Levon Chorbajian Patrick Donabedian Claude Mutafian
Zed Books
As the Soviet Union Entered Its Death Throes, the self-determination of the nations within its republics became an issue over which people were prepared to die. When Azerbaijan declared its independence, the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh followed suit. Before long, pogrom and war were the order of the day, resulting in thousands of Armenian and Azeri casualties. This book examines the history of Mountainous Karabagh, the ancient Artsakh of the Armenians, and assesses the mass of archaeological material and documentary evidence supporting the conflicting Azeri and Armenian claims. The authors follow the populations of the area from antiquity through periods of Mongol, Turkmen and Persian occupation, on to Turkey's and Russia's entry onto the scene, the period of Bolshevik rule, perestroika and, finally, the war with Azerbaijan. This book highlights the Armenian culture of the enclave, traces Karabagh’s demographic evolution and situates the current hostilities in terms of the interests of neighbouring Russia, Iran and Turkey. The picture that emerges of a clash of nationalistic passions and of Russian economic, military and diplomatic calculation is a signpost for future conflicts on both sides of the Caucasus. The assertion of Armenian and Azeri identity and culture remain at the heart of this tragedy. This book helps us to understand why the Armenians feel so strongly that Artsakh is theirs and is worth dying for.
The authors: Levon Chorbajian teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; Patrick Donabedian is a diplomat at the French Embassy in Yerevan; Claude Mutafian is a lecturer at the University of Pans.
Contents
List of Maps / viii About the Authors / ix Transliteration Note / x Preface by Gerard Chaliand / xi Maps / xvii-xxi
1 Introduction to the English Language Edition / 1 Levon Chorbajian Armenia and Karabagh: An Overview / 4 Is Islam a Factor in the Struggle for Nagorno-Karabagh? / 9 The Azerbaijani Claim to Nagorno-Karabagh / 11 Military and Related Issues / 13 Strengths and Weaknesses of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Economies / 18 The Politics of the Armenian Question and the Karabagh Question / 22 Other Interested Parties: the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Great Britain, the UN and the CSCE / 31 Escalating Violence / 37
2 Introduction / 49 Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian
3 The History of Karabagh From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century / 51 Patrick Donabedian
Karabagh and Mountainous Karabagh / 51 The Eastern Provinces of Armenia until the Fifth Century / 52 Artsakh and Utik in Albania / 54 The Descendants of Arran / 55 Church and Language in Albania / 56 Following die ‘Albanian Episode’: Arab Occupation / 58 The Kingdoms and the Seljuk Invasion / 60
‘Albanian’: An Ambiguous Concept / 63 The Princes of Khachen after the Seljuks / 64 A Grand Armenian Prince under the Mongols / 66 The Long Otdeal of the Mongol and Turkmen Occupations / 68 The Armenian Meliks under Persian Occupation / 70 Rebirth of the Idea of Independence / 72 The Eighteenth Century: The Turks Enter Mountainous Karabagh / 74 Armenians and Turks in Karabagh / 76 The Nineteenth Century: Russia Enters the Scene / 77 Under Russian Administration / 79 Ambiguity in the Term ‘Azerbaijani’ / 80 A Brief Survey of Art History / 82
4 Karabagh in the Twentieth Century / 109 Claude Mutafian Russian Transcaucasia / 109 The Turn of the Century / 111 The Armeno-Tatar War / 112 From 1906 to 1918 / 113 The Rescue of Armenian Karabagh / 115 Great Britain against Karabagh / 118 The Destruction of Shushi / 124 Soviet Azerbaijan / 127 The Fall of the Armenian Republic / 131 Soviet Armenia / 133 The Separation of Karabagh from Armenia / 134 The Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh / 137 Azerbaijani Politics / 139 Red Kurdistan / 140 The Exodus of Armenians from Karabagh / 141 Early Attempts at Reunification with Armenia / 144 The Eta of Perestroika / 147 1988 - An Historic Year / 149 The Impasse / 155
5 Conclusion / 171 Patrick Donabedtan and Claude Mutafian
Appendices / 174 I Letter from the Commander in Chief in Zangezur (Andranik) to the Commander of Allied Troops in Baku Concerning the Immediate Ban on Azerbaijani Troop Concentrations in Karabagh and Zangezur (March 1919) / 174 II Declaration of H. Bahalrian, Karabagh Armenian National Council Representative, on the Situation in Karabagh (21 March 1919) / 175 III An Appeal from the Armenian National Council of Karabagh to Colonel Haskell, High Commissioner in Armenia, to Undertake Measures to Liberate Karabagh horn Azerbaijani Authorities and Troops Who Have Organized Pogroms and Massacres of Armenians (Tiflis, 18 August 1919) / 176 IVA Declaration of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, Signed by Narimanov, President of the Committee, and Huseinov, People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs (30 November 1920) / 178 IVB Declaration of Narimanov at the Baku Soviet (1 December 1920) / 178 VA Propositions Put to a Vote by the Caucasian Bureau (of the Communist Party) on the Status of Karabagh (Tiflis, 4 July 1921) / 178 VB Decision of the Caucasian Bureau (of the Communist Party) on the Status of Karabagh (Tiflis, 5 July 1921) / 179 VIA Special Session of the 20th Meeting of the Deputies of the Soviet of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh. Text of the Resolution by the Parliament of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh Requesting Incorporation into Soviet Armenia (20 February 1988) / 180 VIB Decision of the Plenum of the Regional Committee of Mountainous Karabagh of the Azerbaijani Communist Party Concerning the Demand of the Proletariat and Communists of the Region to Reattach the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh to the Armenian SSR (17 March 1988) / 180 VII / Letter from Andrei Sakharov Addressed to the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, M. S. Gorbachev (21 March 1988) (excerpts) / 181 VIII / Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Rejecting the Reunification of Mountainous Karabagh with Armenia (23 March 1988) / 182 IX / Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijani SSR Concerning the Appeal Made by the Deputies of the People’s Soviet of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh to Transfer the Region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR (13 June 1988) / 183 X Speech by Henrik Poghosian, First Secretary of the Regional Committee of Mountainous Karabagh, Communist Party of Azerbaijan, before the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (18 July 1988) (excerpts) / 184 XI The Mediation Mission of Andrei Sakharov as Interpreted by Ziya Buniyatov, Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (IS April 1989) (excerpts) / 187 XII Analysis by Ziya Buniyatov, Azerbaijani Academician, Concerning the Events in Karabagh and Sumgait (13 May 1989) (excerpts) / 188 XIII / Interview with Elena Bonner, Widow of Andrei Sakharov, in LcFigtn (26 July 1990) (excerpts) / 189 XIV Interview with Galina Starovoitova, Deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in Haratch (19 September 1990) (excerpts) / 190
Index / 192
List of Maps
1 Greater Armenia and the Provinces of Artsakh and Utik from the First to the Fifth Centuries / xvii Patrick Donabedian
2 The Marzpanate of Albania and the Provinces of Artsakh and Utik from the Fifth to the Seventh Centuries / xviii Patrick Donabedian
3 The Near East and Transcaucasia Claude Mutafian
4 Transcaucasia Claude Mutafian
5 The Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh / xxi Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian
TRANSLITERATION NOTE
Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian published the original version of this work as Le Karabagh: Une terre armintenne en Azerbaijan (Paris: Le Groupement pour les Droits des Minorities, 1989). An expanded and updated volume appeared as Artsakh: Histoire du Karabagh (Paris: Sevig Press 1991). The Caucasian Knot is the complete English language translation of the expanded Sevig Press edition with a preface by Gerard Chaliand and an introduction by Levon Chorbajian.
On the matter of transliteration, we have relied mainly on Randall K. Barry's American Library Association and Library of Congress system for the transliteration of non-Roman scripts. But exceptions have been made, most commonly for individuals who spell their names in ways which do not conform to this system and in the case of place names where alternative orthographies have become commonplace in the Western print media. Thus, Etchmiadzin is preferred over Ejmiatsin, Yerevan over Erevan, and Nakhichevan over Nakhijevan.
Preface Gerard Chaliand
The question of whether it is the Armenians or the Azerbaijanis who have an historic right to the territory of Mountainous Karabagh has been amply debated during the last half-dozen years.
Historians on both sides have laboured to find evidence for their case. What matters today, in the context of twentieth-century conceptions, is who is actually in physical possession of the disputed ground. Ever since Mountainous Karabagh came into existence as an administrative unit - since the beginning of the 1920s - the territory, attached to Azerbaijan as an autonomous entity (oblast), has been populated largely by Armenians. The Armenian population accounted for 94 per cent of the total in 1921 and 75 per cent in 1988. The decline is due to Baku policies promoting Azerbaijani settlement. The principle which holds sway today is self-determination. In this respect the feelings of the majority of the population of Mountainous Karabagh have been evident since 1988. They have expressed a clear desire not to remain dependent on Baku. As for the successive governments of Azerbaijan, they have all rejected any change in frontiers. This impasse, ending up in violence and armed conflict, is one more reminder that the two principles underlying international law in the contemporary world, namely the inviolability of frontiers and the right to self-determination, are often in contradiction. In practice, following the Second World War, the right to self-determination has amounted to the right of those peoples once colonized by Europeans to determine their own destiny. The exceptions are few and far between: Bangladesh only gained its independence thanks to the intervention of Indian troops, Mrs Gandhi being only too happy thereby to weaken Pakistan. The people of Eritrea, the ex- Italian colony attached to Ethiopia as an autonomous entity in 1952 and then incorporated as the fourteenth province of the Empire in 1962, had to struggle for thirty years before finally winning their independence following the fall of the Mengistu regime.
The conflict in the former Yugoslavia is a case in point. Originally, the Western states backed the principle of the inviolability of frontiers and therefore Belgrade’s pro-Serbian policies. This solution seemed, to the Europeans of the EC at any rate, to present the least risk of instability. Later on, stability seemed best served by taking account of the aspirations of Slovenia and Croatia. However, it would be a mistake to believe that the example of the former Yugoslavia has set a precedent. There seems little doubt that in the future the principle of the inviolability of frontiers will, in the last analysis, prevail over the principle of self-determination, in the name of stability.
What Has Actually Been Going on in Mountainous Karabagh?
On one hand there was a population the majority of whom rejected the status quo, which they believed to be only a pseudo-autonomy. On the other, there was a state which had no intention of giving up its prerogatives. The result: Baku’s attempt to solve the problem by an initially successful attempt, in 1990-1992, to force the Armenian population of Mountainous Karabagh to flee. The counter-offensive then mounted by the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh, backed by Armenia, which was itself blockaded by the Azerbaijanis, enabled Mountainous Karabagh’s troops to gain control not only of almost all of the once autonomous territory (this status having been removed by Baku in 1991) but also of 5,500 square kilometres outside Mountainous Karabagh from which the Azerbaijani population had fled. How had all this come to pass?
The Origin of the Conflict
Traving aside the Armeno-Azerbaijani antagonisms of 1905 or 1920, one can say that relations between the two communities during the Soviet period were not openly hostile, although there were many tensions. The state was Azerbaijani, there had been Armenian minorities in Azerbaijan ever since the formation of the Soviet Caucasus in 1920, and in 1923 the Armenians accounted for 95 per cent of the population of Mountainous Karabagh.
The imperial divide and rule policy had laid down that Mountainous Karabagh, populated by Armenians and lying only 15 kilometres from Armenia, was placed under Azerbaijani rule, whilst Nakhichevan, populated mainly by Azerbaijanis, was separated from Azerbaijan by an Armenian province. During the 70 years of Soviet rule, the Armenian population of Nakhichevan fell from some 25 per cent to nil, and that of Mountainous Karabagh from 95 per cent to 75 per cent.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s main concern was not to resolve those national con-tradictions of the empire masked by the Soviet gag. An explanation of history based on class struggle served as a way of containing national antagonisms, as it did under Tito in Yugoslavia. The ideology, which offered as its model Soviet man or the Yugoslav citizen, had made possible marriages between Azerbaijanis and Armenians or between Croats and Serbs, in the towns at least. The children were brought up in their father’s religion. However, as the Soviet and Communist system entered its death throes in Europe, the national question, sometimes reinforced by religious considerations, came back to the fore, especially along the fault lines where the old empires had clashed: Austro- Hungarians and Turks, Russians and Muslims, Ottomans and Iranians.
Although he might have been in a position to bring a solution to the conflicting demands of the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh and the Azerbaijani state, Gorbachev chose, at first, to do nothing. Then he opted in favour of Azerbaijan, whose leadership was at the time a Communist one, as against the elected and non-Communist President of Armenia, Levon Ter Petrosian.
The peaceful demands of the Armenians for Mountainous Karabagh to be reunited with Armenia were met, in February 1988, by pogroms; dozens of Armenians died in Sumgait, one of Azerbaijan’s main towns. Further atrocities followed, in Kirovabad and in Baku, over the next two years. The 400,000 Armenians who lived in Azerbaijan, mainly in the larger towns, fled. A similar exodus saw the 170,000 Azerbaijanis living in Armenia pushed into Azerbaijan. Nationalist tension grew. In August 1990, the Soviet army, which had consistently backed Communist-led Azerbaijan, participated in military operations with armed Azerbaijanis and forced 150,000 to 200,000 Armenian villagers living in the north of Mountainous Karabagh to flee.
In the meantime, within what was still the Soviet Union, Armenia and Mountainous Karabagh invoked Soviet law and called for an administrative change, but not for any change in the frontiers between the two nations. In Spring 1991, matters came to a head. The conflict became militarized as Azerbaijani forces occupied the north of Mountainous Karabagh, in the Shahumian region, forcing Armenians to flee towards Armenia.
Following the abortive August 1991 putsch in Moscow, the entire Soviet system began to unravel. The political situation in the USSR became increasingly chaotic, especially in the Caucasus. In August 1991, Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence. In early September, Mountainous Karabagh indicated its desire not to be part of Azerbaijan and proclaimed its own independence. In December 1991, a referendum in Mountainous Karabagh confirmed the Armenian population’s desire for independence. Later that month, the USSR ceased to exist.
The Phases of the Conflict
All the elements of the confrontation were now in place. The Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh demonstrated a desire for independence as manifest as the refusal of the Azerbaijanis to give up an inch of territory that was legally theirs - especially as Mountainous Karabagh’s proclamation of independence had led Baku to cancel the autonomous status of the province. Armenia gave diplomatic support, backed by logistical support and volunteers, to the Mountainous Karabagh Armenians, who were insisting on self-determination. Both sides complained about the exodus of their own people and accused the other side of atrocities: in many cases, sadly, these accusations were correct. From that point on, the war went through four phases.
First came an Azerbaijani offensive from the South, pushing up to Chute, from where Stepanakert was bombarded from December 1991 to May 1992. The Armenians counter-attacked in February, taking Khojaly, from where the country’s sole airport was being bombarded, and again, in May, with the audacious seizure of Shushi and the Lachin Strip, establishing a road link with Armenia.
The second phase took place during the summer of 1992. A major Azerbaijani offensive backed, according to some sources, by Afghan Mujaheddin and by a few Ukranian and Russian mercenaries, occupied in a few mondis about half of Mountainous Karabagh’s 4,300 square kilometres. Despite difficult conditions, the Armenian population did not flee. Those who wanted to go had already gone. Mountainous Karabagh prides itself on a heroic streak, and visitors will often be reminded that this small region produced over twenty ‘Heroes of the Soviet Union’ during the Second World War, along with more generals than the whole of Azerbaijan. With the help of logistical support from the Armenian Republic, which had no intention of allowing a second massacre of Armenians after the 1915 genocide, trained and organized Karabagh troops launched a counter-attack under the aegis of their Supreme Defence Council.
The Armenian counter-attack represents the third phase, the war of October 1992 to September 1993, in the course of which the Armenian forces not only liberated most of Mountainous Karabagh, but also occupied some 5,500 of Azerbaijan’s 86,500 square kilometres, forcing the Azerbaijani population to flee…
This aggressive policy was necessary, according to the authorities in Mountainous Karabagh, to achieve a purely defensive aim, namely to narrow the military front down to some 120 kilometres instead of twice that., The demographic balance, Karabagh’s 100,000 inhabitants against Azerbaijan’s 7.5 million, made this essential, despite the modest aid supplied by Armenia. Azerbaijan complained, quite rightly, about the number of refugees created by the extension of the conflict: 250,000 to 300,000 on top of those who had already fled Armenia, bringing the total up to at least 500,000. As for the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh, they still see die conflict in terms of survival and their right to stay in a land where they have formed the majority since time immemorial.
The fourth stage of the struggle is still taking place. Following the demise of President Elchibey in July 1993, in which Moscow played an indirect part (the former President having evinced too pro-Turkish a position for Russian tastes), die situation was taken in hand by Gaidar Aliev, Azerbaijan s fifth president in six years. The Azerbaijani counter-offensive started in September 1993 and cost the Armenian forces dear during the winter, but did not achieve any marked success. These attempts to break through are still continuing, especially on the eastern front, while the main preoccupation of the Armenian forces is to counterattack in the north-east, in a part of Mountainous Karabagh still held by Azerbaijani troops. Reinforcements are pouring in on both sides. Moscow, meanwhile, remains the ultimate arbiter of the situation, even though its mediation continues through the Minsk group incorporating Sweden, Russia, the US, Turkey, France, Germany, Belarus, Hungary, Italy, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Mountainous Karabagh.
For Moscow, the aim is to achieve in Azerbaijan what Russia has just pulled off in Georgia. Having worked towards the destabilization of a state that did not, at first, wish to be part of the Confederation of Independent States, the Russians are now able to maintain their military bases in Georgia. Azerbaijan is the only country of the CIS where Russian troops are not currently stationed. The Azerbaijanis had hoped, and still hope, that their oil, their proximity to Turkey, perhaps even the encouragement of certain Western countries or business circles would be enough to stave off a Russian military presence. The Russians will have none of it, however. Everything will be done to ensure that Azerbaijan remains within the Russian orbit. In this respect the conflict in Mountainous Karabagh is useful to Moscow. Perhaps circumstances will lead Russia to send in troops to separate the warring parties. If so, who will pay the political price, Mountainous Karabagh or Azerbaijan? No one can yet be sure, but it seems likely that the independence that the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh are fighting for is a realistic objective. In today’s world, generally speaking, the inviolability of frontiers takes precedence over the right to self-determination, despite the counter-example of the former Yugoslavia. However, avariety of other outcomes are possible, so long as the military balance of forces remains in favour of the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh.
One other factor is of concern to Moscow: the course of the pipeline that will eventually carry Baku’s oil. Of the two probable options, the route straight to Turkey via Armenia or that initially heading northwards towards the Black Sea, Moscow favours the latter and will push for its adoption.
The regional powers, Turkey and Iran, have differing positions concerning the conflict in Mountainous Karabagh. The Western media are no longer preoccupied with the idea that these two ancient rivals are going to compete to fill the void in central Asia and the Caucasus created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian geopolitical interests are not so easily disposed of.
Turkey is limiting its present ambitions to the provision of some support to Azerbaijan, although it entertains hopes of a growing influence around the Black Sea and in Central Asia. As for Iran, a multi-ethnic state in which Persians account for a little less than half of the total population, the government there is suspicious of the dynamic of Azerbaijani nationalism, and the fact that the Azerbaijanis are Shi’ite matters less than the fears of an eventual destabilization of Iran, 25 per cent of whose population is Azerbaijani. Furthermore, any reinforcement of Turkey’s position which would turn the latter into a major regional power is a source of anxiety in Teheran.
Armenia, under the remarkably wise diplomatic policy conducted by its President, Levon Ter Petrosian, has accepted unconditionally both the Russian and the CIS propositions for a negotiated end to the conflict. President Aliev, on the other hand, has initially rejected such propositions, perhaps in the hope of seizing some interim military advantage, or perhaps because the situation at home makes it difficult for him to negotiate. Time is on Azerbaijan’s side, but perhaps not on Aliev’s, who as yet can point to no successes. Moscow now seems decidedly chilly towards him, but it remains to be seen if his hand will be forced. The war can still spread. An attack could be launched on Armenia from Nakhichevan. The Karabagh forces may broaden the front towards the north-east.
Only Moscow is sure to achieve its ends in the long run, providing the political situation there remains stable. In the meantime, it is the guns that are doing the talking.
1 Introduction to the English Language Edition Levon Chorbajian
For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabagh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabagh it is a matter of life and dead.
Andrei Sakharov (1921—1989) Physicist, Human Rights Activist, Nobel Peace Laureate
In his history of modem Armenia, Ronald Suny wrote that ‘the single most volatile issue among Armenians is without doubt the question of Karabagh, the autonomous region heavily populated by Armenians but lying within the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic.1 These words were published in 1983. Two years later, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power and initiated a series of modest reforms which opened the way to a surge of popular protest throughout the Soviet Union.
Professor Suny’s implicit prediction concerning Nagomo-Karabagh found expression in February 1988, when the region emerged at the cutting edge of social change in the Soviet Union. Under the banner of Gorbachev’s reform agenda, Armenian protesters defined the 1921 assignment of Nagomo-Karabagh to Soviet Azerbaijan as a Stalinist injustice and called for its redress. Demonstrations in Nagomo-Karabagh and massive popular rallies in the Armenian capital city of Yerevan rocked the Soviet Union, providing a model for peaceful mass protests by other national groups at the same time that they exposed the falsehood of the Soviet claim to have resolved the age-old national question.2 By the end of 1991 the scale of change had exceeded even the boldest predictions made half a dozen years before. In what was certainly one of the very few defining historical moments since the Second World War, the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991. The Communist parties were out of power nearly everywhere, and the former minority republics had claimed independence, gained diplomatic recognition, and become part of the inter¬national community as members of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
…..
Levon Chorbajian Patrick Donabedian Claude Mutafian
The Caucasian Knot The History and Geo-Politics of Nagorno-Karabagh
Zed Books
Zed Books Politics in Contemporary Asia The Caucasian Knot The History and Geo-Politics of Nagorno-Karabagh
‘This ethnic flashpoint has deep historical roots and ivide-ranging geo-political implications, as this perceptive study makes clear’ - Gerard Chaliand
The Caucasian Knot was first published by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK, and 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716, USA, in 1994.
