History of Karabagh: A Response to the US State Department

By Dr. Simon Payaslian

For some years now the United States has presented itself as an impartial mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan for a resolution of the Karabagh question. It remains to be seen whether the United States can accomplish that task. The views expressed by the administration of George W. Bush on the situation appear to be a mere continuation of the pro-Azerbaijani and pro-Turkish policies adopted by the Bush and Clinton administrations since the early 1990s. The method of historical revisionism the US government has employed for decades to condemn the Armenian Genocide to permanent oblivion now seems to be applied to the history of Armenians in Karabagh as well.

On March 30, 2001, the State Department released a document titled "History of the Nagorno Karabagh Conflict." The historical background presented in this document may be characterized as superficial at best. The first sentence, for example, leaves the impression that Karabagh Armenians emerged as an entity in the late 18th century. In fact, the region (consisting of two provinces of Artsakh and Utik) was part of the Armenian Ervanduni kingdom since the 4th century BC, and the area was further consolidated into the Armenian kingdom by King Artashes I (189-160 BC) [1]. In 387 AD, during the partition of Armenia by the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, the provinces of Artsakh and Utik were separated from Armenia by the Persian empire and incorporated into Caucasian Albania [2].

Beginning in the 7th century, under Arab rule Artsakh became known as al-Ran (Arran). Arab invasions were followed, between the 11th and 15th centuries, by the successive invasions of the Seljuks, Mongols, and Turkmens [3]. Yet, even after the fall of the Bagratuni and Cilician kingdoms, the Armenians of Artsakh maintained their military and political autonomy and in turn provided protection and refuge for Armenians escaping bloodshed instigated by the onslaught of foreign incursions into their homeland [4].

The Ottoman-Iranian struggle for power in the 16th century and recurring invasions in the region led to the resettlement of Armenians from eastern Armenia to Georgia and Iran [5]. Under the Perso-Ottoman Treaty of Zohab (1639), the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV and the Safavid Shah Safi partitioned Armenia. The Safavid government divided the Armenian territory under its control into separate regions, each ruled by a general-governor (beglarbegi). In the 1720s, the Ottoman Turks invaded the Safavid beglarbegis but failed to conquer Karabagh, where the Armenian meliks (general, prince), led by David Bek, defended the region [6], until Nader Shah forced the withdrawal of the Ottoman forces from Transcaucasia in 1735 [7]. Driven by political and territorial ambitions, Panah Khan (leader of the Jivanshir tribe) and his son, Ibrahim Khan, pursued an aggressive policy toward the Armenian meliks during the 1740s-1760s [8]. Confronted with such hostility from foreign invaders, the Armenian meliks in turn sought protection first from Peter the Great and later from Catherine the Great to expel the khans from Karabagh [9].

Efforts to establish an Armenian state under the auspices of the Tsarist government failed to materialize, but in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, determined to create a buffer zone in the region, Russia annexed Georgia and eventually sought to conquer all of Transcaucasia, a policy that clashed with Iranian and Turkish interests. After two wars with Iran in the early 19th century, Russia acquired Karabagh and integrated it into a single Muslim province encompassing the khanates of Baku, Karabagh, Qobbe, Shirvan, Shakki, and Talesh [10]. Growing Armenian immigration from the Ottoman empire and Iran to Karabagh re-established an Armenian majority after four centuries of wars and instability [11].

During the second half of the 19th century, under Mikhail S. Vorontsov, the first Tsarist viceroy, and his successors, Russian modus operandi toward the region's local conditions and nationalist sentiments fluctuated between flexibility and brutality [12]. Karabagh was first divided between the newly reorganized provinces of Tiflis and Shemakha, and subsequent administrative reforms placed it within the Elizavetpol province, to which it belonged until 1917 [13]. By the closing days of the 19th century, unlike the more accommodative policies of Vorontsov, Russian policy relied on coercion and divisiveness, which led to growing tensions between Armenians and Azerbaijanis [14].

Hostilities between the two nations further intensified during the period 1918-1920, as each, upon declaration of independence in 1918, sought secure boundaries. Contrary to the State Department's claim that "With the 1917 Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan and Armenia each declared independence," the two republics declared independence in May 1918. By presenting such an extremely over-simplified analysis, the State Department not only undermines its own credibility, but also violates the Armenian cultural integrity and national historical memory of all those Armenian leaders who, through superhuman efforts, struggled to resuscitate their murdered nation and to rebuild its institutions.

On May 26, immediately after the Transcaucasian Seim adopted the Georgian resolution to dissolve itself, the Georgian National Council declared independence. On May 27, the Muslim National Council met in Tiflis and declared the independence of "Eastern and Southern Transcaucasia," followed by a declaration to form the Republic of Azerbaijan on May 28 [15]. The Armenian National Council met on May 26 to address the issue of independence. The Council expressed concerns that an isolated Armenian state would be vulnerable to Turkish attacks [16]. In Tiflis, Dashnak leaders, including Aleksandre Khatisian and Hovhannes Kachaznuni, agreed that under the circumstances, Armenian anxieties notwithstanding, the National Council declare independence and at the same time establish a modus vivendi with Turkey. Accordingly, on May 28, the National Council sent Khatisian, Kachaznuni, and Mikayel I. Papajanian to Batum to negotiate peace with Turkey. The following day, the Dashnak leaders decided to declare independence and appointed Kachaznuni Minister-President. On May 30, the National Council issued its proclamation but without mentioning the words "independence" or "republic" [17].

The subsequent wars between Turkey and Armenia on one hand, and between Azerbaijan and Armenia on the other, were part of the coordinated Turkish Kemalist effort to strangle and destroy Armenia, a situation exacerbated by the Bolshevik drive to control it, which they finally did in 1921 [18]. The State Department erroneously suggests that these clashes were part of the Russian Civil War. In doing so, the State Department implicitly exonerates the Kemalists, the founders of modern Turkey, of the destruction and misery they, inspired by the Pan-Turkist aspirations and geopolitical schemes inherited from the Young Turk regime, imposed on the remnants of the Armenian population across the Armenian Plateau and continued the genocidal process commenced in 1915, finally accomplishing the task of eliminating the Armenians from their homeland [19].

Further, the State Department ignores the fact that in 1918 Major General William M. Thomson, representing the British military mission headquartered at Baku [20], favored the Azerbaijani government to secure access to Caspian oil and to strengthen the allegiance of the Muslim population in Azerbaijan and across the British empire. Accordingly, Thomson sanctioned the Azerbaijani claims, as presented by the Azerbaijani Fathali Khan Khoiskii's government, to Mountainous Karabagh and Zangezur. He also sanctioned the appointment, in January 1919, of the Pan-Turkist Khosrov Bek Sultanov, who had repeatedly terrorized the Armenians in the region, as provisional governor-general of Karabagh and Zangezur [21]. That proved a crucial turning point, as the provisional government became permanent and set the stage for the Sovietization of Azerbaijan and Armenia, thus solidifying the boundaries between the two as existed during the Soviet regime.

In 1923, as part of its Sovietization strategy the Moscow government assigned Karabagh, as an autonomous region, to Soviet Azerbaijan. Armenians vehemently protested against this policy, but to no avail. In the late 1980s, however, as the Soviet regime entered the process of disintegration, Armenians of Karabagh demanded independence from Azerbaijan. In February 1988, the Soviet of People's Deputies of Nagorno Karabagh voted for unification with Armenia [22]. By then, Armenians in Karabagh numbered about 145,450, or 76.9 percent of the population, while Azerbaijanis numbered 40,668 (21.5 percent) [23]. That a hostile minority had ruled over the Armenian enclave for seven decades is ignored by the State Department.

Also omitted in the State Department's account is the Azerbaijani response to the independence sought by Karabagh Armenians. The State Department fails to mention the prolonged economic strangulation imposed by the Azerbaijan-Turkish blockade, which has caused serious deterioration in the economic and political life of Armenia and Karabagh. In February 1988, reminiscent of the Turkish massacres and the genocide against the Armenians, the Azerbaijani government provoked Azerbaijani mobs to launch pogroms against Armenians in Sumgait [24]. During the spring and summer of 1991, in order to establish "law and order," Azeri Special Function Militia Troops (OMON) imposed Operation Ring throughout the Armenian villages in Karabagh and the districts of Khanlar and Shahumian (north of Nagorno Karabagh). Under Operation Ring, the Azeri OMON arrested hundreds of Armenian men, deported thousands of Armenians, and emptied more than twenty Armenian villages. Helsinki Watch reported that Operation Ring was "carried out with an unprecedented degree of violence and a systematic violation of human rights" [25]. In April 1993, as Azerbaijani military forces attacked the village of Maraga, they executed about 45 non-combatant Armenian civilians [26]. For years, Nagorno Karabagh has been without adequate food supplies, fuel, running water, electricity, sanitation facilities, and communication facilities. The findings of the investigations conducted by Helsinki Watch in April 1992 remain valid nearly a decade later [27].

Since the bilateral US-Azerbaijani meetings in the US in September 1994, policy makers in Washington have developed close relations with Baku. Their relations, coupled with the US-Turkish alliance, rest on oil deals worth billions of dollars as well as on geopolitical considerations with respect toward the entire Caspian region. The Armenians of Karabagh voted to secede from Azerbaijan, but the latter has refused to recognize their independence to this day.

Simon Payaslian holds a PhD in political science and is a PhD candidate in Armenian history at UCLA. He is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles, including most recently "After Recognition" in the current issue of Armenian Forum. The appendum of footnotes is available upon request.