market orientation and privatization. Dual citizenship for diasporans, but did not insist against ANM wishes. Must not be shut out.

Foreign relations outlook

Pro-Russia, as a security measure (be it Soviet or not). Turkey is the enemy; it is the root of our problems; conditonal relations. Pan-Turkism is a real threat.

Pro-West in ideology, but accepts local strategic realities; hence, pro-Russia/Soviet on security issues. Lukewarm regarding relations with Turkey

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Table 6.1 Differences between ANM, ARF and Ramgavar Parties (1988–91;)

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Harutiunian (May 1988–April 6, 1990), who had replaced Karen Demirchian as First Secretary. In short, within a year of the beginning of the Karabagh movement, the nationalist intelligentsia of Armenia espoused clear notions of independence from the Soviet Union, realizing that Moscow was not going to “give” Karabagh to Armenia. Ironically, the party whose motto was “Free, Independent and United Armenia” was against the country’s independence at this stage. The ARF consistently opposed the ANM on this issue and dismissed calls for independence as irresponsible and adventurist. Reflecting the thinking of much of the diaspora, the ARF argued that Armenia could not be independent, it was not ready for it, and it needed Russia/USSR to protect it against pan-Turkism. A Droshak editorial entitled “Although Against Separation, We Remain for Independence” put it this way: “Dashnaktsutiun considers any attempt at immediate separation [from the USSR] as an adventurist step because we see Armenia’s independence as conditional on guarantees of the survival of the Armenian people against the dangers of pan-Turkism.”14 This was in May 1990. The fear of pan-Turkism was such an ingrained part of Dashnak thinking that the party simply could not envision independence without Moscow’s approval. A few lines below, the editorial explicitly states, “without a green light in one way or another from Russia, Armenia could once again fall between the Turkish anvil and the Russian hammer.” Furthermore, Dashnaks constantly supported Suren Harutiunian as the legitimate leader of Armenia, and as the best representative of the republic in Moscow. He had to be supported by the Karabagh movement, it was argued, so that he could be more effective in dealing with the Soviet leadership.15 They still insisted, two years after Gorbachev had lost all credibility in Armenia, that he would solve the Karabagh issue in favor of Armenians if they could present the case correctly to him.16 Far from demanding independence, the ARF was banking on the leader of the empire for favorable solutions. Dashnaks believed that it was in the best interest of Armenia to stay in the USSR, to strengthen itself economically, to sort out the Karabagh problem, and even claim Nakhichevan, through the restructuring process led by Gorbachev, and then engage in the final move towards independence.17 It was only in March 1991, as Azeri and Soviet (Russian) forces were relentlessly attacking Armenians in Getashen and Martunashen, that the ARF finally rejected Gorbachev and began to think along the lines of national self-determination,18 realizing that the “Gorbachev bet”, as Dashnaks had put it, had failed miserably.

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This is not to say that the ARF rejected Armenia’s declaration on independence of August 23, 1990. It supported it because the declaration was only on the “start” of the process of independence, and it did not contain anti-Russian tendencies, that is, it did not reflect some of the “mistakes” of the ANM according to the ARF.19 That is to say, Dashnaks were enthusiastic regarding the declaration because it was not insisting on immediate and total independence. For the Ramgavars independence was an ideal to be achieved much later.

Foreign relations and outlook Each party’s position on independence was obviously tied to its outlook on foreign relations, security issues, and geopolitics. Briefly, the ANM saw the Soviet Union as an empire that was undermining Armenian interests. It was the main external threat to the republic, and hence its dissolution was welcomed. Although the movement flirted briefly with anti-Russian attitudes before 1991, this trend never developed into a serious approach. And when Boris Yeltsin emerged as the leader of the Russian Federation against Gorbachev and the Union, the ANM came to the side of Yeltsin. After the collapse of the USSR, ANM’s policies were clearly pro-Russian on security issues, balanced with economic ties to the West. Importantly, ANM wanted to develop normal relations with Turkey, putting aside historical considerations, and rejecting pan-Turkism as a threat. As Ter-Petrossian put it in a speech in the Supreme Soviet on June 23, 1989, “Pan-Turkism, as an ideology, born during the First World War, has presently lost its context as a political factor since Turkish speaking people have taken the path of national development.”20 He added, seeing Armenia as surrounded by enemies and therefore only capable of safeguarding its existence under the protection of a great power, is a “bankrupt and dangerous” way of thinking. As already noted, the ARF had been systematically pro-Russian, which meant pro-Soviet Union before its dissolution.21 In the struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, it came down on the side of the latter because it simply could not believe that the USSR would disintegrate.22 For the ARF, Turkey and pan-Turkism was the real threat to Armenia and the root of the nation’s problems. The Karabagh struggle, the Sumgait massacre of Armenians, Azerbaijani policies, and so on, were all tied to pan-Turkism and not to the Soviet Union. Hence, there should not be any relations with Turkey without the historical fact of the Genocide being taken into account.

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In their expressed ideology, the Ramgavars were the most western oriented party. They believed in liberal democracy and market relations, and, therefore, wanted Armenia to be close to the West. But they too realized that when it came to foreign policy and security, local strategic realities had to be taken into account. Ever fearful of antagonizing Russia, their pro-western attitudes were offset against their favorable stand toward the Soviet Union (and Russia) as Armenia’s protector.

The Armenian cause There were major differences in the parties’ conception of the Armenian cause. According to the ANM, the primary aim of the Armenian cause should be the strengthening of the independent statehood of Armenia and the security of Karabagh. Genocide recognition and land claims were secondary to this imperative. Such an approach reflected a reinterpretation of the cause to suit the needs of the republic. It was based on “realist” calculations of the current capacities of the country. Raising wider issues would have been, for the ANM, biting off more than the country could chew and hence detrimental.23 The ARF was much more hard line. It did accept that not all elements of the entire cause could be addressed now, but it argued that Armenian policies must reflect the wider issues of Genocide recognition and the lost lands in Turkey and Nakhichevan. The first item on the agenda was, however, the reunification of Karabagh with Armenia, followed by Nakhichevan and Akhalkalak (the Armenian region in Georgia). What is more, this was to be done through the Soviet Union!24 The Ramgavars were much closer to the ANM thinking on this issue. National development had to take precedence over land claims and historic grievances.25 It should be noted that Clause 11 of the August 1990 Declaration of Independence says that the Armenian Republic supports the attempts to achieve international recognition of the Genocide, but it does not make any land claims against Turkey (or Georgia). This clause was hotly debated in parliament, but eventually included in the declaration despite the objection of many ANM leaders.

Solution to the Karabagh conflict The ANM and the ARF had profound differences on this issue as well. Fairly early on, in 1989, Dashnaks began to criticize the Karabagh

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Committee for “mixing water in the wine of Artsakh” – that is, broadening their demands from the attachment of the oblast to Armenia to wider political issues and independence.26 Soon, the ANM was being accused of “selling” Karabagh. These accusations emanated from the fact that the ANM always insisted on the security of Armenians in Karabagh, leaving questions of status open. For the ANM, the unification of Karabagh to Armenia, or its independence, that is its final status, was secondary to peace and security, which should be achieved as soon as possible. The ARF, on the other hand, insisted that Karabagh must be part of Armenia or be recognized as an independent republic by Armenia. The struggle must continue until these objectives are achieved. Ramgavars also believed that Karabagh must not be sacrificed and that Armenia should recognize its independence, but were not too insistent on the issue.

Political and economic system The ANM’s ideological views were based on liberal democracy, market relations and privatization of state assets. They were openly against any idea of socialism. They also implemented a strong presidential system, and a constitution that centralized power in the President’s hands. The ARF believed in a mixed economy and social democracy. Dashnaks advocated democracy as well, but wanted to put a stop to the unchecked privatization of land and state enterprises. They still adhered to socialist principles.27 They also objected to the creation of a strong presidential system, and presented an alternative draft constitution in 1995, with a weak presidency and a strong parliament. Ramgavar ideology was the same as the ANM, but the party had some problems with the centralization of power. It did not, however, take a clear stand on the constitutional debate. It must, however, be pointed out that ideological clashes on such issues were not as sharp as clashes over “national” issues. In most instances, nationalism was the subtext to other policy differences, even in the economic realm.

Citizenship The 1990 Declaration of Independence included a Clause 4 which said that Armenians of the diaspora should be granted the right of citizenship to the republic. But this was subsequently dropped and the 1995

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constitution rejected the notion of dual citizenship (Article 14) and did not at all give any special status to Armenians abroad. Foreigners can become Armenian citizens only if they settle in the republic and renounce other citizenships.28 There are exceptions to the law. Special citizenships can be granted by presidential decree (for example, to government advisers/ministers from the diaspora). The ANM ostensibly objected to dual citizenship on the grounds that it would be a loophole for young men seeking to dodge military service. In reality, the movement did not wish to give diasporan Armenians too much political leverage within the republic when their long term commitment and responsibility to it could not be taken for granted. It was reasoned that diasporan Armenians, who will continue living abroad, should not be on an equal footing with the locals, as dual citizenship would imply. The ARF rejected the law which does not allow dual citizenship, effectively disqualifying anyone in the diaspora who would want to be both a citizen of Armenia and their country of residence. Dashnaks have consistently advocated dual citizenship as a tangible means of linking the diaspora with the homeland. Ramgavars were in favor of dual citizenship as well, but in a lukewarm manner. Their alliance with Ter-Petrossian prevented them from pursuing this issue in a forceful manner.

The role of the diaspora Finally, each party’s view of the diaspora radically differed, based on their conception of the nation. The citizenship issue underscored this fundamental difference. According to the ANM, Armenia and the diaspora are two different entities, and they should not meddle in each other’s internal affairs, especially in politics. In Ter-Petrossian’s words, “the concept of national political parties which exist and function outside their country is unnatural. There will always be a mutual lack of understanding and trust, so long as the Diaspora leadership does not come to terms with the reality that policy is determined here, on this land.”29 This mentality was also reflected in the fact that the diaspora was hardly mentioned in the speeches, declarations and pronouncements of the ANM and its members.30 In short, the diaspora is shut out not only from the internal politics of the homeland, but also from political matters which reflect nationwide interests and issues (for example Genocide recognition, Armenian cause, and so on). The ANM wanted to limit the relationship between the homeland and the

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diaspora to the arena of economic aid/investment, cultural links, and the selective use of diaspora experts whose opinions are in congruence with the ANM. Hence, what is required is dialogue and mutual contact which assumes that the two are separate bodies. ARF’s approach diametrically opposed this view. Dashnaks, using the slogan “one nation, one homeland”, blurred the line between the diaspora and the homeland. Their mentality is based on the belief that the nation is indivisible and therefore its politics should be a symbiosis between the homeland and the diaspora.31 It is legitimate, then, for diaspora based “pan-national” parties such as the ARF to have a direct say in the affairs of the republic. As Apo Boghigian, a member of the ARF Bureau (ruling council) says, “Imposing distinctions between native Armenians and Diasporans when it comes to involvement in Armenia’s politics is insulting.”32 On this basis, therefore, the diaspora organizations/parties claimed a right to be directly involved in the politics of Armenia. Ramgavars were caught between their support for Ter-Petrossian and an (uneasy) alliance with the ANM on the one hand, and on the other, their desire to link the diaspora closely with the homeland. They emphasized economic links and investment by Armenians abroad into the republic.

Events coming to a head In a series of major events between 1991 and 1996, the above antagonisms came to a head. The stage was set when the three diasporan parties issued their joint communiqué in October 1988 regarding the Karabagh movement. Reflecting the vocabulary of the Soviet authorities, it called for calm, the ending of strikes, and respect for order, and it denounced “extreme” measures.33 It was widely seen in Armenia as a condemnation of the movement and support for the Communist leadership.34 Consequently, Dashnaks had to justify and defend themselves against accusations of being against independence, pro-Soviet, proGorbachev, and so on.35 Soon, the ANM and its leaders were being covered less and less in the Dashnak press, and were often ignored in analytical articles in Droshak. Even when they were arrested in December 1988, Dashnaks called for their release, but did not make a major issue out of it. They interpreted their arrest as a “gaff” or a “mistake” by Gorbachev, and not much more, which should be corrected.36 And when they were covered, it was to criticize the movement (and particularly Ter-Petrossian) for being too radical, too demanding, too idealistic,

Razmik Panossian 167

too oppositional or confrontational, for ignoring the diaspora, for giving in to “mass mentality”, for not supporting Suren Harutiunian in the name of national unity, and for neglecting the threats of pan-Turkism, and so on. A brief summary of some key articles in Droshak reveal the progression of Dashnak opposition to the ANM. The die is already cast in G. Pelian’s “The Future Direction of the Popular Movement in the Homeland” ( July 5, 1989, 20: 6, pp. 6–11). It conceded that the leaders of the Karabagh movement had done well so far, but saw them now taking wrong turns because (a) they were not stopping extremist expressions and demands (i.e. calls for independence); (b) they were not cooperating with the reform-minded communist leaders (Harutiunian) and state structures which were in favor of the popular demands; (c) they had neglected the diaspora as an important political force which must have a significant role in the program and activities of the ANM; and (d) they were not taking into account pan-Turkism. Criticism increased considerably after ANM’s formation as a party in June 1989. The title of N. Perperian’s article is indicative of this: “Why Did ANM’s Founding Congress Cause Disappointment” (November 22, 1989, 20: 16, pp. 7–12). First, he lambastes the ANM for calling itself pannational when it is not. It did not represent the entire nation because it left “healthy national” elements of the Communist Party, and others, out. Second, it was not based on principles of national liberation. That is to say, (a) it did not make the wider Armenian Cause an integral part of its program, (b) it dismissed the threat of pan-Turkism, and (c) it rejected a united front approach. Third, the ANM is accused of selling out Karabagh because it no longer saw Karabagh as the central element of its struggle, rather, it focused on sociopolitical problems in the restructuring of Armenia. By late 1990, the theme of democracy had emerged as a vehicle of criticism of the ANM, that is, it was not running the country democratically; it was operating in an authoritarian manner, and so on (see, for example, Marukhian’s interview, January 16, 1991, 21: 20, pp. 3–14). By summer 1991, after a brief period of cordial relations when Ter-Petrossian was elected as Chairman of the parliament on August 4, 1990, and the ARF was registered officially as a party in Armenia on August 8, 1990 (see interview with Marukhian and Tasnapetian August 15, 1990, 21: 9, pp. 3–7), the gloves were off as the ANM and the ARF began to exchange damning accusations. Ter-Petrossian declared that the ARF was acting like a fifth column for Moscow in undermining Armenia’s drive for independence, while the Dashnaks were accusing the ANM of selling out

168 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

Karabagh for the sake of independence and political power, and for being authoritarian. (G. Pelian, “The Fifth Column”, June 19, 1991, 22: 5, pp. 10–12). Ter-Petrossian, it is asserted, had sold out to the enemy (July 31, 1991, 22: 8, pp. 13–14), and the words “hypocrisy” and “national traitors” are attached – for the first time – to the ANM government in an editorial called “The Time to Lie Has Past” (August 14, 1991, 22: 9, p. 2). The ANM, of course, did not lag behind in its accusations. Its president, Vano Siradeghian, declared in a speech on July 28, 1991 that Dashnaks … do not want political power, they want to give political power to the communists … [They and] the communists [gave] the Armenian state to Russia [in 1920] and as such gave Karabagh, and consequently ruined Nakhichevan. This is their second act to again give Armenia to Russia.37 These antagonisms were of course played out in political activity. The first significant showdown was the October 1991 presidential election. The Dashnaks, misjudging the mood of the country, ran their own candidate (unlike the Ramgavars who had declared Ter-Petrossian “their” candidate). Popular actor Sos Sarkissian, a political novice, ran against Ter-Petrossian. Sarkissian and the ARF – which, incidentally, had emphasized its diasporan links – were humiliated. They received a little over 4 percent of the vote, while Ter-Petrossian received 83 percent. Not only was this a major blunder by the Dashnaks, it also set the stage for the oppositional politics to come. A few months after the election, the ARF began to agitate for a coalition government, putting forward claims to share power. Ter-Petrossian at first agreed to some limited collaboration and sharing of power. But when the Dashnaks demanded more, the President responded in a televised speech on June 29, 1992, accusing the Dashnak leadership of undermining government policies and activities in relation to the Karabagh war. At the end of the speech he issued an order expelling Hrair Marukhian, the Dashnak leader (and Greek citizen), from Armenia. This was also a message to the diaspora according to senior presidential advisor Jirair Libaridian. The President, he says, … took on the most powerful man of the most powerful (diaspora) organization and it was a message in a way, from my point of view to the diaspora: know your place! You are not running this republic! … This is not an all-Armenian government … .38

Razmik Panossian 169

Two years later, the most severe blow came when in another speech, on December 28, 1994, Ter-Petrossian “temporarily” banned the ARF, its subordinate organizations and its press in Armenia. He accused them of harboring a secret paramilitary organization called Dro which, he said, was responsible for assassinations, drug trafficking and destabilizing activities aimed at undermining the government. In a series of arrests preceding the announcement, 12 Dashnaks were detained and subsequently tried. The charges ranged from murder to possession of false documents. The trial concluded on December 10, 1996, when ten of the accused were found guilty and given sentences ranging from three years imprisonment to death. No direct links, however, were found between their crimes and the ARF.39 But the party remained outlawed until Robert Kocharian, the new President, legalized it again on February 9, 1998. In the meantime, the ARF was banned as a “foreign” organization controlled from abroad, although many of its activities were tolerated in a semi-legal manner. The Dashnak ban was widely condemned by other diaspora organizations (as well as by western governments). The Ramgavar Party, for example, issued a statement criticizing the move as a dangerous precedent in violation of democratic principles. But another wave of Dashnak arrests followed in summer 1995, among them Vahan Hovannisian, one of the leaders of the ARF in Armenia. He was detained on July 29, joining 30 other party members. All were accused of planning a coup. Their trial began in March 1996. Almost all of those arrested were freed by Kocharian in February 1998. The lowest point in homeland–diaspora relations was 1995. Not only was it becoming clear that Armenia, under the leadership of the ANM, was much less democratic than it first appeared, it was rejecting a significant part of the diaspora which was in opposition to its rule. Even ANM supporters in the diaspora condemned the outright banning of the ARF on insufficient grounds. The homeland wanted a docile and apologetic diaspora, not a diaspora which had a mind, and an organization, of its own operating in the republic. The next major showdown between the ANM and the ARF came with the September 1996 presidential elections. Most of the opposition, including the Dashnaks, united under the banner of a National Alliance Union (NAU) and put forward one candidate: Vazgen Manukian. The ARF played an important role in mobilizing against Ter-Petrossian. The entire Dashnak bloc – both in Armenia and in the diaspora – campaigned to unseat the President. But non-ARF diaspora organizations in general took the side of Ter-Petrossian, although part

170 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

of the opposition campaign focused on diaspora issues. The NAU promised dual citizenship, more integration between the diaspora and the homeland, and the unbanning of the ARF. The antagonism between the opposition and the government reached new heights immediately after the elections when, amidst justified accusations of electoral fraud, the opposition vehemently protested Ter-Petrossian’s re-election with a margin of less than 2 percent of the vote. When a mass demonstration turned violent and became an attack on the National Assembly, the administration cracked down using the army and the “yerkrapah” militia, controlled by the then defense minister Vazgen Sarkisian. Once again Dashnaks were accused of fomenting unrest, planning a coup and engaging in illegal agitation to obtain power.40 More arrests followed, and the ARF once again took a beating in Armenia. It is only with the resignation of Ter-Petrossian and the loss of political power by the ANM that relations have began to improve between the new Armenian government and the ARF. Part of the reason is that the new Kocharian presidency seems to have more of an inclusive view of the diaspora and a much more accommodating attitude toward the Dashnaks, who supported him in his election campaign.

The “why” question Why did relations between the ANM and the ARF come to be so antagonistic? In addition to different conceptions of the role of the diaspora in the politics of the homeland and differences over such fundamental issues as independence, there are two other factors. The first is the “conspiracy theory” used by the ANM. In this view, the Dashnak party was infiltrated by the KGB and was used as an instrument to oppose the Karabagh movement and to maintain Armenia in the USSR. This argument gained some credibility when “neutral” individuals, such as former KGB spy Oleg Kalugin (Chief of Counter-Intelligence and Major General in the KGB) declared …we most thoroughly infiltrated … the Armenian exile group, Dashnak Tsutyun [sic]. Once, Dashnak Tsutyun had been a staunchly nationalist group that campaigned for an independent Armenian state. Over time, we placed so many agents there that several had risen to positions of leadership. We succeeded in effectively neutralizing the group, and by the 1980s Dashnak Tsutyun had stopped fighting against Soviet power in Armenia. The organization and some of its members had been co-opted by the KGB … .41

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The ARF vehemently denies such collaboration, although it does admit that since 1963 the party maintained secret contacts with Soviet Armenian authorities to discuss issues of mutual concern.42 Such contacts, Dashnaks insist, do not constitute collaboration or infiltration. The second reason contributing to the antagonism between the ANM and the ARF is a difficult one to research. It is the arrogance, usually unspoken, on both sides. The ARF saw itself as the beacon of freedom, the natural “liberators” of Armenia, and the sole party qualified for leadership. It actually believed its rhetoric of having a right to power and could not accept that in reality it did not have much to do with Armenia’s independence. Being of secondary importance in the homeland did not correspond to its self-image nor to its primary position in diaspora politics. Dashnaks were used to being in control for “the good of the nation” – an attitude and a drive they took with them to Armenia. As Jirair Libaridian puts it, with indignation, They think they are the only ones who can possibly govern. They have a God given right to govern and they have a God given right to define Armenian interests. And they define them very easily.43 ARF’s arrogance emanates from its historic role as a revolutionary party, as the government of the 1918–20 independent republic, and from its anti-Soviet public stance, and nationalist ideology of independence, when Armenia was under communist rule. Based on past credentials, Dashnaks believed that they could make legitimate claims to power. This attitude was clear in statements like “No one has the right to give our party lessons in patriotism [hairenasirutiun] and realist politics, we who have sacrificed thousands of our chosen sons to the national liberation struggle”, and been the ones to have “created and served the ideal of United, Free and Independent Armenia.”44 The nationalists in Armenia, who had directly struggled against Soviet rule and had just obtained power, reacted to this negatively. Why should we, they asked, share power with an organization from abroad who had nothing to do with the independence movement here, was opposed to us, and did not have a large following in the republic.45 Ter-Petrossian went further. He began to systematically push the Dashnaks out of the political life of Armenia. He was the elected president and did not need the ARF, or anyone else from the diaspora, to tell him how to run the country. Such examples of arrogant righteousness and intolerance have marked Armenian politics since 1988.

172 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

Conclusion When two entities differ to such a degree in their outlook toward some of the basic issues facing the nation, it becomes very easy to talk past each other, and to vilify one another as a “traitor”, as “anti-national” or as unworthy of the name “Armenian”. The relationship between the Armenian National Movement and the diaspora was problematic from the very beginning. The arrogance and oppositional policies and politics of the ANM and the ARF made the situation worse. Ironically, in the past ten years, the overall dynamic has been similar to the communist period with one side of the diaspora supporting the homeland, the other side opposing it. It is only now, after the removal of the ANM regime in Armenia, that the relationship is beginning to improve. Still there is no consensus as to what the proper relationship should be, but newly elected President Kocharian has said in his inaugural speech on April 9, 1998: Our generation is here to shoulder one more responsibility. That is the unification of the efforts of all the Armenians and the ensuring of Diaspora Armenians’ active participation in social, political and economic life of our republic. A constitutional solution to the issue of dual citizenship will also contribute to the issue. Armenia should be a holy motherland for all the Armenians, and its victory should be their victory, its future, their future. We have to realize that a nation, understanding the value of its combined force, can never be defeated. Where this leads, of course, remains to be seen.46

Notes 1. Some of the arguments in this essay are further developed in Razmik Panossian, “The Armenians: Conflicting Identities and the Politics of Division”, in Charles King and Neil Melvin (eds), Nations Abroad: Diasporan Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998) and Razmik Panossian, “Between Ambivalence and Intrusion: Politics and Identity in Armenia–Diaspora Relations”, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies vol. 7, no. 2 (Fall, 1998): 149–96. 2. “Dashnak” is the shortened name (in Armenian) of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). It was founded in 1890 in Tiflis (Tbilisi), with a melange of nationalist and socialist ideologies. Its main aim was to liberate Armenia(ns) from Ottoman rule and Tsarist repression. After the Sovietization of the independent Armenian republic (which the ARF headed) in

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

December 1920, the organization became the most significant diasporan political party. Horizon Weekly (Montreal) (March 13, 1995): 16. The January 23, 1995 issue of the same paper published a cartoon equating Ter-Petrossian with Stalin and with Talaat Pasha – the architect of the Armenian Genocide, and the embodiment of evil in the Armenian collective psyche. Ter-Petrossian, a philologist – historian, was one of the early leaders of the Karabagh movement in Yerevan, and became the central figure in the non-Communist “counter-elite”. He was elected Chairman of the Parliament in August 1990, and directly President of the country in October 1991. He was “pushed” to resign in February 1998. The Ramgavar Party (The Armenian Democratic-Liberal Party) was founded in Istanbul in 1921, based on an earlier organization set up by the Armenian bourgeoisie in 1908 (in Egypt). The Hnchaks (Hnchakian Social-Democratic Party) was established by radical socialist revolutionaries in Geneva in 1887. Note that as early as 1989 some Dashnaks objected to the characterization of the ARF as a “diasporan” party. They argued that it is a pan-national party which, although organizationally dissolved in Soviet Armenia in 1933, it always had an ideological and spiritual presence there, while it continued to focus on the homeland in its program and policies. See K. Manoyan, “The ARF Is Not a Diasporan Party” Droshak 20, 18–19 (January 3, 1990): 49–50. As the Party Program of the 23rd Congress put it in 1985: although the ARF does not accept communist totalitarianism, it nevertheless “decides to limit its demands and criticisms in relation to Armenia, the Armenian nation and the Armenian Cause, and to refrain from taking one-sided positions in international issues against the Soviet Union”. Droshak 17, 8–9 (August 6–20, 1986): 6. (All translations are by the author.) Another interesting revelation is made by E. Hovannisian, in his attempt to debunk criticisms from Soviet Armenia that the ARF is a tool in the hands of US imperialists. He cites a study of the ARF press in the first half of 1986 which found that out of the 10 653 articles published, there was not a single pro-USA article. Instead, there were 1532 forcefully anti-USA articles, 943 forcefully pro-Soviet articles, the rest being neutral or anti-Turkish. There were only between 16 and 21 articles, which were mildly critical of the USSR. He also goes on to say that since the early 1970s there has not been any anti-Soviet activity such as demonstrations, flyers, and so on, organized by the ARF. “New Undertakings to Weaken the ARF”, Droshak 17, 6–7 (July 9–23, 1986): 20–2. As a point of comparison, it is worthwhile to cite an article from 1931 in the ARF press. There hardly is a word on Turkey or the Genocide in it. The main target of criticism, as the “enemy”, is Soviet rule of Armenia, and their followers in the diaspora. The Armenian Cause is understood as liberation of Armenia from the Soviet yoke, and not Genocide recognition or the lost lands in Turkey. ARF’s 40th Anniversary, Hairenik Amsagir (Homeland Monthly) (Watertown, MA) 9:4 (February 1931): 1–7. For an interesting article on the ARF’s changing attitude toward Soviet Armenia in the 1920s and 1930s, see Karlen Dallakian, “The Armenian Cause as a Factor in the National-Ethnic Survival”, Paikar Amsagir (Struggle Monthly) (Watertown, MA) 1–2 (May 1993): 14–20. For the Dashnak view of the diaspora in this period see their Party Program based on the 23rd Congress, 1985. Droshak 17, 6–7 (July 9–23, 1986): 7–9.

174 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh 9. S. Melik-Hakobian, “Establishment of the Second Republic of Armenia and the Dashnaktsutiun (ARF)”, Nor Gyank (New Life) (Los Angeles), (November 28, 1996: 51. (Originally published in Armenia in Hayastani Hanrapetutiun (Armenian Republic June 23 to July 3, 1995.) 10. A cursory examination of some of the unofficial underground publications of this period in Armenia demonstrates this point. Dashnak heroes (especially Garegin Nzhdeh), slogans, historical battles, as well as quotes from past leaders, were widely used and reproduced. See, for example, issues of Azat Haik (of the National Unity Pact), Hayastan (of Armenian National Independence Party), and even some of the earlier flyers/papers of the ANM. 11. Levon Ter-Petrossian is on record as saying in 1992: “If in 1988 the ARF had embraced the Armenian National Movement which had come into being on the ideology of independence, it is highly probable that the Movement would have become assimilated into the ARF and today, we in Armenia would have had a Dashnaktsakan government. But the Dashnaktsutiun did not do that, and rejected us.” (Quoted in Melik-Hakobian, p. 51.) This is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but there is some truth in it. 12. The ANM became the undisputed ruling party of Armenia in 1991. It had already acquired a considerable, if not commanding, foothold in the politics of the country a year earlier, with the spring/summer parliamentary elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, and with the election of TerPetrossian as its Chairman in August 1990. 13. Both articles are reprinted in English in Gerard J. Libaridian (ed.), Armenia at the Crossroads: Democracy and Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era (Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1991), pp. 9–38, and 51–86. 14. May 23, 1990, (21, 3):32, emphasis in the original. 15. See Hrair Marukhian’s interview (November 1988) in Droshak 19:19 ( January 4, 1989): 5. On independence he says: “We consider extremist those nationalists … who, in the streets of Yerevan, put forth demands for Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union. [NP] The Armenian Revolutionary Federation considers independence its main objective. But we believe that it is not the appropriate time to present demands for immediate independence, when our people need so much the support of the Russian people.” The people of Armenia, “presently under the influence of mass hysteria [massayakan hogebanutiun]” find it difficult to understand our caution (emphasis added). This line of reasoning was a continuation from the pre-movement days when Marukhian wrote: “the demand for independence is not necessarily the same as opposing the idea of the current reality of [Soviet] Armenia” (emphasis in the original). Independence is here conceived as a “forbidden fruit” to be achieved in the distant future. “We Must Cherish the Vision of Free, Independent United Armenia”, Droshak 18, 3 (May 27, 1987): 3–4. (The same article appears in Droshak’s English Supplement of January 1988 (1, 2): 11–12; and in Libaridian, pp. 143–5). See also the editorial “The Cup Is Spilling”, Droshak 19: 24 (March 15, 1989): 3, which criticizes Harutiunian for his mistakes, but still lends him support. 16. See, for example, the editorial “Nichevo, We Will Wait a Bit Longer” Kamk [Will] (Paris) reprinted in Droshak, 21, 5 (July 20, 1990): 8. 17. This argument is forcefully put as late as May 1991 in an article by Khazhak, “The Struggle for Separation Damages Armenia’s Regaining of

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18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

Independence”, Droshak 22: 2–3 (May 22, 1991): 19–23. It is argued that ANM’s propaganda for separation is a strategy to gain power and it is not real independence. It ridicules the idea of making independence conditional on the collapse of the USSR, and sees the latter not as a source of Armenia’s problems, but as an avenue for pursuing its national cause. See the party’s declaration of March 26, 1991: “Against the Negative Stand of the Central Authorities”, Droshak 21, 1 (April 24, 1991): 2. Editorial, “The Voice of History”, Droshak 21, 10 (August 29, 1990): 2–3. Reprinted in Droshak, 20: 6 (July 5, 1989): 18 and in Libaridian, p. 156. This position is forcefully put in the above mentioned editorial, “Although Against Separation, We Remain for Independence”, 21, 3 (May 23, 1990): 33. “We view the objective of Armenia’s independence within the context of a special relationship [hatuk haraberutiants] with Russia.” Hence, choosing an orientation between Russia, the West or Turkey is not an issue. The only issue is “the necessity to have a special relationship with Russia”, which is based on the reality of the current political interests of Armenians (emphasis in the original). Note that this was written when the national movement in Armenia was critical of the value of such a relationship with Russia within the context of the USSR. E. Hovhannisian, “What It Is Not Possible to Say and Should Not Be Said”, Droshak 21, 1, 6–17 (December 5, 1990): 6–10. See, for example, Levon Ter-Petrossian’s speech at ANM’s fifth annual convention in June 1993. For Ter-Petrossian, anything more than these limited goals is considered adventurism, Hayastani Hanrapetutiun (July 29, 1993). According to Karlen Dallakian, this paralleled the arguments put forward by Soviet Armenian authorities in the 1920s and 1930s. Dallakian criticizes Ter-Petrossian’s approach for reducing the Armenian cause to the present republic, thus undermining the survival of Armenians in the diaspora. “Hai Date Aisor”, Paikar Amsagir 1, 6 (September 1993): 12–14. See the Party Program of the 23rd Congress (1985), Droshak 17, 8–9 (August 6–20, 1986): 7. Five years later, the party’s views were unchanged, as expressed by Marukhian in an interview, “Toward National Unit”, Droshak 20, 25 (March 28, 1990): 3–20 (this was initially published in Armenia in Grakan Tert [Literary Paper], February 16, 1990). He argued that Gorbachev and the progressive elements of the Communist Party were the best (and only) way to resolve the Armenian cause and problems facing Armenia. This was in 1990 when Gorbachev no longer had any credibility in Armenia. In an editorial called “Sea to Sea Irresponsibility”, Paikar Amsagir 1, 9 (December 1993): 2–3, Dashnak land claims are criticized as irresponsible radicalism in pursuit of “empty dreams” which do nothing but harm the good name of Armenians in the international community, and hence damage the “supreme interests” of the Armenian people. Armen, “The Imperative for Political Priorities”, Droshak 20, 4 (July 7, 1989): 4–10. On one of the ARF’s web sites (checked in April 1998) the party’s Armenian name is “translated” as “The Armenian Socialist Party” (http://www.arf.am). But, according to the Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens (adopted in June 1994), a foreign citizen of Armenian origin or others with interest in Armenia can obtain a ten year (renewable) residency permit (Article 21).

176 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh 29. Interview in Armenian International Magazine (AIM) (March 1994): 32. 30. For example there is no mention of the diaspora in Ter-Petrossian’s speech to the Armenian Supreme Soviet in August 1990, when he presented the ANM “platform” before his election as the Soviet’s President, in Libaridian, pp. 95–105. It is the same case in the original program of the Karabagh Movement (August 1988), reprinted in Droshak 20, 7 (July 19, 1989): 14–17. This is not to say that there were no other organizations within the wider national movement that did not address the diaspora and issues dear to the diaspora. Among them were Armenian National Unity, founded in 1989. See their program in Droshak 20, 11 (September 13, 1989): 28–34. But none of these organizations came close to the popularity of the ANM. Vazgen Manukian’s National Democratic Union, which broke away from the ANM in 1991, did focus on the diaspora and criticized the ANM for their neglect of Armenians abroad. As Manukian puts it, contrasting his views to those of Ter-Petrossian, we have “radical differences (in our) characterization of the Armenian people as a nation.” The President, according to Manukian, insisted in ignoring the diaspora because it was a “dying presence”. Instead, he focused on the Armenian population who live in the Republic as the people who will build statehood. “The President simply has written off the Diaspora as a vibrant and supportive entity and appears to be more interested in their financial input in Armenia,” Manukian concludes. The Armenian Reporter International (November 11, 1995): 25. 31. See, for example, the official “Announcement” of the ARF’s 26th World Congress (dated December 5, 1995). 32. Boghigian, a US citizen, had just been expelled from Armenia. Interview in AIM (November–December 1994): 39. 33. It is printed in Droshak 19: 13 (October 12, 1988): 2; it also appears in English in Libaridian, pp. 127–9. 34. The communique created much discontent and subsequent debate in the ARF as well as the need to constantly defend it by the party leadership in the following years. 35. See, for example, N. Perperian’s articles in Droshak, 19, 17 (December 7, 1988): 3–4; 19, 22–3 (March 1, 1989): 9–21. 36. N. Perperian, “Time for Seriousness”, Droshak, 19, 20 (January 18, 1989): 3. 37. Cited in Droshak 22, 10–11 (September 11, 1991): 4. 38. This is from an interview given to Soren Theisen on September 1, 1992. I have not seen it published, but it did appear on the Armenian “Groong” email network. 39. For details on the accused and their trial (in English) see, AIM (May–June 1996): 26–33. For a story on the ban see, AIM, (November–December 1994): 37–8. The text of the President’s speech appears in Nor Gyank (January 5, 1995): 10–11. 40. One high ranking government official told me in an interview (October 30, 1996) that “there is no other force besides the Dashnaks who bring so much harm to this state. They serve other states and interests. They are behind everything. The ARF had planned the attack on the National Assembly … .” 41. Spy Master: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West (London: Smith Gryphon Publishers, 1994) p. 193. See also, S. MelikHakobian who elaborates on the KGB–ARF link. He claims that it was not

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42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

even the Armenian KGB who had established and maintained the initial contacts, but the central offices in Moscow. See Marukhian’s response to Ter-Petrossian’s speech expelling him from Armenia in Droshak (October 21, 1992). Interview with Theisen on Groong, September 1, 1992. Interview with H. Marukhian and H. Tasnapetian in Droshak 21, 9 (15 August 1990): 7. cf. N.P., “Who Is Afraid of the ARF,” Droshak 21, 23 (27 February 1991): 3. One of the earliest expressions of such anti-diaspora sentiments came from Paruyr Hairikian’s National Self-Determination Union. Their publication, Inknoroshum [Self-Determination) (Yerevan) (December 1, 1988): 28–9, printed a damning criticism of the diaspora after the joint communiqué of the three parties in October 1988. “Why is the diaspora more afraid of the USSR than we are in the republic?” it asked, dispensing advice to us that the future of the Armenian people is forever tied to Russia. It concluded, the only solution for Armenia is to decide its own future, and the diaspora should support us in this or remain silent. (A version of this article appears in Libaridian, p. 130.) Armenpress, April 9, 1998 as posted on the Armenian News Network Groong, See AIM, April–May 1998, n.p.

7 Betrayed Promises of the Karabagh Movement: a Balance Sheet Markar Melkonian

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newformed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned … K. Marx and F. Engels (1848)

Introduction In spring 1997, I happened to pass by an opposition demonstration in Yerevan’s Independence Square. It was a small demonstration compared to the demonstrations of the past – a huddle of several hundred ragged men – and the tone was bitter. Such gatherings were not uncommon at that time. The Yerevantsi* accompanying me reflected not on the angry words swirling in the air, but on the sunflower seeds scattered across the square like confetti. Ten years earlier, she recalled, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators occupied the city squares for days and nights on end. People’s faces were radiant. They shouted “Gharabaghu mern eh! Karabagh is ours!” in unison, like an enormous choir. Neighbors brought trays of coffee to share with the first demonstrators they met. The protesters picked up their litter, and when they dispersed the squares were cleaner than they had found them. “Now look at this place”, my companion said sadly, “They ought to rename it ‘Sunflower Seed Square’.” Instead of the bracing chant Gharabaghu mern eh! and demands for clean air, national sovereignty, democracy and freedom, the speakers (as I noticed later, on the local television report) hurled angry charges and counter charges against government personalities, while the sullen 178

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audience gnawed on sunflower seeds. The tone of bitter recrimination was a far cry from the exalted rhetoric of the “heroic period” of the Karabagh movement – roughly, say, from early 1988 through 1991. Even more significantly, perhaps, few passers-by bothered to take notice of the demonstration. Few Yerevantsis, it seemed, still had the stomach for high blown oratory. It might seem curious that this scene of demoralization and lassitude would have taken place in Independence Square, of all places. Only seven years earlier, jubilant throngs had gathered there, surrounded by the architectural achievements of the Soviet era, to celebrate their victory over what was advertised as a ruthless and all-mighty Evil Empire, “the most criminal regime in human history”, according to the hyperbole of the time. The crowds were supposed to have been welcoming a new era of freedom, happiness and unforced civic responsibility. So what happened in the intervening years? This chapter offers an approximation to an answer to that question, as I revisit the main goals of the Karabagh movement and consider whether or to what extent they have been achieved.1 It is not my purpose to engage in the sort of desultory criticism that characterized public oratory in the final years of Soviet Armenia. During the course of this study, I hope the prospective, cautionary character of my remarks will become clear. In order to make my evaluative task a little more manageable, I will narrow my discussion in two ways. First, I will limit my remarks to the Yerevan based Karabagh movement, the Karabagh Committee and its successor, the Armenian National Movement (ANM). Despite the fact that the movements in Yerevan and Karabagh had “intertwined trajectories”, they were in fact distinct, at least geographically and, to some extent, tactically. For these reasons my remarks below should not necessarily be taken to apply to the contemporaneous military and political leadership in Karabagh. Second, I will limit my view to the Karabagh Committee and its successors as they developed since May 1988. At that time, it will be recalled, stridently anti-Soviet leaders, including the future President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the future mayor of Yerevan, eclipsed Igor Muradian, Zori Balayan, Silva Kaputikian and others who earlier had been prominent in the Karabagh Committee. The new leaders were most readily associated with the Committee (which by the spring of 1988 was leading the Movement), and they have widely been credited with giving the Movement its momentum and policy direction.

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Balance sheet One of the most obvious items to place at the top of a balance sheet of the Karabagh Movement might be the recognition that it succeeded in achieving a goal which, only ten years ago, seemed unachievable. That goal, of course, was Armenia’s formal independence as a nation-state. I will begin my survey, then, with a few remarks about (1) the achieved goal of formal political independence. Since some of the first mass demonstrations in late 1987 were protests against air polluters and a nuclear power plant, I will then turn to (2) the Movement’s environmental demands. After that, I will review the goals of (3) “renationalizing” Armenian culture; (4) advancing democratic reforms and human rights; and (5) achieving economic prosperity.2 Questions about reforms undertaken in the name of achieving prosperity are inextricably tied up with questions about class formation and the macroeconomic trajectory of the country. Towards the end of the presentation, I will say a few words about Yerevan’s sustained commitment to (6) the goal of self-determination in Karabagh.3

Political independence The Republic of Armenia has a new national anthem, its own currency, a flag flying at UN Plaza, a number of embassies abroad and a number of foreign embassies based in Yerevan. The country is a member of various multinational organizations and arrangements, including the OSCE, the IMF and the World Bank, and has acceded to the WTO and numerous other multilateral arrangements. Thus, the Republic of Armenia would seem to have met the requirements to qualify as what nowadays passes for an independent country. National independence, of course, is relative, especially in this supposedly new epoch of globalism, an epoch Marx and Engels described with stunning accuracy over 150 years ago, in the prophetic first section of the Communist Manifesto. The term economic interdependence is often used to describe the global relationships among a large number of countries relevantly similar to, say, Ghana, Jamaica and Bangladesh, on the one hand, and a small number of countries relevantly similar to Germany, the USA and Japan, on the other. The word interdependence, however, masks at least two patterns of power relationships on the ground today: private appropriation of surplus value, in the domestic and transnational arenas, and neo-colonialism, in the international arena. As far as I can determine, a great part of the vaunted “realism” of the

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leaders of the Karabagh Movement consisted in pretending that these two patterns of domination do not exist. This, at least, is the impression one gets after reading some of the public statements of these leaders. Consider the following statement, made in early 1990 by Karabagh Committee member Vazgen Manukian: Currently the dominant course in the development of world affairs is the strengthening of [nation] states [through] scientific, technical, economic and cultural development. One magic word describes the foundation of that course: Freedom.4 Manukian and other leaders of the Karabagh Committee customarily described Armenia’s previous relationship to Russia as one of “slavery” (kerootyoon; sdergootyoon).5 At the same time, they also insisted that “It is necessary not only to encourage joint ventures but also the direct investment of foreign companies in our republic.”6 According to Manukian’s “realistic” account, this is the path “which has been traveled by many other nations and which leads to happiness.”7 It would be instructive to consider the experiences of other countries that have embarked upon the path that Manukian has described as “leading to happiness”, starting with such acclaimed “economic miracles” as Chile, Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil. But alas, this would take us too far afield. It is a safe bet, in any case, that, despite the renewed popularity of slogans calling for closer relations with Russia, Armenians remain overwhelmingly in favor of national statehood. If my account is at all near the mark, however, the form that Armenia’s independence has taken and the international context in which it was achieved have contributed at least indirectly to the erosion of popular support for the ANM administration. I will return to the topic of national sovereignty towards the end of this discussion. First, however, I would like to turn to other public goals of the movement, beginning with the early ecological demands.

Green demands The mass demonstrations that began in late 1987 focused attention on a number of environmental concerns, including the Medzamor Nuclear Power plant near Yerevan. Protesters made it clear that they did not feel secure living in close proximity to a potential Chernobyl located in an earthquake zone and near a highly militarized border.

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As we know, the Karabagh Movement eventually succeeded in shutting down Medzamor. The power plant may or may not have represented an unacceptable risk, in the estimation of western inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Specialists on both sides have argued the point back and forth. What is less obscure, however, is that as long as the demand to shut down Medzamor helped undermine Soviet authority, the Karabagh Committee and the ANM did little to quell the hysteria about evil Russians imposing a nuclear power plant that created “a generation of birth defects” in Armenia. In the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake, authorities shut down Medzamor, reducing Armenia’s electrical output by 816 megawatts, or 23 percent of its electrical capacity.8 In the course of several bitterly cold winters with only sporadic electricity, however, the popular mood shifted and Ter-Petrossian came out in support of putting Medzamor back on line. After both units at the power plant were reopened in 1995, the President’s supporters pointed to the recommissioning of Medzamor as one of the accomplishments of his administration!9 A similar scenario was played out when it came to demands to shut down the sprawling Nairit chemical complex in Yerevan. City residents justifiably blamed the complex for much of the degradation of their city’s air quality. Nairit produced some one hundred different kinds of products used in more than 150 factories in Armenia. Closing the facility in 1988 improved air quality, but cost 10 000 workers their jobs. Once the latter point began to sink in, ANM leaders began backpedaling on the issues of closure. The plant resumed production in July 1994. If today it is still operating at far less than full capacity, this has more to do with a lack of inputs than to do with concern about air quality. Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the Republic, also became a powerful symbol of Soviet diminishment and despoilation of Armenia. Over the decades Soviet authorities severely disrupted the biostasis of the lake, destabilizing the indigenous aquaculture and reducing water volume to an alarmingly low level. Under the new regime, however, the problem only got worse, as the government drew water from the Sevan–Hrazdan Cascade for hydropower generation, to compensate for the loss of Medzamor. As a result, the lake’s water level has diminished to such an extent that, according to the CIA Factbook for 1997, Yerevan’s drinking water supply is now endangered.10 These, then, were the three main ecological demands of the Karabagh Movement: closure of Medzamor and Nairit, and reversing the biostatic damage to Lake Sevan. In the case of the first two demands,

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as we have seen, the Movement promptly achieved its aims, only to backpedal on the issues once the economic and human price of their successes began to sink in. In the case of the third demand, the Movement helped set the stage for a worse and more rapid deterioration of the lake. As I have emphasized, Armenia’s problems, environmental and otherwise, did not originate in 1988. Many of them date back decades and may to a large extent be laid at the doorstep of the Soviet leadership. The wasteland that was the Aral Sea stands as a stark reminder of the scale of environmental degradation during the Soviet years. Decades of ruinous Soviet environmental practices, however, do not diminish the damage that can fairly be billed to the ANM account. Armenia’s high profile at the 1992 Rio Summit notwithstanding, and despite the establishment of a Ministry of the Environment and the adoption of environmental protection legislation, the green demands that lent urgency to the Karabagh Movement and attracted warm bodies to the city squares have either been reversed or abandoned. Aside from accelerated environmental degradation, the most salient effect of the Karabagh Movement’s ecological component has been its role in disrupting production and galvanizing anti-Soviet, anti-Russian and procapitalist forces. Once these developments had run their course, the green demands quietly dropped from the public agenda. Indeed, the ANM government exacerbated the environmental problems it inherited and brought on new problems, including severe deforestation, additional loss of topsoil, salinization and further pollution of the Hrazdan and Arax rivers.11 Unlike its Soviet predecessors, moreover, the ANM regime managed to do its environmental damage at a time when industrial production in the country was at a near standstill.

“Renationalizing” culture The Karabagh Movement adroitly connected issues of environmental abuse to issues of abuse of power. In the heady final days of the Soviet era, leaders of the movement blamed Russians for various and sundry “crimes committed against humanity and against our people.”12 These crimes included “enslaving” Armenians, of course, as well as losing Kars and Ardahan to Turkey, and criminally wresting from Armenians their “natural aptitude in business.”13 Vazgen Manukian has even insinuated on the record that Russia was largely to blame for the 1915 Genocide.14 As we know, ANM’s best diplomatic efforts to distance itself from Russia and to draw closer to Washington and Ankara yielded little in

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the way of benefits to Armenia, and events finally forced the administration to revert, however regretfully, to a “North–South”, Moscow– Teheran alignment.15 These events included Ankara’s blockade and active support of Azerbaijan on the issue of Karabagh, and the fact that close relations with Ankara were inimical to long-standing Russian policy objectives in the region. By the time ANM leaders relinquished their hopes for a policy alignment along the “East–West”, Ankara– Washington axis, they had squandered much precious time and political capital. While the secessionists were courting Ankara in the final years of the Soviet era, they were also calling for the “de-Russification” of Armenia. Whatever “de-Russification” might mean, however, and to whatever extent it has taken place in Armenia, it has not resulted in the Armenian cultural renaissance that many people had expected. Not so many years ago, Armenians from the diaspora would come to Yerevan on state scholarships to study everything from Armenology to medicine at the State University and the Polytechnic Institute. Today, by contrast, a new generation of native born citizens may no longer look forward to the sort of free university education that the mathematicians, historians and philologists on the Karabagh Committee enjoyed. As part of the standard package of “fiscal restraint” requirements of the IMF and the World Bank, the ANM administration consolidated schools, reduced the number of teachers, introduced student payment for textbooks, facilitated the development of private schools and introduced fees for higher education. It should not have come as a surprise, then, that as the government itself has reported, “the quality of education has dramatically deteriorated in recent years, reflecting severe budgetary constraints.”16 The erosion of the educational infrastructure, together with the brain drain, have stripped Armenia of the educated, inexpensive labor force that western analysts counted among the country’s best assets as it entered an environment of global economic competition.17 The ANM’s record, then, provides little in the way of consolation to the “renationalizers” of Armenian culture. On the contrary, its policies have swept away subsidies for education and the arts and have opened the country more completely to western – that is, non-Armenian – cultural commodities and popular entertainment. Eight years ago, a giddy crowd pulled down Lenin’s statue in the central square. Since then, the erstwhile protectors of the purity of the Armenian nation have conducted their daily affairs under the inscrutable but reassuring gaze of the Marlboro Man, and Yerevantsis have discovered that it is

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considerably more difficult to feed their families than to topple the statue of a great man.

Democratic reforms and human rights Armenians, like Russians and other peoples of the former Soviet Union, were angered by decades of arbitrariness, arrogance and abuse on behalf of apparatchiks and the nomenklatura. As such, they embraced appeals in the name of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. These terms, of course, are far from unambiguous. A study conducted by an international program entitled “Democracy and Local Authorities” confirms this point, with reference to the word democracy. The study concluded that in Armenia and other CIS countries “democracy” is taken to refer to negative freedoms, such as the freedoms of speech, the press, conscience and so on. By contrast, in Western and Central European interpretations, according to the study, “democracy” is taken to refer pre-eminently to “the participation of the population at all levels of decision-making, that is, their participation in the process of government.”18 If we take “democracy” in the former sense, it would not be difficult to make the case that the ANM regime has, at best, a tarnished record on this count. True, Armenians have scored notable advances when it comes to the freedoms of association, expression, conscience and so on. However, western observers and native dissidents have leveled a wide range of charges against the ANM regime, including complicity in the persecution of religious sects,19 attacks against opposition figures, and widespread bribery, embezzlement and nepotism. Not all these charges have been convincingly documented; nevertheless, it would be hard to deny that the ANM regime has jailed citizens in questionable circumstances, shut down opposition newspapers and expelled political opponents. In the eyes of many Yerevantsis, moreover, the regime forfeited its last democratic credentials in the fall of 1996, when it violently suppressed demonstrators protesting election results many people believed were falsified. If, on the other hand, we take “democracy” to refer to “participation of the population at all levels of decision-making”, then there is no dearth of evidence that, like the goal of cultural revival, the goal of democracy has also proven to be harder to achieve than to demand. I have spoken to former wage-earners in Armenia who were surprised to find out that, in the West, “participation in all levels of decisionmaking” does not include decision making in the workplace. But even

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if one were willing to accept this limited conception of democracy, there is good reason to view Armenia’s proclaimed democratic reforms with skepticism. In view of the role multilateral credit institutions and foreign aid providers have come to play in defining the country’s domestic policies, the question “who elected the bankers?” raises serious doubts about the efficacy of representative democracy in Armenia. The new decentralized system of regional governance, consisting of 11 provinces (or marzes) divided into 930 communities, may result in greater popular control and accountability at the local level. This system is advertised as strengthening the salutary role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the democratic life of the country.20 It should be noted, however, that the 1400 groups registered as NGOs in Armenia are quite diverse. Some are genuinely grassroots operations manned by volunteers, while others are primarily conveyor belts and propaganda mechanisms for foreign corporations and state agencies. A stronger role for the latter sort of NGO would not necessarily enhance “participation at all levels of decision-making.” As a final alternative, we might take the word democracy in its “Central American” signification, to designate the ritualistic endorsement once every few years of one or another candidate pre-selected by a handful of oligarchs. Even at this level, however, it has become difficult, especially after the 1995 parliamentary elections and the 1996 presidential election, to ignore charges that ANM candidates, including the former President himself, have won elections thanks to large-scale fraud. Whatever merits these charges may have, ANM leaders clearly have implicated themselves in the same sorts of anti-democratic activities for which they reviled their Soviet predecessors. Unrealistically high initial expectations, together with narrowly prescribed democratic practices and a merely pro-forma reality – these considerations go a long way in helping to explain why it is that, as the UNDP has put it, “Democratic principles are not held in high esteem” in Armenia.21 Passing on to the issue of human rights, the question of responsibility for war related violations on both sides of the conflict in Karabagh, of course, is highly charged, controversial and far too complicated an issue to broach in this discussion. For our purposes it will suffice to register the following point: by denying self-determination to the people of Karabagh for decades, successive Soviet regimes and intransigently chauvinist leaders in Baku set the stage for the escalating violence in Karabagh, and accordingly they deserve a large portion of blame for the subsequent bloodshed and destruction.

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Having said this, however, it should be acknowledged that in the late 1980s and early 1990s the Karabagh Committee, the ANM and other secessionists benefitted from the escalating violence, at least to the extent that the fighting further discredited and destabilized Soviet rule. Without delving into details, suffice it to note that, in the early days of the conflict, the Committee time and again balked at or rejected attempts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict within the framework of Soviet institutions. Truculent orators in the city squares did nothing to improve the prospect for a peaceful change in the legal status of Nagorno-Karabagh. As we know, Karabagh became a liability to Movement leaders almost as soon as they achieved their chief aim of dismantling the Soviet Union. When it became clear that the conflict was obstructing the new regime’s overtures to Ankara and the West and inhibiting attempts to attract foreign investment, the new leaders began backtracking on their earlier professions of commitment to Karabagh. It would be easy to run through a litany of realpolitik rationales for TerPetrossian’s signature of documents acknowledging Baku’s sovereignty over Karabagh, and his administration’s inability to formally recognize the Nagorno-Karabagh Republic. His former supporters, however, refused to accept similar rationales from Ter-Petrossian’s Soviet predecessors, and they likewise refused to accept his rationales. As we know, this eventually contributed to the downfall of the ANM as a ruling party. Another human rights concern the Karabagh Movement barely acknowledged was women’s rights. Over the course of the past ten years, the status of women in Armenia has plummeted from deplorable to abominable. High rates of unemployment for women22 and cutbacks in state subsidized health services (which had always been poor by western standards) translated into a lack of access to prenatal care and contraception, higher rates of infant mortality,23 declining birth and marriage rates,24 and lower life expectancies for both males and females.25 Inflation, the disappearance of consumer price subsidies and shortages of reliable electricity and cooking fuel have made daily housework harder and more time-consuming for most housekeepers. Suicide figures for women are almost three times those for males.26 User fees for higher education have translated into declining enrollment figures for women, and prostitution (which, of course, was widespread in Soviet times) has grown into an export industry. Keeping these developments in mind, it is hard not to conclude that in Armenia, as in Russia, Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, a movement that

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proclaimed itself for freedom has significantly vitiated the status, personal security and life options of fully half the population.

Prosperity With the possible exceptions of the former president’s more recent pronouncements on Karabagh and his regime’s reputation for corruption, his dismal record on the economy probably converted more former supporters into opponents than did any other item on our balance sheet. The Armenian economy registered a cumulative decline in measured output between 1990 and 1993 of 75 percent,27 and in 1992–93 alone, GDP fell nearly 60 percent from its 1989 level.28 After 1991 and prior to privatization of mid to large enterprises (around 1994 to 1998), the level of capacity utilization, in the industrial sector was between 15 and 20 percent. Unemployment soared, and wages and salaries declined.29 This decline would have been disastrous even if the 1989–90 levels were high; however, by the time Ter-Petrossian assumed office, the country’s economy already was a shambles. The December 1988 earthquake had destroyed between one-tenth and one-third of Armenia’s industrial base; protest strikes and Azerbaijan’s economic blockade had accelerated the disintegration of the republic’s economy; and some 200 000 refugees had flooded into the country from Sumgait, Baku and Karabagh.30 Without daring to imagine that there is any alternative to Armenia’s “transition”, the UNDP report blandly concedes the obvious: “Armenia”, the report states, “is a country in the process of impoverishment.”31 No wonder, then, that so many people have left the country to seek their fortunes elsewhere. According to a figure that has appeared in print more than once, some 700 000 Armenians have left Armenia in the past ten years.32 A 1997 estimate cited in the CIA World Factbook reported a net migration rate of 98.32 migrants per 1000 and a negative population growth rate of 90.33 percent.33 According to the UNDP 30 percent of the economically active population has left Armenia.34 Most Armenian emigration of the past several years has taken place for “economic reasons”, and most of the traffic has been to Russia.35 Some of those who have left will return, of course. Nevertheless, as a recent report by western analysts puts it, “The exodus of qualified labor has a negative impact on the entire economy of the country, and may represent an irretrievable loss of manpower over the medium-term.”36 There is, of course, an “upside” to emigration, namely, “transfers from abroad.” The UNDP estimates that private transfers to Armenia

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total $250 million annually.37 The average monthly per capita income in Armenia is equivalent to a dollar figure in the low two-digits38 and the per capita GDP is reportedly $450.39 Whatever the exact figure on foreign remittances may be, then, it is safe to conclude that they have come to play a significant role in the domestic economy. In the mid 1990s, the country had scored positive growth rates (5 percent in 1995; 4 percent estimated real growth rate in 1996), as a result of an ambitious IMF sponsored program of “economic reform”. According to a recent World Bank/IMF forecast, moreover, the Armenian economy will enjoy projected growth rates of about 6.5 percent per annum until the year 2000, and 6 percent per annum thereafter.40 Ominously, however, these optimistic forecasts were voiced prior to the Russian financial crisis in the late summer of 1998. A further cautionary note is in order. Neo-liberal assumptions notwithstanding, economic growth as measured by the GDP, in abstraction from other considerations – such as resource distribution, consumption levels and infant mortality rates – does not indicate very much about the prevalence of poverty in a country. A quick review of IMF “success stories” will amply confirm the point. Even if we assume that Armenia’s energy problems can be resolved soon, and that this will translate into significant economic growth, higher growth rates will not necessarily improve the lives of the country’s inhabitants or stem the tide of emigration. Not everyone in Armenia, of course, has stood to lose as a result of neo-liberal policies. Available statistics abundantly bear out the UNDP’s conclusion that “an intense process of economic stratification is underway” in Armenia, and that “the nation is increasingly polarized by income and wealth.”41 On the same page, the report notes that 5 percent of Armenia’s population owns most of the country’s wealth. On this dimension, Armenia’s record is comparable to that of some of the wealthiest capitalist countries. After decades of abuse by Soviet officialdom touting “universal human values”, the explicit discourse of class is reasserting itself in the harsh post-Soviet reality. It might be worthwhile, then, to examine the process of class formation a bit more closely. In Armenia, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and the South, privatization has been a major component of the structural adjustment reforms that have dominated the government’s macroeconomic goals.42 In the agricultural and retail sectors, as well as small-scale manufacturing, the government has largely achieved its privatization goals. By October 1995, 90 percent of arable land was privately owned;

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by March 1996, more than half of the housing stock had been privatized; and by mid January 1997, 975 mid to large enterprises had been privatized. Of the remaining 650 mid to large enterprises, 120 were scheduled to be privatized as part of the 1998–99 program. Once this process is completed, the private sector will encompass about 90 percent of the country’s firms, and account for about 75 percent of GDP.43 Privatization of mid to large enterprises has taken place in large part (80 percent, according to the privatization plan) by means of auctioning privatization vouchers. Each citizen was entitled to a voucher, and about 3.10 million vouchers were distributed in late 1994. The face value of a voucher was originally set at 10 000 drams (about $25 at the time), but it was raised to 20 000 drams in early 1995. There was a free market in vouchers, however, and the price adjusted downward to reflect asset overvaluation. The market price for enterprises was further depressed when citizens sold vouchers for cash to meet immediate expenses, and mass privatizations ran into foreseeable market absorption problems. As a result, market prices of the vouchers varied between 2000 and 8000 drams, and only an estimated 7 percent of the population participated in the privatization process beyond simply selling off whatever vouchers they received.44 In Armenia, as in Russia, the process of privatization had predictable results. Less than two years after voucher distribution a survey reported that insiders, mostly managers of the enterprises, manipulated profits before privatization to reduce the asset values at revaluation. The report concluded that, “The vouchers are now owned by primarily the managers of the enterprises to be privatized.”45 Thus, as the UNDP report puts it, “The national wealth was swiftly and in great disproportion redistributed to the benefit of the rich strata of the population.”46 Clearly, a new capitalist class is in formation. The question of the day, however, is this: what sort of capitalist class has come to control the larger part of the country’s productive assets? One way to approach this question is to take a look at what has happened to the mid- to large-scale industrial enterprises that, in the Soviet era, played such an important role in the republic’s economy. These enterprises, especially in the chemical, machine tool, food processing, construction, transport, light industry and furniture making sectors, represented a large portion of fixed-capital investment in the republican economy (much of it subsidized from All-Union funds). Once the former managers of these enterprises had bought controlling interests – usually for a song, as we have seen – they typically withheld capital investment and did not recapitalize or modernize. Rather, they

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ran them for short-term profit, at the expense of minority stockholders and creditors (including tax creditors). As western analysts reported: Out of the 50 enterprises surveyed … only three have shown any investment since privatization. The remaining enterprises show ever increasing arrears, near-zero return on assets and, unless massive restructuring and reorientation takes place, the vast majority should be pushed into bankruptcy proceedings by their creditors before all the tangible assets with some value are stolen.47 The analysts added that, “… almost all industrial enterprises here are worth more as scrap metal than as going concerns.”48 According to the US State Department, Armenian exports in 1996 totaled $264 million, of which 39 percent went to countries outside the former Soviet Union.49 Some 22 percent of the total export figure is categorized as “machinery and equipment” and another 35 percent is categorized as “minerals and metals”. According to US State Department figures, Iran, with a total 13 percent share of export trade with Armenia, is the country’s third largest trading partner, after Russia (with 24 percent) and Turkmenistan (with 20 percent).50 It is a safe bet that a large portion of Armenia’s exports to Iran consists of scrapped industrial infrastructure. Fledgling capitalists appear to be running extractive industries, strip-mining the old Soviet infrastructure, exhausting inputs, selling off inventories, and then closing shop to scrap the machinery.51 Visitors to the southernmost city of Meghri may watch the Mercedes trucks with Iranian plates haul ton after ton of scrapped industrial infrastructure out of the country. Thanks to the imposition of a liberal trade regime and the elimination of currency restrictions, much of the cash generated in these ventures has ended up in foreign bank accounts.52 When reinvestment has taken place at all, it has typically been directed to: (a) joint ventures with foreign capital (Midland Armenia Bank jsc, Armentel Company, the Shant Jermuk Mineral Water Bottlers, and so on); (b) the import– export sector; and (c) small retail operations and services for domestic markets.53 At present, of course, “informal activity” – everything from bribe taking and bank fraud to extortion and assassination-for-hire54 – permeates the public and private sectors, from top to bottom. The prevailing environment of illegality in Armenia55 reflects the absence of what pro-privatization literature refers to as “a modern market-oriented legal system.” Judging from local initiatives and from the experiences of

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other countries under IMF/World Bank tutelage, however, this situation is not likely to persist indefinitely. As the new owner–managers and the old regional clan leaders draw closer together to form a proper class for itself, they will eventually reconstruct the legal and law enforcement systems in their own image. In the coming years Armenia will gradually acquire the trappings of a modern capitalist state, including a reorganized judiciary, effective civil and contractual law, a competent police apparatus, and a functioning tax system.

Self-determination in Karabagh In Armenia as elsewhere, many managers of industrial firms also sit on the boards of commercial banks.56 If the experiences of other countries offer any insight, these banks and their board members will increasingly play the role of brokers for global finance capital. As the owner– managers of privatized firms maneuver for commanding positions within Armenia’s economy, it is a good bet that they will also consolidate their commanding positions politically. In so doing, they are likely to become what the former director of the World Bank’s Health Department and former acting vice-president of personnel, Michael Irwin, has referred to as the local “autocrats”, with whom World Bank “bureaucrats” regularly consult. Armenia joined the World Bank and the IMF in 1992.57 The decision to join took place with very little in the way of officially encouraged debate by the population of Armenia; a population that will bear the burden of these decisions for years to come. Armenian officials announced that membership in these institutions would enhance Armenia’s independence and sovereignty. People in countries with more experience in these matters, however, have expressed a very different view of things. Martin Khor, director of the Third World Network in Malaysia, observed that, “Economically speaking, we [countries in the South] are more dependent on the ex-colonial countries than we ever were. The World Bank and the IMF are playing the role that our ex-colonial masters used to play.”58 It is important to understand that the dependency Khor has described is not limited to economics. Structural adjustment programs, conditionalities and bilateral foreign “aid” facilitate the steady transfer of wealth, through debt repayment, from poor debtor countries to bankers in the most highly industrialized countries. As such, these policies perpetuate power relationships and the subordinate status of the poorer debtor countries. In this sense, then, the multilateral financial

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institutions and trade organizations that promote these policies reproduce relations of political domination.59 I have just hinted that the ascendant capitalist class in Armenia – a class-in-formation that has been a leading beneficiary of ANM policies – is crucially different from the national classes of the great bourgeois revolutions of past centuries and the anti-colonial movements of the 20th century. Opposition to protectionism; promotion of production for export rather than domestic markets; public subsidies for foreign capital; these are a far cry from the traditional tasks of national bourgeoisies. Yervant Odian’s** literary creation, the doctrinaire Comrade Panchoonie, brought calamity to one Anatolian village at a time. The new Panchoonies – spiritual heirs of the Karabagh Movement and organic intellectuals of the new ruling class in formation – might continue to invoke nationalist themes and appeal for legitimacy to nationalism from below. To the extent that their constituents function as brokers for multilateral financial institutions and foreign investors, however, they are functionally capitalist internationalists, or what one might call “internationalists from above.” And to that extent, they disqualify themselves as bearers of a national program, a program that aims to unify the country, protect domestic industries and markets, and defend national sovereignty. As long as the Soviet bogey remained in place, the Karabagh Movement and the ANM benefitted from nationalism from below. Even in the early years of the Movement, however, the “new thinkers” did not conceal their priorities.60 As with environmental demands, so also in the case of Karabagh, the organic intellectuals of the Movement increasingly came to view these struggles as costly distractions from the genuine historical tasks of the day. (These tasks they variously described as “economic reform”, “competitiveness”, “attracting foreign investment”, “integration into global markets”, and so on down the list of neo-liberal incantations.) At least as early as September 23, 1991, for example, representatives of the Ter-Petrossian government agreed to renounce territorial claims to Karabagh, as part of an Armenian– Azeri concord jointly brokered by Russian President Yeltsin and Kazakh President Nazarbayev. Since then, the ANM administration has refused, obviously wishing to avert the threat of escalating military engagement with Azerbaijan, to officially recognize the Nagorno-Karabagh Republic.61 Moreover, the administration has set a post-Soviet precedent for “compromise” on the issue by signing a number of multilateral documents which acknowledge Baku’s sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabagh.

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Thus, after ten years of bloodshed, sacrifice and steadfast resistance in Karabagh, the same leaders in Yerevan who reviled their Soviet predecessors for subordinating Karabagh’s fate to political and economic expediencies have indicted themselves for exactly the same offense.

Conclusion If I had set myself a different purpose in the present discussion, I could have produced a more generous evaluation of the Karabagh Committee and its successor, the ANM administration. One could, for example, credit the previous regime with significant diplomatic successes. After all, Karabagh is today free of Baku’s domination, and Armenia has so far averted overwhelming international isolation while supporting Karabagh’s independence. These are important achievements, and they did not come easily. This example, moreover, illustrates a general point which ANM supporters have enunciated more than once; things could have turned out worse. If, for example, Lake Sevan’s water level has fallen x feet, it could have fallen x;y feet, where y90. If 700 000 citizens have left the country, 1 000 000 could have left the country in the same period. If the morbidity rate has risen p percent, it could have risen p;q percent, and so on. The point is well taken, as far as it goes. However, I doubt that many ANM supporters would have gone out of their way to concede the same point when it came to evaluating the achievements of the Soviet era. Another likely response to my remarks, particularly with respect to prosperity and self-determination, could be summarized by the common, if uninspiring, post-cold war refrain, “There is no alternative.” This is not the place to examine the metaphysics of this formulation. However, even if one were to grant that, in some sense, the country now has no choice but to play the neocolonialists’ losing game, one still need not conclude that such a predicament is something to celebrate. These possible responses, in any case, appear to have lost whatever rhetorical force they might once have possessed in Yerevan. One of the most surprising results of the first round of balloting in the March 1998 presidential election – even more surprising, perhaps, than Demirjian’s rapid rise in the polls – was the increased popularity of the candidate of the titular Communist Party, Sergei Badalian.**** Even running against former Soviet boss Karen Demirjian, Badalian took fourth place, winning 11 percent of the votes cast on the first round.

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That was almost twice as large a share of the vote as the CP candidate received in 1996, and it was only 1.24 percent less than third place candidate, Vazgen Manukian – the candidate many Yerevantsis believe won the presidential election only a year and a half earlier.62 These election results and the demoralized scene in Independence Square that I described at the beginning of this discussion become more comprehensible when one reflects on the Karabagh Movement’s poor record of achieving its announced goals. Moreover, as I have hinted and as we shall see below, subsequent developments endanger even the goals that have been achieved so far, notably self-determination in Karabagh. The press of record has described Armenia’s current president Robert Kocharian, as both a “hardliner” on Karabagh, and as a proponent of “free-market economies”; a code term, in the orthodox lexicon, for capitalism in the neo-liberal mold. It would seem, then, that President Kocharian has inherited his predecessor’s dilemma: on the one hand, he draws his legitimacy from nationalistic supporters below; on the other hand, he is the chief executive of a state under the economic, political and ideological tutelage of global finance capital. Thus, like his predecessor, he receives pressure from two directions. On the one hand, he receives nationalist pressure from below, calling for self-determination for Karabagh and the protection of domestic industries and markets; on the other hand, he receives internationalist pressure from above, calling for “compromise” on Karabagh, along with structural adjustment, liberalization and so on. If he backpedals on the issue of Karabagh, he risks losing his basis of legitimacy at the bottom, antagonizing the army and impairing his ability to rule. If, on the other hand, he lives up to his reputation as a “hardliner”, he risks antagonizing his constituency at the top, inviting further economic isolation and placing more obstacles in the way of what Manukian described as “the path leading to happiness.” More than one observer has noted that the change of administration has brought precious little change on the domestic scene.63 Kocharian is facing the same pressure to “compromise” on the issue of Karabagh as his predecessor faced, and there is some evidence that he, too, might succumb. During a recent pilgrimage to Washington DC for the annual IMF meeting, for example, one of the supplicants, Armenian Prime Minister Armen Darbinyan, was quoted as saying that his country is prepared to forgo its demands for the “immediate” independence or annexation of Nagorno-Karabagh.64 However, as far as I can tell at the time of this writing at least, it is not a foregone conclusion that the Kocharian administration will capitulate on the issue of Karabagh.

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What is less disputable, however, is that leaders in Yerevan will find it increasingly difficult to justify a dual allegiance to both capitalist internationalism and self-determination in Karabagh. Like his predecessor, Kocharian will try and fail to harmonize nationalist rhetoric with neocolonial reality. He, too, will find it more and more difficult to serve both his impoverished electoral constituency at the bottom and the local brokers for international finance capital at the top, and to balance his sincere commitment to the people of Karabagh with the gamut of multilateral commitments he has inherited. Much has been made of the need for “social cohesion” in Armenia. Moralistic appeals for such cohesion, however, have typically been directed to members of the new ruling class in formation – a class I have described as being very different from a national class. No wonder, then, that these appeals have not borne much fruit. It is conceivable, of course, that Armenia’s capitalist rulers will once again be forced to abdicate in the face of sweeping changes in Russia. It is also conceivable, however, that Armenians may one day create a different course for themselves. Armenia’s best hope might lie in the hands of a future generation of poor and working-class Armenians who will have to make the best of their country, if for no other reason than that they simply have nowhere else to go. In any case, the future is open – far more open than the new Panchoonies and the technological determinists at the IMF would have us believe. It remains at least an open possibility, then, that working-class Armenians may one day participate in their own governance “at all levels of decision-making”. In the meantime, we in the diaspora can at the very least begin to change the way we talk about Armenia’s predicament. It certainly is not too soon to stop pretending that the country’s “transition to a market economy” will lead to a happiness that has eluded all the other impoverished satrapies of the IMF and the World Bank. Nor is it premature to stop permitting nationalist rhetoric to mask capitalist internationalism, and to stop imagining that the new rulers the Karabagh Movement helped bring to power are capable of carrying out the missions of a national class.

Notes * The suffix “tsi” in Armenian refers to a person who resides in or hails from the place in question. In this case, a Yerevan dweller. ** Yervant Odian (1869–1926) Armenian satirist and journalist.

Markar Melkonian 197 *** Page references in footnote items marked with three (3) asterisks reflect pagination of the individual documents as they are retrievable on the Internet. **** We note that Badalian has since died of natural causes while Demirjian was killed in an armed attack on the Armenian parliament in late 1999. 1. I presented the first version of this chapter in Cambridge, Massachusetts in early May 1998 at the Zoryan Institute sponsored conference entitled “The Karabagh Movement, 1988–1998”. Since then, the loudly lamented financial crisis in Russia has provided a rare (though no doubt temporary) opening for discussion in the mainstream press of the broader effects of a decade of neo-liberalism in the former Soviet Union. Reports that the IMF has failed miserably to live up to its advertised claims have prompted more than one academic interviewee, exasperated to the point of sacrilege, to suggest out loud and on the record that it should be abolished. Since heresy appears to be in the air, at least for the moment, my remarks may not appear so controversial as they did in the spring of 1998. 2. Compare this list with the similar list of objectives in the statement by Levon Ter-Petrossian (then candidate for the presidency of the Armenian Supreme Soviet), published by Armenpress on August 10, 1990. See Jirair Libaridian (ed.) Armenia at the Crossroads: Democracy and Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era (Watertown, MA.: Blue Crane Books, 1991) pp. 96–105, especially 96–7. Libaridian’s collection of documents will serve in this discussion as a handy English language reference for the views of the leaders of the Karabagh Movement in its early “heroic phase”. 3. A more comprehensive balance sheet, of course, would include many other topics not included as separate items in this discussion. Such topics might include the ANM’s record in international diplomacy, relations with the Armenian diaspora, technological modernization, official corruption, and so on. Aside from space constraints, I will not discuss these topics under separate headings because they did not constitute major public goals of the Karabagh Movement during its years of ascendancy. 4. Vazgen Manukian in Libaridian, p. 56. 5. Refer, for example, to Rafael Ishkhanian in Libaridian, p. 28. 6. Manukian in Libaridian, p. 71. 7. Manukian in Libaridian, p. 52. 8. Roupen Adalian (ed.) Armenia and Karabagh Factbook (Washington DC: Armenian Assembly of America, 1996) p. 50. Cf. Business Information Service for the Newly Independent States*** (henceforth BISNIS(a)), ‘Energy Sector Profile — Armenia’, February 4, 1997 (Yerevan), p. 3.*** 9. Authorities have announced that at least one of Medzamor’s two reactor units is scheduled for retirement in 2004. See BISNIS (a),*** p. 2. 10. Over the years (both Soviet and subsequent), there has been a cumulative reduction of Lake Sevan’s water level of eighteen meters, leading to a 41 percent loss in water volume. See Armenian Authorities in collaboration with the staffs of the IMF and the World Bank, “Republic of Armenia: Policy Framework Paper, 1996–1998”, p. 12.*** Also refer to BISNIS (a), p. 2*** and the UN Development Report, Human Development Report: Armenia 1997, 1998 (henceforth UNDP), p. 47. 11. Central Intelligence Agency, CIA World Factbook: Armenia (henceforth CIA), p. 2.*** Due to deteriorating municipal wastewater treatment

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12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

infrastructure, only about 10–15 percent of sewage water was being treated as of early 1996. Manukian in Libaridian, p. 52. Ter-Petrossian in Libaridian, p. 116. Manukian in Libaridian, p. 54. Apparently, Jirair Libaridian, an advisor to Ter-Petrossian from 1991 to 1997 and one of the chief advocates of the “new thinking”, admitted in a May 9, 1998 talk at Princeton University what, in any case, had become quite obvious: that the “new thinking” had failed. Curiously, however, Libaridian persists in describing Russophobia and unilateral appeasement of Ankara as a “revolution in political thought.” Ara Sarafian, “The New Thinking Revisited”, Armenian Forum, 2 (1988): 139. Armenian Authorities, p. 13.*** Center for Economic Policy Research and Analysis, “Mass Privatization of Enterprises in the Republic of Armenia: An Early Assessment” (henceforth CEPRA), (College Park, MD: Center for Economic Policy Research and Analysis, 1997), p. 35.*** Cited in UNDP, p. 23. Strangely, few western reports on conditions of religious minorities in Armenia make mention of the long established Muslim minority in the country. The UNDP report, for example, mentions Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seven-Day Adventists and followers of the Krishna Consciousness movement, each more than once, but lacks even a passing reference to the Muslims. Refer, for example, to UNDP, p. 62. UNDP, p. 16. UNDP, p. 16. According to an estimate in the CIA World Factbook for 1994, infant mortality in Armenia as of 1994 was 27.1 per 1000 live births. According to a 1997 estimate reported in a later edition of the CIA World Factbook, the infant mortality rate had risen to 40.4 deaths per 1000 live births. Also refer to Kim Hekimian Arzoumanian’s valuable discussion, “Infant Nutrition and Foreign Aid: Changes in Postpartum Practices and Improvements in Breastfeeding in Armenia”, Armenian Forum, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 1–15. According to Violetta Aghbabian, Secretary General of the Armenian National Commission of UNESCO at the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Barbara J. Merguerian and Doris D. Jafferian (eds) Armenian Women in a Changing World (Belmont, M.A.: AIWA Press, 1995) pp. 204–5. Adalian reports that, “In the last few years general mortality has increased by 5500 (from 22 000 to 27 500) or by 24 percent.” Adalian (ed.) p. 52. According to the UNDP report the life expectancy in Armenia has fallen from 79 years in 1962 to 76 years in 1994, UNDP, p. 20. For an overview of deteriorating healthcare provisions in Armenia, see Marina Kurkchiyan, “Health Care in Armenia: the Human Cost of the Transition”, CACP Briefing Number 16 (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs), March 1998. Figures for 1996 are 3.4 female suicides as compared to 1.2 male suicides per 100 000 people, UNDP, p. 83. Armenian Authorities, p. 2.***

Markar Melkonian 199 28. US State Department, Bureau of Public Affairs, “Background Notes: Armenia”, (Washington DC: US State Department) 1996 March, p. 5.*** 29. CEPRA, pp. 2, 27 and UNDP, pp. 49, 80. 30. Here we can add another item to the balance sheet. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, Movement supporters loudly criticized relief efforts in the earthquake zone as insufficient. Seven years after Movement leaders assumed office, however, thousands of refugee families still had no permanent housing. 31. UNDP, p. 47. 32. The UNDP reports Armenia’s “permanent population” as 3.7 million, but parenthetically notes that “the number of actual population is less than 3.0 million because of large-scale migration”, UNDP, p. 13. Also refer to the US State Department, p. 1.*** I am not sure how this figure was determined, nor how reliable it is. As far as I am aware, neither Armenian officials nor the Federal Migration Service of Russia has released definitive figures on immigration. See also S. Karapetiyan, “Migration from Armenia in the PostSoviet Period, 1991–1995”, report to the UNDP, Armenia office, 1996, cited in Kurkchiyan, p. 1. By the year 2001, Armenia’s population might have been reduced to a little more than half of what it had been ten years earlier. John Hughes, “Celebrating What?” AIM (February 2001) 102. 33. CIA, p. 3.*** 34. UNDP, p. 22. Many of the young men who emigrated might have done so to avoid being drafted into military service, and in many of these cases, the decision to emigrate might have been an economic decision, especially in view of the fact that military pay is insufficient to support a family, and that public health and welfare programs for elderly parents on fixed incomes have been dramatically reduced. 35. Snark News Agency report of December 8, 1997. Russia, however, is facing its own negative population growth. According to Richard Paddock, a Los Angeles Times, staff writer in Moscow, Russia’s population has fallen from nearly 149 million to 146.5 million in the past five years, while the average life expectancy of Russian men has fallen to 57 years. Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1999, p. A5. 36. CEPRA, p. 31. 37. UNDP, p. 45. Also refer to Armenian Authorities, p. 12.*** I am not sure what to make of other published claims such as Selina Williams’ claim that Armenia received over $350 million from the diaspora in 1997, Financial Times, May 19, 1998, p. 4. 38. According to one source, per capita income in 1995 amounted to $30 a month. Adalian, p. 41. 39. US State Department, p. 1.*** 40. BISNIS(a), p. 4.*** 41. UNDP, p. 18. 42. Structural adjustment is the name given to a series of policies imposed by the multilateral financial institutions on debtor countries for the purpose of reducing domestic consumption and redirecting resources to manufacturing exports and the repayment of debts. In poor debtor countries like Armenia, structural adjustment has involved (a) selling off state enterprises to the private sector, (b) removing price controls for agricultural goods, (c) devaluing

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43.

44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

local currencies to make exports more competitive in foreign markets, (d) reducing government budget deficits by cutting consumer subsidies and charging user fees for social services such as health care and education, (e) dropping protectionist measures and reducing regulation of the private sector, (f) creating incentives – guarantees, infrastructure, tax breaks, and wage restraints – to attract foreign capital, and (g) dismantling foreign exchange restrictions (which also allows wealthy locals to export funds overseas capital flight, thus worsening balance of payment deficits). Kevin Danaher (ed.) 50 Years Is Enough: the Case against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Boston: South End Press, 1994 and World Bank, Operations Evaluation Department). World Bank Structural and Sectoral Adjustment Operations, 1992.*** For figures on privatization refer to Armenian Authorities, pp. 10–11,*** BISNIS(b), “Armenia: Economic and Trade Overview”, Yerevan: Business Information Service for the Newly Independent States, June 1997, p. 2*** and CEPRA, p. 1. The description of the privatization process in this paragraph is drawn largely from the discussion in CEPRA*** and UNDP, pp. 39–40. CEPRA, pp. 1, 4. The results of privatization in Armenia closely parallel the results in many other countries. The UNDP has charged that privatization has primarily benefitted multinational corporations and local brokers. UNDP, p. 40. CEPRA, p. 1.*** The report, which consists of findings of a research project initiated in the fall of 1996, presents results, analysis, and policy recommendations based CEPRA’s survey of 50 mid to large newly privatized enterprises in Armenia. CEPRA, p. 3. US State Department, p. 2.*** US State Department, p. 2.*** The UNDP reports that Iran is Armenia’s third largest trading partner after Russia and Belgium. According to the State Department report, Armenian imports exceeded exports by $305 million (US State Department), p. 2. Of the total $669 million imports, humanitarian assistance amounted to some $152 million or 41.8 percent of the value of total exports. This percentage is even higher if we accept the CIA World Factbook figures that estimate total imports at $830 million and total exports at $273 million in 1996. A similar process took place under neo-liberal tutelage in Bangladesh a generation earlier. Undervalued state owned enterprises were sold off to entrepreneurs who, instead of recapitalizing these facilities, just sold off the machinery and sent their money abroad. Restrictions on interbank foreign exchange transactions and on cash withdrawals from banks were eliminated in 1995, thus facilitating cash transfers out of the country. The scale of this sort of investment is limited, however, in part because so many local products are not competitive with foreign products on the domestic market, CEPRA, p. 30.*** News of questionable “suicides” and murders in Yerevan found a distant echo on November 20, 1998, when Galina Starovoitova was gunned down in a stairwell in St Petersburg. Apparently, the “principled liberal” advocate

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55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

of free enterprise and the rule of law was killed by a hit man employed by one of the enterprising “New Russians” she helped elevate to power. According to the UNDP report, for example, about 75 percent of income is not currently taxed in Armenia, UNDP, p. 45. CEPRA, p. 8. The Republic of Armenia became the 169th member of the World Bank on September 16, 1992 and the 163rd member of the IMF on May 28, 1992. Quoted in Daneher, p. 4. Actually, the current “South-to-North” resource flow outstrips that of the colonial period. According to the World Bank’s 1992 Annual Report, the Bank’s two lending arms paid out $16 441 billion in gross disbursements to borrowers that year. However, net disbursements – that is, gross disbursements minus the amount of money repaid to the Bank on outstanding loans and credits – totaled $6258 billion. In the same year, the Bank’s borrowers paid companies in rich OECD countries $6547 billion for procurement of goods and services on outstanding World Bank loans. Thus, that year, borrower countries paid $198 million more to OECD economies for bank associated procurement than the borrowing countries received from the Bank. This was not an atypical year. Between 1984 and 1990, there was a net transfer of financial resources of $155 billion from the “South” to the “North”. The case of Bangladesh illustrates just how totalitarian that domination can be. In that country, the World Bank decides what the domestic policy and budget will be (earmarking 2 percent of funds for education, 4 percent to women’s healthcare, and so on); liberalizes trade laws, thereby promoting export oriented policies; allocates funds to the various sectors, and determines the country’s domestic priorities, right down to population policy, which the Bank controls entirely. The Bank even goes so far as to set targets for the number of various types of contraceptive devices that are to be distributed in the country. Refer, for example, to Libaridian. Refer to Sarafian, p. 140. It will be recalled that the Republic proclaimed its independence from Azerbaijan on September 2, 1991, and that it has yet to be officially recognized by any other government. Kocharian received 38.76 percent of the vote on the first round and Demirjian received 30.67 percent; 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Many thanks to Geoff Goshgarian for bringing to my attention Jean Gueyras’ article “Un<>pour rien,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 18, 1998. Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1998, p. A6.

8 Possible Solutions to the Nagorno-Karabagh Problem: a Strategic Perspective1 Armen Aivazian

Introduction The continued failure of international mediation efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict prompts a detailed consideration of the following topics: (1) the actual causes of the conflict and the actual objectives of the direct participants; (2) the systemic–structural flaws of the OSCE’s Minsk Group peace plan and the reasons why it is unrealistic to expect that this plan will ever be implemented; (3) an alternative compromise peace plan, the critical point of which is a US political– military commitment to the security of Armenia; and (4) an assessment of the chances for a settlement.

Sources of the conflict and international involvement We begin by asking what, after all, is this conflict about? What are the underlying causes and motives for this conflict? If the answer to these questions is incorrect, then the whole analysis and the ensuing peace proposals will go awry.

Nationalism vis-à-vis geopolitics The Nagorno-Karabagh crisis has been at the center of international attention since 1988. The OSCE has conducted intensive international diplomatic efforts for years to resolve the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. However, all attempts to reach a viable solution have so far failed. The chief mediating officials suffered professional frustration and were openly pleased to be moved to other assignments: among them Italian 202

Armen Aivazian 203

ambassador Mario Sica, US ambassador John Maresca, Swedish ambassador Jan Elliasson, and Russian ambassador Vladimir Kazimirov. Many westerners, diplomats and scholars alike, explain the near total failure of these mediation efforts solely in terms of the intransigence of the conflicting parties. In their view, this amounts to an irrational incapability to grasp the clear benefits of regional economic co-operation vis-à-vis what they refer to as “ethnic strife”.2 As Ambassador John Presel, US special negotiator for Nagorno-Karabagh, put it before the House International Relations Committee on July 30, 1996: … the ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus are primarily an expression of the bottled-up nationalism that is unleashed when empires collapse … . The tragedy of Nagorno-Karabagh is that the collapse of empire and the ambitions of crowd-baiting politicians allowed it to turn into a full-scale war.3 Unfortunately, this is a typical western characterization of the origins and dynamics of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. Yet it is terribly inaccurate. Nationalism is as much a cause of this conflict as it is a cause of the Gulf War. The nationalism of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis is subordinate to the real causes of the conflict and limited mainly to the mobilization and organization of the conflicting societies in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The real reasons behind the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict are not to be found in the domains of ideology or social and ethnic psychology but in the realm of strategy, or, more precisely, geostrategy. Two levels of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict The Nagorno-Karabagh conflict is evolving on two levels. The first is strategic and the second is diplomatic–legal. The strategic level represents the base (to use Marxist terminology). Besides a purely military aspect, this level incorporates relevant geopolitical and geo-economic factors as well as the internal political processes of the states, directly or indirectly, involved in the conflict. It is this set of complex factors that determines the strategic thinking of the immediate parties to the conflict.4 The superstructural level of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict is located in the framework of OSCE’s Minsk Group negotiations. Logically, if the developments on the superstructure are not going to meet those of its base, then these two levels will experience a dangerous friction. In other words, a successful settlement of this conflict depends on whether the international mediators, as well as the parties to the conflict,

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understand adequately what is taking place on the ground and how seriously they try to cope with the fundamental causes of this conflict. Negotiations in the OCSE Minsk group The OSCE’s Minsk group process has until now dealt with the NagornoKarabagh conflict at the level of superstructure only. They address only the immediate time and territory of the hostilities, as though the only issue was the administrative status of Nagorno-Karabagh and the plight of its population. Thus, the negotiations confine themselves to the narrowest framework possible – “to the tip of the iceberg” – leaving out of the agenda the deeper conflicting patterns of behavior and strategic thinking of the immediate parties to the conflict. In fact, the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis has a strategic two-dimensional causal field: first, a clash of divergent strategic interests and objectives of the immediate parties to the conflict and, second, a similar clash between the great and regional powers, who have been effectively meddling in Transcaucasia and especially in Karabagh. This strategic reality means, among other things, that the political responsibility for solving the Karabagh crisis rests not solely with the immediate parties to this conflict, which include Armenia, Nagorno-Karabagh, Azerbaijan and, as we shall see below, Turkey, but this responsibility rests, in equal measure, on the big powers, especially Russia and the USA. We must recognize as well that these two powers have opposing agendas in the Caucasus and are in the midst of an intense, ongoing tug-of-war in the region. Recently, some western analysts have promoted an almost mystical slogan of “integration” between Transcaucasian states as a panacea for the resolution of regional conflicts. It should be obvious, however, that any kind of regional integration between the Transcaucasian actors is possible only if and when accompanied by simultaneous and concomitant regional co-operation among the greater powers, Russia, the USA, Turkey, and Iran. Without a geopolitical and geo-economic modus vivendi between these powerful outside players, any talk about the integration of the Transcaucasian actors is, at best, wishful thinking.5 With regard to the first dimension, that is the clash between the immediate parties to the conflict (IPCs), the strategies pursued by the immediate parties to the conflict are as follows. One of the foremost strategic objectives of Turkish foreign policy is to strengthen its position in the newly independent and not finally shaped Caucasian– Central Asian geostrategic region. The main means for achieving this aim is to deepen the economic, political and, if and whenever possible,

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military and security relations with the five Turkic-speaking former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kirgizstan. Thus, in May 1998 the security ministers of all these states held a sudden meeting in Istanbul, which was viewed with suspicion in Moscow. Prior to that, we have the Treaty on Bilateral Military Cooperation signed by Turkey and Azerbaijan in summer 1996. Turkish– Georgian military collaboration is also evolving. Besides financial and technical support for the Georgian army, there also exists a training program for Georgian officers. The primary strategic goals of Azerbaijan are to strengthen its independence by building and exploiting oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russia, and to provide economic and military security to its province of Nakhichevan, a small territory bordered on three sides by Armenia and non-contiguous with Azerbaijan proper. The strategic objectives of both Turkey and Azerbaijan converge on trying to shrink Russia’s sphere of influence and to eliminate the narrow “Armenian wedge” consisting of Armenia’s southernmost province which separates Azerbaijan proper from Nakhichevan and Turkey. This is not merely because of a century-old pan-Turkic ideology (which calls for the political unification of all Turkophone peoples) or traditional Armenophobia (quite strong in both Turkey and Azerbaijan), but because of clear geopolitical and geostrategic interests. Pan-Turkism and Armenophobia are merely the appropriate ideological vehicles for the promotion of these interests. The major strategic challenge facing Armenia is to withstand this pressure from Turkey and Azerbaijan and to ensure its long-term security. Armenia’s security predicament is to survive as a state and as a nation. Neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan faces a similar problem.

The Armenian defense agenda Before considering Armenian gains and losses in the event the Minsk Group peace plan (or any other peace plan that envisages territorial concessions to Azerbaijan) is implemented, let us first examine Armenia’s present strategic situation and determine the country’s defense requirements. The Azerbaijani–Turkish blockade of Armenia has severely damaged the economic and, hence, the social security of the country. However, the most fundamental and essential layer of the national security of Armenia that is, its military security, is relatively strong. The Armenian defense agenda requires the safeguarding of two fronts, Azerbaijani and Turkish. For the time being, the Turkish threat

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is neutralized by the Armenian–Russian defense alliance and the presence of Russian troops in Armenia. As for the Azerbaijani front, the weaponry of the Armenian Army (including the Defense Army of Karabagh) is not inferior to that of Azerbaijan. At the same time, the Armenian army maintains a considerable superiority in organization, professionalism (especially in its officer corps), and morale in addition to holding superior strategic positions. The latter factor is crucial. Thanks to the advantage of high ground, Armenian positions are favorable for both defensive and offensive operations, and unlike Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan, Armenia and Karabagh have direct and secure land communication. It is also likely that in the event of a full-scale war Armenia would be able to take Nakhichevan and, thereby, radically transform the regional geostrategic situation in its favor. Of course, this would be a most dangerous development, since Turkey has repeatedly warned that it would directly invade Armenia if the security of Nakhichevan is at stake. However, Armenian options in a full-scale Armenian–Azerbaijani war – what would amount to a battle for survival for Armenia – would be critically limited, and the escalation of war into Nakhichevan and subsequent Turkish, Russian and Iranian involvement in fighting could not be ruled out. In addition, Turkey itself could instigate a pre-emptive Nakhichevani strike in order to create a pretext for the direct military invasion of Armenia or for the Turkish occupation of Nakhichevan. Taking all of these factors into consideration, Armenian defense doctrine would have to satisfy two essential requirements: (1) the capacity of Armenia to independently confront and win wars with Azerbaijan, and (2) a defense alliance with at least one external power which would neutralize the Turkish threat. In the foreseeable future, only Russia is interested and willing to assume such a role. However, it should be clear that Russian commitment to the security of Armenia is grounded, first and foremost, on strategic calculations made in Moscow rather than the “historical friendship and fraternity of the Armenian and Russian peoples”, or other similar notions. If, or as soon as, Armenia is deprived of its capacity to independently cope with Azerbaijan, the strategic value of Armenia for Russia would evaporate, causing any Russian military commitment to Armenia to be withdrawn. Thus, the first point of Armenian defense doctrine, the independent capacity to confront and win a possible war against Azerbaijan, requires constant and unrestricted Armenian military control over NagornoKarabagh, that is, the presence of the Armenian army in Karabagh and the absence of any other military force from the territory.

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Let us develop these points further.

The two pivots of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict The problem of Siunik The recognized pivot around which the conflict evolves is the future of the indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabagh. However, there is yet another pivot that is inseparably interwoven with the first. It is Siunik (Zangezur), the southernmost region of Armenia. The security of this region is the key to the national security and survival of the Republic of Armenia. The borders of Soviet Armenia, drawn in 1920–23, precluded any possibility for Armenia to be a geopolitically viable state in the event of any future repetition of the collapse of the Russian Empire. Siunik, the mountainous southern region of Soviet Armenia, represents a case of extreme strategic vulnerability. This region is totally lacking in any strategic depth. Its territory extends for some 50 kilometers between Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan, in the two narrowest parts of Meghri and Jermuk, it shrinks to only about 40 kilometers. The threat to Siunik becomes clear when we consider (1) the ferocity of combined Azerbaijani–Turkish attempts to conquer Siunik by force in 1918–21 with the aim of providing a direct territorial link from Turkey to Azerbaijan and from there to Turkophone Central Asia; (2) Azerbaijani historiography’s decadeslong revisionist attempts to prove that Siunik is historically “an Azerbaijani land”; and (3) the open and repeated territorial claims of the current Azerbaijani leadership. Notably, not only is Siunik (Zangezur) proclaimed “an indigenous Azerbaijani land” but also other parts of Armenia, including Lake Sevan (or, as the Azerbaijanis call it, Geycha) together with its coastal regions and even Yerevan. As just one example of such claims, below are excerpts from the speech of President Gaidar Aliev at the January 14, 1998 session of the Constitutional Commission of Azerbaijan: … The lands around Nakhichevan were also Azerbaijani lands, although the Armenians were living there as well. Precisely in the same fashion as they were seizing other land – for example, certain lands currently within the territory of Turkey, or Azerbaijani lands, where the Armenian Republic is now situated – in the same fashion they were trying to seize Nakhichevan … . If in its time the Azerbaijani lands were not turned over to Armenia – the province of Zangezur which separates Nakhichevan from Azerbaijan – then, perhaps,

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Nakhichevan would not have needed autonomy, Azerbaijan would have been a country with a united territory. However, the transfer of Zangezur to Armenia in 1920, including the districts of Meghri and Ghapan, was a very grave event in the history of the loss of our lands. The Armenians were always trying to seize our lands … . It is a well known fact that the founders of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic gave their consent to the delivery to Armenia of part of Azerbaijani lands, including Yerevan … … Such was the process of the gradual loss of our territories. … We have to know these facts. I believe that the territories that were formerly given up should be taken back. The historical lands of Azerbaijan should be taken back. And our people must know what lands are our historical lands, what lands we have lost and why we have lost them. Certainly, these lands should be taken back. If we prove to be incapable of accomplishing this, then future generations will do it. … I have told you about these lands. Fifty years ago, in 1948–53, the Azerbaijanis were deported from Armenia. Those were Azerbaijani lands, the lands that through conflict were delivered to Armenia in 1918, 1919, 1920. Next, after 40–50 years of living there, in 1948 the Armenians decided that the Azerbaijanis need to be totally deported from there, so that no one later would say that these are Azerbaijani lands … The autonomy of Nakhichevan is an historical achievement, we have to defend and sustain it. The autonomy of Nakhichevan is a very serious factor that can help us to take back our other territories … it serves this goal.6 In his Decree of December 18, 1997, entitled “About the Mass Deportation of Azerbaijanis from their Ethnohistorical Lands on the Territory of the Armenian SSR in 1948–1953”, President Aliev went as far as to define the present day Republic of Armenia as “the so-called Armenia”: As a result of the purposeful policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, conducted against the Azerbaijanis in the Caucasus for the last two centuries, our people has suffered burdens, national tragedy and hardships. As a result of these progressively carried out inhuman policies, the Azerbaijanis became exiles from the territory of the present so-called Armenia, from their ethnohistorical lands where they lived for millennia … 7

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The military vulnerability of Siunik was further attested to in 1991–93 when its main cities, Goris and especially Ghapan, were ravaged by direct gunfire from Azerbaijani firing positions, making any normal life there impossible. Siunik is not merely indefensible in the case of a possible full-scale simultaneous offensive from the east (districts of Kelbajar, Lachin, Kubatli, Zangelan) and the west (Nakhichevan), but simple border clashes suffice to bring life in the region to a halt, since almost all of its territory can be easily shelled from the other side of the border. Siunik’s geostrategic importance to Armenia becomes fully clear when we consider that Armenia lacks a common border with Russia. Siunik provides Armenia with an essential outlet to the outside world through Iran, bypassing hostile Azerbaijan and Turkey, and volatile Georgia. By 1991, the last bastion for the defense of Siunik was Karabagh, and beginning in 1991, Karabagh itself came under a fullscale Azerbaijani offensive with the categorical objective of driving out its indigenous Armenian population.8 If Azerbaijan succeeded in conquering Karabagh, Armenia would experience a sharp deterioration in its strategic position and be laid open to one of three possible scenarios. First, along with the drastic deterioration in the strategic situation of Armenia, Siunik would immediately come under the threat of occupation, either permanent or temporary. Even during a temporary occupation, the infrastructure and economy of Siunik would be destroyed, depriving the population of the means and desire to live there, especially in view of the possible repetition of hostile attacks. In the second scenario, Azerbaijan would invent various border provocations and follow them with prolonged artillery bombardment of the cities and towns of Siunik, with the same results as described above. The third, and best possible scenario for Armenia, would not differ significantly from the first two. Even if Siunik was neither occupied nor bombarded, it could remain only formally part of Armenia since the mere threat to execute the first and second options would suffice to turn Armenia into a puppet of Turkey and Azerbaijan, a kind of Transcaucasian Swaziland. As in Swaziland, where the country’s geopolitics prevented the leadership from conducting any policies that would contradict the policies of South Africa prior to the fall of apartheid, Armenia would be forced to accept a Turkish– Azerbaijani orientation, and reject its defense alliance with Russia and its strategically important relations with Iran. Furthermore, the absolute strategic worthlessness of Armenia would destroy any incentive for Russia, and, to a lesser extent, Iran, to continue their support of Armenia. At first Siunik, then all of Armenia, would become a transit

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highway between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Turkish–Azerbaijani control of Armenia would then spread from the political–economic to the national and educational spheres, including the attempt to impose the revisionist Turkish version of Armenian history through textbooks. There is no doubt about this, since Turkey has been and is doggedly engaged in the falsification of the history of Armenia through all available means and channels including its connections with NATO country security agencies.9 All of this political, economic, and military pressure would cause massive psychological complexes and divisions within Armenian society, resulting in nothing less than the final Armenian national catastrophe and the disappearance of Armenia from the world map. In this context we can see that Armenian military victories in Karabagh in 1991–94 were the only opportunity Armenia had to save Siunik and provide Armenia with the time and opportunity to strengthen its independence. Thus, the present stage of the Armenian– Turkish/Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh is about the very survival of Armenia. Armenia cannot become a viable state without the permanent presence of strong and effective Armenian armed forces in Karabagh.

The historical sources of Armenian mistrust This analysis leads us to rather pessimistic conclusions regarding Armenian–Azerbaijani and Armenian–Turkish relations. Yet these conclusions are contested. International mediators and “observers” have blamed Armenia for, as they put it, an irrational mistrust on the part of Armenians toward Azberbaijan and its policies. In light of such assessments, an examination of the bases of Armenian mistrust is warranted. When we compare the present situation with the historical record in the region, the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict emerges as an organic extension of Armenian–Turkish conflict of the 1894–1923 period rather than as an isolated historical phenomenon. Among the striking similarities between these periods are the same Turkish geostrategic objective and state policies of establishing and controlling directly and fully land communication among the Turkophone peoples from the Bosphorus through Baku to Central Asia. The Armenians do not trust Baku because they have not forgotten the pan-Turkic genocidal policies conducted by independent Azerbaijan against the Armenians from 1918 to 1920, followed by elaborate ethnic discrimination against Armenians through all seven decades

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within Soviet Azerbaijan. The independent post-Soviet Azerbaijani Republic simply revived and continued the old policies of massacres and forceful deportations of its Armenian population. While Azerbaijani policies toward Armenia have been adequately assessed and elucidated, Turkish policies toward Armenia have been insufficiently analyzed by Armenian policymakers and analysts. We can summarize Turkish anti-Armenia and anti-Armenian policies under five major headings. 1. International campaign. Turkey has been pursuing a decades-long international anti-Armenian campaign in diplomatic, academic and public circles. After Armenia regained its independence, this campaign has been intensified both qualitatively and quantitatively. 2. Diplomatic relations. Ankara has been categorically refusing to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia from 1991 onwards. At first, Ankara tried to justify its stance by reference to Armenia’s nonexistent territorial claims against Turkey, then by the Karabagh conflict. Later, Turkey invented numerous other pretexts as rationales for its hostile policies toward Armenia. In fact, since 1993, a new pretext has been adopted, namely false Turkish allegations of Armenian support for PKK guerrillas in the form of bases and training on Armenian territory. Turkey even names the places inside Armenia where it says there are PKK bases, among them the vicinity of the Armenian nuclear power station and the Lachin corridor.10 If we recall that Turkey has not hesitated to strike against alleged PKK bases in a foreign country (Iraq) without any international sanction – from 1991 to June 1998, there have been at least 55 Turkish assaults into Northern Iraq, including four major operations involving more than 20 000 troops – then these Turkish allegations do stand as a clear threat to Armenia’s security.11 Until now the Armenian government has failed to assess these Turkish policies correctly. The refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia should be assessed as nothing less than an attempt to fundamentally deny the Armenian right to an independent statehood. 3. Turkish–Azerbaijani alliance. Turkish diplomatic, propaganda and military support to Azerbaijan throughout the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict has acquired the proportions and characteristics of a mature military–political alliance between Ankara and Baku. The level of military commitment by Turkey to Azerbaijan can be illustrated by the statement of the commander-in-chief of Turkish ground forces, General Hikmet Göksal, who visited Baku in November 1996 within

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the framework of the Treaty on Bilateral Military Cooperation signed between Turkey and Azerbaijan in summer 1996 (visits to Baku by top Turkish generals occurred before the signing of the treaty as well). He told a briefing in Baku “if the cease-fire regime is violated by Armenia, Turkey under the treaty on bilateral [military] cooperation will render necessary aid to Azerbaijan.” Any such aid, he added, “would be consistent with international legal norms.”12 This was probably the most explicit among numerous Turkish threats to intervene militarily into the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict on Azerbaijan’s behalf. 4. The blockade. The effect of the blockade of Armenia by Turkey is nearly equivalent to a full-scale war. It has devastated Armenia’s economy and caused an exodus of more than 700 000 refugees. It is now evident that by opening its border with Armenia in the winter of 1992–93 Turkey sought merely to advance its propagandistic ends. At that time the defeat of the Karabagh Armenians seemed imminent to both Baku and Ankara, and a few cargo trains carrying wheat to Armenia would not have had any appreciable effect on the situation. 5. The denial of the Armenian Genocide. Before addressing this question directly, let us consider the notion frequently promoted by western mediators and diplomats that history does not have any place in the settlement of the Karabagh conflict. Many Western observers view the Armenian–Turkish conflict of the 1894–1923 period and the most recent Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh as separate and distinct developments. In stark contrast, the Armenians, the Azerbaijanis and the Turks join together in viewing the current Karabagh crisis as the continuation of the earlier conflicts. As a matter of fact, since the strategic thinking of the parties to the conflict is severely determined by history; history plays a major role in the negotiating process over the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict.13 Armenia fears the repetition of genocide. Turkey is worried that in the future its Armenian neighbor will be held up as an economically prosperous and internationally respected state, which would then be in the position to raise questions about moral and material compensations for the colossal damage done to the Armenian nation by the Ottoman Empire (leaving aside the territorial claims). Azerbaijan is fearful of losing Nakhichevan in addition to what it has already lost. Turkey is also very apprehensive that Nakhichevan could be conquered by Armenia. Such a development would mean a radical change in the strategic situation in the whole region. Turkish dreams of ever

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establishing a land corridor with Azerbaijan, and then to Central Asia, would suffer a devastating blow; Armenian borders would acquire some natural shape, providing her with an economic viability and an increased defense depth; and Turkey would experience a severe reduction of influence in the region. Having been a victim of genocide in the not too distant past, Armenia’s population is extremely sensitive to security issues. This sensitivity has been partly responsible for both the unparalleled determination on the part of Armenian fighters during the Karabagh war as well as for the mass exodus of population from Armenia during recent years. For Armenians, psychological security, a feeling of safety, is equal in importance to such traditional basic layers of national security as military and economic security.14 For Armenia, international recognition of the Armenian Genocide has a primary strategic and security importance in addition to its legal and moral value. The recognition of genocide by the international community would reduce the possibility of any direct Turkish aggression against the Republic of Armenia. The recognition of genocide by Turkey itself could serve as a rudimentary confidence-building measure in Armenian–Turkish relations. However, present Turkish policies indicate that this is not going to happen in the coming years and perhaps decades. Hence, for an unknown protracted period of time, Armenian–Turkish relations are going to develop in conditions of deep and principled mistrust, irrespective of the level of diplomatic and commercial relationships. Former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian and his government were of the opinion that establishing active commercial relationships with Turkey and Azerbaijan would solve Armenia’s grave security problems. Such an assessment was based on a naive misreading of history. During the 1894–1914 period Armenian–Turkish and Armenian–Tatar commercial relations had been vigorous and dynamic; nevertheless, this factor did not, and could not, play any role in the prevention of the Armenian Genocide.15 Before 1990, the commercial, financial and political relations between Iraq and Kuwait were excellent; nevertheless, that factor did not prevent the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Before 1988, Armenia and Azerbaijan were collaborating in almost all economic fields; nevertheless, this did not prevent the eruption of the Karabagh conflict. Commercial relations do not automatically create a harmony of strategic interests. Further, these relationships often themselves become the causes for conflict. Conflictologists have noted that interdependent

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economic systems are much more inclined to conflict than mutually independent economic systems. It has been stressed particularly that the independence of capitalist and communist political and economic systems contributed to stability during the cold war era. Having made this point, I do no want to convey the impression that Armenian– Turkish and Armenian–Azerbaijani commercial relations are undesirable. Not at all. Such relationships are very desirable and even necessary for the normal development of the Armenian economy, and the Armenian government has never been against such collaboration. The point is simply that the development of commercial relationships and the safeguarding of Armenia’s security are different issues. The security of Armenia must be safeguarded by other means. At this point we can reach two conclusions: (1) the only hostile step that Turkey has not yet undertaken against Armenia is direct military intervention, and (2) Turkey is an immediate party to the NagornoKarabagh conflict.

The strategic world views of the parties to the conflict We should now consider the strategic thinking of the immediate parties to this conflict (IPCs), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabagh, and Turkey, and compare it to the thinking of the Minsk Group (MG). The term strategic thinking refers here to the calculations and prognoses of the parties to the conflict about the long-term threats to their national security and ensuing long-term priorities of their foreign policies. Historical–chronological approach IPCs – the conflict has a century-old history and will continue after the Minsk Group plan is implemented. MG – the conflict started in 1988 and will finish with the implementation of the proposed peace plan. Territorial approach IPCs – the conflict is about the entire territory of Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as that of eastern Turkey. MG – the conflict is limited to Nagorno-Karabagh and the adjacent territories. Security guarantees Armenia and Karabagh – security guarantees are needed for both Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, in particular, Siunik.

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Azerbaijan and Turkey – security guarantees are needed for Nakhichevan. MG – security guarantees are needed for Nagorno-Karabagh.

The desirability of short-term or long-term peacekeeping forces in the region Armenia and Karabagh – as long as possible. Azerbaijan, Turkey and MG – as short as possible. Clearly, the strategic thinking of the immediate parties to the conflict is completely different from what is discussed in the negotiations and gives a much more adequate explanation of the origins and essence of this conflict. Thus, from its very inception in 1992, Minsk Group efforts have suffered from three fundamental functional shortcomings. First, the strategic worldviews of the parties to the conflict (PTCs), which, incorporate, inter alia, the deepest historical–psychological layers, have not been addressed. In fact, the international mediators have been regularly pooh-poohing the strategic thinking and ensuing wider strategic aims of each of the parties. Second, Turkey, one of the immediate PTCs, is not identified as such but was instead included in the group of mediators. Third, another of the immediate PTCs, Armenia, has failed to clearly and openly present, and indeed to fully realize and face, its strategic concerns. Let us consider for a moment a relevant analogy. A small Israel borders a Germany that is by all accounts a non-democratic state. This Germany engages in an ongoing civil war against its biggest minority (analogy with Kurdish problem), occupies part of another country (analogy with Cyprus), and makes raids into another country (Northern Iraq). This Germany also denies the Jewish Holocaust and organizes large scale international campaigns of denial in diplomatic and academic circles; tells this imagined Israel on its borders that it intends to “teach it another lesson” (as, for example, the late Turkish President Ozal as well as other high profile politicians, threatened Armenia); and, finally, imposes a complete blockade on this Israel, the economic result of which equals the result of a full-scale war. There is no doubt that the Israeli government would have tried to explain to the outside world its legitimate security apprehensions. This is something that the Armenian government, for some reason, has not yet done, and this lapse has contributed to the complete indifference of the OSCE mediators to Armenia’s long-term strategic security requirements.

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The major systemic–structural flaws of the OSCE Minsk Group peace plan for Nagorno-Karabagh In September 1997, Armenia and Azerbaijan accepted the peace proposals presented by the co-chairmen of the Minsk Group. The plan envisaged a two-stage settlement of the conflict. During the first stage, Karabagh Armenian troops were to withdraw from the six occupied districts, the OCSE multinational peacekeeping force was to be deployed between the Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, and the blockade of Armenia and Karabagh was to be lifted. However, the second stage was designed so vaguely that it allowed for diametrically different interpretations. Thus, according to the Azerbaijan official understanding, during the second stage, simultaneous negotiations were to be held about the final status of Nagorno-Karabagh and the restoration of full Azerbaijani control over the Lachin corridor and Shushi.16 The interpretation of Yerevan and Stepanakert excludes any change in Armenian military control over Lachin and Shushi since the return of Lachin and Shushi to Azerbaijan would mean nothing less than the removal of the last vestiges of military security for Nagorno-Karabagh. Consequently, the Azerbaijani position had the effect of negating the entire second stage of negotiations. Moreover, President Aliev, during his much publicized July 1997 trip to Washington, created an excellent pretext for Baku to ruin the peace process by appearing to make a concession by “agreeing” to leave the Lachin strip under Armenian control until the second stage of negotiations with the full knowledge that Armenia considered Lachin essential to its security. It is true that the demilitarization of the “occupied territories” was stipulated in the Minsk Group proposals, but there were no mechanisms to ensure they would remain demilitarized once Armenian forces left. Azerbaijan could have violated the demilitarization provision by various means; for example, by introducing regular army units disguised as police, or claiming that Armenian forces had violated the agreement and re-entered those regions, or some other pretext. Second, as we shall see, the OSCE Karabagh peacekeeping force, if implemented, would only remain for a brief period of time, thus making the remilitarization of the currently occupied districts by Azerbaijan a matter of inevitability. The following is a brief discussion of major systemic–structural, and irremediable, flaws of the OSCE Minsk Group plan. The transience of the Karabagh Peacekeeping Force (PKF) The most notable flaw in the MG peace plan is that it envisages only a very short-term PKF around Karabagh. As I have already

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mentioned, throughout the last one hundred years (not to go deeper into history) the development of Armenian–Azeri/Turkish relations has been proceeding along the same lines of antagonism. Unfortunately, there is no rational reason to believe that this situation will change. Despite this, the Minsk Group peace plan calls for a short-term commitment of peacekeeping forces. The reasons are extraneous to the conflict. The first reason is financial. According to the calculations of the OSCE High Level Planning Group (HLPG), $300 million is required to keep that force for one year, while the OSCE normal annual budget is $30 million.17 Another source gives an estimated figure of $40 million during the first six months of Karabagh peacekeeping.18 The current budgetary contours for OSCE render long-term peacekeeping in Nagorno-Karabagh impossible regardless of need. The second reason concerns the OSCE mandate. The CSCE Helsinki Summit of July 1992 adopted a mandate for all future peacekeeping operations by CSCE. Article 25 of Chapter 3 reads: “Peacekeeping operations cannot be considered a substitute for a negotiated settlement and therefore must be understood to be limited in time.”19 The officers of the High Level Planning Group, which has been responsible for planning the Nagorno-Karabagh PKF mission, also specifically state: “it should be emphasized once more that the operation will only last for a set period of time and will be terminated at the earliest possible date.”20 The third reason is that Azerbaijan will be hostile to the peacekeeping force. After the re-establishment of Azerbaijani control over the six occupied districts, Baku will try to use the PKF against Armenian forces. If that does not work, Azerbaijan will seek to nudge the PKF out at the earliest possible date. Even if we suppose for a moment that this PKF would stay in the region for ten or even 20 years, it is going to leave at some point. The PKF would eventually abandon the region without leaving behind any stable solution. This is a major systemic reason for the failure of all attempts to reach a negotiated solution. The Minsk Group tries to solve the Armenian–Azeri/Turkish conflict that carries a long-term prognosis within a very short-term framework. This approach cannot work and is doomed to failure. Thus, the inevitable transience of the OSCE peacekeeping force mission in the region makes the whole operation senseless from the viewpoint of attaining a stable, lasting peace. At the same time, it provides Azerbaijan with an excellent opportunity to try again to solve the crisis militarily.

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OSCE’s inexperience in peacekeeping The OSCE has been specializing in what is called preventive diplomacy. The peacekeeping operation in Nagorno-Karabagh was supposed to be the first in OSCE history. Military peacekeeping has been a prerogative of the United Nations and, in recent years, of NATO. As the first attempt of its kind, the operation in Karabagh will inevitably have its shortcomings. The small size of the Peacekeeping Force and the limitations of its mandate The OSCE High Level Planning Group concept for a peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabagh was presented to the 54 OSCE member states on July 14, 1995. It includes four operational options plus two sub-options. Option 1 calls for three battalions and three independent units for a total force of 3560 peacekeepers with 240 peacekeeper observers. Option 2 calls for five battalions for a total force of 4200 peacekeepers with 200 peacekeeper observers. (Options 1A and Option 2A call for an Advance Deployment Force (ADF) to be forwarded early, but they represent the same force format as Options 1 and 2.) Option 3 calls for four companies for a total force of 1260 peacekeepers with 240 observers; and Option 4 calls for a purely Military Observer mission for some 400 observers with 375 support personnel.21 Even if Option 2 is implemented, and the largest planned total force of 4200 peacekeepers is dispatched, this will be a seriously overextended force, since it would be deployed along the more than 400 km borders of Nagorno-Karabagh. This force would definitely be insufficient to withstand any massive military offensive by the Azerbaijani army. Furthermore, Article 22 of Chapter 3 of the CSCE 1992 Helsinki Summit final document, entitled “Challenges of Change”, states “CSCE peacekeeping operations will not entail enforcement action.” This article can easily be interpreted as a ban against military involvement in case of gross violations of the peace accords. In the event of an Azerbaijani offensive, the most likely option for the conduct of the Nagorno-Karabagh peacekeeping force would be to sit out the offensive, as happened, for example, with UN peacekeepers in Lebanon in 1982. Non-streamlined and decentralized command and control structure of the OSCE Peacekeeping Force The 30 000-strong international peacemaking force in Somalia was paralyzed because of the United Nations’ ineffective command and control structure. The forces of different states were acting without

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proper co-ordination. When, for example, General Montgomery, the commander of the American contingent, asked the Italian commander for backup tank assistance, the latter had to contact Rome for approval.22 The mistakes of the Somalia peacekeeping force (UNICOM I and II) were taken into account in Bosnia, where the international force (Stabilization Force or SFOR) was placed under joint NATO command.23 SFOR was acting under the supervision of NATO headquarters, and decisions about engagement were being taken at the military rather than at the political level, that is, very swiftly. Besides, the NATO member states’ strategic objectives mainly coincided, especially in Bosnia. When we consider the proposed Karabagh peacekeeping force, we confront what is perhaps the most flawed command and control structure ever employed in peacekeeping operations. From the military perspective, it would have been most expedient if the Karabagh peacekeeping force operated under the authority of either a Russian or NATO chain of command. In reality, the chain of command of the Karabagh peacekeeping force is the following: (39) The [OSCE] Council/CSO will assign overall operational guidance of an operation to the Chairman-in-Office (the chairmanship is to be on a 6 month rotating basis among one of the foreign ministers of the OSCE member-states – A.A.) assisted by an ad hoc group … . The Chairman-in-Office will chair the ad hoc group and in this capacity, be accountable to it, and will receive, on behalf of the ad hoc groups, the reports of the Head of Mission. The ad hoc group will, as a rule, consist of representatives of the preceding and succeeding Chairman-in-Office, of the participating States providing personnel for the mission and of participating States making other significant practical contributions to the operation. (40) The ad hoc group will provide overall operational support for the mission and will monitor it. It will act as a 24-hour point of contact for the Head of Mission and assist Head of Mission as required. … (44) The Head of Mission will be responsible to the Chairmanin-Office. The Head of Mission will consult and be guided by the ad hoc group. (45) The Head of Mission will have operational command in the area.24 It is not difficult to imagine enormous problems generated by this chain of command. It is a well-known fact that the OSCE, due to its basic principle of consensus, is a very slow moving international

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organization. Decision-making at OSCE is an exceedingly complicated and slow process that requires the consensus of all the participants. Any decision could be vetoed by a single “no” vote from one of the member states. We may compare this reality with the fact that among the participants of the ad hoc group, which is going to be a virtual headquarters for the operation, there would be the representatives of Russia, the USA, and Turkey, states with incompatible geopolitical agendas in the region, who are usually at loggerheads over even seemingly uncomplicated decisions. It is obvious that the Karabagh PKF could only be a most cumbersome and inefficient force.

Karabagh versus Bosnia: peacekeeping dilemmas The Armenians are often blamed for their mistrust of an international peacekeeping force in the region. Western diplomats, in their bid to persuade the Armenians to rely on and trust international guarantees, usually cite the example of the NATO led Stabilization Force in Bosnia. However, the Karabagh and Bosnian cases differ substantially in the possibilities they offer for a successful international peacekeeping operation. Unlike Bosnia, Transcaucasia is far from being fully integrated into the NATO political–military orbit. The region is influenced to a significant degree by Russia and Iran, the two regional powers whose geopolitical interests too often confront those of the USA and the West. The region is, furthermore, exposed to the instabilities arising in the Middle East, Russia (especially in the North Caucasus), Central Asia, and the Balkans. Shireen Hunter, an American specialist in Middle East and Transcaucasian politics, is absolutely correct in calling the Transcaucasus a dependent and subordinate subsystem of the international political system, which is highly vulnerable to the dynamics of the international political system, including destabilizing exterior influences.25 Bosnia and the unstable Balkans at large are in the stable European geostrategic region, fully under the umbrella of NATO military might. The influence of Russia has been almost completely eliminated there, not to mention the influence of countries such as China or Iran. Unlike Nagorno-Karabagh, the peace process in Bosnia is almost devoid of the exceedingly negative impact of big power rivalry. There is yet another decisive difference between the Bosnian and Nagorno-Karabagh peace processes. After the peacekeeping operation none of the parties to the conflict will be in a definite position to resume the war and win it. The power correlations between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims, the territories, armed forces, populations and the

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watch and control by NATO, have, if not absolute, then a very good chance of preventing the resumption of the conflict.26 In the case of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh, the return of the six currently “occupied territories” to Azerbaijan by Armenia without alternative security guarantees to Armenia will completely alter the batttlefield in favor of Azerbaijan, and make the resumption of war, therefore, much more probable. Thus, Karabagh and Bosnia make qualitatively different kinds of demands on peacekeeping operations. In Karabagh, the difficulties for a peacekeeping mission are much greater, and in the event of failure, Armenia and Karabagh would be major losers. Finally, the future of peacekeeping forces in Bosnia itself remains deeply ambiguous. No serious political observer could exclude the withdrawal of the peacekeeping forces and the resumption of hostilities between the old adversaries. A parallel outcome would be a disaster for Armenia and Karabagh, with Azerbaijani forces now in a position to prevail totally in the battlefield as a direct result of the terms of the peace agreement.

Possible compromise solutions to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict After eliminating the OSCE Minsk Group peace plan as unworkable, we are left with only two other previously voiced programs for a compromise solution. The first calls for the recognition of Nagorno-Karabagh as an independent state by Azerbaijan and the international community. This would be accompanied by the simultaneous withdrawal of Karabagh Armenian forces from all “occupied territories” except for the Lachin corridor. Under this plan, any future Azerbaijani attack on Karabagh could be repelled with military and diplomatic assistance provided to Karabagh by other states, first of all, Armenia; while the presence of Armenian military forces in Karabagh would preclude possible Azerbaijani aggression or border provocations against Siunik. This proposed solution has been completely rejected by Azerbaijan and is unlikely to be supported by the international community. The second proposal calls for a territorial swap. In 1992 a former US State Department official Paul Goble proposed a territorial swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a possible solution to the conflict. Under Goble’s plan the southern part of Armenia would have been delivered to Azerbaijan, while the major part of Nagorno-Karabagh, as

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well as the Lachin and Kelbajar districts, were to be passed to Armenia.27 As a result, Armenia would have reunited with Karabagh, but only at the expense of losing its geostrategically vital border with Iran and finding itself surrounded on three sides by Turkey and Azerbaijan. This plan is deeply unacceptable to Armenia. Yet, a territorial swap of a different sort could serve as a viable solution. A plan under which Armenia would receive Nakhichevan in return for all of Karabagh and the currently “occupied territories” could work. To employ a medical metaphor, Armenia would be cured of its Nakhichevan “cancer” and Azerbaijan would be cured of its Karabagh “cancer”. Nakhichevan is larger than Karabagh, if we consider Soviet administrative borders, and Karabagh is richer in natural resources. Under current conditions, this solution would be vehemently opposed by both Azerbaijani leaders, who retain the hope of regaining Nagorno-Karabagh eventually, as well as by Karabagh Armenians, who would refuse to leave their ancestral lands. This proposed solution would also get a fierce “no” vote from Turkey, since Turkey would lose its 10 km border with Nakhichevan and, with it, all hope of ever establishing a direct land corridor with Azerbaijan. Neither of these peace plans would be supported by the great powers, since both would require border changes of some sort, creating an additional “undesirable” precedent in international politics. However, the Nakhichevan–Nagorno-Karabagh swap may still contain the best strategic solution to this conflict and should be kept in reserve, especially if all other solutions prove to be unacceptable or unworkable. It is not unthinkable that possible future transformations of the conflict could render this proposal more attractive than it is at present.

The US–Armenian–Russian military alliance as the strategic solution to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict Currently, there is no feasible plan for the settlement of the Karabagh conflict on the negotiating table. Since any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan would mean a drastic decrease in the military security of Karabagh and Armenia, the peaceful settlement of the conflict should be guided by the following strategic maxim: any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan should accompany commensurate compensation for the security of the Armenian side. Hence, the central question of the peace process should be the following: what security substitutes would Armenia receive in return

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for the territories from which the Armenian side withdraws? With this consideration in mind, I propose an entirely new settlement plan based on a recognition and careful consideration of current strategic realities. The outcome of this plan would fulfill Armenia’s legitimate defense requirements, preserve Karabagh’s de facto independence and provide it with solid security guarantees, and return to Azerbaijan all currently occupied territories (except the Lachin corridor) while preserving its territorial integrity. The proposed plan consists of three interrelated political, military, and legal agreements. The political framework would consist of the following agreements: 1. The Republic of Armenia, the Russian Federation and the United States would sign a tripartite defense treaty, which guarantees the long-term strategic security of Armenia. The treaty should include the explicit statement “any attack on the Republic of Armenia would be considered as an attack against the United States of American and the Russian Federation; and consequently, if such an attack occurs, the US and the Russian Federation will assist Armenia in meeting the attack by taking immediate, individually and in concert with each other, such action as is deemed necessary, including the use of armed force, in the exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.” Any other, less certain formulation constitutes an illusory promise and will be of no use to Armenia.28 This treaty shall be of unlimited duration. 2. The Republic of Armenia, Republic of Turkey and the Azerbaijani Republic would sign a tripartite agreement, clearly recognizing the territorial integrity of each of the three states. 3. The Nagorno-Karabagh Republic is renamed the Nagorno-Karabagh Armenian Republic and is recognized by Armenia as a confederative part of Azerbaijan. The relations between NKAR and Azerbaijan are based on a confederative or horizontal relationship. 4. The USA, the Russian Federation, Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a quadripartite agreement recognizing Armenia as a guarantor of the security of the Nagorno-Karabagh Armenian Republic (exactly as the Moscow Agreement of 1921 recognized Turkey and Russia as the guarantors of the security of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic). 5. According to a gentleman’s agreement between the parties, no mention of the Armenian Genocide of 1915–23 is made in any of the documents to be signed.

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The military framework would consist of the following agreements: 1. The Nagorno-Karabagh Armenian Republic maintains its separate armed forces under the name of NKAR Defense Army. 2. In the absence of war, the NKAR receives the right to have up to 25 000 personnel armed force (the same as its present size). 3. It is agreed that separate negotiations will be held within the framework of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe to determine the numerical limitations (the so called “ceiling”) on armaments and equipment of the NKAR Defense Army. 4. The NKAR Defense Army unilaterally waives the right to have such offensive weaponry as combat aviation (excluding armed helicopters) and surface-to-surface missiles with a range of over 100 km. 5. The NKAR Defense Army withdraws from the six districts it currently holds, namely from Aghdam, Fizuli, Jebrail, Zangelan, Kubatli and Kelbajar. 6. The Azerbaijani Army withdraws from currently occupied territories of the NKAR, including the Shahumian district. 7. The road from Armenia to Karabagh running through Lachin remains under the control of the NKAR Defense Army. This land strip includes the territories extending to 25 km on each side of the road. 8. A Limitation of Forces Agreement is signed, under which, inter alia, Azerbaijan agrees to maintain a demilitarized zone along its border with Karabagh and Siunik, varying from 20 to 30 km (excluding the border of Nakhichevan with Siunik). In practice, this will include all those territories from which the Armenian forces are withdrawing; only police could be stationed in this zone. In turn, the Armenian forces of Karabagh and Armenia (in Siunik) establish a similar 1km demilitarized zone on their side of the border with Azerbaijan (excluding the border of Siunik with Nakhichevan). This zone would be monitored by an approximately 300 unarmed OSCE or UN mission personnel for an unlimited period. Azerbaijan needs to accept this asymmetry in the deployment of Armenian and Azerbaijani forces with the understanding that Armenia and Karabagh lack any substantial defense depth. The Camp David Accords of September 17, 1978 established a similar asymmetry in the deployment of Egyptian and Israeli forces. Only United Nations forces and Egyptian civil police equipped with light weapons to perform normal police functions were allowed to be stationed within an area lying west of the international border and the

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Gulf of Aqaba, varying in width from 20 km to 40 km. In the second zone, lying to the west with a width of approximately 100 km, only about 4000 Egyptian border patrol troops are stationed and in the third zone, which is almost 150 km from the international border with Israel, one division of Egyptian armed forces is stationed (22 000 soldiers, 230 tanks, 480 armored personnel carriers). The same accords allowed Israel to establish only a 3 km zone of limitation, but even in this area Israel was allowed to station four infantry battalions (4000 soldiers, 180 armored personnel carriers).29 9. Armenia, Azerbaijan and the NKAR hold talks on border issues with the understanding that the former greatly unnatural borders of Nagorno-Karabagh and Siunik should be slightly revised to provide these Armenian regions with a basic defense depth.30 The legal framework would consist of the following agreements: 1. The NKAR receives the right to have its own government, constitution, flag and coat-of-arms. 2. The citizens of Azerbaijan or at least those who permanently live in the NKAR receive the right to have dual citizenship. 3. The NKAR itself determines the extent of trade and other economic relations with Azerbaijan. 4. The NKAR participates in the activities of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. The forms of participation should be decided during further negotiations between Baku and Stepanakert. 5. The NKARs extent of co-operation and co-ordination with Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, defense, security and law enforcement establishments become the subject of negotiations between Baku and Stepanakert. Note 1. All aforementioned accords should be signed and implemented simultaneously and in a package deal. Omitting any of these articles would thoroughly undermine the entire package. Note 2. The remaining problem of displaced populations could be realistically addressed only when all aforementioned accords are agreed.

The US–Armenian–Russian defense alliance: its meaning and necessity While the proposed settlement plan would consist of many other details, the aforementioned accords are the basic ones, and the pivotal element is the US–Armenian–Russian defense alliance. A legitimate

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question can be raised as to whether this tripartite agreement is necessary at all for Armenia’s security in light of the existing Armenian–Russian defense alliance. The answer is positive because Russian guarantees of Armenia’s security are insufficient. There are four reasons. First, Russia remains an unstable and unpredictable state and is itself subject to possible partition, especially in its Caucasus region. Second, after the withdrawal from the “occupied territories”, the geostrategic position of Armenia would deteriorate, possibly to the extent that Moscow would lose its interest in the continuation of its defense accord with Armenia. Third, the change in Russia’s security commitment could be facilitated by certain economic and political concessions made by Turkey and Azerbaijan in other spheres, for example, their pledge not to support Chechnya in its bid for independence or some concessions and privileges in oil and pipeline politics. Fourth, for the foreseeable future, Russia’s financial and economic situation will continue to be substantially dependent on western loans and logistical support, especially from such US dominated transnational structures as the IMF, World Bank and WTO. As long as the great powers, primarily Russia and the US continue their struggle for the redistribution of zones of influence in former Soviet Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Russia will be exposed to possible American pressures on behalf of Turkey and Azerbaijan (this has already occurred at the Lisbon Summit of 1996, when Armenia was simply abandoned by Russia). This possibility, that is pro-Turkish US pressure on Russia in Transcaucasia, is all the more likely if we consider that the Russian–Armenian and US–Turkish military alliances objectively preserve and promote the same type of zero-sum thinking of the cold war. If we add rapidly growing but low profile Turkish–Azerbaijani military ties to the mix, it becomes quite obvious that conflict prone elements and a tense atmosphere will continue to characterize Transcaucasia after the implementation of any settlement plan that envisages the withdrawal of Armenian forces from strategically important territories. Thus, after the withdrawal of Armenian troops from their current positions, the defense alliance between Armenia and Russia not only will be incapable of neutralizing tensions leading to conflict in the region, but the alliance itself would be exposed to pressures possibly leading to its rapid deterioration. The US as a non-regional power with conflicts with Iran and Russia – two powerful regional states – would neither be willing to make a unilateral commitment to the long-term security of Armenia nor be

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capable of providing that security. However, the strategic security of Armenia and the long-term stability of Transcaucasia could be effectively addressed by Russia and the USA, provided they could act in concert.

Elements of a US–Armenian–Russian defense alliance The pivotal point of these accords would be an explicit commitment by the USA to assist Armenia by all available means, including militarily, in case Armenia is attacked by a foreign power. In theory, the USA can make that commitment in two ways – by concluding a bilateral US–Armenian Military Accord or by joining the existing Armenian– Russian defense alliance. Considering the first option, the USA could have concluded a bilateral Mutual Defense (or Security) Treaty with Armenia. In recent decades, the USA has concluded similar treaties (some of them are no longer in force) with a number of countries, such as the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, China (Taiwan), South Vietnam, Spain, Iran, Liberia and others.31 However, the existing Russian– Armenian defense alliance makes such US–Armenian treaty impossible since it could cause serious political problems between Armenia and Russia as well as between Russia and the USA. Specifically, such a treaty could be interpreted as a means to protect Armenia from Russia rather than from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Hence, Moscow would rightly see this sort of US–Armenian alignment as an attempt to further shrink its sphere of influence by promoting the departure of Armenia from its traditional pro-Russian orientation. The other way of ensuring Armenia’s security would be for the USA to join the existing Armenian–Russian defense alliance. This would be an acceptable and even welcome option for Russia, if two conditions are met: (1) US troops should not be stationed in Armenia (this is something that Washington itself would be unlikely to do). Thus Russia will be assured that its interests in Armenia are not in jeopardy; (2) The US–Armenian–Russian joint agreements should be signed first. After that, and only after that, Armenia and the United States can additionally sign a bilateral Treaty on Military Assistance, which would provide for American logistical support, technical training, and possibly also weapons sales to the Armenian military. In this respect one point needs to be stressed. The USA may not need to engage directly in combat for the survival of Armenia. Russia alone could have both the incentive and capability to protect Armenia, calling only for US political–diplomatic backing. However, without this kind of US logistical support (leaving aside a possible US pro-Azerbaijani

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and pro-Turkish stance) the Russian security umbrella over Armenia could prove deficient. It must be understood that this proposal’s request for a maximum US military commitment in written form aims at receiving minimally sufficient US support in the diplomatic, logistical, and moral spheres. A positive response by Russia toward this kind of US–Armenia military co-operation can be inferred by Russia’s acceptance of the defense accord between Tajikistan and Iran signed in December 1997. Tajikistan is home to a considerable Russian military presence, but Moscow did not object to and, indeed, endorsed Iranian logical and technical training offered to military personnel in Tajikistan. There is yet one extra precondition to US–Armenian military co-operation. It should in no way affect Armenian–Iranian relations which are vital for Armenia’s economy and security. On the contrary, Yerevan’s currently positive relations with both the USA and Iran could serve as a suitable communication channel between these former partners, especially in light of the recent cautious moves toward a possible US–Iranian rapprochement.

The geostrategic significance of the US–Armenian–Russian military alliance Although the proposed US–Armenian–Russian military alliance would play a rather narrow and purely defensive role in Armenia only, its geostrategic significance would be much greater. In addition to the settlement of the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict, this alliance could contribute to the stability and development of the entire interrelated region of Transcaucasia and Central Asia. What is of perhaps greater geostrategic value: the conclusion of this alliance could be a turning point in the military–political relations of Russia with the West. In fact, this would be the first US–Russian military pact since World War II. It is no secret that the ongoing expansion of NATO to the East brought increased feelings of isolation and alienation in Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has repeatedly expressed its desire to forge a strategic partnership with the West. The US–Armenian–Russian alliance would provide a limited framework for such a relationship. The success of this new partnership could pave the way for wider military co-operation between Russia, the USA, and NATO, especially when one considers those many areas where Russian and US strategic interests overlap. These areas include the peaceful settlement of open

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and potential conflicts in the Eurasian and Middle Eastern regions, the containment of a possible aggressive drive by the increasingly powerful and assertive China in the Pacific and Siberian regions, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the containment of radical Islam and the struggle against international terrorism and drug trafficking. Many western analysts agree that “cooperation between Russia and the transatlantic community would make successful western policies much more likely” in the Middle East.32 The implementation of this settlement plan would give all parties the necessary prerequisites to ensure their security and economic development. Armenia would cease to be blockaded and would be enabled to rebuild its badly damaged economic and social spheres without sacrificing its present, relatively high level of military security. The strategic alliance with the USA would give Armenia reliable guarantees for its long-term strategic security and create most favorable conditions for the involvement of the large Armenian diaspora in the economic revival of the homeland. Under such circumstances, Armenia would keep pace with the possible rapid development of the Azerbaijani economy prompted by the revenues received from oil sales. Thus, Transcaucasia would be reasonably ensured against the danger of uneven development. Nagorno-Karabagh would receive firm long-term security guarantees, a permanent land corridor to Armenia, and de facto (though not de jure) independence. Azerbaijan would preserve its territorial integrity and regain its six Armenian occupied provinces. Nakhichevan’s future security as part of Azerbaijan would also be guaranteed. USA involvement in the proposed security pact would reassure Azerbaijan against what it perceives as Russian–Armenian “conspiracies”. Turkey would acquire Armenia as a potentially friendly neighbor on its border and a new market for its goods. The construction of the shortest oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan would provide, at long last, the least expensive and secure solution by running through the territory of Armenia. The conclusion of the Russian–American military alliance would reduce the probability of Turkish–Russian clashes to a minimum. Russia would receive the American “blessing” and even a kind of logistical–moral support for the preservation of its current role as the most influential power in Armenia. Consequently, Russian presence and influence in Transcaucasia would acquire stability and, what is very important, predictability. The US–Russian military alliance over

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Armenian security would be a break in the current geostrategic isolation of Russia. The USA would see the realization of two of its as yet unaccomplished key foreign policy goals. First, a safe and practical export route for Caspian oil would be untangled once and for all, thus providing the Persian Gulf oil dependent Western countries with an alternative energy base. Second, Armenia and Azerbaijan, two of the former Soviet Union’s weaker states, would be freed to pursue a rapid consolidation of their independence and political development. Finally, this US–Russian alliance would end the intense and destabilizing, though covert, struggle between the USA and Russia in Transcaucasia. The present balance of forces between the local and outside powers in the region would be legitimized. On the other hand, the USA, Russia and Turkey would have to accommodate themselves to major changes. Russia would need to reconcile itself to the current reality of a strongly pro-Turkish and pro-NATO Azerbaijan. The USA would have to reject its post-Soviet policy of pushing Russia out of Transcaucasia and accept Russia as the most influential power in Armenia. Turkey would have to give up its long-term strategic design of replacing Russia in Transcaucasia and crushing Armenia as a viable state. Iran is another powerful regional player whose attitude toward any settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict should be taken into account. Until now Iran’s behavior in regard to this conflict has been driven by two primary concerns; first, to prevent further expansion of Turkish influence in the region, and second, to prevent any agitation or disturbances among its own population of Iranian Azerbaijanis that could stem from either major Azerbaijani military victories or defeats. These concerns, in combination, have produced very cautious Iranian policies in Transcaucasia, in essence, limited economic and political support for Armenia and cooler relations with Azerbaijan. One can assert that Iran is more or less content with the present balance of forces in Transcaucasia. Inasmuch as the proposed settlement would actually sanction the current status quo in the region, it is unlikely to elicit sharp criticisms and counteractions from Iran. US–Russian regional co-operation may significantly accelerate an eventually inevitable rapprochement between the USA and Iran. What are the guarantees that, if implemented, the US–Armenian– Russian alliance would survive the test of time? As for Russia, it is very unlikely that Moscow would step back from its commitments to this alliance, since it loses nothing and profits considerably. In the USA some influential circles connected with Turkey and transnational oil

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corporations could at different times voice their opposition to this alliance. Nevertheless, recognizing the fact that the USA is a state extraordinarily based on the rule of law as well as the increasing political awareness of the Armenian-American community, as soon as this alliance is ratified by Congress and becomes law, there would be substantial ground to believe that Washington would stick to the spirit and letter of its commitments. All this, in turn, means that the proposed complex settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict could be implemented (including the withdrawal of Armenian forces from some of their present positions) only after the highest legislative bodies of the USA and Russian Federation ratify the US–Armenian Russian defense treaty. At the same time, the proposed peace plan is a compromise plan and the aforementioned conditions are a bottom line of concessions that, in my opinion, Armenia might be able to make now. Any transformations in regional politics, particularly the prolongation of current Turkish–Azerbaijani policies toward Armenia or new Armenian–Azerbaijani wars would further damage the chances for a compromise settlement. Finally, one thing should be clear to the international mediators as well as to Baku and Ankara; any settlement plan for this conflict must allow for permanent, full and unchallenged Armenian military control over Nagorno– Karabagh and the Lachin corridor. Without agreement on this point, serious negotiations are impossible.33 Armenian–Azerbaijani and Armenian–Turkish relations can enter into a stage of normal development only when the parties cease to fear each other. Let us recall that after the last two world wars, German– French reconciliation has been possible only after NATO provided those two former adversaries with security guarantees. Simple statements of good will and noble intentions are far from being adequate. Hence, reliable security guarantees are the most important prerequisite for stability and economic progress of the region. Turkey does not need and does not ask for any additional security guarantees. It is a veteran member of NATO and, moreover, it has a large, well-trained, and wellequipped military. Notably, from 1995 to 1997 the Turkish armed forces in active service underwent a dramatic increase from 507 800 to 639 000 personnel. The army expanded from 400 000 to 525 000 soldiers, and the Air Force also grew. Armenia is deeply concerned that this build up occurred largely in the territories adjacent to the Armenian border, where now, according to reliable estimates, over 200 000 Turkish troops are deployed. Armenian armed forces number only 58 600. The Nagorno-Karabagh Defense Army has in its ranks some

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20–25 000 soldiers. Russian military presence in Armenia is currently insignificant, a single brigade with only 4300 personnel and one squadron of MIG-23s.34 After the withdrawal of Karabagh Armenian forces from the six occupied districts, Azerbaijan would have great geostrategic superiority over Armenia and Karabagh. Azerbaijan’s security would be additionally guaranteed by its increasingly close military relationship with Turkey. The involvement of the USA in the Russian–Armenian defense pact, the most feasible avenue for any significant American military presence in Transcaucasia in the foreseeable future, would actually advance Azerbaijan’s security as well. On the other hand, after Armenian forces withdrew from the aforementioned territories, the Armenian side would find itself in an extremely vulnerable strategic position and would be in dire need of external protection. Without ironclad security guarantees, the Armenian side would be naive to abandon those limited strategic advantages it has gained in war. If war is to come, it is always preferable to occupy stronger strategic positions, irrespective of the final outcome, We reiterate that because the Minsk Group peace plan of September 1997 called for the surrender of territory without providing for Armenia’s security guarantees. A new war would have been much more likely had that peace plan been implemented. The post-Soviet years have clearly demonstrated that there is no great power or regional security organization that can replace the former Soviet Union as a security guarantor for the Transcaucasus. Russia is not capable of restoring its former hegemony in Azerbaijan and, to a degree, in Georgia. The USA and NATO are also incapable of replacing Russia as a new hegemon in Transcaucasia because of the great influence that other states, especially Russia and Iran, exercise in this region. However, the necessary field of confidence between Armenia, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan and Turkey on the other, could be provided by a US–Russian political–military pledge to the security of Armenia, geostrategically one of the most vulnerable states in the world.

Conclusions 1. The problem of survival and long-term security of the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh forms the basis of the current Armenian–Azerbaijani–Turkish conflict. 2. A speedy compromise solution to the conflict is preferable for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh rather than the continuation of the

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present “neither war, nor peace” situation. However, even an elementary calculation of legitimate strategic needs will preclude the Armenian side from retreating from its relatively high military security level attained through military advances in the early and mid 1990s. 3. Any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan should be compensated by other than territorial guarantees for the security of Armenia. Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh should be allowed to maintain their military security on at least its present level. 4. The OSCE peace plan fails to solve or even to recognize these problems. 5. Including the USA in the current Russian–Armenian defense alliance will provide the Armenian side with the security guarantees that are an equivalent and sufficient substitute for relinquished territories.

The feasibility of an impending peace settlement of the Nagorno–Karabagh conflict: a postscript At present, the chances for the implementation of any compromise peace plan seem to be unfavorable and impractical. A precondition for any kind of lasting peace is a shift in the intransigent position of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Currently, neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan are under international pressure to negotiate seriously and make reasonable concessions to the Armenian side, and therefore, no progress in negotiations seems possible. Furthermore, due to the geopolitical and geo-economic interests of the West, western, and particularly US and British media, especially blame Armenia for the failure to reach a negotiated settlement. Other obstacles stem from internal politics in the USA and Russia. In the USA non-interventionist, “neo-isolationist” attitudes of the public and similar inclinations in sectors of the legislative and executive branches, have gained new momentum with the end of the cold war. It seems that a strong military commitment to the security of Armenia would not be taken up by a US president or the Senate. As for Russia, some opposition forces could try to interpret the proposed tripartite alliance as a further Russian retreat from its traditional spheres of influence. Finally, the behind-the-scenes geopolitical power struggles between the USA and Russia in Transcaucasia are still in full swing. Thus Armenia must seriously consider its strategic realities. In the foreseeable future, the hostile policies of Turkey and Azerbaijan toward

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Armenia are not going to subside. They threaten at any moment to escalate into a full-scale war. Concomitantly, the Armenian side is unlikely to retreat from any of the strategically important territories currently under its control. For years and perhaps decades to come, the only remaining option and historical task for Armenia is to seek ways to live, to develop and to thrive under precisely such unfavorable circumstances. There is no other way to survive. At the same time, Azerbaijani–Turkish intransigence should not halt the search for a viable peace. Armenia’s diplomacy has been predominantly responsive and defensive. What Armenia needs is a more mature, responsible, imaginative and aggressive diplomacy. It is time for the Armenian side to seize the initiative in the negotiating process by elaborating and presenting to the international community new original ideas for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. Despite all of the discouraging considerations mentioned above, I strongly believe that the Nagorno-Karabagh peace plan proposed here, especially the idea of US–Russian mutual engagement, deserves careful attention. Each of the steps in the plan illustrates a particular problem in the conflict, clarifies its multi-level, complex and diverse patterns, and provides a sort of “crisis diagnosis”. The peace plan opens the way to consideration of a US–Russian geostrategic partnership that could materialize and take effective forms in the not too distant future, perhaps within one or two decades. That would be the optimistic long-range interpretation. The other not so positive possibility is that the partnership will emerge too late or not at all.

Notes 1. This chapter is adapted from a longer version published as The Settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh Conflict and the Strategic Security of Armenia (Yerevan: 1998), (in Armenian). 2. A striking example of such an analysis is provided by David Rieff’s “NagornoKarabakh: Case Study in Ethnic Strife”, Foreign Affairs (March–April 1997) 118–32. It is remarkable that the editors of one of the most distinguished western journals on international relations would choose to publish as its first ever article on the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict a piece by an author who is utterly lacking in any background knowledge on the region and the conflict. Rieff’s, and ultimately Foreign Affairs editors’, misunderstanding is overwhelming. Rieff “…wonders about the sanity of some of the enclave’s (i.e. Karabagh’s) officials” and finds it “incredible” that “many of the enclave’s citizens think the government is far too moderate” (p. 126). In other words, for Rieff, a large proportion of the population of Karabagh is simply insane. This notion is supported by the overall style and the third rate “factual” basis of his work. He goes so far as to denounce the Karabagh Armenians for

Armen Aivazian 235 “… the suffering they themselves have caused (including to themselves)” (p. 121). Rieff’s knowledge was acquired in the course of a few days of travel to Armenia and Karabagh and is so limited that he confuses the traditional head-dress of Karabagh Armenian women with the completely different Russian babushka (p. 122). Rieff fails or refuses to understand that the Karabagh Armenians fought to survive and to claim the right to live on their land. If it is insanity to fight for that, then how much more insane, for example, were the US and its allies who transported hundreds of thousands of their troops to the Persian Gulf for an operation, which judged by Rieff’s criteria, would be the most irrational of wars? With an outlook like Rieff’s, all wars throughout history can be blamed on the irrationality of the combatants, and from a moral and philosophical perspective, that is probably correct. However, such a perspective does not have a place in a political scientist’s analysis, particularly when the perspective is applied selectively and opportunistically. 3. Ambassador Presel Testimony on Caucasus Conflicts, Internet, http://usiahq.usis. usemb.se/abtusia/posts/xA1/wwwhpsl.html. Presel’s report is extremely biased. He denies the very facts of the Turkish and Azerbaijani blockades of Armenia, preferring to call them “… a series of interlocking trade embargoes … [which] are crippling all three countries.” Presel dismisses as “untrue” arguments concerning the unjust and arbitrary borders drawn by Stalin and the Bolsheviks, saying that “Armenians and … Azeris lived side by side; it would have been impossible for anyone to draw rational boundaries.” To illustrate his claim, Presel employs an inaccurate source and claims that “… in the 1896 census 55 percent of the population of Yerevan District were Muslims,” without ever uttering a word about the more than 90 percent Armenian majority of Nagorno-Karabagh in 1920 or about the Armenian Genocide. Presel defines the Sumgait and Baku events of 1988 and 1990 as “anti-Armenian pogroms”, while for the battle and liberation of the strategically important town of Khojalu in 1992, he uses inappropriate and much stronger language, “the massacre of Azerbaijani civilians”. Presel distorts the chronology and dynamics of events by first saying that the “Azerbaijanis … were expelled from Armenia”, and then indicating that only after that the Armenians “fled Azerbaijan”. Presel identifies Shushi as a city “historically inhabited by Azeris”, and fails to mention that the city became predominantly Azeri after the massacre of the Armenian majority in March 1920. The Armenian government should have exercised its right to have Presel replaced rather than allow him to continue in his work that would culminate in the now infamous OSCE Lisbon Summit statement of December 1996. 4. My focus here is on “the interrelationship between politics and the threat and use of force, which is the essence of strategy.” Ken Booth and Eric Herring. Keyguide to Information Sources in Strategic Studies (London: Mansell, 1994) p. 16. 5. In this respect, as a counter argument, we note the agreement by the American and Russian co-chairs of the Minsk Group. As a matter of fact, this unanimity is merely a veneer that does not reflect in the slightest USA and Russian geopolitical power struggles and “hidden agendas”. The peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict can only be addressed through the two levels of the immediate parties and the greater powers involved.

236 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh 6. January 23, 1998, Bakinskiy Rabochiy, Baku Worker (in Russian). For a fuller account of this and other analogous statements by President Aliev and others see Arsen Melik-Shakhnazarov, “An Appetite Comes during Lunch”, Armyanskiy Vestnik, no. 2, (1998), Moscow (in Russian). 7. December 23, 1998, Bakinskiy Rabochiy, Baku Worker (in Russian). 8. Caroline Cox and John Eibner, Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in NagornoKarabakh (Zurich, London, and Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World, 1993). 9. While no one has yet undertaken a systematic compilation and analysis of Turkish denials of the Armenian Genocide, a point by point rebuttal of denial arguments is found in Vahakn Dadrian, The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification (Cambridge, Massachusetts and Toronto: The Zoryan Institute, 1999). Also see Roger Smith, Eric Markusen and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and Denial of the Armenian Genocide”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9, 1 (Spring 1995) 1–22. 10. The extent of Turkish propaganda on this issue can be gleaned from some of the titles in the Turkish press; Sezai Sengun, “Syria Flies PKK Militants to Armenia”, Hurriyet, November 10, 1993 in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: West Europe (henceforth FBIS), November 15, 1993, 72; Gorsel Polat, “PKK Will Attach with ASALA in the Spring”, Cumhuriyet, December 27, 1993 in FBIS Daily Report: West Europe, January 5, 1994, 29; Sinan Onus, “Intelligence Report Details Armenia–PKK Ties,” Aydinlik, January 29, 1994 in FBIS Daily Report: West Europe, February 3, 1994, 36; “PKK Reportedly Moving to Iran, Armenia”, Turkish Daily News, February 1, 1994 in FBIS Daily Report: West Europe, February 7, 1994, 44. This sample is found in Rouben Adalian, “Armenia’s Foreign Policy: Defining Priorities and Coping with Conflict”, in Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha (eds) The Making of Foreign Policy in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995) pp. 335–6 notes 23, 25–6. An April 16, 1998 article in the English language Turkish Daily News claimed that Armenia is home to seven PKK bases while Iran has 11, Russia four and Cyprus one. 11. Ed Blanche, “Turkey Seizes PKK Field Commander”, Jane’s Intelligence Review – Pointer, June 1, 1998. 12. Anatolia News Agency, Ankara, in English, 15:36 GMT, November 11, 1996 See Azerbaijan. Country Report. The Economist Intelligence Report (1st quarter 1997) 10. On April 16, 1998 Turkish Daily News, Interfax and REF/RL reported that meeting in Baku on April 14 with Azerbaijani President Gaidar Aliev. General Hakki Karadayi, Turkish chief of staff, said that the Karabagh conflict must be resolved in such a way that Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity is preserved. Aliev termed the conflict a threat to Turkey. The two men also discussed the possibility of deploying NATO forces to protect oil pipelines in the Transcaucasus. General Karadayi praised Azerbaijan as “the star of the future in economic, commercial, and military terms.” However, according to Turan, he refused to comment on reports that Azerbaijan is seeking to buy F-16 fighter aircraft from Turkey. The next day, Caucasus Press reported on the talks in Tbilisi between General Karadayi and Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and Georgian Defense Minister Vardiko Nadibaidze. The talks focused on Turkish financial and technical

Armen Aivazian 237 support for the Georgian military and on the ongoing training program Turkey is offering Georgian army officers. Shevardnadze and Karadayi noted their “common interests” in exporting Caspian oil and gas via Georgia and creating a regional security system. 13. Kenneth Booth, a well-known scholar on strategic studies, wrote extensively about the ethnocentric shortcomings in US strategic thought: Partly because of the dominance of the United States in the development of the subject, it [strategic studies] came to have an ethnocentric flavor, that is, it reflected the culture-bound assumptions, world-view preoccupations and prejudices of the country of its dominating practitioners. The main contributors to the strategic debate were writing primarily with US problems in mind, and they shared a common (American) understanding of the strategic world they sought to analyze and sometimes influence. However, the theory and practice of strategy exists in a multicultural world and multistate world, and there was only a slow recognition of this in the literature. The importance of different national perspectives and of encouraging contributors from beyond the American strategic community remains: thirty years later the subject is still unsatisfactorily ethnocentric … strategic studies remain, by the best standards of the study of social behavior, an ethnocentric subject … strategic theory is often a rationalization of ethnocentric bias.

14.

15. 16.

17.

Booth and Herring, Keyguide to Information Sources, pp. 9–11, 18. Unfortunately for Armenia, some high-ranking government officials have accepted the view that history has no place in the settlement of the NagornoKarabagh conflict. This can be attributed to inexperience and the severe lack of qualified intellectual resources in Armenian strategic and foreign policy circles. We note that even the great powers such as the United States recognize the importance of psychological security for their own populations. Roland A. Paul, American Military Commitments Abroad (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973) p. 5. The Caucasian Tatars, Turkic-speaking Shiite Muslims of Transcaucasia, later, during the Soviet period, named Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijani President Aliev expressly underlined this position during his January 8, 1998 meeting in Baku with a group of visiting American members of Congress (see the relevant report by ITAR–TASS for January 9, 1998). A virtually identical understanding about the course of negotiations had been implied by Ambassador Presel, US Special Negotiator for NagornoKarabagh, in his testimony cited above: “We are pressing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to make the compromises that will be necessary to forge a permanent peace. The principal problems to be resolved include the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh, including permanent guarantees for security; the withdrawal of forces from occupied territory and the return of refugees to their homes; the question of Lachin, the Azerbaijani province through which runs the road between Armenia and NagornoKarabakh and the fate of Shusha and other places inside Nagorno-Karabakh that were historically inhabited by Azeris. (emphasis added) Heikki Vilen, Mike Karie, and Roger Biesel, “Preparations of a Peace-Keeping Mission for the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict by the OSCE’s High Level

238 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

Planning Group (HLPG),” May 1996, see in Internet, http.//www.osce.org/ inst/organix/conflict5.htm. William J. Durch(ed.) UN Peacekeeping, American Politics and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 446. Arie Bloed (ed.) The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Analysis and Basic Documents, 1972–1993 (Dodrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993) p. 726. Vilen, Karie, and Biesel. Vilen, Karie, and Biesel. Jonathan Stevenson, Losing Mogadishu (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995) p. 119 Dayton Peace Agreement, Annex 1A: Agreement on the Military Aspects of the Peace Settlement, Article I, 1(b), November 21, 1995. Until December 1996, the Bosnian peacekeeping force was known as the Implementation Force or IFOR. Bloed, pp. 727–8. Shireen Hunter, The Transcaucasus in Transition: Nation-Building and Conflict (Washington: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994), p. 20. For details see Armen Aivazian, pp. 54–9. Paul Goble, “Coping with the Nagorno-Karabagh Crisis”, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. 16, 2 (Summer 1992), 26. Another proposal for a territorial swap appeared within weeks, this time in the liberal weekly. The Nation. 255, 7 (September 14, 1992) 243. For a critique of both plans see Levon Chorbajian. Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: the History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh (London: Zed Books, 1994) pp. 29–30. As defined by two leading US specialists in foreign relations law, “An illusory promise is an expression cloaked in promissory terms, which, upon closer examination, reveals that the promiser has committed himself to nothing. Illusory promises make for illusory contracts, and illusory contracts are void.” Thomas M. Franck and Michael J. Glennon, Foreign Relations and National Security Law: Cases, Materials and Simulations (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1993) p. 521. See “Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel. Stationing of Forces” in Camp David Accords, September 17, 1978. See, with the date in the accompanying map “Sinai: Showing Limitation of Forces Agreement”, Annex to The Military Balance, 1995–1996 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995). Recognition of the need to establish geostrategically viable borders for states has an interesting precedent in the case of Czechoslovakia. After World War I, the Supreme Council of the Versailles Peace Conference (represented by the premiers and foreign ministers of the five principal powers, commonly called the “Council of Ten”) granted Czechoslovakia certain territories inhabited by Polish and German minorities in the belief that a more demographically precise border “Would have left Czechoslovakia so entirely defenseless as to be really incapable of independent life … ”. Thomas M. Franck, The Power of Legitimacy among Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 156. Roland A. Paul, American Military Commitments Abroad (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973). Elizabeth C. Roy. U.S. Military Commitments (Washington: Institute for Defense Analysis, 1963).

Armen Aivazian 239 32. Robert D. Blackwill and Michael Sturmer (eds) Allies Divided: Transatlantic Policies for the Greater Middle East (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 1–2, note 1. US–Chinese and Russian–Chinese conflict patterns are described in K.E. Sorokin, Geopolitika sovremennosti i geostrategiya Rossii (Modern Geopolitics and the Geostrategy of Russia) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), pp. 93–5, 100–7, 145, notes 62–74. Douglas Johnston, Foreign Policy into the 21st Century: the U.S. Leadership Challenge (Washington: The Center for Strategic & International Studies, 1996) pp. 45–6, 84; on the common interests of the USA and Russia in containing Islamic fundamentalism, see pp. 18, 95. A recent perceptive analysis in the Economist focuses on geopolitics in the first 30 years of the 21st century. It specifically highlighted the desirability of a military–political partnership between the USA, Europe, and Russia; see “The Next Balance of Power: a Geopolitical Detective Story”, Economist, 346, 8049 (January 3–9, 1998), p. 19. Even Zbigniew Brzezinski, an outspoken representative of the influential Russophobic school of foreign policy has written that sooner or later “America and Europe … should offer Russia not only a special treaty or charter with NATO, but they should also begin the process of exploring with Russia the shaping of an eventual transcontinental system of security and cooperation that goes considerably beyond the loose structure of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And if Russia consolidates its internal democratic institutions and makes tangible progress in free-market-based economic development, its even closer association with NATO and the EU should not be ruled out.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Impreratives (New York: Basic Books. 1997), p. 120. 33. Currently, the territorial swap of Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabagh remains an impractical, hypothetical alternative. 34. The Military Balance, 1997/1998 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1997) pp. 68, 74, 76; The Military Balance, 1995/1996 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995) p. 62. Also, Ara Tatevosian, “Nagorno-Karabagh’s New Army of ‘Iron Will and Discipline’”, Transition (OMRI) (August 9, 1996) 23.

9 Nagorno-Karabagh: International Political Dimensions Richard Giragosian

Introduction The Nagorno-Karabagh issue has expanded, since its military inception in 1988, to emerge as one of the most significant post-Soviet conflicts. This is particularly the case given the conflict’s inherent nature whereby the political and diplomatic challenges of balancing the principles of territorial integrity and the right to national self-determination require prudent solutions in order for the conflict to be resolved fairly. The Nagorno-Karabagh issue has also emerged as a complex situation with international political dimensions, fostering the involvement of the world’s most powerful nations, the regional powers, and the existing and newly created diplomatic and security organizations of the international community. Given the recent events in Kosovo, and other incidents of “ethnic conflict” in many areas of the world, a clear understanding of the Nagorno-Karabagh issue is crucial to any attempted mediation or intervention by the international community. The Nagorno-Karabagh conflict has long been misunderstood and incorrectly presented as simply an “ancient hatred” or “historical conflict” which happened to erupt once the Soviet Union collapsed. The Karabagh issue is far more complex, however, and the generalizations and stereotypes surrounding the conflict only hinder progress in resolving the dispute. Specifically, the Karabagh conflict has been interpreted in three different ways. The first and most common is to define the issue by a focus on the role of extreme nationalism stemming from “ancient hatred” in driving ethnic violence. A second approach is the suggestion that the conflict stems from a series of interethnic security dilemmas.1 The third approach sees manipulation by belligerent leaders as the key cause of the conflict. 240

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The dilemma of ethnic insecurity The fundamental issue of the Karabagh conflict is the fact of a significant “security dilemma”, whereby the Armenians of Karabagh were driven by the fear of mass extinction, a fear compounded by the realization that state guarantees of safety did not exist. The pogroms in Baku and the organized violence in Sumgait directed against the Armenian minority demonstrated the insecurity of the Armenian population residing within Azerbaijan. The outbreak of anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan fed the already present sociological insecurity of Armenians stemming from the 1915 Armenian Genocide perpetrated by neighboring Turkey.2 The preconditions of the conflict, following a pattern found in most incidents of ethnic violence, included a series of ethnically defined grievances, negative ethnic stereotypes, and disputes over emotive symbols (land, churches, and so on). Other factors necessary to raise the danger of actual violence were present as well. These included a sincerely held fear of mass extinction and a threat of demographic expulsion, both demonstrated in actions by the Azerbaijani pattern of state policy. The security dilemma of the Karabagh Armenians became firmly rooted during the de facto anarchy associated with the decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet system.

The limits of international mediation Aside from the inherent obstacle of oversimplifying the core of the conflict, international mediation attempts seeking to foster a negotiated settlement to the Karabagh conflict face additional constraints, both as a result of the mediators’ strategy and from several important external factors. Initial approaches to the Karabagh conflict (and to other global crises as well) rested on the premiss that the post-cold war era offered new opportunities for the world powers to intervene on a global level to mitigate, mediate, and help resolve ethnic conflicts. This premiss of a “new world order” hoped that the external enforcement of agreements between warring parties would lead to a new period of stability in conflict prone areas. It was in this optimistic initial period that the USA began to exert a dominant role in the Middle East peace negotiations, and joined the European powers in attempting to resolve the bloody conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Very soon into this initial period, however, it became evident that the new post-cold war period deprived the great powers of the political will necessary for such international commitments.

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The fundamental test for international mediation is the depth and fortitude of the international community’s commitments. For example, the external guarantees vital to any lasting negotiated settlement in conflict resolution can only be effective if the parties to the conflict believe in the political will of the outside powers to fairly enforce the settlement for an indefinite period. The stamina of external enforcement is, therefore, crucial to the overall effectiveness of the settlement.3 By noting this fact in the context of Karabagh, it becomes apparent that even intervening countries with vested interests in reaching a solution, as is the case with the world powers mindful of Azerbaijan’s significant oil reserves, are hampered by the inability to offer credible external guarantees. An additional complication in the ineffectiveness of the outside powers in conflict mediation is the very fact of their vested interests. In this way, these powers must overcome the distrust of the Karabagh leadership regarding their investments and interests in Azerbaijani oil. Another example of this complication was seen in France’s doomed attempt at intervention in the ethnic conflict in Rwanda in 1994, where the French were seen to be partisan by the combatants and/or were partisan because they were affected by the outcome of the conflict. Countries with weak interests in the conflict, on the other hand, are commonly perceived as lacking the political will to offer credible guarantees to the parties. This case was most evident in the failed role of the USA in Somalia, as the first loss of US lives in enforcing the peace was enough for Washington to immediately withdraw. This also relates to the danger of weak commitment leading to ambiguous policy, a scenario that has tended to only exacerbate the hostilities in the former Yugoslavia, for example, and has broadly defined the weakness of US policy in the Balkans. The notable exception, however, is posed by the NATO campaign in Kosovo which also offered a new danger of promoting the right of self-determination over the previously held defense of national sovereignty, a principle which contains an inherent concept of territorial integrity. This seemingly contradictory clash between the principles of self-determination and national sovereignty reflected in the Kosovo scenario, however, is not without the same constraints in the testing of political will. In fact, the very nature of the Kosovo model demands an even greater level of political will by states involved in order to surmount the shield of national sovereignty. The Karabagh leadership seems to understand this only too well as demonstrated by its frustration with the lack of true security guarantees within the framework of the peace proposals of the OSCE.

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Incentives to settlement The international community has long used a set of coercive and noncoercive measures in conflict settlement. This mix of pressure and reward has alternated between offering economic incentives to Armenia, such as promising a share in the wealth of Azerbaijani oil by hinting at a possible pipeline constructed across its territory, and pressures on Azerbaijan in terms of US Congressional limitations on assistance. In the Karabagh case, the informal ceasefire agreement in place since May 1994 – which basically solidified the current boundaries between Karabagh and Azerbaijan proper – has held the mediators from escalating the degree of coercive measures. And since the military situation is fairly contained with only sporadic minor incidents, the mediators have not followed the Bosnian formula of increasing coercion from pressure to economic sanctions to military intervention. Another factor in the Karabagh case is the international community’s ambiguity regarding the actual nature of the conflict. Specifically, Karabagh has either been seen as a civil war, with Karabagh as a “minor insurgency”, or as an interstate conflict, which would assume a weakening of the legitimacy of Azerbaijan’s claim to sovereignty. If the mediation attempt accepts the premiss of an interstate conflict in dealing with Karabagh, the challenges to settlement would be greatly reduced. It stands that interstate war is easier to mediate and settle because the two warring parties are distinct national entities separated by borders, whereas to settle internal civil wars, the combatants must be reconstructed into a single unit or state, in itself a much more challenging task. External security guarantees are also much easier to enforce between states than within states, as historically the external guarantees of minority rights have so often proven to be worthless.

Self-determination versus sovereignty As mentioned above, the ambiguous nature of the Karabagh conflict in terms of civil war or interstate war calls for an examination of the Azerbaijani claim of territorial integrity or sovereignty. Although it seems bold to dismiss the Azerbaijani claim outright, the very principle of sovereignty itself is not as widely held or as strongly defended as often thought. States have a long history of intervention and involvement in the ethnic affairs of others.4 And most obvious to the Armenians, most of the international treaties settling European affairs at the end of World War I contained provisions and obligations of signatory states

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protecting minority rights. Moreover, as the former United Nations Secretary General Boutros-Ghali has admitted, “the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty has passed.”5 The most recent example, however is the September 1995 decision by the Bosnian government to recognize the autonomous Bosnian-Serb entity (self-declared state) of the Republika Srpska. This recognition was the key breakthrough for the US brokered mediation effort and led directly to the division and legal acceptance of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Croatia and Serbia.

Regional power involvement The Nagorno-Karabagh conflict naturally led to the involvement of the regional powers Iran, Turkey, and, of course, Russia. Each of these three regional powers holds some degree of strategic interest in the conflict’s continuation and resolution, although each country’s involvement follows a different set of interests and strategic objectives. Since 1988, each of these regional powers has at times competed for a dominant position or has been manipulated or encouraged by the world powers into positions directed at thwarting a greater regional role for others. This was evident in the case of the USA that preferred to use its position to counter Iranian involvement, to promote a greater Turkish role (especially in the politics of the oil pipelines), and to contain the Russian strategic agenda in the region. From the beginning, however, each of the regional powers and, to a lesser extent, the world powers, shifted political and diplomatic positions from one side to another in a realist attempt to gain an effective strategic foothold in the region. The Karabagh issue became an avenue for those countries seeking greater influence that undoubtedly expanded the conflict from local confines, fanned the military hostilities and complicated negotiations. Iranian involvement From February to May 1992, Iran conducted a fairly intensive mediation effort aiming to reach a negotiated settlement and to counter both the USA and Turkey. The Iranian strategic interest in the conflict stemmed from a desire for stability along its northern borders; particularly important given its fear of internal dissent among the ethnic Azeri population along the Iranian–Azerbaijani border, and as an element of its overall drive for greater regional power. Secondary motives driving Iranian involvement included gaining a greater role in the

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development of the significant offshore reserves of the Caspian Sea. Although controlled by Azerbaijan, Iran moved to use its position as a littoral state as leverage in seeking a share in the various exploration projects. Other factors may have included a plan to expand into the new post-Soviet markets and the desire to appear constructive to the European powers that have been dissenting from the hardline isolationist policies of the United States. In terms of strategic interest, Iranian involvement in the region is based primarily on its relations with Russia. Interestingly, Iran is now moving away from its historical rivalry with Russia by pursuing policies that generally supplement Russian policies. This is largely due to Iran’s dependence on Russia for arms purchases and, possibly, to a limited Russian role in Iran’s nuclear program. A leading example of the convergence of policies between Teheran and Moscow is seen in the dispute over the status of the Caspian Sea and its subsequent division among the littoral states.6 Regarding the Karabagh issue, Iran seeks to overcome its exclusion from the OSCE by portraying itself as an impartial mediator without the baggage of the traditional interests of the OSCE member states. Overall, Iranian relations with Armenia remain strong, as seen in the bilateral treaty on friendship and economic co-operation signed in 1992, the growth of bilateral trade (by mid 1998 Iran had become Armenia’s third largest trading partner after Russia and Belgium), and with the current plan to establish crossborder energy and transport links. Relations with Azerbaijan, by contrast, are more complicated and have only improved gradually with the advent of the Aliev government. Iranian sensitivity to events in Azerbaijan was most evident in December 1989 when Azerbaijanis on both sides of the border destroyed barriers and demanded free access between the territories. With estimates of nearly 15 million ethnic Azeris living in the border region, relations with Azerbaijan notably worsened with the calls for autonomy for Iranian Azerbaijanis by former Azerbaijani president Abulfez Elchibey in late 1992. Since Elchibey was ousted, Iranian relations with Azerbaijan have gradually improved with trade increasing and Iranian natural gas being provided to Nakhichevan. Occasional, though serious, obstacles in relations have included incidents involving the arrest and execution of Iranian nationals and Azerbaijani Islamic Party officials by Azerbaijani security forces on charges of espionage and anti-state activity. Azerbaijan’s expanding relations with Israel have also complicated its relations with Iran.

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Turkish involvement Turkey has played the most destructive and destabilizing role in the region and has sought to influence the Karabagh conflict since 1988. The overwhelming majority of the diplomatic, political, and even military support Azerbaijan received during the Karabagh conflict was from Turkey. The Turkish government has also firmly held to a set of preconditions before formal diplomatic relations would be established with Armenia. These preconditions include an explicit abandonment of all territorial claims and allegations of genocide against Turkey and a solution to the Karabagh conflict. Relations with Armenia worsened even further with the Turkish government’s announcement in March 1993 denying permission for the transport of all humanitarian aid and assistance to Armenia through its territory and air space. Although Turkey partially reopened its air space to aid shipments two years later, it still maintains a strict railway and transport blockade of Armenia. Turkish military support for Azerbaijan, although significant throughout the duration of the conflict, was neither official nor substantial in strict military terms. In late 1993, Turkey confirmed that several hundred Turkish military officers and personnel were assigned to the Azerbaijani defense ministry as trainers and advisors as part of a plan drafted by the Turkish military general staff. An additional $30 million credit was extended to Baku for the purchase of Turkish armaments and weapons. Several times during the period of hostilities, the presence of NATO arms were discovered as well as the presence of a number of Turkish, Ukrainian, and Russian mercenaries. Diplomatic support for Azerbaijan was also significant, and Turkey played an important role in influencing the OSCE mediation effort. Turkish involvement in the region has also been fueled by a sense of disappointment in its relations with newly emerging nations of Central Asia, an area where Turkey initially hoped to capitalize on its perceived role as a bridge to Europe and to the West. The Central Asian states have expressed frustration with the amount of Turkish investment and financial assistance over the past few years and have embarked on their own foreign policy course based on each of their strategic interests, which in reality had little in common with faraway Turkey. The Turkish role was also enhanced by the USA that saw Turkey as a valuable asset in an effort to contain Iran and to balance Russia in the expanding arena of contentious geopolitical interests. The Clinton administration viewed Turkish influence in the region as a positive, pro-Western balance to Iran and Russia, and supported the Turkish

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desire for a new oil pipeline for Azerbaijan oil exports to transit its territory and to utilize Turkish port facilities along the Mediterranean Sea. Russian interests Russian involvement in the Karabagh conflict, as well as those in other parts of the former Soviet Union, has been driven primarily by Moscow’s geostrategic interests it its “near abroad”,7 or the areas of the former Soviet Union bordering the Russian Federation. Moscow’s involvement, or at times even interference, in the Transcaucasus has been, and continues to be, in no way confined to Nagorno-Karabagh. Strategic interests have driven an active Russian agenda of engagement in a wide array of conflicts in the region: from Ossetia to Abkhazia in Georgia, to Karabagh, in an effort to gain leverage over both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and, of course, to the Chechen conflict. Russian involvement, whether active efforts to incite conflict or military peacekeeping operations aimed at containing conflicts, also follows a secondary course of economic and commercial interests. These economic interests rest on the region’s energy supplies and the need for a secure, reliable and stable pipeline route in order to transport the energy reserves to western markets. The economics of Russian regional involvement are, thus, intertwined with its geostrategic, military and political ambitions. Therefore, Russian mediation of the NagornoKarabagh conflict must be seen in this light, revealing a geostrategic interest incapable or unwilling to reach an impartial and objective settlement of the Karabagh conflict.

The European powers in the region The leading European countries generally follow a two-track approach in handling relations with the Caucasus: an individual course of bilateral relations with each of the states, mainly driven by commercial and political interests and a collective course within the existing pan-European or international organizations such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the OSCE. The British and the French, in a manner strikingly similar to their involvement in the earlier history of the region, are at the forefront of active engagement in the Caucasus, with German, Italian and even Scandinavian policies exerting less influential roles. British interest in the Caucasus centers on the substantial investment of British industry (most notably British Petroleum) in Azerbaijan’s

248 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

energy sector. Britain’s involvement in Karabagh can be viewed with some degree of trepidation. An unofficial tilt toward Azerbaijan has been apparent for some time. Most recently there have been allegations of British military personnel having been contracted to the Azerbaijani defense and interior ministries to provide training for the Azerbaijani presidential security service, and there is the incident of March 1998 where it was revealed in Parliament that government approved contracts authorized the provision to Baku of military explosives, in violation of an OSCE regional arms embargo.8

The USA and the Karabagh conflict The USA has relied on its role as co-chair of the OSCE’s working group on the Karabagh conflict, the so-called Minsk Group, for much of its policy stance regarding Nagorno-Karabagh. In 1993, the US State Department formally named a Coordinator of Regional Affairs to handle conflict resolution within the former Soviet Union. Holding the rank of ambassador, this special envoy is empowered to manage and articulate the official US policy regarding the Karabagh conflict and has a role in the United Nations sponsored mediation of the Abkhazian conflict in Georgia, and, to a lesser degree, with the conflict in Moldova. A significant element of US policy concerns the devastating effects of the blockade of Armenia and Karabagh imposed by Azerbaijan since 1989. Major railway links, transports routes, natural gas pipelines and communications links have all been consistently blockaded by Azerbaijan and have considerably impacted an Armenian economy already seriously dependent on external energy and raw materials imports. Under pressure from the Armenian–American lobbies, the US Congress enacted legislation, Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act (P.L. 102–511), which prohibits all US government assistance to Azerbaijan, except for non-proliferation and disarmament activities, until the President determines that Azerbaijan has taken “demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno – Karabagh”. US aid was thereby limited to only that allocated by private NGOs and through international agencies. A subsequent amendment to Section 907, however, afforded the President the ability to waive restrictions on direct “government-to-government” humanitarian aid to Azerbaijan.9 To date, this waiver has not been invoked, although the provision was amended in 1998 to permit humanitarian and democratization aid, and international border security and customs support to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Richard Giragosian 249

This amended version allows for the engagement of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Trade and Development Agency (TDA), as well as US Export–Import Bank financing for projects in Azerbaijan. Additional US Congressional action has dealt with the Turkish refusal to allow its territory and airspace to be used in the delivery of any humanitarian aid to Armenia. Two pieces of legislation (now enacted as public law) mandate a freeze of US aid to any country found to be restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian aid to a third country. This is aimed at convincing Turkey to allow for the transit of aid to Armenia.10 The legislation allows for presidential waiver, and in both 1996 and 1997, President Clinton waived the mandated aid cutoff, citing national security grounds. A subsequent presidential waiver has not been necessary because the legislation (Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act) has been effectively by-passed. While official US foreign aid to Turkey has not been extended since FY 1998, the aid has been made available through other means such as NATO. Meanwhile, shipments of US aid to Armenia must still be shipped to the Georgian ports of Batumi and Poti on the Black Sea and then transported by rail to Armenia. Another important legislative element in US policy, once again coming from Congress rather than the executive, was adopted and signed into law in November 1997. This legislation contained significant provision of aid specially for Karabagh, including “$12 million in reconstruction and remediation aid”. The legislation restated a ban on most assistance to the Azerbaijani government, but contained new language allowing for humanitarian aid and providing US government backed guarantees and risk insurance for US firms investing in Azerbaijan (mainly through the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation). The legislation further called for aid to be provided to refugees, other displaced persons, and the most vulnerable of the population affected by the conflicts in Abkhazia and Karabagh. In a fairly realistic reflection of the core of US policy, the legislation went on to cite the region’s “substantial oil and gas reserves” and called on the administration to “target U.S. aid and policy” to support conflict resolution, US business and investment, as well as the usual support for democracy and free markets.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) The Karabagh conflict has had an impressive collection of mediators attempting to resolve the conflict since 1998. At various times, Russia,

250 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey, and the USA have each initiated attempts at mediation. Sporadic mediation was also launched by different international organizations ranging from the Commonwealth of Independent States to the United Nations. But the most consistent mediation attempt has been made by the OSCE, which has sought a negotiated resolution since first engaging in the Karabagh issue in March 1992. The OSCE formalized its mediation activities for Karabagh at its December 1994 summit in Budapest and, for the first time, extended recognition of Karabagh as a party to the conflict. The summit resolved to merge its efforts with Russian mediation and once a settlement was reached, agreed to deploy up to three thousand peacekeepers to the region, acting under United Nations aegis with no more than 30 percent of the contingent coming from any one member state. The OSCE sought to build on the relative peace and stability derived from the May 1994 Russian brokered ceasefire agreement that is still in place. The direction and actual negotiations of the OSCE effort are conducted by an 11-nation working group, the so-called “Minsk Group”, with France, Russia and the USA each appointed as co-chairs in February 1997.11 The Minsk Group drafted a peace proposal in June 1997 promising a general degree of autonomy for Karabagh in exchange for the withdrawal of its forces from areas of Azerbaijan outside of the traditional Karabagh borders. This proposal was the centerpiece of the OSCE mediation efforts for much of 1997 and was subject to intense negotiations and amendment by the parties. In October 1997, the Karabagh government formally rejected the plan due to the OSCE refusal to alter key elements which called for a series of staged steps, including the withdrawal and demilitarization of Karabagh forces prior to any negotiations over Karabagh’s political and diplomatic status, and the lack of any explicit security guarantees. The Karabagh position differs from the OSCE position in advocating a comprehensive package solution, whereby all issues and disputes would be settled within a single framework document. A growing rift between Armenia and Karabagh became evident as Armenia moved toward acceptance of the OSCE plan during the last months of the Ter-Petrossian government. At an OSCE meeting convened in Copenhagen in December 1997, the OSCE failed to garner passage of the peace plan and a proposal reiterating the 1996 Lisbon OSCE summit declaration supporting Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Vague promises of autonomy and future security guarantees for Karabagh were tabled after Armenia announced its opposition.

Richard Giragosian 251

The United Nations Aside from occasional forays into the Karabagh conflict by United Nations mediators and officials, the UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions dealing with the conflict. In late April 1993, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 822 calling for the implementation of a set of measures in the region, including cessation of military activities and attacks, the withdrawal of forces from the Kelbajar district of Azerbaijan, and the resumption of negotiations. Significantly the resolution specifically defined the Karabagh military forces which has seized Kelbajar as “local Armenian forces”, rather than following the standard Azerbaijani contention alleging that Armenian armed forces were directly engaged in Karabagh.12 A second measure adopted in July 1993, UN Security Council Resolution 853, criticized Azerbaijan for waging indiscriminate artillery and bombing attacks against civilian population centers in Karabagh and also criticized Karabagh for responding to the attacks by seizing Azerbaijani positions in Aghdam. The resolution called on Armenia “to continue to exert its influence” over the Karabagh leadership. The other two resolutions, 874 in October 1993 and 884 in November 1993, articulated renewed calls for both sides to cease hostilities and to resume negotiations. All four UN Security Council resolutions significantly clarified the difference between the parties to the conflict by differentiating the Armenian forces of Nagorno-Karabagh from those of Armenia proper.

Conclusion The two fundamental obstacles to an effective resolution to the Karabagh conflict are Azerbaijan’s refusal to engage the Karabagh leadership in direct talks, insisting that any such engagement would imply recognition of Karabagh’s independence, and the lack of any real security guarantees by the international community, insuring continued skepticism on the part of Karabagh. The Azerbaijani refusal to conduct direct talks with Karabagh has not been adequately challenged by the OSCE, despite the existence of significant precedents presented by the cases of UN brokered talks featuring Georgian and Abkhazian delegations, and Greek and Turkish Cypriot parties engaged in direct negotiations. The second obstacle, the lack of any firm security guarantees for Karabagh, is a much thornier issue. The very credibility of any mediation effort rests on the necessity for the enforcement of any concluding agreement by the international community.

252 The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh

Predicting an outcome, however, depends more on internal factors than any developments involving outside powers. It seems likely that the internal political fragility of Azerbaijan promises the likelihood of renewed conflict, especially in the wake of a new post-Aliev regime. Specifically, the internal control and power of the Aliev regime stems from a top-down administrative command structure, and the Sovietstyle rule of President Aliev has resulted in a systematic marginalization of internal opposition. His personnel policies have left no viable successor, and as Aliev further ages (b. 1923), the question of whither Azerbaijan? assumes heightened relevance. His death is most likely to bring on a series of destabilizing and threatening factors including the postponement or negation of much of the multi-billion dollar oil deals now in place, a heated contest for power between surviving members of the opposition and remnants of the Aliev camp, and a renewal of armed conflict with Karabagh. A resumption of hostilities with Karabagh seems all but inevitable as every new Azerbaijani leader in the post-Soviet period has used extreme nationalism to create legitimacy for his government. Another internal problem for Azerbaijan concerns its own minority population. During the political upheavals and coups d’etat of the pre-Aliev period, there were significant uprisings by the Lezghin minority and even the establishment of a short-lived self-declared independent state in southern Azerbaijan along the Iranian border. Thus, the possibilities for internal political anarchy and even a break-up of the state threaten to greatly complicate the situation in the region. Although Karabagh should cautiously maintain readiness for such a scenario, the longer the status quo continues, the more advantageous for Karabagh. Even understanding the pro-Azerbaijani leanings of countries with significant interests in international oil deals, the one element that is a priority among all investors is stability. And the longer the status quo continues, complete with the security of the Lachin corridor which connects Armenia and Karabagh, the stronger the geopolitical situation of Karabagh. Therefore, the past decade of Karabagh as victim, combatant, and now nation-builder has laid the foundation for the possible continuation of de facto statehood.

Notes 1. First articulated by Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, 35, 1 (Spring 1993) 27–47.

Richard Giragosian 253 2. Stuart J. Kaufman, “Spiraling to Ethnic War”, International Security, 21, 2 (Fall 1996) 116. 3. This is explored in depth by David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, “Containing Fear: the Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict”, International Security, 21, 2 (Fall 1996) 68–9. 4. See Stephen D. Krasner and Daniel T. Froats, “Minority Rights the Westphalian Model”, in David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (eds), The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion and Escalation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) pp. 227–50. 5. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1992), p. 9. 6. See Peter Pavilionis and Richard Giragosian, “The Great Game: Pipeline Politics in Central Asia”, Harvard International Review, XIX, 1 (Winter 1996/1997) 24–7, 62–5. 7. The term “near abroad” has come to signify the areas of the former Soviet Union beyond the borders of the Russian Federation proper that still hold significance in terms of Russian strategic interest. The Russian security policy concerning the near abroad has been most importantly developed, defined, and demonstrated by former Russian foreign minister Yevgennii Primakov. 8. Richard Giragosian and Christopher Hekimian, Transcaucasus: a Chronology, VII, 4 (April, 1998) 8–9. A publication of the Armenian National Committee of America. 9. H.R. 1868 and later as P.L. 104–107. 10. P.L. 104–107 and P.L. 104–208. 11. H.R. 2159, the Foreign Operations Appropriation for FY1998, later P.L. 105–118. 12. “Nagorno-Karabagh: a White Paper”, The Armenian Center for National and International Studies, Yerevan (March 1997), p. 16.

Index Abkhazia 6, 10, 122, 247–9, 251 Abrahamian, Emil 141 Abrahamian, Levon 38–40, 125 fieldwork in Armenia 38–40, 125 Abrahamyan, H. 98 Afghanistan 187 Afghans 109 African-Americans 10, 16, 27 lynching, similarity to anti-Armenian pogroms 16 Aganbegyan, Abel 68 Aghdam 17, 101, 105, 107, 224 Aivazian, Armen 41 Akhalkalak 64, 163 Alaverdi copper works 123 Albania (Caucasian) 33–6 Albert 3 Alexander Miasnikian Public Library 98 Alexandropol, Treaty of 24 Aliev, Gaidar 19–20, 75, 94, 207–8, 216, 245, 252 “About the Mass Deportations of Azerbaijanis from Their Ethnohistorical Lands on the Territory of the Armenian SSR in 1948–1953” 208 age, political implications of 252 oil diplomacy of 19–20 territorial claims 207–8 Alma-Ata protests 4 Altai Mountains and Oblast 98 Andranik (Andranik Ozanian) 95, 101–2, 112 Ankara 183–4, 211–12, 231 apartheid 209 Aqaba, Gulf of 225 Aral Sea 183 Ararktsian, Babken 119 Arax river 33, 97, 183 Ardahan 64, 183 Armenia (1918–1920) 23–4, 36, 95–6, 99–100, 111–12

aid to Karabagh Armenians 111–12 independence of 100 Armenia (post-Soviet) xii, 4, 6–7, 9, 14–16, 20–1, 26, 28–31, 33, 36–8, 40–2, 58, 60, 63, 67, 72, 74, 77–83, 85–6, 111–12, 119–23, 131, 136, 150, 155–72, 178–96, 198–9, 202–34, 241, 245–52 aid to Karabagh Armenians 6, 111–12, 136 blockade of 6, 184, 205, 212, 248 capitalism 180–96 class divisions, growing 189–93, 195 commercial relations with Turkey, exaggerated importance of 213–14 Constitution, Article 14 165 Declaration of Independence, Clause 11 163 Declaration of Independence, Clause 4 164 de-industrialization 190–1 democracy and human rights 185–8 de-population 188, 212 distrust of Azerbaijan and Turkey, reasons for 210–14 dual citizenship proposals 164–5 earthquake relief 199 economy 164, 188–93, 205, 248 education, right to free education abrogated 184 educational cutbacks 184 election fraud and protests (1995) 170, 185–6 Environment, Ministry of 183 environmental concerns 80, 122–3, 181–3 foreign policy 82, 162–3, 202–34 free trade consequences in 184 German–Israeli analogy 215 human rights and 185–6 254

Index Armenia (post-Soviet) – continued imports–exports 191 independence 81, 180–1 infant mortality rates 198 inflation 188 informal economy 191 internal constraints 80–2 international mediators, perceptions of 202–3, 210 investment patterns 191 Iran, relations with 209, 222, 228, 245 military 206, 231 military security 205–6 mortality rates 198 Nagorno-Karabagh, strategic importance of 206 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 186 per-capita income 188–9 popular attitudes 178–9, 181 presidential election (1991) 168 presidential election (1995) 169 presidential election (1998) 194–5 privatization 41, 189–91 refugees from Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabagh 81, 188, 225 religious minorities in 198 remittances 188–9 Russian defense alliance with 206, 222–34 strategic defense requirements 204–7, 209–10, 222–3, 232–3, 241 strategic importance of Siunik (Zangezur) 209–10 strategic vulnerability of 207, 209–10, 221 Tripartite Defense Treaty, proposed 222–34 Turkish threat to 207–12 Armenian Aid Committee (HOK) 157 Armenian anti-Turkic animosity, religious or political? 78 Armenian Assembly 21 Armenian Communist Party xii, 98, 127–31, 194–5 archives 98

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Armenian diaspora 17, 20–2, 40, 78–80, 147, 155–72, 184, 229, 231, 248 citizenship for 164–5 education, right to 184 role in independent Armenia 165–6, 229 Armenian Genocide 14, 23–4, 70, 79, 99, 111, 162–3, 183, 210, 212–13, 223, 241 Armenian identity and 70, 79, 213 denial 212 documentation 48–9 fear of repetition 212, 241 recognition of 163, 213 survivors in the Arab Middle East 79 Armenian Genocide Resolution 21 Armenian lobby 20–2 Armenian National Committee 21 Armenian National Councils 97, 98, 100 Armenian National Movement 81, 155–72, 179–96, 202–34 Armenian cause 163 Armenian Revolutionary Federation, differences with 159–66 citizenship for diasporan Armenians 164–5 de-Russification campaign 184 diaspora in independent Armenia 165–6 economy under 188–93 foreign policy 160, 162 human rights, violations of 185 independence for the Armenian SSR 159, 161–2, 180–1 Nagorno-Karabagh, proposed solution 163–4, 202–34 political and economic system, proposed 164 Ramgavar Party, compared to 159–66 women’s rights and 187–8 Armenian nationalism 74 Armenian Parliament 71

256 Index Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksutioun) 40–1, 98–9, 112, 122, 145, 155–73 Armenian cause 163 Armenian National Movement, differences with 159–72 Armenian SSR, changing relationship to 157 arrogance of 171 banned by President Levon Ter-Petrossian 169 citizenship for diasporan Armenians 164–5 diaspora in independent Armenia 165–6 foreign policy 162 importance of 156 imprisonment and trial of leaders 169 independence for the Armenian SSR, opposition to 161 joint communiqué on Nagorno-Karabagh 166 Nagorno-Karabagh, proposed solution 163–4 political and economic system, proposed 164 Ramgavar Party, differences with 159–66 Ter-Petrossian, Levon critique of 155 Armenian-Russian defense alliance 227 Armenian SSR xi, xii, 1–6, 9, 16–18, 22–4, 39, 41, 54, 58–9, 61–72, 75–8, 80–1, 83–5, 98, 106–7, 111–12, 116–31, 136, 138, 155–72, 178–9, 181–3, 185–92, 207–8 anti-Sovietism 120 attacks on Azerbaijani villages 71 Azerbaijani blockade of 6, 22, 70, 81, 107 banners 125–7, 133–4 bilingualism, issue of 120 borders of 207 civil society, development of 125–31 Committee for Cultural Relations with Diaspora Armenians 157

consciousness raising 127–8 constitutional groups 129 crime, moratorium on during demonstrations 124 democracy and human rights 185–8 demonstrations 81, 116–31, 178, 181, 188 diaspora, changing relationship to 157–8 dismissal of First Secretary 2 earthquake (December 1988) 2, 75, 123, 182, 188, 199 economy 188–92 elections 128–9 electrical output 182 environmental concerns 4, 68, 122–3, 181–3 expels Azerbaijani minority 2 Fascists 125, 133 Genocide, effects of 23–4 Historical Institute of the Armenian Academy of Sciences 98 homeland, as the 157–8 hunger strikes 124–5, 127 independence from the USSR 159–62, 180–1 Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography 125 Institute of Party History 98 Karabagh struggle, attitude towards 117 martial law 2 Medzamor Nuclear Power Plant 123, 181–2 Nagorno-Karabagh, assistance to 17 National Unity Party 61 nationalist parties, established 70–1, 75 1965 protests 61 Parliament 119, 127–9 sit-down strikes 127 Soviet troops in 81 Armenian Supreme Soviet 70, 81, 125, 127–9 Armenian Writers Union 97 Armeno-Tatar clashes (1905–6) 97 Armeno-Tatar wars (1917–18) 147

Index Armentel Company 191 “Army of Islam” 101 Arshaguni Dynasty 33 Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) 33 Ashgabet 97 Asian-Americans 27–8 Astourian, Stephan 35 Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) 23, 37 Athens 156 Avakian, Lola 15 Azerbaijan xii, 1, 6–7, 13–41, 47, 55, 58–67, 69–72, 74, 77–83, 86, 94–5, 98–9, 100–9, 111, 121–2, 126, 136–7, 184, 188, 204–17, 221–34, 241–3, 245–52 anti-Armenian massacres and deportations 211 Armenian villages, destruction of 107 Armenophobia 205 arrest and execution of Iranians 245 blockade of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh 6, 22, 70, 81, 107–8, 188 Central Bank of 225 Constitutional Commission 207 ethnic cleansing of Armenian villages (1918) 101–2 historical revisionism 208 history of 63 independence for NagornoKarabagh, rejection of 221 independence of 100 internal constraints 83–4, 252 irredentism 208 military 206 Nagorno-Karabagh, revokes autonomous status of 71, 83 Nakhichevan, fear of losing 212 national historians and Nagorno-Karabagh 34–5 national identity 33–4 oil reserves 18–19, 229, 247 OMON (Black Beret forces) 16–17, 25 OSCE peacekeeping plan, expected response to 217

257

perception of the NagornoKarabagh conflict in 21 political instability in 83–4, 94, 252 refugees from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh 83, 225 renunciation of Nagorno-Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Zangezur 63–4 repression in Nagorno-Karabagh 18, 107 social problems in 83 strategic objectives 205, 229 territory held by Armenian forces 47 Turkey, allied with 100, 184, 232 Azerbaijani Islamic Party 245 Azerbaijani Popular Front 75, 83, 106 Azerbaijani SSR xi, xii, 1, 2, 5, 9–10, 12, 14, 16–18, 22, 37, 38–9, 58–67, 69, 70–1, 75–9, 81, 83, 85, 95, 98, 107–8, 136–7, 141, 208, 210–11 anti-Armenian pogroms 16–17 assigned Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan 37, 63–4 blockade of Armenia xii, 6, 22, 70, 81, 107–8 Communist Party 98 demographic characteristics 65 dismissal of First Secretary 2 expels Armenian minority 2 history of 63 Kurds, assimilation of 107 massacre of Armenians in (1918, 1990) 70–1, 79 minorities in 65 nationalist parties, established 70–1, 75 Supreme Soviet 70 Babayan, Rubik (Oosda Rubik) 145–9 Badalian, Sergei 194 Bagirov, Kyamran 94, 98 Bailov Prison 97

258 Index Baku 16, 17, 24, 25, 30, 70, 95, 97–8, 101–2, 112, 136, 186–8, 210–11, 212, 216, 225, 231, 246 massacres of Armenians in (1918) 70 Ottoman offensive toward 102 Baku Commune 101 Balakhani oilfields 97 Balayan, Zori 179 Balkans 220, 242 Baltic Republics 5, 62 Bangladesh 180, 200–1 Basques 86 Batumi 109, 249 Bek, Davit 95 Belgium 245 Belorussia 86 Bennigsen, Alexandre 34 Beria, Lavrenti 127 Bilateral Military Cooperation, Treaty on (Azerbaijan and Turkey 1996) 205 Bohigian, Apo 166 Bolsheviks 24, 28, 31, 36–7, 95, 99, 109 Bosnia 217, 220–1, 243–4 peace process 220–1 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 244 Brazil 181 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918) 100–1 Brezhnev, Leonid 61–2 national minorities under 61–2 Britain 10, 24–5, 37, 95, 102–5, 108–9, 112, 233, 247–8 Caucasian policy of 102–5, 108–9 violation of OSCE regional arms embargo 248 British Petroleum 247–8 Budapest 250

compared to the US 28 establishment and 6–9 multinational firms and 6, 8, 11, 14 objectives of national groupings and nation states 6 Ottoman Turkish forces invade 101, 108 Russian withdrawal from 99 Sovietization 36 Central Asia 210, 220, 225, 228, 246 Cetin, Hikmet 77 Ceyhan 229, 247 Chardakhlu 68–9 Chechnya xii, 6, 10, 109, 225, 247 Cheney, Richard 21 Chernobyl 181 Chile 181 China 220, 229 Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957) 4–5 Chomsky, Noam 12 CIA Factbook 182, 188 Civil society 117, 121–2, 125–6, 128–31 Clinton administration 246, 249 Commonwealth of Independent States 75, 185, 250 Communist Manifesto, The 180 Comrade Panchoonie 193, 196 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Helsinki Summit (CSCE, 1992) 217–18 Copenhagen 250 Council of Europe 247 Cox, Baroness Caroline 18, 79 Croatia 220, 244 Cyprus 12, 215, 251 Czechoslovakia 13

Cabral, Amilcar 139 Camp David Accords (1978) 224 Caspian Sea 245 Caucasian Association of Armenian Writers 97 Caucasus region 5–6, 8–9, 11, 14, 23, 27–8, 36–7, 63, 95, 99–101, 108, 203–4, 208, 220, 225–8, 230, 232–3, 247

Dadivank 33 Danielyan, Mirza 97 Darbinyan, Armen 195 Demirchian, Karen 161, 194 Demirel, Suleman 77 Democracy, defined 185 ‘Democracy and Local Authorities’ 185 Denikin, Anton Ivanovich 102

Index Dio Cassius 33 Dizak 36, 103, 110 Dolanlar 103 Dro 95 Droshak (Flag) 156, 161, 166–8 East Timor 86 Eastern Europe 197 Egypt 224–5 Eibner, John 18 Elchibey, Abulfez 75, 94, 245 Elizavetpol (Ganja) 101 Elliasson, Jan 203 Emin, Joseph 95 Engels, Frederick 178, 180 Enver Pasha 101 Esayan, M. 110 Establishment, The 6–8, 28–30 assumptions of 28–30 defined 6 interpretations 6–8 local objectives as obstacles 8 Nagorno-Karabagh and 6–8 strategies 8 Establishment analysts and commentators 6–32, 38, 44 assumptions of 9 dissenters 9–32 ideal typical characterization 44 structural position of 32 Estonia 122 ethnicity 54 Europe, fascism in 28 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) 247 European Parliament 68, 78 European Union 247 fascism 125, 133, 139 Fedayee 122 Fizuli 224 Foreign Affairs 234 France 37, 112, 242, 247, 250 Fuller, Elizabeth 21 Galstian, Hambartsum 120, 124 Gamsakhurdia, Zviad 121–2 Gandzasar 33, 35 Catholicos of 35

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Ganja 35 Georgia xii, 5, 19, 24, 28, 35–6, 40, 60, 62–4, 100, 109, 111, 121–2, 163, 205, 209, 247–9, 251 attitudes toward Russians 100 attitudes toward Turks 100 German aid to 100 independence of 100 Turkey, military cooperation with 205 German–French reconciliation 231 Germany 24, 139, 180, 247 Getashen 17, 30, 106, 109, 135, 161 ‘Ode to Getashen’ 135 Geycha 207 Ghana 189 Ghapan 207–9 shelling of 209 Ghazarian, Samson 122 Giragosian, Richard 42 glasnost xi, xii, 5 Goble, Paul 221 Goksal, General Hikmet 211–12 Goltz, Thomas 136 Gorbachev, Mikhail xi, xii, 2–5, 39, 62, 68, 75, 79, 84–6, 117, 123–4, 127, 130, 159, 161–2, 166 Armenian disillusionment with xii, 2–4, 159, 161–2 initial popularity of 3, 62 nationality policy under 62 reasons for failure of 3–4, 62, 123–4, 130 reforms, impact of 84–6 Goris 102, 109–10, 209 shelling of 209 GRAD rockets 17–18 Greece 251 Grigorian, R. 98 Gulf War 77, 203 Gulistan, Treaty of 35, 63 Hadrut 145–7 Harutiunian, Shant 125 Harutiunian, Suren 159, 161, 167 Harvey, David 135 Hayrikyan, Paruyr 120, 159 self-determination and 120 Helsinki Accords 10–12, 44

260 Index Herzegovina 244 Herzig, Edmund 8, 10–14, 19, 37 deconstruction of 11–14 History of the ARF 97 Hnchak Party 97, 156, 159, 166, 173 joint communiqué on Nagorno-Karabagh 166 Hovannisian, Richard 26 Hovannisian, Vahan 169 Hrazdan river 183 Humanitarian Aid and Corridor Act 249 Hunter, Shireen 37, 220 Ibrahim Khan 35 Indonesia 181 influence strategies 92 International Atomic Energy Agency 182 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 180, 184, 189, 192–3, 195–7, 225 International Oil Agency 19 Iran 5–6, 8, 10, 19–20, 24, 29, 74, 76, 78, 191, 204, 206, 209, 220–1, 227–8, 230, 232, 244–6, 251 response to Nagorno-Karabagh crisis 78 Tajikstan, defense accord with 228 Iranian Azerbaijan 63, 78, 230, 244 Iraq 77, 211, 213, 215 irredentism and secession 54–8, 78, 86 characteristics of struggles 55–8 defined 55 legitimacy of 55 Irwin, Michael 192 Ishkhanian, Rafael 159 Israel 12, 224, 245 occupation of the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon 12 Istanbul 205 Italy 247 Itchevan 78 Ittihad ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress, Young Turks) 23 Jamaica 180 Japan 180, 227

Jebrail 224 Jermuk 207 Jewish Holocaust 215 Jews 121 Jivanshir 103, 110 Jraberd 36 Kalicki, Jan 19 Kalugin, Oleg 170 Kaputikian, Silva 179 Karabagh Committee 4, 41, 75, 81, 118–24, 128, 130, 163–4, 179–96 ages of members 120–1 arrest of 4 corruption and 122 Karabagh Compatriotic Union 99 Karabagh Movement xii, 4, 116–23, 130, 135, 159, 161, 167, 179–96 Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh, distinctions between 117, 179 assessed 179–96 political independence 180–1 women’s rights and 187–8 Karabagh National Council 110 Karabagh Republic 118 ‘Karabagh to Armenia’ society 60 Karin Tak 141 Kars 64, 183 Kasparian, John Antranig 38, 40, 135, 141–9, 151 fieldwork in Nagorno-Karabagh 135, 141–9, 151 Kazakhstan 4, 60, 205, 250 Kazarian, Raphael 121 Kazimirov, Vladimir 203 Kelbajar 209, 221, 224, 250 Kerensky, Alexander 99 KGB 146, 170 Khachen 36, 103, 107, 110 Khachkars 33 Khanjian, Aghassi 60 Khojalu 17, 141 Khomeini, Ayatollah 78 Khor, Martin 192 Khosrov bek Sultanov 25, 103–4, 109 Khrushchev, Nikita 61 Kirgizstan 205

Index Kocharian, Robert 26–7, 41, 118, 169–70, 172, 195–6 Kommunist 97 Kosovo 242 Krikorian, Robert 38–9, 95, 105–6 fieldwork in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh 105–6 Kubatli 209, 224 Kura river 33 Kurdish Autonomous Region 107 Kurds 65, 107–8, 211, 215 alleged PKK bases in Armenia 211 assimilation by Azerbaijanis 107 Kuwait 213 Lachin 72, 209 Lachin Corridor 42, 107, 211, 216, 221–2, 224, 231 Lausanne, Treaty of 24 Lebanon 218 Lenin, V.I. xi, 99, 127 Leninism 75 Leo 97–8, 101 Lezghis 65, 252 Libaridian, Jirair 168, 171 Liberia 227 Lieven, Anatol 18, 20 Ligachev, Yegor 127 Limitation of Forces Agreement 224 Lisbon Summit 225, 250 lynching 16, 46 MacFarlane, Neil 7–9, 19–20, 28 Mamedov, Yagub 94 Manoukian, Vazgen 120, 124, 159, 169, 181, 183, 195 Manucharian, Ashot 118–20, 128 Manucharov, Arkadi 118 Manuel 25 Mao Ze-dong 4 Maresca, John 203 Martakert 102 Martunashen 106, 109, 161 Martyrossian, Arthur 39 Marukhian, Hrair 167–8 Marx, Karl 178, 180 Medzamor nuclear power plant 4, 181–3, 211 Meghri 207–8

261

Melkonian, Markar 41 Melkoumian, Igor 15 Meri, Leenart 122 Mesbahi, Mohiaddin 21 Mexico 181 Middle East 220, 229, 241 Midland Armenia Bank 191 Mikoyan, Sergei 68 Moldova 248 Montgomery, General 219 Moscow 184, 228, 245 Moscow Agreement of 1921 223 Motyl, Alexander 5 Mouradian, Igor 118, 179 Musavats 98, 101 Muslims 220 Mutalibov, Ayaz 94 MVD Security Forces 2 Nagorno-Karabagh xi, xii, 1–43, 47, 54–5, 58–88, 90, 95–112, 116–31, 135–51, 158–64, 167–8, 185–8, 192–5, 202–34, 240–52 alternative peace plan 223–34 archaeology and 13–14 Armenian claims to xi, 8–9, 13, 33, 63 assignment to Azerbaijan, reasons for 37, 63–4 autonomy for 37 Azerbaijan, need to reassess 150 Azerbaijani refugees from 6 Azerbaijani repression in 18, 63–4, 66–70, 107–9 Azerbaijani use of mercenaries in 109 blockade of 22, 70, 107–8 Bosnia, differences compared to 220–1 British intervention in 25 capitalism, advent of 141, 149–50 casualties 15 ceasefire xii centrality in the Caucasus region 6 class divisions, growing 149 conflict, phases of 67–73, 137 de facto independence of 101, 138, 141, 149, 252 definition of 42–3

262 Index Nagorno-Karabagh – continued demographics 35–6, 65–6, 90 Director’s Council 118 establishment analysts and commentators and 6–32 1st Congress of Karabagh Armenians 101 foreign invasions of 33, 63 4th Congress of Karabagh Armenians 105 history of 25, 32–8, 63 immediate parties to the conflict – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabagh and Turkey 214–15 independence 159, 162–3, 221 inhabitants, consciousness of 24–7, 31, 37–8, 66, 80, 85, 111–12, 117–18, 126–7, 135, 138–49 internal constraints 80 interpretations of 136–7, 140 intransigence of conflicting parties, alleged 203 Iranian response to protests and war 78 irredentism and secession 54, 66–7, 69, 84, 86, 88 journalism and 1–2, 6–7 Karabagh Armenian objectives 6, 66–7, 117–18 Krunk Committee 118 media coverage 1–2, 18, 20, 47, 151, 233 Meliks 33, 35, 63, 117, 126 mercenaries fighting against 109, 246 military 206, 231–2 misinterpretations of 136–7, 240 monastic complexes 33 nature, ideology of 138–49 New York Times coverage 1 parliament of 80, 126 parties to the conflict (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabagh, and Turkey), immediate 204 peace mediation efforts 6–7, 26–7, 41–2, 71, 202–34 peace proposal, provisions of 216

peacekeeping force 216–17 petition to Khrushchev (1964) 61 protests, initial (1987) 68, 126 protests 1988 xi–xii, 1–3, 5, 15, 23, 40, 54, 63, 67, 69–70, 116–31, 146, 158 refugees 15, 188, 225, 249 regional legislature votes for transfer to Armenia 1, 69 resistance, rational or irrational? 85, 203, 234 resistance to Turkic-Muslim invaders 117 role in the collapse of the Soviet Union 5, 116 2nd Congress of Karabagh Armenians 101 7th Congress of Karabagh Armenians 37 6th Assembly of Karabagh Armenians 98 solutions, proposed 163–4, 192–4, 202–34 Soviet response to protests xii, 2, 69–76, 83, 123–4 Soviet Union, direct administration by 70 strategic thinking on 203, 214–15 structural factors 74 territorial swap, Nagorno-Karabagh for Nakhichevan 222 territorial swap, Zangezur for Nagorno-Karabagh, Lachin, and Kelbajar districts 216, 220–1 3rd Congress of Karabagh Armenians 101 tobacco products 145 Turkey’s response 76–7, 210–14 Turkic presence in 35–6, 63, 101–2 Turkish aggression (1894–1923), continuation of 210–11 urbanites and peasants, differing attitudes of 111 US–Armenian–Russian military alliance, a proposed conflict solution 221–34

Index Nagorno-Karabagh – continued vignettes 141–9 war over xii, 5, 15, 55, 58–9, 72, 80, 83–6, 122, 137, 140–1, 186 “We Are Our Mountains” 138–40, 144, 147 weapons 110, 146 western diplomacy and 6–8 women and 149 Nagorno-Karabagh academic and diplomatic controversies 9–32, 38, 44, 86, 186, 192–4, 203, 210–14, 240, 242–3 Armenian lobby 20–2, 31 civil war or interstate war 243 democracy and fairness in the developed world 27–30 history, proper role of 13–14, 30, 210–14 origins of the conflict 15–18, 30, 203 post-colonialism and the posture of objectivity 28–9 role of oil 18–20, 31 territorial integrity vs self-determination 9–13, 30, 38, 44, 86, 186, 192–4, 240, 242–3 world view of people who have suffered genocide 23–7, 31, 210–11 Nagorno-Karabagh Armenian Republic, proposed 223–5 defense army 224 Nagorno-Karabagh Autonomous Oblast (NKOA) xi, xii, 1–2, 58, 158, 164 Nagorno-Karabagh Communist Party 70 Nagorno-Karabagh Defense Committee 80 Nagorno-Karabagh National Council 101 Nagorno-Karabagh Regional Council 69–70, 72, 80 Nairit chemical complex 4, 68, 123, 182–3 Nakhichevan 24, 36–7, 61, 63–4, 66, 68, 72, 85, 90, 101, 105–6, 161,

263

163, 168, 205–9, 212–13, 222, 224, 229, 245 Nakhichevanization 66 nation and nationalism 54, 74, 85, 90, 136–49, 203 interpretations of 136–7, 203 naturalness of 139 National Alliance Union 169–70 national question xi National Self-Determination Union 159 native Americans 27–8 Nazarbayev, Nursultan 193 Nazi ideology 139 neo-colonialism 180–1 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 20, 78, 210, 218–21, 228, 230–2, 246, 249 North Caucasus 220 Nuri Pasha 101, 108 Nzhdeh, Garegin 95 Odian, Yervant 193, 196 oil and natural gas pipelines xii, 8, 19, 47–8, 77, 205, 225, 229, 243–4, 247 oil and natural gas reserves xii, 6, 8, 14, 18–20, 29, 32, 37–9, 64, 77, 102, 109, 137, 150, 229–30, 242–3, 245, 247–9 international competition for access to xii, 64, 77, 102, 137, 230, 245 oil companies 20, 22, 137 Operation Ring 16–17, 109 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 7, 37–8, 42, 76, 180, 202, 218–20, 224, 242, 245–7, 249–50 inexperience in peacekeeping 218 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) High Level Planning Group 216–18 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group 41, 202–5, 214–15, 248, 250

264 Index Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe peace plan 202, 204, 214–21, 232–3, 250 ban on enforcement 218 critique of 202, 204, 214–21, 232–3 finances 217 mandate 217 options 218 transience of peacekeeping presence 217 Ori, Israel 95 Orjonikidze, Sergo 25 Ossetia 122, 247 Ottoman Empire 23–4, 31, 78, 95, 99, 101–2, 108, 111 defeat in World War I 102 forces invade Caucasus 101, 108 Hamidian massacres of Armenians 23 Ozal, Turgut 77, 215 Palestinians 25 Panah Ali Khan 35, 117 Panossian, Razmik 40–1 pan-Turanism 76 pan-Turkism 23, 108, 157, 161–2, 167, 205, 210, 222 Papazian, Lalig 39 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 36, 63, 102, 111 participant observation 38–40, 95, 105–6, 125, 135, 141–9, 151 Pashayev, Hafiz 18 peacekeeping, coercive and non-coercive elements 243 Pelian, G. 167–8 Perperian, N. 167 Persia 36, 63 Persian Gulf 5, 230 Philippines 227 Pir-Jamal 96 Pliny the Elder 33 Plutarch 33 pogroms, anti-Armenian 2, 15 Poland 128 Polish Solidarity Movement 128 Poti 249 Presel, John 203, 235

Ptolemy 33 Quebec

86

Raffi 96 Ramgavar Party 156, 159–66, 168–9, 173 Armenian cause 163 Armenian National Movement, compared to 159–66 Armenian Revolutionary Federation, differences with 159–66 citizenship for diasporan Armenians 165 diaspora in independent Armenia 166 foreign policy 163 independence for the Armenian SSR 162 joint communiqué on Nagorno-Karabagh 166 Nagorno-Karabagh, proposed solution 163–4 political and economic system, proposed 164 religion 78, 100 Rieff, David 234–5 Riga 71 Rio Summit 183 Roman Empire 63 Russia xii, 5–6, 8, 10, 16, 19–20, 29, 34–7, 42, 61, 74–5, 78, 161–3, 181–4, 187, 191, 195, 204–6, 209, 219–20, 222–34, 244–7, 249–50 anti-Armenian pogroms, complicity in 16 reliability as an Armenian ally 226 role in Nagorno-Karabagh 204 Tripartite Defense Treaty, proposed 222–34 Russian Empire xi, 35–6, 99, 117, 121 anti-Semitism and 121 Russian Federation 162 Russian Revolution 99 Rwanda 242 Safarian, Gagik 118 Sakharov, Andrei 119

Index San Marino 86 Sarkisian, Vazgen 170 Sarkissian, Sos 168 Sarukhanyan, Martiros 97 Sasanid Persians 33 Scandinavian nations 247 Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act 20–1, 78, 243, 248–9 waivers allowed 248–9 self-determination 9–13 African-Americans 10 Chechnya 10 Kurds 10 native Americans 10 Northern Ireland 10 Puerto Rico 10 Scotland 10 standards to be met for 13 violation of the principles of 12 Wales 10 Seljuk Turks 34 Serbia 220, 244 Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade 182 Sevan, lake 4, 33, 182–3, 207 Sèvres, Treaty of 23–4 Shahumian District 18, 30, 224 Shahumian, Stepan 97 Shant Jermuk mineral water bottlers 191 Shatakh 97 Shiite Muslims 100 Shushi 24–5, 31, 95, 101–2, 141, 216 destruction of (1920) 25, 31 ethnic basis of 25 massacre of Armenians in 101 Sica, Mario 203 Simonian, Karen 123 Siradeghian, Vano 122, 168 Siunik, see Zangezur Smyrna 23 Somalia 86, 218–19, 242 Somaliland 86 South Africa 209 South Korea 227 South Ossetia 6, 10, 62 South Vietnam 227 Soviet Central Asia 5 Soviet nationality policy xi, 2, 4

265

Soviet Union 1–6, 14, 16, 18, 24, 28–9, 40–1, 58–64, 70–6, 82–5, 106, 109, 116–19, 123–4, 126–7, 130–1, 157, 159–63, 179, 181–3, 186–7, 189, 191, 193, 228, 232 Articles 72 and 78 of the Constitution 59, 131 Constitutions 127, 131 coup d’etat (August 1991) 119 direct administration of Nagorno-Karabagh 70 environmental record 183 failure of crisis management 74–5, 161 fate of non-republic minorities 60–1, 161 Internal Ministry Troops (MVD) 106 Mafia economics 123–4 Nagorno-Karabagh crisis, response to 70–6, 118, 159, 161 nationality policy 59–62, 186 reform policies, impact of 84–5 replacement of Armenian and Azerbaijani First Secretaries 70 rule over Armenia, controversy concerning 157, 159–61 Supreme Soviet 123, 126 troops sent to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabagh 70, 75, 83 Sovietology 116, 136 Spain 227 Srpska, Republika 244 Stabilization Force (SFOR) 219 Stalin, Joseph xi, 37, 95, 127 assigns Nagorno-Karabagh to Azerbaijan 95 Stamboltsian, Khachik 123, 128 Stepanakert (Khankend) 1–2, 16–17, 69, 78, 80, 105, 141, 216, 225 missile attacks on 17 Strabo 33 Strategic studies, critique of 212, 237 structural adjustment, defined 199–200 Sultanov see Khosrov bek Sultanov Sumgait 2, 5, 15, 17, 30, 69–70, 84, 130, 162, 188, 241

266 Index Sunni Muslims 100 Suny, Ronald 18, 26–7 Supreme Soviet 2, 71 Swaziland 209 Swietochowski, Tadeusz 33 system structures 73–4 bipolar 73–4 multipolar 73 polycentric 73 Taiwan 227 Tajikistan 228 Talish 36, 65 Tashkent 146 Tasnapetian, H. 167 Teheran 194, 245 Ter-Danielyan, Aramais (Misak Gabrieli Ter-Danielyan) 39–40, 95–113 aliases 96 Armenian Republic, relationship to 109, 111–12 biography 96–8 diary 97–9, 103–5 exile and death 98 guerrilla fighter 97 literary career 96–8 memoirs 97 posthumous rehabilitation 98 Ter-Petrossian, Levon 4, 27, 31, 40–1, 81–2, 119–21, 123, 126, 155–6, 158, 162, 166–71, 182, 187–8, 193–4, 213, 250 accommodation with Azerbaijan and Turkey 81–2, 213 bans the Armenian Revolutionary Federation 169 constitutional route to independence 119–20 occupation, interpretation of 121 renunciation of Nagorno-Karabagh claim 193–4 resignation of 155 Third World Network 192 Tibet 86 Tibilisi 25, 71 Tigran the Great 33 Trade and Development Agency (TDA) 249

Tragedy of Karabagh: a Summation for History, The 98 Transcaucasian Federation 100 Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Republic 63 Transcaucasus see Caucasus region Treaty on Bilateral Military Cooperation (1996) 212 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe 224 tricolor flag 146 Turkey xii, 5–6, 10, 12, 14, 19–24, 29–30, 37, 41, 61, 63–4, 74–9, 81–2, 85, 99–103, 105, 108–9, 111, 136, 155, 157, 161–3, 183–4, 204–15, 217, 220, 222–3, 225–7, 229–34, 241, 244, 246–7, 249–50 alleged PKK bases in Armenia 211 alliance with Azerbaijan 85, 205–6, 211–12, 246 Armenian prosperity, fear of 212 Armenian reparations, fear of 212 Armenophobia 205, 211–13 Azerbaijan, aid to 77, 85, 184, 206 blockade of Armenia xii, 6, 184, 246 ethnic cleansing of Armenian villages 103 Genocide of Armenians 14, 23–4, 70, 79, 99, 111, 162–3, 183, 210, 212–13, 223, 241 historical revisionism 210–11 immediate party to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabagh 214 Karabagh Armenians, massacre of 101 military forces 231 NATO membership 20 occupation of northern Cyprus 12 refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia 211, 246 regional ambitions 77–8, 204–5 role in OSCE 246 threat to Armenia 207–12 troops in the Caucasus 105 US sanctions against and waivers 249 Turkmenchai, Treaty of 35–6 Turkmenistan 191, 205

Index Ukraine 5, 60, 86 United Nations 42, 86, 218–19, 223–4, 244, 250–1 Charter, article 51 223 flawed command and control structure in Somalia 218–19 Security Council Resolutions 822, 853, 874, and 884 251 UNICOM I and II 219 United States 6–7, 10, 19–20, 22, 27–8, 48, 112, 180, 202–4, 220, 222–34, 241–2, 244–7, 248–50 African-Americans and 27–8 Aid to Armenia and Karabagh 249 anti-Sovietism 28 Asians and 27–8 decision makers, structural linkages to the Caucasus region 48 democracy in 27–8 economic indicators compared to 28 ethnicity and race 27–8 Export–Import Bank 249 House International Relations Committee 203 leadership ties to Azerbaijan and multinational firms 48 native Americans and 27–8 neo-isolationism 233 “new” immigrants and 27–8 Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) 249 refugee aid 249 role in Nagorno-Karabagh 204 Russia, areas of shared strategic interest 228–9 Tripartite Defense Treaty, proposed 222–34 US–Armenian Military Accord, proposed 227 US Department of Commerce 19 US Department of State 191, 248 Utik 33 Uzbekistan 205 Van 23, 97 Varanda 36, 102–3, 110 Vardanian, Mikayel 97 Vatican 86

267

Walesa, Lech 128 Armenia, influence on 128 Washington 183–4, 195, 227, 231, 242 Weber, Max 44 western powers xii, 6–7, 10–11, 14, 18–19, 23–4, 27–9, 31–2, 36–7, 42, 77, 112, 136–7, 140, 169, 186, 204, 220, 228–9, 233, 246 response to the Genocide of Armenians (1915) 23–4, 112 self-determination, predisposition against 6–7, 10 Transcaucasian integration, promotion of 204 White armies 102 Wilson, Woodrow 12 World Bank 38, 180, 184, 189, 192–3, 196, 225 World Trade Organization (WTO) 180, 225 World War I 99 Yeltsin, Boris 119, 162, 193 Yerevan 1–2, 16, 40, 98, 111–12, 116–31, 136, 178, 181–2, 194, 196, 207, 216 Zvartnots International Airport protests 2 Yerkrapah militia 170 Yugoslavia 86, 241–2 Zangelan 209, 224 Zangezur (Siunik) 23, 25, 36–7, 63–4, 100–3, 105–8, 110–11, 207–10, 214, 221, 224–5 Azerbaijani and Turkish attack of (1918–21) 207 Azerbaijani claims to 207–8 Azerbaijani historical revisionism 207–8 conquered by Azerbaijan, if 209–10 strategic importance to Armenia 209–10 strategic vulnerability 209–10 Zoryan Institute xii–xiii Zverev, Alexei 37