There is an indigenous and organic peace process underway again in the Caucasus. After decades of conflict and many failed efforts to reconcile Baku and Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan appear on the cusp of restoring normal relations between their countries. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh, a territory located within Azerbaijan's borders composed of a majority ethnic-Armenian population, began, at least in modern times, in 1988 and resulted in the death of tens of thousands and over a million internally displaced persons.
Whether driven by pragmatism or opportunity, the current chance for reconciliation and amity should be appreciated for what it is—the possibility to end a protracted and horrific conflict, and the prospect for future generations in this region to live out from under the cloud of war. For it to succeed, this new effort needs to learn the lessons of past attempts, particularly the need for appropriate support from the international community.
Peace was very close twice before, but both times in large part were international failures.
The international community was caught on the dilemma of trying to support what in this case were contradictory principles—maintaining Azerbaijan’s right to territorial integrity versus the right of Karabakhi Armenians to self-determination.
The borders of this region, drawn in the 1920s by then Commissar for Nationalities Josef Stalin, are a confusion of layered identities and languages, enclaves and exclaves, ethnicities and nationalities and where divisions outnumber commonalities. The interethnic stasis of the pax Sovieticus was upended in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the forces of irredentism and revanchism—the desire to redraw/restore borders along ethno-national lines, resulting in violence and mass dislocations.
After three years of frozen conflict, where military conflict ceased but the political dispute remained unresolved, 1997 saw then Presidents Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia come close to reaching a phased or “step-by-step” peace agreement. This effort sought an intermediate compromise and to postpone an ultimate decision on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh based on two principles: that Karabagh should be governed by the majority, ethnic-Armenian population, and that Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity was respected.
Presidents Heydar Aliyev, Vladimir Putin and Robert Kocharyan meet in 2001. Source: kremlin.ru
This settlement proposal meant that Karabagh would formally remain part of Azerbaijan, but administered independently by the local, majority-Armenian community. The first phase of the agreement imagined security guarantees that would facilitate the gradual return to Baku of most Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani territories around Karabakh, demilitarization of Nagorno-Karabakh and contiguous territories and the deployment of peacekeepers, as well as the opening of the Azerbaijani and Turkish borders with Armenia. The final determination of Karabakh’s legal status would come in later negotiations. However, international and domestic Armenian politics doomed this process.
The international community under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had established a conflict-resolution framework (“the Minsk Process”) to provide a negotiation platform that would facilitate a conclusion of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. OSCE also held a mandate to deploy multinational peacekeeping forces in support of any conflict resolution. However, the organization’s cumbersome consensus requirement and an internally conflicted Minsk Group failed to secure needed support from participating states for the Ter-Petrosyan-Aliyev peace talks.
At this point, Armenian politics entered a period of political turbulence and instability that further impeded peace efforts. Disagreements between the Armenian President and Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan, the subsequent election of Kocharyan to the presidency in 1998, as well as the 1999 massacre of eight, key reformist leaders in the Armenian Parliament, condemned this peace process effort and its attendant proposals. Fears in Yerevan of further domestic unrest or assassinations hampered chances of any leadership efforts to advance a near-term peace process. However, continuing international efforts did subsequently kick start a new round of talks in 2001.
After multiple Minsk Group proposals were rejected, Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev and Armenian President Robert Kocharian met 16 times to discuss mutual assurances in late 2000 and early 2001. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (the United States, France, and Russia) mediated the next round of negotiations between the two Caucasus countries in Key West, Florida, in April of 2001, in an effort to initiate next steps towards achieving a durable Nagorno-Karabagh settlement.
Prime Minister Kocharyan and President Heydar Aliyev meet in Key West in 2001. Source: civilnet.am
As the two sides drew closer to an agreement in Key West, the negotiation format shifted to separate talks between mediators and each of the heads of Azerbaijan and Armenia but ultimately did not result in bringing the two sides together. In addition, the closed-door discussions in 2001 were not reported in public and, as a result, did not build popular support for any form of compromise between the war-torn publics on both sides.
The main elements of the Key West proposal were a significant departure from the 1997 effort, envisaging a bridging of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia through the Lachin corridor, the return of territories outside of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, as well as open passage between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave. However, Aliyev could not secure domestic support on his return to Baku resulting in the Key West peace process being placed on hold. In 2003, Azerbaijan and Armenia both elected Presidents and a de facto freeze on negotiations, because neither of the newly sworn-in leaders appeared willing to be seen compromising in the face of domestic political risks.
For nearly two decades, while international mediation enabled the leaders from the two countries to come together on occasion, few incentives for peace or conflict-resolution steps were offered. And, while Moscow attempted to resolve the dispute with its own proposals during this time, none were acceptable to either Armenia or Azerbaijan. The international community wasn’t able to generate a catalytic spark to ignite a new peace process.
It wasn’t until the six-week Second Karabakh War in the Fall of 2020, followed by Azerbaijan’s 2023 “anti-terror operation” in the Karabakh region, that Azerbaijan restored its control over the territories it had lost in the First Karabakh War (1988-1994). Following these two military actions, Armenia and Azerbaijan began work to aggregate various proposals into a draft peace treaty in the hopes of diplomatically reconciling their differences.
The basis for current negotiations is focused on familiar, core principles including the mutual recognition of territorial integrity and repudiation of the use of force. In a major step forward, both countries have agreed to abide by the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration with its provision recognizing the inviolability of the then existing borders that includes Nagorno-Karabakh within the borders of Azerbaijan. The two countries have already peacefully begun the process of jointly demarcating their boundaries and are also showing signs of cooperating on a number of other issues.
As Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan stated this year in his September United Nations address, peace between the two countries is “not only possible, but within reach.” There do remain some significant obstacles, however, including provisions in the existing Armenian Constitution that define the Karabakh region as a legal part of Armenia. Baku believes this provision is unacceptable and would undercut security for Azeri citizens and future peaceful relations. Prime Minister Pashinyan appears to agree and is calling for a new Constitution, though this would take time and require a domestic consensus that may or may not exist. Azerbaijan wants a timely peace proposal.
Armenian Prime Minister at the UN General Assembly. Source: primeminister.am.
Of common interest, both Baku and Yerevan seek security provisos and mutual recognition of sovereign territory as the main issues to be addressed. In practice, though, the situation is proving more complicated. The Zangezur Corridor is a transport passageway that could be established for direct access between western Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan exclave, transiting sovereign Armenian territory. Baku seeks unrestricted passage, no customs duties, nor border checks for cargo and passengers traveling along the proposed corridor.
Moscow has sought to maintain a role for its Russian border guards in Armenia’s Zangezur region along the border with Iran, including regulating transit, as well as providing customs and security checks. While Armenia’s peace proposals do not allow for passage without customs duties and border/security checks, Yerevan does not appear to support the continued presence of Russian troops within its borders. The result is a critical impasse.
Overall, the peace process has moved forward with some assistance and facilitation from the United States, Germany, Kazakhstan, and others, but also is largely driven by direct engagement between the two Caucasus capitals. Both sides acknowledge that significant differences remain between their positions, but so far seem committed to continuing dialogue.
The immediate incentives for Armenia are significant and include the following: normalized relations and trade with Türkiye and Azerbaijan, connectivity through a new rail and road corridor, transit fees for cargo coming from China and Central Asia, and an opportunity for Yerevan to secure its economic sovereignty by circumventing Moscow’s control of its access to global trade routes. For Baku the incentives include: stabilizing relations with its neighbor, direct access to its citizens in Nakhchivan, opening a new trade/transit corridor to Türkiye, doubling the freight capacity and revenue stream from the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor, and also further diversifying away from Moscow’s control of global trade route access.
While the international community has so far generally provided meeting space and tea, more incentives need to be forthcoming to help stabilize and strengthen this process between the two Caucasus countries. Certainly, increased trade across the Caspian, as being enhanced and improved through international assistance, can be a major boon to both Baku and Yerevan. But substantive international support and engagement to help both sides overcome continuing uncertainties and skepticisms, as well as the remaining obstacles to an initial agreement and then to a comprehensive peace treaty, could provide more oxygen to the current process.
The failure of negotiation and multilateral engagement led to the Second Karabakh War and unleashed long pent-up frustrations on Baku’s side. The lack of credible negotiations or progress by the OSCE’s Minsk Group or by Russia’s insinuated and unproductive involvement resulted in a lack of confidence in these institutions for both Baku and Yerevan. The peace negotiations now underway represent an organic process that brings both capitals together, largely independent of external facilitation. For the international community to support this process, only tangible and innovative efforts will be accepted or make a difference.
The United States has stated a willingness to further support the peace process, engaging with both sides, including with an October 21 letter from President Biden to President Aliyev stating that the United States is prepared to take “bold initiatives” in support of a peace agreement. In addition to U.S. Secretary of State Blinken’s and other high-level visits to the region, this highest sign of U.S. support is a critical step but needs further implementation carrots to be of help to strengthen the current process.
For the departing Biden Administration, support from the U.S. Congress would be important to free up needed stabilization resources, such as for U.S. assistance programs that might work to provide reintegration programming and small business development for those displaced by the conflict on both sides of the border. Absent Capitol Hill’s engagement, an effort within the executive branch to reapportion existing resources to further enable post-conflict rehabilitation efforts would be a useful and practical line of effort. Likewise, continued efforts to develop trade and transit across the Caspian to and through the Caucasus would increasingly incentivize the benefits of the Middle Corridor for Yerevan and Baku. Coordinating a strategy and efforts with Türkiye, Central Asia, and the European Union could also provide a strong pull factor for Baku and Yerevan.
President Tokayev visits Yerevan in 2024 before visiting Baku. Source: primeminister.am
Kazakhstan has shown a strong willingness to engage with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, as President Tokayev has traveled to both capitals and met repeatedly with his counterparts. Offering to mediate, to provide necessary conditions for negotiation, and to support reconciliation efforts, Astana has made significant outreach to the Caucasus countries and stands to benefit from any peace agreement that opens the Zangezur rail corridor for Central Asian cargo.
A potentially significant contribution could be for Astana to offer, in addition to mediation, the services of its peacekeeping battalion (KAZBAT). Neutral troops from Kazakhstan could oversee and safeguard Zangezur rail and road transit, for a set period of time, to build confidence and establish regular trade through the region. If initial transit along the corridor was limited to cargo, customs procedures could be regularized and revenue streams established by these impartial forces to build confidence and stability. Passenger traffic could be added later, once doubts and uncertainties were resolved and a more permanent solution developed.
The European Union and bilateral European entities could also be contributors to the post-conflict stabilization and confidence-building process and help round out the effort. While both Armenia and Azerbaijan have demonstrated continued resolve to restore relations, frustrations over lack of progress have derailed peace efforts between the two in the past. Inertia could again undermine confidence in this fragile, bilateral process, since expectations on both sides have been raised. The lack of continuing input and support of other actors in the past when negotiations stalled condemned those early peace efforts.
International assistance now could make the difference in helping both countries over existing hurdles, enable a peace treaty, and support its successful implementation. Past international practice has shown that concrete, sustained, and timely engagement is needed to have any impact and renew confidence for Baku and Yerevan. Specific proposals of assistance that will provide needed and prolonged engagement can help to ensure both Caucasus leaders that their organic efforts for peace are valued and supported.
