Image: On the road north of Stepanakert. Askeran, Nagorno Karabakh. Photo by Clay Gilliland on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Dr Andrew Forde, Dublin City University
Analysis: The death of Nagorno-Karabakh a year ago raises many important questions about the weaknesses of rules-based international order
Most of us take our state, and our peace, for granted. But history shows us that states and empires, just like people, have a life cycle. They are formed, they survive for a while and they eventually change dramatically or die. Sometimes, they are deliberately killed-off.
One such case is Nagorno-Karabakh, a contested state within Azerbaijan, which was inhabited for centuries by Armenians and operated as an independent “de facto” state for more than three decades. Exactly a year ago, on September 19th/20th 2023, Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as the Republic of Artsakh) was effectively wiped off the map with more than 100,000 people forced into exile as Azerbaijan reasserted full control. Yet, few seemed to care about the dramatic ethnic cleansing and death of a state. How could this happen, and what does it say about the weaknesses of the international order?
Thanks largely to social media and brave local journalists, the demise of Nagorno-Karabakh was documented in real-time. As Council of Europe Rapporteur, Ireland’s Paul Gavan highlighted the serious humanitarian concerns as they were unfolding. The Red Cross, desperately protecting its neutrality, begged parties to allow it to carry out its essential humanitarian operations. The International Court of Justice issued binding legal orders against Azerbaijan, all of which were flatly ignored.
The world woke up only when photos of thousands of people fleeing their homes on the backs of trucks began to circulate, reminiscent of the early days of the Kosovo war in 1999. Even then, attention was fleeting and superficial. Now one year on, almost no Armenian has returned to Nagorno-Karabakh. With every passing day, the chances of return are diminishing and the prospects of justice being served are fading rapidly away. This should be a concern for all of us who care about international peace and security.
The ethnic cleansing followed months of repression by Azerbaijan which sought to drive the Armenians out through coercion by cutting off gas, limiting food and medicine, sabotaging civilian infrastructure and carrying out military attacks. Initially Azerbaijan claimed this was to prevent “illegal mining”, though the real intention was to settle the conflict by force, for once and for all. This all took place under the watchful eye of Russian “peacekeepers” (yes, really) who cleared the roads to allow Azerbaijan seize control unimpeded.
From Azerbaijan’s perspective, the use of force was merely a question of settling a historic injustice for lands that are recognised under international law as being theirs. The trouble with referring to historic injustices is that one can often find a good justification if one goes back far enough.
Of course there is also an important Soviet context. When the Soviet Union was being formed and when it was falling apart, borders had a way of wrapping themselves around people in ways they didn’t always agree with. Though the ancestors of Armenians and Azerbaijanis have lived in the south Caucasus for centuries, the formation and dissolution of the Soviet Union forged new understandings of place and became a breeding ground for toxic nationalism.
Tens of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijani’s were killed, and thousands more displaced since the first Karabakh war in the late 1980s. Following heavy fighting in 2020, which left more than 7,000 soldiers and civilians dead, a ceasefire agreement allowed efforts to peacefully settle the conflict to be stepped up.
Unilaterally “settling” the conflict flew in the face of these peace efforts. Azerbaijan’s actions not only violated fundamental principles of international law, it has entrenched the hatred and may have reduced the possibility of a long term, sustainable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has ruined the lives of a hundred thousand people. Worse still, it has reduced the possibility of securing justice for legacy crimes, including – importantly - those perpetrated against Azerbaijanis by Armenians more than 30 years ago but which haven’t been fully investigated. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent, which certainly won’t have gone unnoticed by other governments with territorial disputes.
Our international order is driven by politics, fuelled by economics and (theoretically) limited by law. But the law is only as effective as the will of governments behind it. If governments don’t hold each other to account for the values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, if they don’t support international institutions like the UN or courts like the International Criminal Court, the system begins to unravel.
In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, one can only guess that the overwhelming focus on Ukraine drew the lion’s share of diplomatic energy from states that otherwise should have held Azerbaijan to account. The gas deals with Azerbaijan, the presence of Russian troops on the ground and the low likelihood of the conflict spilling over onto “western” soil, were also likely part of the arithmetic leading the international community to choose apathy over action.
But will this same arithmetic hold true in other areas of simmering conflict? When it comes to human rights and international law, surely we have learned from the experience of Russia that ignoring autocratic tendencies encourages them, and weakens an international system that we all depend upon, even though we take it for granted.
This blog first appeared on the RTE Brainstorm website.
Dr Andrew Forde is Assistant Professor (Law) in the School of Law and Government at DCU, and a member of the DCU Conflict Institute. He is the author of European Human Rights Grey Zones: The Council of Europe and Areas of Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
