The spectre of war in the Caucasus rose again this week following the pardoning by Azerbaijan of a convicted axe murderer who killed and all but decapitated an Armenian soldier while he slept. The White House, Russia, the EU and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe all moved to diplomatic battle stations as the Armenian president, Serzh Sargsyan, furiously warned: “We don’t want a war, but if we have to, we will fight and win.”
The case of Ramil Safarov, an Azeri army lieutenant who was jailed in Hungary in 2004 for the murder of Gurgen Margaryan during a Nato Partnership for Peace course that they both attended, has inflamed public opinion in Azerbaijan and Armenia. The two countries have a history of hostilities that includes a war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that killed 30,000 people between 1988 and 1994. The dispute remains unresolved and this summer there was a sharp escalation in border skirmishes.
The alarm in Washington and Moscow at the latest confrontation is rooted in political and strategic considerations.
Thanks to the efforts of former US vice-president Dick Cheney, among others, Azerbaijan has become a major oil supplier to the west in recent years. US and British companies including ExxonMobil and BP have invested an estimated $35bn in its oil and natural gas fields and the country’s importance has grown during the turmoil engendered elsewhere by the Arab spring.
Nato, meanwhile, uses Azeri airfields to resupply Afghanistan. Azerbaijan’s military spending, financed by oil sales, is expected to reach $3.6bn this year.
Pro-western, pro-business Azerbaijan’s location on the Caspian basin has also made it a key player in the Obama administration’s undeclared war on Iran.
Official US criticism of long-standing civil, electoral and human rights abuses by the government of President Ilham Aliyev is relatively muted. In return for its discretion, Washington is said to be rewarded with intelligence-sharing and other Iran-related favours.
Up to 20 million ethnic Azeris live in north-western Iran and some Azeri politicians refer to the area as “South Azerbaijan”. For CIA schemers intent on destabilising the Tehran regime, the potential for subterfuge is vast.
The Israel-Azerbaijan relationship is even more remarkable. The two countries have steadily expanded military ties: Baku spent $1.6bn on Israeli weapons in February.
Then in March Azerbaijan arrested 22 people allegedly involved in an Iranian plot to assassinate American and Israeli diplomats, and Aliyev claims Azerbaijan is neutral in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme, which Israel believes threatens its existence. But Iran-Azerbaijan relations are in deep freeze amid a public war of words.
Less wealthy Armenia also has strategic significance and powerful backers. Russia is a major weapons supplier, maintains military bases within reach of Armenia’s border with Nato member Turkey, and oversees the country’s air defences. Russian military flights increased sharply this year as Azeri-Armenian tensions rose, according to Interfax.
It was announced in June that Russia would double its personnel at its Gyumri base, whose lease has been extended until 2044. Gyumri is home to Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters. Iran also takes Armenia’s side in opposition to Azerbaijan – while just to complicate matters further, so too does the influential Armenian-American diaspora, which knows how to put pressure on the White House.
Small surprise, then, that the feting of the axe murderer Safarov when he returned to Baku, his subsequent promotion, the awarding to him of eight years’ back pay – and Armenia’s furious reaction – have caused ripples of alarm at the highest levels. Armenia broke off diplomatic relations with hapless Hungary for letting him go, Barack Obama expressed deep concern about it all, the Kremlin chastised both Hungary and Azerbaijan, demonstrators took to the streets of Yerevan and an Armenian opposition party demanded formal recognition of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan claimed in turn that Armenia’s reaction was “hysterical” and that President Sargsyan had secretly ordered the assassination of Safarov.
International diplomatic efforts to pull the two sides back from the brink appear to have worked so far, but more by luck than judgment. The Safarov affair is not over yet. And it is a sobering reminder that the so-called “frozen conflicts” left over from the Cold War can and will re-ignite with appalling speed if ignored for long enough.
In point of fact, the dispute has not been wholly ignored. The so-called Minsk group of countries has been trying to resolve it for years. In June, the US, Russian and French presidents issued a joint statement calling for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. “Military force will not resolve the conflict and would only prolong the suffering and hardships endured by the peoples of the region for too long,” they said. That is indubitably true. What they did not admit is their own part in the problem.