Week 21-27 Feb.: The Trojan horse, déposè

Again about wars and wars’ strategies… Can a prolonged conflict be annoying? And two? And Three?
Wars are tragic, dramatic and – when they are never ending – really too much. Actually they are too much from the very beginning.

So, after having gained all the possible attention on its warmonger approach to the conflict solution of the protracted Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan devoted the 26th Feb. to the commemoration of the Xocalı massacre.
The tragic event left on the memory of the Azerbaijani nation a flood of blood, and an opaque (beyond the official version) reconstruction of what happened. While the Armenian side from the very beginning denied responsibilities (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/52/plenary/a52-85.htm), few voices in Azerbaijan claimed the need for further investigations and disclosed unspeakable hypothesis. One of them, Elmar Hüseynov, was killed in 2005. Another one, Eynulla Fatullayev, is still in prison (http://www.amnestyusa.org/bannedbooks/pdf/eynullafatullayez.pdf).


The present is in the midst of history and its narration, and the future in the choices to be made.
So, much ado about nothing or is really Azerbaijan on the warpath? The very last words of the Minister of Foreign Affairs suggest that no, there is still room for negotiation.
Without needing to go back to sophisticated strategies such as the Trojan horse, for sure after so much war propaganda, in case of conflict Azerbaijan would have pulled on itself all the blame. And it is not desirable.
Negotiation should be carried out at presidential level. This sounds very promising, somehow. Still, according to the amendment of article 11 of the Azerbaijani Constitution any alteration of the State borders should be approved via referendum, and not via referendum or presidential decree, as it was stated before 2002. Harder and harder…

What about a Georgian Trojan horse?
The National Security Concept to be approved by Georgian lawmakers specifies that “Georgia realizes necessity of deepening and developing relations with brotherly people living in the North Caucasus,”
It is totally reasonable for a country to devote its efforts to have good relations with its immediate neighbours. At the same time a regional approach can be very tricky. Russia is facing tremendous costs in coping with North Caucasus. Just to give the update list of casualties among law enforcement agents and militants: 12. Feb. Ingushetia, 2; 15 Feb. Chechnya, 2; 19 Feb. Kabardino/Balkaria, 4; 22 Feb. Kabardino Balkaria, 3; 26 Feb. Chechnya, 3; 27 Feb. Chechnya, 3.

An overreaction to a Trojan horse, or an even slightly perceived one, is not totally unpredictable.

“Twenty Years After: 1991 in Retrospect”

Dear readers,

this week and the following one the blog won't be updated as I am in India for the International Seminar on “Twenty Years After: 1991 in Retrospect”, MAKAIAS, Kolkata, February 15- 17, 2011.

(and, of course, on a short holiday...)

Week 31 Jan. – 06 Feb.: Every morning is already the future

On the 2nd of February Elmar Məmmədyarov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, was interviewed by RT. Questioned about the Nagorno Karabakh issue, the Minister expressed the need to increase the region's prevedibility.
Two casualties in three days, in January, on the contact line should remind that the expression “frozen conflict” doesn’t mean that there’s no any process in flux. Nothing can hibernate a human community, that is to say, frozen means – at the very best – a creeping movement.

The Minister mentioned four UN resolutions, EUPA’, PACE’, OSCE’s ones … all international organizations expressed their support for Azerbaijan, because of the principle of territorial integrity. The point is that no one of the three parties involved – Azerbaijan, Armenia, de facto Nagorno-Karabakh – is addressing one of the main issues: how to face the necessary sacrifice to find an exit strategy to the impasse.

Military specialists in Azerbaijan will analyse every now and then the feasibility of military re-conquest, not mentioning the little detail of how to cope with the day after. A military victory wouldn't for sure help to win the hearts of Karabakhis, who from almost twenty years rule the country, having created a separate State and developed their own identity.

The original sin, for all the three ruling classes, was to allow nationalism (or ultra-nationalism) to become one with patriotism. Due to this mystification of what means loving the homeland, the public opinions are now used to the radical positions and whoever might try – as an act of patriotism – to negotiate a reasonable, thou painful, solution, would be taken for a traitor.
If such a condition was critical ten years ago, it’s worse now, when entire new generations are growing up without any memory of peaceful co-habitation. A future of mutual exclusion has already begun.

An unwelcome future has already begun in Georgia as well. At the end of January Georgian authorities lamented and condemned the deployment of short-range ballistic missiles, Tochka-U (SS-21 Scarab B) and other offensive weapons in breakaway South Ossetia, accusing Russia to be preparing an attack. Be as it might be in Russia’s Government’s mind, for sure South Ossetia with a depressed economy, rotten infrastructures, poor resources and a total population comparable to an average small town is most probably on its way to become a little more than a military site, needed to control the situation in South Caucasus but perhaps even more in the North.

The urgency of prevedibility is felt much more in North Caucasus, where the death’s list must be updated almost every day.