What Is Going on in Armenia? A Not-So New Regional Conflict Emerges Again
By: Joseph Giacalone
I admit, I was unaware of the history behind the tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan that have plagued the two nations since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.[1] In late 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as a state, and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics became fifteen independent countries.[2] Two of the newly (and by this I mean had existed in various iterations as states or as regions within other states) that found themselves sharing a border were Armenia and Azerbaijan.[3] Even those these states were newly independent, they had previous instances of ethnic and territorial conflict that stretched from the late 1980s, through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and continued until May 1994.[4] The fighting was largely fought along ethnic lines, with the ethnic Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh area in southwestern Azerbaijan being backed by Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan. The result of this bloody, undeclared, and unofficial war between the secessionist ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijani government resulted in ethnic cleansing on multiple occasions.[5]
Under international law, the heinous and morally evil act of ethnic cleansing is not actually considered a violation of international law.[6] This a murky area of international law, as the classification of something as genocide or ethnic cleansing is the difference between a crime punishable by an international tribunal or something that is not listed as a crime.[7] Within in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [8]
Therefore, under international law, genocide is a punishable crime.[9] Any person found guilty of carrying out genocide will be tried by either a tribunal of the state where the genocide was committed or an international tribunal. The history of the ethnic conflict has resulted in deep scars into the relationships between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has had other iterations even more recently. In 2016, conflict broke out between the two countries in the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. While brief,[10] the death toll was 350 people, including civilians. Cluster munitions, tanks, air forces, and suicide drones, along with the statements of Azerbaijani officials, lead to a conclusion from many observers that the events of the four day conflict were not spontaneous actions in an area that had been prone to conflict and a bloody history of it, but instead was a deliberate military action.[11] Tensions have remained high between the two nations since the Four Day War of 2016.
Between July 12-14 in 2020, serious armed clashes occurred on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan resulting in the death of at least eleven soldiers from the Azerbaijani side and four soldiers from the Armenian side. This is the most serious border conflict since April 2016, when a four-day war broke out between the two countries. The conflict has remained a serious issue continuing to the present. The United States, Russia, and Iran have all offered to provide mediation between the two countries and assist in peace talks.[12] Other countries, however, have picked a side and have chosen to provide military aid to their pick.[13] In this continuation of the tension between these two countries, there is no indication that this situation will be resolved quickly, efficiently, or in a manner that will lead to a finality of all conflict between the two countries.
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[1] End of the Soviet Union; Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics’ Independence by Francis X. Clines, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/26/world/end-soviet-union-gorbachev-last-soviet-leader-resigns-us-recognizes-republics.html (originally published December 26, 1991).
[2] Id.
[3] Check a map.
[4] See 1994 Ceasefire Agreement, (in Armenian) Hakobyan, Tatul. Կանաչ ու Սև: Արցախյան օրագիր [Green and Black: An Artsakh Diary]. Yerevan-Stepanakert: Heghinakayin Publishing, 2008, pp. 506–08, Appendix Documents 38–39.
[5] Rieff, David (June 1997). "Without Rules or Pity". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. 76 (2). Archived from the original on 20 July 2008. Retrieved 13 February 2007; Lieberman, Benjamin (2006). Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. pp. 284–292. ISBN 1-56663-646-9.
[6] See The Difference Between Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide, The Borgen Project, https://borgenproject.org/difference-ethnic-cleansing-and-genocide/#:~:text=The%20United%20Nations%20%28U.N.%29%20first%20termed%20%E2%80%98genocide%E2%80%99%20in,on%20Genocide%20Prevention%20and%20the%20Responsibility%20to%20Protect%29 (published February 13, 2018).
[7] Id.
[8] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948. Entry into force: 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII.
[9] Id.
[10] The conflict was from April 1, 2016, to April 5, 2016. See President Serzh Sargsyan met with the Ambassadors of the OSCE member states, https://web.archive.org/web/20191010125014/https://www.president.am/en/press-release/item/2017/04/18/President-Serzh-Sargsyan-met-with-OSCE-Ambassadors/ (April 18, 2017).
[11] Masis Mayilian, The Nagorno-Karabakh Cease-Fire at 25: Marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the cease-fire in the area of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict, The National Interest, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nagorno-karabakh-cease-fire-25-57522 (May 14, 2019).
[12] Stephen Grigoryan, What is happening on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border?, New Eastern Europe, https://neweasterneurope.eu/2020/07/16/what-is-happening-on-the-armenia-azerbaijan-border/ (July 16, 2020).
[13] Id. (referring to Israel selling drones to Azerbaijan and Turkey accusing Armenia of aggression and offering aid to Azerbaijan).