Lachin checkpoint: ultimate defeat of "miatsum" idea
Serhey Bohdan's analysis

ANALYTICS  01 May 2023 - 14:04

Having recently lost the last chance to supply Armenian bandits via Lachin road, Yerevan has rushed to seek help abroad. However, the search for rescue beyond the seas and mountains is consistent with the internal logic of Karabakh separatism. The so-called "miatsum" project, which resounded throughout the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, was inflated by a number of external factors, from the Armenian diaspora and Western elites to Gorbachev's team. As the interest of these players in the venture waned, the project itself also deflated, and in the last decade, the pace of its collapse has been increasing exponentially. Without a boost from the outside, it does not stand a chance. The Lachin checkpoint means a quiet end to the expansionist and separatist project of Armenian nationalists in this Azerbaijani region.

Pashinyan and Aliyev live in different worlds

Once again the Armenian leadership has miscalculated with international support. Yerevan has appealed to the UN Security Council and International Court of Justice, and Pashinyan has made phone calls to world leaders since the checkpoint was set up. Yerevan insists that only Russian forces should "control the Lachin corridor".

Pashinyan and Aliyev speak different languages, and this is not about linguistic aspects, but ideological ones. Why should Russian forces - even peacekeeping forces - "control" Azerbaijani lands? Of course, for the neoliberal post-Soviet elites, of which Pashinyan is the most prominent representative, the foreign military is a weighty argument, and foreign bases are the basis of national security. These gentlemen do not count on their own people, army, and country, and do not take the opinion of their fellow citizens into account.

In Baku, however, people of a different kind are in charge, and so they will not even discuss the question of whether Russian troops should control the Lachin district or not. Because it is obvious that the Lachin district of Azerbaijan, like any other piece of Azerbaijani land, should be controlled only by the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan as the embodiment of the will of the Azerbaijani people. And no one else. Otherwise, what is the point of the existence of the Republic of Azerbaijan? Alas, the Armenian leadership has a very different approach to their own land - their "democracy" is little connected to the sovereignty of the Armenian people on their own land and is based on attempts to please "the powers that be" abroad. Hence the desire to draw foreign powers into solving Armenia's problems. No sooner had the EU police-civilian mission been deployed than last week PM Pashinyan announced that Russia and Armenia were ready to deploy a CSTO mission to Armenia as well. It will not be superfluous, and cannot be compared to the EU mission, he said. The CSTO has security commitments towards Armenia, and Armenia also has obligations, which it fulfilled during the events in Kazakhstan in 2022.

Moscow, tellingly, did not escalate the situation regarding the checkpoint; the war with Ukraine does not leave it time and resources for such bizarre adventures as defending the remnants of Armenian territorial expansion. Regarding the checkpoint, the Russian Foreign Ministry did not accuse Azerbaijan of violations, but urged both sides "to return to existing agreements". Similar trends persist in CSTO policy. In this regard, the deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, Hakob Arshakyan, recently lamented: "There is no consensus within the CSTO in relation to the presence of foreign troops on Armenian territory".

The West disagrees with Yerevan

Western reactions to the checkpoint have also been restrained. Even countries like the United States with a huge Armenian lobby, have limited themselves to calling for a return to negotiations and ranting about the need for the "free movement of people and goods" along the Lachin road. At the same time, incidentally, the US Department of Commerce began preparing a deal to sell American-made rifles to Azerbaijan.

Significantly, this is not the first time in recent months that the West has demonstrated its unwillingness to team up with Pashinyan. After the April 11 fighting, the US State Department refused to support the Armenian position at all, stating only the following: "We regret the deadly clash involving Armenian and Azerbaijani forces on April 11, which resulted in several casualties. We express our condolences to the families of the dead and wounded. There can be no military solution to the conflict, and the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable. The only way to lasting peace is at the negotiating table".

By the way, appeals of the Western countries, look like attempts to break into an open door because, when you get down to it, they do not contradict the position of the Azerbaijani side. First, Baku itself convinces Yerevan to stop sabotaging the meaningful peace process. Secondly, blocking the road is not an appropriate term to describe the measures taken by the Azerbaijani side. If people and goods move along this road for peaceful purposes and in accordance with Azerbaijani law, Baku does not in principle intend to obstruct them. The checkpoint is not a break in ties, but a control point and, let us stress it, a passageway - peaceful legal movements.

But it is clear that the Armenian nationalists need other things from this road - for example, to supply the separatists' armed formations and ensure the rotation of forces. After all, as supporters of the separatists have recently indignantly admitted that in fact, forces sent from Armenia have always fought in Karabakh - "it is clearly visible from our losses. Soldiers from all corps, all brigades and regiments, special forces, peacekeeping contingent, mobilised soldiers died. Did they go to Karabakh on their own?". In parallel with military movements, the separatists used the road to export illegally mined natural resources in Karabakh - thus partially financing the entire occupation project.

Yerevan invited to cooperate

Since the signing of the Trilateral Statement in November 2020, Baku has patiently and persistently sought engagement from Yerevan on border delimitation, communications (including the corridor to Nakhchivan), and related issues. Politics, as we know, is the art of the possible, and the Armenian leadership could have long ago begun to engage with the Azerbaijani side, building a new South Caucasus and a better future for Armenia itself together - overcoming through constructive diplomacy the consequences of military confrontation and building a comfortable configuration for itself in constructive dialogue with Azerbaijanis. Yes, we would have to adapt to something and give up excessive ambitions and start living "within our means" rather than trying to pretend to be a powerful state, if in reality there is no money even for basic needs. Everyone in world politics has to interact and take circumstances into account - even world superpowers are no exception. In other words, there is no shame in adapting to reality. So far, however, Yerevan has pursued a different course, related primarily to the refusal to engage with a neighbouring country.

All this has taken on a form that can be described as "formally correct but in essence a mockery". How else to explain the actions of the Armenian FM Ararat Mirzoyan who declared a couple of weeks ago that "rumours about the death of the OSCE Minsk Group are exaggerated a little. The format exists, contrary to Azerbaijan's claims"? Again on Friday, Armenia's Security Council Secretary Grigoryan spoke about the OSCE Minsk Group. Translated into layman's language, "OSCE Minsk Group" means refusing to engage in dialogue.

Such obstruction of the peace process by Pashinyan's team is particularly surprising, and not only because they have nothing to defend and no forces for confrontation. It is also surprising because the non-confrontation option was possible. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Friday that the Armenian side had refused to implement parallel control on the Lachin road at the border between the two countries, forcing Azerbaijan to implement the control mechanism unilaterally. He also stressed that the road itself was open for "all humanitarian purposes". The Azerbaijani minister is not alone to make such a statement. Russian officials also recently said: "It was clear that Aliyev would not back down. Baku raised the issue of checkpoint for a long time but wanted to come to an agreement. Each time the subject was diverted. In the end, they simply created a fait accompli".

Karabakh's "miatsum" and Gorbachev's Hongweibings

On April 18, Pashinyan declared his readiness to accept the 1991 borders, which also means recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. The liberal post-Soviet media, for whom support for Armenian expansionism has become part of their credo, immediately began to wonder: "Armenian society is strongly opposed to the transfer of Nagorno Karabakh under Azerbaijani sovereignty. And it may seem strange that after Nikol Pashinyan's words, the streets of Yerevan were not flooded with protesters on the same day". Why Armenians are not coming out in droves to protest again, as they did back in the late 1980s?!

But this reaction of the Armenian society is a logical continuation of the eloquent trend of ordinary Armenians refusing to fight for the occupied lands. The numbers of those who refused to die needlessly to continue the occupation in 2020 are well known. It is all logical: it is not the people who have changed since the 1980s, but socio-political processes that have now brought to light the murky essence of the so-called "miatsum". This word was used to describe the supposed "reunification" of certain "historical" lands of Armenia - like many similar phenomena in the late Soviet Union, it was just a pretty signboard under which a variety of motives were mixed and a cynical manipulation of human emotions and grievances rather than history took place.

"Miatsum" speculated on people's general dissatisfaction with their lives and was facilitated by Gorbachev's intrigues. Mikhail Sergeyevich, who was rushing to power, was not the noble simpleton he is often portrayed as. An example is his sophisticated fight with his opponents, in particular in the national republics of the Union under the guise of "democratisation" - we owe the current separatist conflicts to this policy. Then in the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev decided to repeat what Mao had done, who, consolidating his power a couple of decades before the Soviet general secretary, launched a so-called "cultural revolution" in China, during which he destroyed opponents in state organs by pitting them against radical forces known as Hongweibins. Gorbachev and his associates - who were well aware of Mao's experience - tried to do the same thing and weakened the leadership of the Soviet republics by siccing their "Hongweibins" on them, either radical nationalists (such as supporters of the same Miatsum) or the ethnic minorities living in those same republics. Of course, other forces also invested in "miatsum" - what they all had in common was their external character in relation to Karabakh, and indeed to Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

Wrapping up expansionist and separatist projects unfolded with the involvement of such powerful external actors is far from easy. But since Azerbaijan has approached the issue comprehensively and patiently, some progress has been steady. On April 20, following the recognition of the 1991 borders, Pashinyan announced success in defining the border with Azerbaijan - referring to the fact that in the south of the country in the Syunik region (Zangazur), by the way, near the famous village of Tegh (Dygh) a certain "segment of the border was clarified. The clarification of the border means that both we and the Azerbaijanis have a common opinion on this issue".

The change in the Armenian leadership's position becomes particularly evident when we remember how the same Pashinyan came to the separatists in 2019 proclaiming that "Artsakh is Armenia, full stop" and started chanting "Miasum!". The tight structural framework for a settlement, created by the efforts of the Azerbaijani government, has apparently forced the Armenian leadership to reconsider this line now.

But it is still too early to talk about irrevocably overcoming the consequences of expansionism. All the more so because there are many in the West who want to play on the ambitions of revanchist circles in Yerevan. France certainly plays a prominent role in this. The official French media still explicitly calls Karabakh "disputed territory". Paris - probably as part of Macron's proclaimed "strategic autonomy for Europe" - sent Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna to Baku and Yerevan last week. Visiting Armenia on April 28, she laid a wreath for those killed in the war on the side of the separatists at the Yerablur military pantheon (the fact that it glorifies ASALA, considered terrorist in the West itself, did not stop her) and announced a military mission to the French embassy.

There are many people abroad who wish to take advantage of this issue as well. On April 20, Nancy Pelosi, known for her radicalism, spoke out in support of Armenian nationalists in Karabakh. According to her, "America will be there because Armenia holds the front in the battle between democracy and autocracy. We saw that when we were there." These Western narratives of "autocracy" are reminiscent of the late 1930s in the USSR, when labels of "Trotskyists" and the like were just as quickly and arbitrarily slapped on anyone undesirable. But we should not generalise since this is the position of only part of the Western establishment, which is very shaky in its moral justification. In the material world, they are unlikely to be able to influence anything in Karabakh in the foreseeable future. Unlike Azerbaijan, which has the strength and arguments to overcome the consequences of the Armenian radical nationalist policy of occupation three decades ago.

Caliber.Az