On February 20, 1988, the local assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh issued a stunning, plainly-worded resolution that called for the transfer of their autonomous region from the republic of Azerbaijan to the republic of Armenia. "The dreary language of the resolution," writes Thomas de Waal in his fine new book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, "hid something truly revolutionary."
The resolution helped trigger a cycle of events that sparked the first inter-ethnic war of the Perestroika era, Mikhail Gorbachev's ill-fated attempt to reanimate the Soviet Union. The "hot" phase of the Karabakh conflict lasted six years, claiming an estimated 15,000 lives and creating a wrenching population "transfer." The warfare displaced hundreds of thousands Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The two countries remain stalemated to this day on a political settlement. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Today, the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh located within the boundaries of Azerbaijan but populated largely by Armenians -- has become one of those "political flashpoints" that few beyond the region understand or pay much heed to. Journalist Thomas de Waal, a veteran observer of the Caucasus, helps fill the need for an authoritative, clear-eyed, balanced account of a conflict that only occasionally appears on the international media radar screen.
De Waal argues that the international policy makers ignore the conflict "at their peril." "The non-resolution of the dispute has tied up the whole region between the Black and Caspian Seas," he writes. If the current cold truce is reignited into a hot war, "it would send out disturbing ripples across Europe, Russia, and the Middle East" with a "nightmare scenario" drawing in Armenian ally Russia and Azerbaijani ally Turkey (and, therefore, NATO) into the conflict.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Armenia continue to peddle official "hate narratives" to a new generation who don't remember the close personal ties of their parents' generation. All the while, large numbers of Armenians and Azeris grow poorer, less secure, and more isolated from the global economy.
De Waal raises three key "misconceptions" about the conflict. He backs his arguments with reportage, documentation, and historical record. Firstly, he contends the conflict was not borne of "ancient hatreds," as some polemicists and activists on both sides propound. He points out that Azerbaijanis and Armenians "fought no more often than any other two nationalities in the region" and he displays through skillful reportage the cultural and personal links shared by the two peoples throughout the 20th century.
These personal links created "friend enemies." De Waal illustrates the concept by recalling an episode of the conflict around the Karabakh city of Shusha in 1992. In one interview, a young Azeri fighter, Kaur, expressed fear that, at some point during the ensuing battle, he may find himself shooting at an old Armenian friend, Vigen. Later, de Waal tracks down Vigen. When the author recounts Kaur's tale, Vigen responded: "I had the same fear!"
De Waal goes on to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that helped drive the conflict, namely that the Kremlin orchestrated the conflict. Through presentation of papers from Soviet archives and interviews with key players, de Waal shows that Soviet leaders in Moscow were "running to keep pace with the dispute, rather than leading it."
Perhaps most interestingly, de Waal argues that the conflict "cannot usefully be reduced to its socioeconomic components." History and identity or, rather misguided and dangerous ideas of history and identity played a more important role. He writes: "The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict makes sense only if we acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis were driven to act by passionately held ideas about history, identity, and rights."
"That the vast mass of these ideas were dangerous and delusory does not make them any less sincerely felt," de Waal continues. "From 1990 and 1991, there were plenty of volunteers prepared to risk their lives for them
Afshin Molavi, a Washington-based journalist, is the author of Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. He was born in Tabriz, Iran and regularly reports on Iran for a variety of Western publications.
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