Page 79 - History of War - Issue 30-16
P. 79
NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Turkey and Iran, in particular, are immediately
affected by any convulsions within Azerbaijan.
For Turkey it’s a matter of looking out for a little
sibling and trade partner – the Azeris are their
co-religionists and speak a Turkic dialect. For
Iran, on the other hand, the problem is quite
dire. Like Armenia, Azerbaijan’s present borders
trace the Soviet republic carved out in 1923.
The majority of ethnic Azeris reside in Northern
Iran. Should a civil war tear Azerbaijan apart, it
could spill southward and embroil Tehran.
History does show both Armenia and
Azerbaijan share unique commonalities. As
a matter of fact, both countries can trace
their arrival at modern statehood at the same
time. With the Russian empire in disarray, and
torn apart by civil war after the October 1917
revolution, the Armenians enjoyed a nationalist
renaissance and short-lived independence. So
did Azerbaijan who possessed a thriving oil
industry judged one of the world’s largest.
In less than two years, each of these
incarnations were undone. The dismemberment
of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of
Sèvres set the Turks on the warpath. In 1920,
independent Armenia was attacked on two
fronts. The Bolsheviks would overrun Yerevan
by year’s end and further bloodshed followed as
a Soviet Armenian regime imposed its control.
In 1923, the whole of Transcaucasia was
absorbed by the Soviet Union with the ethnic
Georgian, Joseph Stalin, making it explicitly
clear that the region known as Karabakh, ruled
by ethnic Armenian clans, called meliks, was
included. Since the 16th century, this was part
of Azerbaijan whose valuable oil wells would
fuel Moscow’s plans for re-industrialisation.
Today, Azerbaijan is shaped by its oil and
the legacy of strongmen. Prospecting along
the Caspian began around the same time
swashbuckling entrepreneurs were digging
wells up and down the eastern United States. It
was the foresight of the Nobel brothers, whose
business interests had long been patronised by
the court of St Petersburg, that brought Azeri oil
irst to Russia and then to Europe.
Reliance on Azerbaijan’s crude only
increased during the peak of Stalin’s reign
and well into the Cold War. It effectively turned
Baku into the Caspian’s greatest city and
cemented the power of one Heydar Aliyev. A
former apparatchik (a full time member of the
Communist Party) who led the Azerbaijan KGB
in the 1960s, Aliyev, became a lackey of Leonid
Brezhnev whose hawkish world view, emphasis
on arms racing, and dictatorial mien rubbed off
on his Azeri counterpart.
Aliyev’s star dimmed during the Gorbachev
era, but a coup d’etat he masterminded in
1993, during the height of the Nagorno-
A defence position in Hadrut, a combat Karabakh war, established his rule over
operational zone in Nagorno-Karabakh Azerbaijan. Always a pragmatist, Aliyev
brokered the ‘deal of the century’ to allow a
1928 1943 1944 1988 1991
The First Five-year Plan The Nazis covet On 22 June 1944, 1.7 million A grass-roots protest A failed coup in Moscow hastens
helps industrialise the Soviet Transcaucasia as the Soviet troops assault Germany’s movement in the Karabakh the dissolution of the ailing Soviet
Union under Stalin. Armenia gateway to Persia and Army Group Center in Belarus. enclave agitates for union with Union. Separate referendums in
is swept along by the India. 500,000 Armenians The offensive is named ‘Operation Armenia. This sparks a wave Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh
grand project and its farm would serve in the Red Bagration’ after a Georgian of riots across Azerbaijan unanimously vote for secession
labourers begin working in Army. Soviet Azerbaijan is aristocrat descended from an and mobs are soon targeting and independence but Azerbaijan
factories en masse. the main supplier of its fuel. ancient Armenian dynasty. ethnic Armenians in Baku. is now girding for war.
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