Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

May I share with the House the fact that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, which is also known as the mountainous Karabakh republic? Many people know very little about the political situation in the south Caucasus, but I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and the noble Lady, Baroness Cox in the other House, for frequently raising the subject. My purpose in raising it in this Adjournment debate is that the Minsk process has sought to resolve the conflict since the ceasefire 20 years ago, but now appears to be stalled, if not frozen. I seek tonight to try to apply the gentlest of nudges to the three Minsk co-chairs, to see if we cannot make progress.

It is difficult to understand and almost impossible to appreciate the full extent and horror of the war that raged between February 1988 and May 1994 in Nagorno-Karabakh. One has to go back many centuries if one wants to discover its origin, but, for the sake of brevity, Mr Speaker, and to avoid testing your patience and indulgence, I shall refer to a couple of simple and basic facts. In that war—and it was a war; it was not a regional conflict, a local conflagration or skirmish—on one side was an Azerbaijani army of 42,000 people, of whom 11,000 died, and on the Armenian side was an army of 20,000, of whom 6,000 died. There were Afghan mujaheddin and Chechen volunteers fighting on the side of the Azeris, and Armenian volunteers and people from the diaspora fighting on the other side. It was an extraordinarily bloody war, and I think that, because there was UK-British involvement in the early days of the creation of the boundaries of these republics, we have a duty to do what we can to nudge the matter forward.

After the Russian revolution in 1917, the three south Caucasian republics, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, together formed a trans-Caucasian federation, which sadly did not last long, collapsing after three months. British troops occupied a great deal of the south Caucasus, particularly Baku in Azerbaijan, in 1919, pending the Paris peace conference—a period in which we were rightly involved in the area. However, the Soviet army invaded and set up something called the Kavburo—the Caucasus bureau—which at the time voted 4:3 in favour of the area we know as the mountainous Karabakh republic or Nagorno-Karabakh being allocated to Armenia.

You will know, Mr Speaker, as will many in this House, that the dividing line between the two communities is very deep and very ancient. Armenia has been a Christian country since 301 AD; the vast majority of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh are Christian, and the majority of the population of Azerbaijan Muslim. There has been a degree of tension, which has spilled over into bloody ethnic conflict.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Churches had to register in Azerbaijan by 1 January 2010. Any house churches active after that date were raided by police and state authorities, with church leaders arrested and sent to jail. Should not our Government make representations to the Azerbaijan Government to stop the persecution of Christians and actions against the churches?

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Gentleman’s record on addressing the persecution of Christians is second to none, and I hope that his words reverberate and are heard beyond this Chamber.

After the Caucasus bureau voted for Nagorno-Karabakh being allocated to Armenia, there was an intervention by the Communist party leader in Azerbaijan, Nariman Narimanov, who reversed that decision. He was guided in this by the people’s commissar for nationalities—better known to us as Joseph Stalin.

Things came to a head in 1985, when Gorbachev was elected in the Soviet Union. In the ensuing feeling of perestroika—the slight lifting of the yoke—there were demonstrations in Yerevan and Baku, which were very much about determination of what was then called an enclave between the two countries. In February 1988, there were skirmishes near Askeran in Artsakh, on the Stepanakert-Agdam road. Then there was what is still—rightly—called the pogram in Sumgait, in which many Armenians were killed in the most horrendous circumstances. There were riots for three days and then the Soviet Army intervened. As if that were not enough, in December 1988 there was an enormous earthquake, which killed 25,000 people in what was then called Leninakan and is now Gyumri.

That period saw increasing tension along the borders, including in January 1990 an air and rail blockade by the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, another pogrom, and finally Gorbachev declaring a state of emergency. There was fighting throughout the Azeri cities, and then, in spring 1991, Operation Ring, in which Ayas Mutalibov—the Azerbaijani leader, who was seen at the time as one of the new wave of non-communist leaders that included Yeltsin, who had just been elected in Russia, and Levon Ter-Petrossian in Armenia—launched a military offensive against Armenians in the Shahumyan area, with a view to ethnically cleansing the area. That is when the diaspora, personified in some ways by Monte Melkonian, who was one of the great leaders, realised that it had to support ethnic Armenians in their homeland.

Gorbachev resigned in December 1991. That allowed the old Soviet Union to collapse in the south Caucasus region. Azerbaijan voted to rescind the autonomous oblast status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians did the same and declared independence on 6 January 1992.

Then the war started, and it was a war. There was a complete imbalance between the two armies. Together, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia had 170 tanks and 360 armoured personnel carriers, but no fighter aircraft. The Azeris had 300 tanks, the same number of APCs and, crucially, 170 fighter aircraft. They were helicopter gunships—the old Mil Mi-24s that were left over from the Russian retreat. Throughout this sad and sorry story, almost all the weapons, armaments, ordnance and artillery pieces were left by the retreating Russians. It was like there was a vast warehouse of weaponry throughout the south Caucasus—an enormous bonfire waiting for the spark.

There were appalling scenes throughout the war. There were accusations of atrocities on both sides, many of which have been investigated. In May 1992, the war took a crucial turn when the Armenians captured the headland or redoubt of the Azerbaijan army in the area that most people now know as Shushi, but which at that time was called Shusha. At that time, much of the fighting was being done by Chechens, who were fighting for jihad. Their leader, Shamil Basayev, referred to the soldiers of the so-called Dashnak battalion, which is also known as the Dashnaktsutyun or the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as the only people who had ever defeated him.

I could describe the war further, but that is not really the point of this debate. Towards the end of the war, in January 1994, even by the horrific standards of modern warfare, things had got to an almost unbearably painful phase. Azerbaijan extended the call-up to boys of 16. The war entered what objective, independent observers call the “human wave” phase. Andrei Sakharov, who is often quoted in this Chamber, said at the time:

“For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life or death”.

The peace process started. In 1994, it was recognised that it was, in effect, a frozen conflict. The Minsk group, with its three co-chairs, who are currently Igor Popov from the Russian Federation, Jacques Faure from France and James Warlick of the USA, is working as hard as it can to move matters forward. I hope and believe that it is doing so with the support, knowledge and understanding of Her Majesty’s Government. The co-chairs visited Baku and Yerevan just this month.

However, matters along the line of contact are not good. Twenty soldiers were killed along the ceasefire line in 2013, despite the existence of the ceasefire. There were nearly 200 ceasefire violations between 2 and 8 February of this year. Often, the violations involve people firing across the border, including snipers, but there are also more violent incidents. The line of contact is porous and is coming under increased pressure.

People will be asking themselves the question, as I would be if I were listening to this debate, “What can we do?” Every Member of Parliament is inundated by letters saying, “Please put pressure on country X or nation Y and do something about it.” What can we do in this case? I think that we have a crucial role to play. There is not a massive amount of trade between the United Kingdom and Armenia. Fewer than 10 UK firms are active in Armenia. We gave Armenia £882,000 in aid last year. I pay credit to our remarkable joint ambassadors in Yerevan, Kathy Leach and Jonathan Aves, who work extraordinarily hard to progress British trade interests in the area. However, we could do much more. By contrast, Azerbaijan was given £1,335,000 in aid over the same period, and we have very close trade links. The United Kingdom is actually the 15th largest trade partner of Azerbaijan, and the major role of BP in oil extraction, refining and marketing cannot be underestimated.