From Baku to Yerevan: The Karabagh Negotiating Process

On Saturday 19 May, OSCE mediators visiting the Caucasus to prepare for the next round of negotiations between Presidents Robert Kocharian and Heidar Aliyev crossed from Azerbaijan into the self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabagh with a small group of journalists from Europe, Russia and the United States.

Tom de Waal is a journalist following up his book on the war in Chechnya with one on Nagorno Karabagh to be published next year. He also writes on Armenia, Karabagh and Azerbaijan for the BBC, The Economist and the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. David Stern writes for AFP and the Financial Times, and is based in Baku, Azerbaijan.

During the visit, the US Chief Negotiator, Carey Cavanaugh, is reported to have been less than optimistic after sampling the mood among both Armenians and Azerbaijanis encountered along the way. Talks planned for June in Geneva now look to be postponed.

Onnik Krikorian [To Tom de Waal]: I have the impression that the itinerary of your journey from Azerbaijan through Karabagh to Armenia was planned to illustrate why the OSCE believes peace is important for both countries. You visited Spitak for example, which is an example of how the poor economy is affecting reconstruction in the earthquake disaster zone, and in Azerbaijan you visited a refugee camp. Where were the refugees from, and what was their mood?

Tom de Waal: They were from Aghdam, which was quite appropriate because we visited the town later. In the camp, there was a particular atmosphere that can be found throughout the region. People were quite emotional and besieged the three co-chairs with their problems. On both sides, people asked for compensation. Money seemed to be foremost in their minds. Refugees from Aghdam said that they lost everything, and that they hadn't been properly compensated, and refugees from Baku and Sumgait said the same thing when we visited them in Spitak and Gyumri.

I think that there are a lot of contradictory messages coming from these people. None of them say that they want to fight again, and that they want peace, but the Azerbaijanis say that this can't go on forever and if we don't get our lands back by peaceful means then we will be forced to fight. However, they don't say this with much confidence, and I don't think that they plan to fight anytime soon. The mood is mainly of slow despair on both sides. People have become significantly poorer over the past ten years, and don't feel as though their governments are helping them. They see the three international negotiators more representative of western money than anything else.

However, no one has spoken to them about compromise or friendship, and although they want peace, such ideas haven't gone through their minds. They really only want peace on their terms. In Azerbaijan, they want the occupied territories to be returned as well as Karabagh, while in Armenia, people want full independence but are unwilling to compromise on Karabagh's status. However, this seems to be what they say in public, and my experience has been that if you sit down and speak to them in private, after a couple of hours they tend to open up a little, and they become a little more flexible.

OK: You crossed the contact line.

TDW: Yes. That was absolutely fascinating. We were basically in a no-fly zone where virtually anything in the air is liable to get shot down. We then transferred to minibuses that drove us to the front line. On the way we could see radar installations, lots of Azerbaijani soldiers, many of whom were no doubt put out on the roads for our benefit, before arriving at the post on the front line itself, marked by trenches and barbed wire. We were met by a group of Azerbaijani soldiers and Colonel Husseinev who was deputed to be our commander for the day, although we weren't sure if he was the commander all of the time.

Some of us put on flak jackets, and we were met by the OSCE and Ambassador Kasprzyk who was already there, and we then set off down this quiet, country road. It was very peaceful, with birds singing and flowers and thistles on either side. There were black and white tapes strung out as well and we were 'encouraged' to walk between them. They had de-mined the roads, but there had been mines outside the tape that had been removed that morning. We walked for maybe five minutes before we met with a group of similar camouflaged soldiers who were of course, the Karabagh Armenians.

From a distance the uniforms looked exactly the same before you could notice a few differences. The Armenians had patches with 'NKR' and the Karabagh flag on, while the Azerbaijanis had crescents on their shoulders. The hats, and the color of the camouflage, were slightly different, but basically, two groups of soldiers met each other. The three co-chairs made speeches about how important this was, and that they wanted to open this route as a line of crossing for the mediators to have direct access between Karabagh and Azerbaijan, and also for humanitarian work.

They asked the two commanders if more contact between the two sides would reduce the number of incidents on the frontline. The Armenian commander said it would, but his Azerbaijani counterpart obviously felt more uncomfortable about the whole concept of meeting representatives from the armed forces of Nagorno Karabagh who he described earlier as bandit formations. The idea that somehow these people were equivalent to him was unthinkable. "It's not my decision," he said. The two commanders avoided eye contact, and the atmosphere was quite tense.

OSCE field officers from Karabagh arrived, bringing with them bottles of Kotayk beer in an icebox and some caviar. We ate and drank in the middle of no man's land before carrying our luggage over to the Armenian side, which was much more impressively built. There was a tunnel that we had to walk through with a soldier holding his automatic weapon in the middle, and Naira Melkoumian [the Karabagh Foreign Minister] met us at the other end. It was an extraordinary experience of traveling between two worlds.

I spent a lot of time going between Karabagh and Azerbaijan last year and it took a few days to adjust, but suddenly you're moving between the two in just five minutes. It really did feel as though you were moving between two worlds. We emerged at the other side of the tunnel and drove to Aghdam. They were quite reluctant to let us see Aghdam at first, but the co-chairs insisted and we stopped at the mosque. The official position has been that Armenians were never going to hang on to Aghdam and as a result it's been stripped bare, and hasn't been resettled.

OK: I'd like to ask about your visit to Spitak. Did you have the opportunity to speak to people there?

TDW: Obviously we were given a tour of Karabagh, and we went to Gandzasar before going up to Shusha [Shushi] yesterday morning. People again besieged the co-chairs with their problems, explaining how poor they were and how they had been thrown out of Baku. We then flew across Lachin, past Kelbajar and across Lake Sevan over to Spitak, and the purpose of the trip was to have greater contact with the public, and to meet those people affected most by the absence of any peace settlement. In Azerbaijan, that was obviously the refugees, but in Armenia, it was people living in economically depressed regions. In Spitak, there were a lot of refugees from Baku and Sumgait talking to the co-chairs, while in Gyumri, our host was the Governor of the Shirak region who spoke in very conciliatory terms, obviously very interested in the peace deal and what it means for his region.

OK: The opening of the Turkish-Armenian border?

TDW: Exactly. We went to the border that has been closed for most of the twentieth century apart from being briefly opened in 1992-3. The gauge changes and crosses into Turkey, and we were told that the couple of thousand people that used to work in the railway depot were the first line casualties [of the Karabagh conflict] and that the whole region had been affected because they couldn't trade with Turkey. The Turks want to trade as well.

OK: How do you see the peace negotiations progressing now? In the Diaspora and among Armenians here, there's still the general consensus that nothing should be returned, and as you point out, in Azerbaijan, people still think that Karabagh is theirs. The OSCE believes that both sides need to make concessions but it's difficult to convince the two sides of that.

TDW: I think that Carey Cavanaugh, Nikolai Gribkov and Phillippe de Suremain [the negotiators] kept on returning to this, and they also put this point to those we met. They said that the two Presidents were ahead of their people, but that they were doing almost nothing to convince anyone that peace is desirable, and that compromise is necessary. This is obviously political maneuvering so as not to appear too conciliatory in the negotiations. I think however, and this is the opinion of the co-chairs, that this is a fundamental mistake. Until the two sides start to look at the positive sides of any peace deal, it's not going to work.

I think that the impression on this trip has been that the two societies aren't ready, and that they've been living with their respective mythologies of the Karabagh war for the past thirteen years. They've been thinking of each other as aggressors and enemies for too long, and there has been no attempt to say that if people are willing to make concessions it can be good for everyone. People still talk about how they all used to live in friendship of course, and that they could live in friendship again in the future, but generally do so in rather abstract terms.

If you look at the negotiations, eighty or ninety percent of the issues have been resolved, and so the positions of the two Presidents are not that far apart. However, it's been obvious from this trip that while the two Presidents came back from Key West having had a good meeting, they've now had a few second thoughts after extending the number of those that they've spoken to.

Kocharian has spoken to Parliamentary leaders, and Aliyev has widened the circle of those he's spoken to. It's obvious that they're a little more cautious, and I think that's the reason why the meeting in Geneva is not going to happen until July, August or even September. It's certainly not going to happen in June, and they need to do more groundwork for that meeting. They're not ready at the moment.

OK: I'd like to ask about the details we've been hearing regarding the fourth peace proposal. Are they correct?

TDW: I think that nothing is settled until everything is settled, and that something like the status of Karabagh varies depending on what else Armenia is prepared to give. We can't say that the question of Karabagh's status has been settled because if Armenia is willing to give up land, it's more likely that it will achieve a higher status for Karabagh.

OK: When you say, "Give up land," you're not referring to the occupied territories.

TDW: No, I'm referring to Armenian land.

OK: The corridor to Nakhichevan?

TDW: Yes, exactly.

OK: Opposition in both republics will be the way to gauge what potential there is for peace, but the opposition in Baku seems more vocal than it does here in Armenia. So far, there's been very little opposition that's emerged, but for many Armenians, the status of Karabagh is the main issue. It has to be either totally independent or united with Armenia. Likewise, can you understand concerns that giving up any territory in the south weakens Armenia in the long term?

TDW: Yes, I can understand those concerns, but the counter argument is that Armenia will not get a better deal than this. There will either be the long-term isolation of Armenia that is crippling the country, or the option to give up something now to get something more later. Kocharian has obviously decided that this second option is better - to give up something now - and I think that's indicative of the global perspective that both Presidents have.

Onnik Krikorian [To David Stern]: One factor that will determine the likelihood of any peace deal will be opposition in both countries, but how strong is the opposition in Azerbaijan?

David Stern: This is my opinion, and that of many others. No one knows how much support the opposition has in the country. We've had a number of elections and depending on whom you ask, the opposition did either fairly well, or they swept the board. However, there's no way of knowing that, because obviously the results were falsified, and that's very convenient for the opposition because they can say anything. However, they haven't so far been pushed to behave like an opposition, and they've had it pretty easy in many ways, but Karabagh will be an indication of how much support they have, or how able they are to mobilize the country. While there are many issues that people are very angry about, Karabagh is the one issue that will presumably bring people out on to the streets.

There's a lot of waiting to see what's going to happen, and until then, it's very difficult to say how much of a feeling there is. They say that the country and all eight million Azeris, or how many there are now, are dead set against any compromise. Every man, boy, and child between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five are waiting to grab their guns, and have itchy trigger fingers. However, it's a lot further from the truth than that. Given the right circumstances I think that you could probably get the population to fever pitch, but at the moment, no. It has however, been much more of a topic of discussion among people on the street than it appears to be in Yerevan.

Gauging from what has been written in the press, and the debates in Parliament in February with Aliyev publicizing the three previous proposals, it has now became a hot topic. After the debates on the 22nd or 23rd February, everyone was saying Karabagh is ours and we're going to fight. Two weeks later however, the mood had cooled down quite a bit, and although people still talk about it, they don't talk about with as much emotion. If there were a peace deal, maybe the same thing would happen. There would be a lot of emotion, screaming and yelling but if Aliyev could control public opinion, within a month maybe things would cool down. It's hard to say.

OK: I get the impression that no one really believes that war could break out again, and if it did, it would be a very short conflict lasting a few weeks, and nothing much would change territorially. People aren't convinced that either Armenia or Azerbaijan could fight a prolonged war, and that morale in both armies is very low. With regards to Yerevan, and I'm interested by your comments regarding feelings in Baku, I think that most people here never believed that peace would be so close, or that they would be in this position now. We're now speaking about the possibility of a peace deal, the possibility of returning territories, and it's all very sudden.

As recently as two weeks ago, people in both Armenia and the Diaspora didn't believe that Kocharian would give up anything. This has been one of the reasons why opposition in Armenia hasn't been as strong or as vocal as in Azerbaijan. I assume there's widespread poverty in Azerbaijan as well as Armenia, and I wondered, do you think that there's the possibility that such issues can be used to rally public opinion around opposition forces in both countries?

DS: Oh yes, and I'm one of the people that think that war is a possibility although I don't think that it's necessarily going to break out tomorrow or that it's a foregone conclusion by any means. However, I do think that the population [of Azerbaijan] can be maneuvered into that position, and that the Karabagh issue can be used for other purposes. There is widespread despair and discontent among the people in Azerbaijan, and feelings against Aliyev and certainly against the government, especially in the countryside, are fairly strong.

That's the thing with the Karabagh issue. Obviously it's something very close to the hearts of both Azeris and Armenians, but they're not just going to go out on the streets because of Karabagh, they're also going to express their frustration with the fact that they don't have jobs or that they're poor. That's why I think it's a possibility, but I don't know if this means that it would be a limited war. When people get fired up enough, and especially in the Caucasus, they suddenly do things that they wouldn't normally do.

OK: Poverty could also be used by both Presidents to explain why peace is so important. I assume they'll be just as much investment in Azerbaijan, Section 907 would be lifted, and for Armenia, the border with Turkey would be opened. The problem will be to convince the population. Kocharian has started to tell people here that everything will finally be okay this year, and he's promised so much that I'd be surprised if he hasn't worked the possibility of peace into the equation. In Azerbaijan, are there any signs that Aliyev might be starting to prepare people for this new 'golden age' of independence?

DS: Firstly, the argument that peace and investment will help the country is correct. The problem is that there needs to be the understanding of what this entails. The Azeris don't quite think in those terms, and I don't believe that Armenians do either. That is, if there's peace, there's going to be all this investment. Well, the thing is that Aliyev has been promising this since he signed what he called the "contract of the century" in 1994. He said then that prosperity was just around the corner, but if he now says that if Azerbaijan gives up Karabagh and signs a peace deal, investment will flow into the country, if I were an Azeri I'd say "that's what you said five years ago, why should I believe you now?" The other thing that Azeris might say is "Okay, all this money is going to start flowing in, but am I going to see any of it? I don't think so."

I haven't heard anybody say that we need to get this thing over with. People might not want to fight, but they also don't want to lose Karabagh and it's a bit of a dilemma. Nobody is behind the President on this one, and the opposition and government alike are just sitting back waiting to see what the deal is. Karabagh is not going to be part of Azerbaijan because that's the exact situation now. It's very unlikely that there's going to be a situation where Karabagh is controlled by Baku, and because of that, you don't really find too much enthusiasm in Azerbaijan. As a result, even if people could read between the lines and understand that refugees would go back to the occupied territories and that investment would materialize because stability has finally come to the region, I think that a number of Azeris would question the notion of "Karabagh or prosperity."

That's the question that really can't be answered at the moment, and it's too much part of their psyche. At the moment what they're saying is that what we have, and what we're being offered, hasn't any guarantees. Give up Karabagh and have prosperity. What prosperity?

OK: Perhaps this is the problem with promises of investment. Many believe that the same old names would benefit, but there is however, no doubt that there would be more jobs. They might be employed on what are effectively slave wages, but that's an improvement isn't it, and part of transition as well?

DS: Yes, but I've also spoken to people here [in Armenia] and said that this would be nice, but let's face it, problems in Armenia and Azerbaijan go far beyond having borders closed. Obviously, both republics have lost investment and the opportunity for import and export, but what we're talking about is the deep-set need for economic and political reform. While there might be an initial euphoria when the "flood gates" open and investment flows in for the first three or four months, businessmen will suddenly realize that the whole region is incredibly corrupt and that they're not going to be able to do any business here before finally pulling out.

OK: The OSCE and the Council of Europe are implementing programs in Armenia that will help create a better investment climate and help fight corruption. Are these issues totally unrelated?

DS: I asked Cavanaugh about the New York Investment Conference. I asked him if it were related, and he said no. There are two separate tracts but they aren't so directly related that someone is saying to the Armenians, if you sign a peace deal we'll get you investment, and not only that, but we'll organize a conference.

OK: But it was the first time that the World Bank held such a conference for a single country. What suddenly makes Armenia so attractive for investors?

DS: You're absolutely right. The spin that they gave me was that this had been planned for the past two years.

OK: It was originally planned for London.

DS: And it should have been held before the assassinations in the Armenian Parliament, so we're going way, way back. On the other hand, we were also very close to a peace deal then. However, I don't think you need to say that this is the carrot that they're throwing, and it doesn't have to be directly related. I mean, the fact is that Armenia is in terrible economic shape and only attracted $120 million in investment last year, it's got a population that can't leave fast enough, and it's stuck in the middle of this no win situation over Karabagh. I think it's a package.

OK: The perception I get is that most Armenian businessmen definitely want the Turkish border open, but if you look out onto the streets of Yerevan, while you might not see people looking depressed now that they think they're going to have to give something away, you also don't see people walking around with a great weight lifted off their shoulders now that peace might be around the corner. This is the issue that both Presidents need to address, but do you think that Aliyev could survive affording Karabagh complete independence or unification with Armenia?

DS: He's got to get something in return. The problem with Azerbaijan is largely psychological. They're a defeated nation and there's nothing that allows them to hold their heads high. They've got fourteen percent of their land occupied, and they need a small victory. Some think that the small victory should be military during a controlled or restricted, limited war, but lets hope that it doesn't come to that. Aliyev needs something to present to his people so that he can say, "We lost Karabagh, but we got this."

OK: Isn't that the return of territory?

DS: As far as Azerbaijan goes, the occupied territories are occupied territories. That's not a victory, that's a defeat, and what's more, it's likely that they'll lose Lachin as well. Guess what guys, you got six of your seven territories back.

OK: Armenians would say that they've already lost them, and in February during a conversation with one Armenian academic from the Diaspora, I said that I believed there were new moves to sign a peace deal. His response was that there was peace already. Isn't this peace?

DS: Let's just say that your argument is correct about the occupied territories, but you've got to see it from the Azeri point of view. For them that's not a victory, and they need to say that they've managed to get something that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

OK: The link to Nakhichevan?

DS: Something, some piece of territory. We talk about historical Armenia, but what about historical Azerbaijan, god forbid? They are a "defeated nation," but don't believe that they lost the war. They think that this is temporary, and say that the war wasn't a fair fight between "us and them." They say that Armenia had support from Russia, that Azerbaijan was going through economic and political chaos, and that Armenians cheated and took advantage of them when they were at their most vulnerable.

OK: Isn't that war?

DS: But you know, they think that if it were just Azerbaijan against the Armenians, they'd kick ass. They'd say that this is just a temporary situation, and that if the war started tomorrow they'd win. This is a very dangerous attitude, and this is similar to that of the Arab States after 1967. They lost so unquestionably in '67 that not only did the Israelis wipe the floor, but they also took the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. Everybody lost. Syria, Egypt and Jordan, and that's a similar situation to that which Azerbaijan now finds itself in. Azerbaijan needs something for it's own self-esteem.

OK: The problem therefore is public opinion and the possibility that significant opposition might emerge. As a last point, if Armenia and Azerbaijan were to sign a peace deal, the proposal would have to be presented to both Parliaments, and there might possibly be a referendum? Is that the way it has to go?

DS: Well, that's what they say, and it appears as though they'll bring the peace deal back and put it up for debate before holding a referendum. If they do that however, there's an awful lot that can go wrong. It would be in their interest to stuff the ballot box even if people prefer the status quo given the choice rather than something that they're just not sure about.

They could hold a referendum but I think that it's very dangerous because it's too much of an unknown. I think it was Stalin that said that the problem with democratic elections is that you don't know who the winner will be. It's the same thing with peace. Kocharian and Aliyev need a peace deal, period, but if you open it up in a referendum, that could destroy it. It's too much of a risk.