On Sunday, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met his Armenian counterpart against the backdrop of a cataclysmic fate being meted out to Armenians in Azerbaijan. With all its focus on Ukraine, the international community has turned a blind eye toward an ethnic cleansing underway, elsewhere. More than 120,000 ethnic Armenians are being driven out of their homeland, the Nagorno-Karabakh region, at the hands of Azerbaijan. Yet, not a single global power has stepped up to prevent this tragedy from unravelling.
So much for the West’s sanctimonious sermons or Russia’s intimidating temerity. For all they care, one may describe the current state of affairs as Azerbaijan having a free pass to do as it pleases with the Armenians.
Last week, backed by Turkey, Baku launched a lightning offensive on the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave where the breakaway Republic of Artsakh resides. The government in the region has been asked to disband. The Lachin corridor connecting Armenia to the region has been blockaded by Azerbaijan since last year’s winter, causing acute food shortages. Electricity and gas supplies, which pass through Azerbaijan-controlled territory, have also dried up. War and deadly bomb blasts targeting civilians are further driving away ethnic Armenians, who fear an impending violent takeover by Azerbaijan. Streams of thousands of Armenians are fleeing a region that they have called home for millennia.
The conflict is a gruesome lesson on the geopolitical tussle that grips the Transcaucasian region leaving numerous casualties and injustices in its wake. While the world has let Armenia down, India has a bigger role to play.
The World Lets Armenia Down
Armenia is ready to take in all the refugees and Azerbaijan, having finally won over the Armenians, is all set to establish complete control over the mountains of Nagorno Karabakh. In fact, the matter is already a done deal as Azerbaijan finds itself in a geopolitical sweet spot.
Russia, tied up in Ukraine and geopolitically invested in Azerbaijan, is only playing the role of a mediator with its peacekeeping forces having done little to stop Baku’s advances. This is despite Russia being a Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) ally of Armenia, whose immediate territory is also under attack. Iran, an ally of Armenia, is sitting out this conflict as well. This is because the European Union will let Baku’s excesses slide, as it views Azerbaijan as an alternative source of gas to fall back on since the decoupling with Russia.
The catch here is that a quarter of Azerbaijan’s gas fields are owned by Russia and moreover, it does not have the resources to fulfil even part of Europe’s needs, making it a convenient indirect source of Russian and Iranian gas. Meanwhile, the United States is too invested in defeating Russia through Ukraine than in preventing an Armenian tragedy from unfolding. And by extension, Turkey, which supported Azerbaijan with arms and mercenaries against the Armenians, is relishing this victory.
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said to his troops that “the fact that Azerbaijan is right is not questioned by major international actors”. This is true. And it has emboldened Aliyev to rub Armenia’s nose on the ground. Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nicol Pashinyan has grown vocal over Russia’s inaction and failure to come to Armenians’ rescue despite being a CSTO ally.
What Azerbaijan Wants
The breakup of the USSR led to the formation of the independent states of Armenia and Azerbaijan among thirteen other nations. While Nagorno Karabakh was completely inhabited by ethnic Armenians after a long war amid the fall of the Soviet Union, the territory is officially recognised to be part of Azerbaijan. During the war, thousands of ethnic Armenians and Azeris were massacred or displaced as violence escalated to its peak.
Since then, peace remained fragile until a complete breakdown in 2020, when Azerbaijan initiated the second Karabakh war taking over vast swathes of land and closing in on the Lachin corridor which connects with the Armenian border. Armenian resistance, however, is verging on complete exhaustion with its border areas under attack by Azerbaijan.
Not only does Baku want to establish control over Nagorno-Karabakh, but it also seeks to cut through the southern part of Armenia to connect with the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan and establish an uninterrupted corridor between itself and Turkey, continuing the centuries-long tradition of nibbling away at Armenian territory.
A Win for Turkey-Pakistan-Azerbaijan Nexus
A cruel narrative is being weaved by Azerbaijan and its Turkish backers. According to them, this mass exodus of Armenians is voluntary and none of them have been asked to leave. But they are not being assured either of safety or security as Azerbaijani armed forces march on. Instead, bomb blasts and civilian killings even as the Armenians leave, paint a different picture. Having faced brutal persecution at the hands of Turkic Islamic forces for centuries, the Christian Armenians know better than to stay back at their mercy.
Even as Turkey continues to deny it, the Armenian genocide executed by the Ottoman Empire amid World War I is not lost on the world. Over 1.5 million Armenians were killed in their systematic erasure from eastern Anatolia. Forcefully Islamised, thrown into the frontlines as cannon fodder or sent into death marches in the Syrian Desert, were some of the ways in which Armenians were uprooted from their homeland, making way for an ethno-nationalist Turkish state.
A century has passed since, but Turkey’s hostility towards Armenians remains. Since 2020, it has backed Azerbaijan’s war and sent arms and Syrian mercenaries to tilt the scales in Baku’s favour. Pakistan jumped in on the military campaign with its soldiers allegedly fighting for Azerbaijan as well. The Ankara-Baku-Islamabad troika has enjoyed a free run over the South Caucasus and the impact of their violent geopolitical victory will reverberate in the foreseeable future.
Where India Comes In
India has a deep interest in the South Caucasus region. The active conflict has a bearing on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) that passes through this region. However, just like most powers around the world, its reaction to the reprehensible hostilities by Azerbaijan has been muted. But New Delhi is not oblivious to the threat that emanates from this part of the world, especially with Azerbaijan backing Pakistan’s claims on Kashmir. When it comes to India, the trio of Pakistan, Turkey and Azerbaijan are up to no good. The three countries engage in military drills and officially back each other’s position on Kashmir, Cyprus and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Meanwhile, Armenia has wholeheartedly expressed support for India on the matter of Kashmir. Notwithstanding Baku’s protests, India has been exporting arms to Yerevan including the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher, which is the DRDO-developed equivalent of the American HIMARS rocket launcher. India has also exported the counter-battery Swathi radar systems to Armenia.
With the INSTC, its burgeoning energy needs, and Russia’s presence in retreat, India’s role in Transcaucasia is bound to deepen in the coming years. The troika of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan, however, threaten India’s geopolitical foothold in the region. Armenia is as much a natural ally as it is a strategic one to India and must be boldly empowered by New Delhi to keep the ATP nexus in check.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Comments
0 comment