Winning the peace in Nagorno-Karabakh

Published: Saturday June 23, 2007

Earlier this month, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met to take another step toward the final resolution of the Karabakh conflict. They did not make progress. Rather, Azerbaijan apparently started negotiating anew on points to which it had provisionally agreed in the past.

Azerbaijan must realize that Karabakh will never be part of it. But it continues to delay the inevitable recognition of Karabakh’s separateness in the hope that time will bring it a better deal.

Whether time will bring Azerbaijan a better deal depends a great deal on how Armenians and Azerbaijanis spend that time.

The difficult but surmountable challenge we face today is to reinforce Karabakh’s separateness from Azerbaijan and to ensure that time works in Armenians’ favor.

Karabakh is not part of Azerbaijan

Karabakh has never been part of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan tried to conquer Karabakh but was defeated in the war it initiated. The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh has been operating as a self-governing state for 15 years. While awaiting the determination of the “final status” of Karabakh, other states and international organizations in many instances treat it as a de facto state. Our challenge is to increase these instances incrementally and continuously.

First, the diaspora should help increase direct contact between Karabakh’s elected officials and the outside world. This includes meetings with foreign government officials, foreign business leaders, and other high-profile figures.
Second, Karabakh should play host to international events – commercial, cultural, athletic, academic, and political. Armenian-American individuals and organizations should do their share to make this possible.

Third, Karabakh’s status, and its people’s standard of living, can be enhanced by securing greater foreign investment.

The passage of time

Azerbaijan’s leaders reason out loud that time will bring them greater military strength, to which Karabakh will have to yield. In saying this they make it abundantly clear that they consider as enemies the people of the land they wish to rule; they make it clear that they will not hesitate to annihilate them or drive them away.

Azerbaijan’s fast-growing military budget shows that they mean what they say. We must take firm steps to oppose U.S. and other international assistance to the growth of Azerbaijan’s war machine and to ensure that Azerbaijan does not once again start a war over Karabakh.

Efforts in Congress to keep U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan on the same modest level as U.S. military aid to Armenia are thus significant. We must also insist that the United States and other governments forcefully and unequivocally denounce and reject every bellicose statement issued by Azerbaijan’s president and other leaders.

These efforts ought not to be limited to direct lobbying of Congress and the executive. It should include working with nongovernmental organizations concerned with disarmament and peace, the media, and think tanks.

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As Azerbaijan spends its time preparing for war, it is not enough for Armenians to counteract. Armenians must spend this time intensively preparing for continued peace.

That means, quite simply, that Karabakh cannot afford population loss or an economic slowdown. On the contrary, Karabakh needs immigration and economic development.

The diaspora as a whole and Armenian-Americans in particular, working through the Armenia Fund, have been instrumental in building Karabakh’s infrastructure, including the North-South Highway and the highway connecting Karabakh to Armenia via Lachin. But there is a lot more to do.

The task at hand is to bring about population growth in Karabakh by encouraging young people to stay and by facilitating large-scale immigration. For this to happen, we must help make Karabakh – including strategic territories outside the boundaries of the Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region – economically and socially viable places to live.

The board of the “Hayastan” All-Armenian Fund, which met last week, wisely decided to focus on a holistic approach to improving village life in Karabakh and in Armenia’s border villages. That is essential and there’s a need for more: a concerted effort to populate this beautiful and lush land.

Since May 1994 Karabakh has been at peace. Peace is a precious gift. We savor it and enjoy it. And we realize that like war, peace can be lost.

It is with a sense of urgency – and some pride – that we continue our collective efforts to consolidate the historic achievement of the Armenian people, the establishment and preservation of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

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As in the past, we urge readers to support the Armenia Fund. In the Eastern U.S. visit www.armeniafundusa.org and in the Western U.S., www.armeniafund.org. Your contributions over the years have been instrumental in the survival and burgeoning of Armenia and Karabakh. Thank you!

We once again encourage readers to support the Office of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in Washingon (www.nkrusa.org or 202-223-4330). This mission works with the U.S. administration, Congress, opinion makers, and the general public to advance the pan-Armenian cause of a secure and prosperous Karabakh.