Statement / Europe & Central Asia
14 October 2020 (ICG)
Reducing the Human Cost of the New Nagorno-Karabakh
War
Fighting in and
around Nagorno-Karabakh is decimating towns and cities, displacing tens of
thousands and killing scores. Combatants must cease attacks on populated areas
and let humanitarian aid through. International actors, notably the
UN and OSCE, should send monitors and push harder for a ceasefire.
Two weeks into a renewed war between Azerbaijani and
Armenian forces over the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and its
environs, fighting appears poised to escalate. On 10 October, a
Russian-brokered humanitarian ceasefire intended to enable combatants to
retrieve the bodies of the dead and exchange prisoners appeared to fall apart
as its ink was drying. Both sides have since struck towns and villages,
with enormous damage to lives and livelihoods. While it may take time for
the parties to return to peace talks, they and international actors must act to
stem the mounting human toll. Whatever an eventual settlement entails, it will
be closer to hand and more sustainable if the parties stop killing civilians
and adding fresh grievances to an already intractable conflict.
Both sides have
struck towns and villages, with enormous damage to lives and livelihoods.
·
As Crisis Group noted in a 2 October statement, the
conflict has no simple solution. Since the 1992-1994 war, which pitted
Azerbaijani forces against Nagorno-Karabakh rebels backed by the Armenian army
and ended with Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto independence, decades of stalled negotiations,
outbreaks of violence and hardened positions on all sides have compounded the
territorial dispute. Foreign actors matter, but for now cannot impose a lasting
peace. The failure of the 10 October ceasefire shows that even Russia, which
has a treaty with Armenia and longstanding relationships with both Yerevan and
Baku, has only limited leverage. Turkey backs Azerbaijan diplomatically and
with military aid, but Baku is not sufficiently dependent on Ankara’s support
that threats of its withdrawal, even if they were forthcoming, would end
fighting. Europe and the United States have even less influence.
Military casualties already number high in the
hundreds and the civilian toll is also mounting. Azerbaijani missile, artillery
and drone strikes on Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital of Stepanakert and other towns
and villages have turned homes, schools, and much of the region’s
infrastructure to rubble. Credible reports indicate the use of cluster bombs, particularly dangerous to civilians and banned
by an international convention (although neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan are
signatories). Since 10 October, fighting has spread to the streets of Hadrut, a
town 40km south of Stepanakert and well within Nagorno-Karabakh itself, rather
than being limited, as it was during the first days of the war, mainly to the
unpopulated adjacent territories controlled by Armenian forces since the
1992-1994 war. According to the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, as of 12
October, at least 31 civilians had been killed in the region and over 100
injured, many seriously. Some 70,000-75,000 people, half the region’s
population and 90 per cent of its women and children, have fled their homes. Many are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. With
a continuing pandemic and rapidly cooling weather, the mass
displacement could have severe public health consequences.
With a continuing
pandemic and rapidly cooling weather, the mass displacement could have severe
public health consequences.
·
On the other side of the front lines, Azerbaijani
officials report 42 civilians killed and 206 injured as of 12
October. Most attacks have hit Azerbaijani cities near the breakaway territory,
but some have struck civilian areas hundreds of kilometres away, including the
Absheron peninsula, where the capital, Baku, is located. Azerbaijan accuses
Armenian forces of using cluster bombs and Scud missiles. Particularly hard hit
are the country’s second-biggest city of Ganja and a town, Mingachevir, which
hosts a large water reservoir and serves as a regional electricity
hub. Ganja was hit again within 24 hours of the weekend’s
ceasefire. Journalists tell Crisis Group that several hundred people,
mostly women and children, have evacuated front-line areas.
Many outside actors have expressed alarm. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has joined calls
for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, while the European Union, Slovakia, and a variety of humanitarian organisations promise aid, though the fighting hampers
aid delivery. Moreover, no international aid can reach Nagorno-Karabakh itself
without Azerbaijan’s blessing, which Baku has not granted, leaving only the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has maintained a
permanent office in the region since the 1990s. With international borders
closed due to COVID-19, if fighting escalates to engulf more of Azerbaijan and
Armenia, it will result in many displaced who have nowhere to go.
With the collapse of the Russian-brokered ceasefire,
both parties look set to escalate fighting, with prospectively grave
consequences. Azerbaijani advances fuel Armenian fears and counter-strikes. The
attacks on civilian areas to date may be mistakes or efforts by combatants to
deter further escalation by the other side. If intentional or with insufficient
care for protecting the civilian population, they violate international law. Even if not, they are causing tremendous
suffering. They are counterproductive to an eventual peace, hardening hostility
and rendering a sustainable settlement more remote.
It is critical that
both sides cease targeting civilians and undertake efforts to prevent and
alleviate humanitarian suffering.
·
Ideally, both sides would return to talks, but even
absent that, it is critical that they cease targeting civilians and
undertake efforts to prevent and alleviate humanitarian suffering. They
must eschew cluster bombs, stop targeting population centres and provide
corridors for the evacuation of the wounded and dead and the delivery of
humanitarian aid. International actors, including the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which has overseen negotiations
since the end of hostilities in 1994, and its co-chairs France, Russia and the
U.S., other capitals worldwide and international organisations should speak in
one voice and specifically call for such measures. Countries that provide
weapons to the parties, including Russia, Turkey, Belarus, Pakistan and Israel,
and those through which deliveries transit, including Iran and Georgia, should
cease provision and transit, at least when it comes to systems credibly
reported to have been used in attacks on civilian targets (Georgia has
already stopped weapons transit through its territory).
The UN Security Council can play a role. First, the
council, which has to date discussed the crisis in private and released a press
statement calling for calm, should now convene an urgent public meeting on the
escalating fighting and attacks on civilian areas. It should insist the
parties abide by the 10 October Moscow agreement on a humanitarian ceasefire
and facilitate the safe, unhindered and sustained delivery of lifesaving
aid, including providing full and secure access to the region for humanitarian
actors. Going further, the council should adopt a resolution calling for
an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire, beyond the limited humanitarian one
agreed in Moscow. The resolution should also condemn the parties for
endangering the lives of civilians and call on them to return to talks under
the Minsk Group co-chairs’ auspices.
The OSCE and its
Minsk Group should step up efforts on the ground.
·
As for the OSCE and its Minsk Group, they should step
up efforts on the ground. Mitigating harm to civilians will require
coordination across front lines even as fighting continues. The Minsk Group
process has frustrated both sides (and particularly Baku) in
its failure over three decades to deliver a lasting peace. Still, it
provides a format for the parties to carry out such coordination. In the wake
of the Moscow agreement, which called for a return to Minsk Group talks, the
co-chairs reported that they and the Personal Representative of the OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office (OSCE CIO PR) were working with the ICRC to explore
“modalities and logistics for the return of remains and detainees”. They also
report that they continue to engage the conflict parties on a long-term
settlement. Building upon this work, the OSCE should resume its field activity
in the region, suspended in March as a result of COVID-19, and work with
military and diplomatic representatives of the warring parties and the ICRC to
develop guidelines and a contact mechanism to facilitate the humanitarian
measures outlined above.
This expanded field activity should include means to
monitor and “verify” the Moscow agreement’s or any new ceasefire, as the
Russian and Armenian foreign ministers called for in a 12 October press conference. One
tool might be a version of the investigative mechanism to study incidents that
Yerevan, Baku and OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries agreed to put in
place, along with an expansion of the OSCE CIO PR’s office, after four days of
clashes in 2016. This could give OSCE monitors the unrestricted access they
would need to Nagorno-Karabakh and, if expanded, any parts of Azerbaijan and
Armenia under fire. In the past, Baku resisted the mechanism, despite having
agreed to it on paper. At the time, Azerbaijan sought to regain control over the
adjacent territories through negotiations before agreeing to new mechanisms
that it feared would solidify the status quo. But Baku may be more amenable to
granting monitors temporary access to its territory and that of Armenia to
investigate recent attacks, while active hostilities continue. Whatever its
specific tools, the OSCE should consider making its monitors’ and investigative
reports public,given the lack of objective, neutral reporting on the
conflict and rampant biased information and disinformation.
The UN could support the OSCE’s monitoring. The two
institutions already have a strong relationship. The OSCE Minsk Group could tap
UN expertise on observer missions and investigative techniques in warzones as
it designs a way forward. The UN could be even more active in its support if
the Security Council requests that the UN Secretary-General dispatch, in
coordination with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office’s Personal Representative, military and civilian observers
to Nagorno-Karabakh and the wider conflict region. Such a mission could observe
the ceasefire and document and report on violations of international
humanitarian law committed during the fighting. Once the OSCE’s monitoring
mission takes shape, the UN mission could withdraw. Such missions would require
the conflict parties to guarantee members’ security, which in itself could help
limit violence.
These steps will not, in and of themselves, end the
war. But they would save lives and improve prospects for a real peace, whenever
it may come
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