A fragile truce concluded on 14 September halted fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia that left hundreds of soldiers dead. In this Q&A, Crisis Group explains what occurred and what needs to happen now to restart the peace process between the two foes.
In recent days renewed clashes have broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. Fighting between these two countries is nothing new. Since the early 1990s, what started as a “hot war” transformed into a long-lasting “frozen conflict” over Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijani territory in the Karabakh region. In 2020, the situation boiled over and the second Karabakh war left Azerbaijan victorious, Armenia defeated, and Russia with a peacekeeping role in the region.
Russian political scientist and sociologist Greg Yudin believes that Armenia should stay away from a “falling building”, that falling building being Russia.
Yudin said in a thread on Twitter on Friday, September 16 that Azerbaijan’s recent attack on Armenia provides evidence of a catastrophic collapse of Russian foreign policy in a “hugely important region.”
AFGHANISTAN
The Taliban and Pakistani forces clashed on Wednesday in the eastern border province of Paktia as the Taliban accused Islamabad of erecting a military post on the border. Crisis Group expert Graeme Smith says tensions between the sides have been simmering for months and have occasionally escalated into armed clashes. Pakistan has grown frustrated with the sanctuary that Afghanistan’s new rulers have afforded the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which is orchestrating a deadly cross-border campaign in Pakistan. Islamabad and the Taliban also disagree over the Durand Line, which the Taliban rejects as the official border and Pakistan continues to fence. The skirmishes take place as Taliban also battles the Islamic State’s local branch and armed resistance forces in the north.
Dozens of Armenian soldiers have reportedly been killed in renewed border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Dozens of Armenian soldiers have reportedly been killed in renewed border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the worst fighting seen since the hostile enemies were embroiled in a 2020 war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan carried out a wide-scale attack against targets in Armenia, an unprecedented escalation of the long-running conflict on to Armenian territory.
Armenia’s defense ministry reported attacks, starting around midnight September 13, targeting cities all along the southern part of Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, including Vardenis, Sotk, Artanish, Ishkhanasar, Goris and Kapan.
While Turkey has prided itself for mediating between Russia and Ukraine, Ankara has shown no such impartiality in the recent fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with Turkish leaders airing their support for Baku.
While the world is looking at Ukraine and Russia, a brewing all-out war is happening between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Fighting on the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia has started, and as two troops faced each other today, 99 soldiers were killed in the skirmish, with both sides taking hits. Armenia reported losing 49 of their soldiers, while Azerbaijan noted they lost 50. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict over the area of Nagorno-Karabakh. This region was considered part of Azerbaijan but had been controlled by Armenian ethnic forces since the separatist war ended in 1994.
Bulgaria has offered to export electricity to Azerbaijan in exchange for expanding gas supplies, acting Economy Minister Nikola Stoyanov announced during his visit to Baku on Sunday (11 September).
“With such a scheme – bartering gas for electricity, Bulgaria could receive quantities in the next four to five months, when we need it most in the winter,” he told state television BNT.
Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in early 2011, Damascus consciously sought to pursue a relatively balanced foreign policy toward most of its neighbors. Its challenges with Israel notwithstanding, Syria tried to maintain diversified and even-handed relations with Iran, Turkey, and the Arab world regionally and with Russia, the European Union, and the United States on the global level. However, when the Arab Spring uprisings brought political crisis home to Syria, the government’s sharp domestic crackdown gradually changed these conditions, resulting in Syria’s expulsion from the Arab League and the escalation of tensions with Turkey and the Western world. This threw Syrian foreign policy out of its traditional balance, compelling the country to rely overwhelmingly on support from Iran and Russia. The constricted room for maneuver on the regional and international stage has had numerous and varied consequences for Syria foreign policy over the past 11 years. But some of the most illustrative about-turns caused by the swing toward Russia could be observed in Syria’s relations with neighbors in the post-Soviet space: namely, Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine.