Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Seeking “Peaceful” Peace


The name of Boris Podoprigora, Member of the Expert-Analytical Council at the Committee for CIS and Compatriot Affairs in the RF State Duma, President of the St.-Petersburg Club of Conflict Resolution Studies, military officer, is rather famous in Russia. His numerous publications on the nature of separatism (interesting in their own fashion but periodically reprinted in various publications) are also well-known to the public.

I was going to write about his articles long ago but had no time to do. However his article posted on respectful website Peacekeeper.ru made me postpone all my urgent works and write this reply. For I know ?the custom? of Podoprigora and may expect that the same or similar article will be reprinted in a couple of months in any other publication. Actually it is difficult to imagine how it was possible to make so many mistakes and inaccuracies in such a small article. Yet, let me tell about everything one after another.

The title of the Podoprigora?s article is long and ornate: Armenia and Azerbaijan Still Fail to Find New Prince Borschagovski, Or Declaration on On-Going Conflict . Actually the name of Prince Borschagovski together with all preceding and succeeding paragraphs and even orthographic errors in them move from one article of Podopribora to the other. Podoprigora likes this Prince because he proposed ?to satisfy those who is unsatisfied with his position, by material acquisitions?, and even allegedly found a formula for co-existence of opponent nations - ? the mutual hostages?.

We will not blame the Prince who proposed ordinary bribing and transfer of someone else?s property for ?reconciliation? and for the sake of the conflict-jittery idea of overlapping national areas. For me it is much more interesting how Podoprigora himself interprets the history and realties of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. I would like to hope that his numerous errors are caused only by keen striving to find a mutually acceptable formula for peaceful coexistence of the Caucasus nations.

Let keep aside ?small? mistakes of the author made in spelling the Armenian name of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and individual areas of the region. Moreover it is actually insignificant. But the phrase: ?The history of the conflict is similar to the Palestinian one ? the same territory is developed by two nations. Each of them was a title nation in its time? seems not so inoffensive. Disregarding the erroneous comprehension of the term ?title nation? by the political analyst, we have to say that the Turk inhabitants of Artsah (Nagorno-Karabakh) never constituted not only a majority but even significant statistic quantity of the population. Let us also point out that the fist Turk nomads currently named the Azerbaijanians followed by the Kurds came to Artsah only in the second half of the XVII century.

Podoprigora writes that ?current population (of the NKR ? author?s note): 130,000 people, of them more than 75,000 Armenians and less than 50,000 Azerbajanians?. The Republic of Artsah is populated by more than 150,000 Armenians and about fifteen hundred Russians and Greeks. There are neither Azerbaijanians nor Kurds in this republic, for they reasonably left the area of combat activities in the years of war.

Podoprigora tells that implementing the idea of his beloved Prince the Tzar Government applied a principle of ?mutual hostages? in the mid XIX century and ?a part of the Azerbaijanian territory was separated from ?the mother country? by the Armenian-populated areas. It is the Nakhichivan area. While a part of the Armenian territory was surrounded by the Azerbaijanian-populated areas. It is the Karabakh area?. The political analyst should better know that Tzar Russia was not divided into administrative territories on the nationality principle. There were governorates, which borders disregarded the frontiers of national localities. Nakhichevan was within the Yerevan Governorate while the entire Karabakh was within the Elizavetpolski Governorate. And finally, that time Russia was ?the mother land? , thus it is impossible to understand who was ?separated? from whom.

We have to add also that Nakhichevan was never a part of the Azerbaijan territory. And this is not the case that the term ?Azerbaijanian? applicable to the Transcaucasia Turks appeared only in the late 30s of the XX century. Nakhichevan was included in the Azerbaijanian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921 pursuant to the 1921 Moscow Peace Agreement which was actually an ordinary collusion between Bolshevik Russia and Kemalist Turkey. After several months the same Russian Communist Party body (the Caucasus Bureau of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ) took a decision to include Karabakh into the same Azerbaijanian Soviet Socialist Republic . Within two-three decades after that date Azerbaijan managed to expel the Armenians from Nakhichevan, and Karabakh was in queue?

However Podoprigora assures us that in the Soviet time the nations reconciled themselves with such separation. ?Vanished tale can?t be round ? in the second half of the XX century maximum national ambitions of the Caucasus nations were illustrated by a guide-board posted on road-junction Baku-Yerevan-Tbilisi. ?The football fans? periodically depicted on it fie-fie symbols of Armenian football team ?Ararat? victories over the Azerbaijanian football team ?Neftchy?, which Captain by the way for many years was Armenian Markarov?.

Eduard Markarov was the best football player of Neftchy during the entire history of the team but he was never its Captain due to his nationality. But this is not the point. It would be useful to know that the standoff between the Armenians and Azerbaijanians in the Azerbaijanian SSR lasted during all years of the Soviet power. It was expressed mainly by letters and petitions of the Armenian population of the Azerbaijanian SSR, as well as those of the leadership of the Armenian SSR requesting to restore the historical justice and return Armenian regions Nakhichevan and Karabakh to Armenia. Time by time this standoff developed into armed clashes, of them the most severe and bloody ones were in Stepanakert in 1964, Kirovobad in 1959 and 1972, Khanlar District in 1969, and Shamhor District in 1987. We provide examples especially from the second half of the XX century. So, the tale of Podoprigora must be round.

The next passage: ?Riots against the Armenians in Azerbaijan provoked by the deportation of the Azerbaijanians from the Karabakh area were responded by ?the historical reunification? of Artsah with ?the ancestral home?. Let?s keep the expressed mockery on the head of the political analyst, and see the facts. The riots against the Armenians in the Azerbaijainian SSR started two days after the Regional Soviet of Kagorno-Karabakh took a decision to submit a request to Baku, Yerevan and Moscow to revise the unjust decision of the Bolsheviks and return the region to Armenia. The decision (we emphasize: with the request) was taken on February 20, 1988, and already on February 22 riots against the Armenians started in Agdam and Askeran. On February 26-29 Sumgait witnessed massacre and riots against the Armenians of the city, which may be regarded as the genocide according to the international law.

Simultaneously Kirovobad also witnessed riots against the Armenians but due to a small number of victims they were ?shaded? by the events in Sumgait. What deportation of the Azerbaijanians from Karabakh is it possible to speak about if all villages of the Karabakh area populated by the Azerbaijanians not only lived in peace until the hostilities but also intensively populated by Turk migrants , in particular, by the Turk-Meskhetins deported from Uzbekistan?

We may continue to show the factual and chronological errors and even try to explain them that the conflict analyst should not get into minor details. But the article of Podoprigora contains also pure fiction, just invented facts. For example, he writes that ?already four UN Resolutions were adopted to demand immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories?. It is difficult to understand how one UN resolution adopted on March 14, 2008 suddenly was quadruplicated.

Similarly, it is difficult to understand how it is possible to silent the fact that the resolution was denied by the world leading countries including three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group: Russia, the USA and France. May be he speaks about four resolutions of the UN Security Council adopted in 1993. But those resolutions read nothing about Armenia as a fighting party. Moreover those Security Council resolutions point out at seize-fire violations by Azerbaijan, and read about severe response to them by the local armed forces.

?The news? communicated by Podoprigora that ?a maximum concession made by the Armenians was a decision to replace the NKR Army by a police contingent equal in strength? is also baseless. The NKR Army of Defense is the most important guarantor of NKR and its population security, and nobody has plans to replace it by any other forces.

Conflict analyst Podoprigora finished several his articles with his favorite phrase: ?It is necessary to recollect more often a principle of Middle Ages medicians - Do not harm??

Now we would like to address this maxim to the President of the St.-Petersburg Club of Conflict Resolution Studies. But let us recall that the author of this maxim, Hippocrates, lived in the V-IV centuries BC, and that time is hardly may be related to the Middle Ages even in case of great invention.
2008-11-20 12:25
Levon MELIK-SHAHNAZARYAN