Face Off: The Coming War between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Another day, another deadly battle between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the southern Caucasus mountains. This time at least three people were killed. There is a lot of attention-grabbing, armed conflict in the world these days. Diplomacy is barely keeping the lid on a conventional war in Ukraine; from Nigeria to the Fertile Crescent war is about as common as peace. But to make accurate predictions about tomorrow’s conflicts, we need to look away from the preoccupations of the moment and turn our attention to the places that trouble is festering unnoticed.

To that end, let me introduce readers to my choice for 2015’s sleeper hotspot:Nagorno-Karabakh. This obscure enclave in the Southern Caucasus is heating up, and the possibility of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is increasing. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region of western Azerbaijan.In the early 1990s, ethnic tensions between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris in the area resulted in a war that in many ways resembled the simultaneous and better-known wars in former Yugoslavia.

Hundreds of thousands were displaced, but the Armenians were eventually victorious. Nagorno-Karabakh has been de-facto independent since the end of the war between the then-newly independent nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The mostly Armenian population of the disputed region now lives under the control of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a micronation that is supported by Armenia and is effectively part of that country. Despite a Russian-brokered ceasefire, the war never officially ended, and Azerbaijan still vigorously disputes the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, to put it mildly.

What is it that makes Nagorno-Karabakh particularly dangerous?

First, there is virtually no room for compromise between the two sides: Azerbaijan refuses to settle for anything less than full control of the entire area, while Armenia will not countenance anything more than a purely symbolic restoration of Azeri sovereignty. It is difficult to imagine Azerbaijan surrendering its claim to almost one-fifth of Azerbaijan’s official territory for any reason.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev continues to assert Azerbaijan’s claim with increasing forcefulness. Armenia is also unlikely to relinquish any land, because Nagorno-Karabakh effectively increases the size of Armenian territory by one-third, which is very valuable for a small, thin and landlocked nation with little strategic depth and historic enemies on almost all sides. The Karabakh conflict is a zero-sum game.

Secondly, the dispute is only growing more militarized and dangerous. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have professionalized and rearmed their forces significantly since the first war.  The Azerbaijani Army and the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army face each other along over a hundred kilometers of a fortified, land-mined and impassable border. Elaboratetrenches, bunkers, revetments and artillery positions abound on both sides of the disputed line of demarcation and the forward positions of the two sides are often less than one hundred meters apart.

Since the ceasefire, hundreds have died in frequent raids and exchanges of fire across the lines that always contain the possibility for escalation. Raids and skirmishes are increasing in frequency and intensity. Since the summer of 2014, these limited but dangerous clashes have taken place almost daily, although they only attract international attention when someone is killed. Azeri forces shot down an Armenian Mi-24 helicopter in November and there was fighting on the ground as the Armenians attempted to recover bodies from no-mans land. Most recently, on January 31 of this year, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army “launched a preemptive attack” on several Azeri positions and killed a number of Azeri soldiers.