Page 80 - History of War - Issue 30-16

BRIEFING

consortium of multinational oil companies to do
business in Azerbaijan. He skirted the Nagorno-
Karabakh issue, ignored Russia, bought arms
from Ukraine and Belarus, and built ties with
the United States.
When Aliyev passed away in 2003, at the age
of 80, he had amassed a fortune and set the
stage for his successor, none other than his son
Ilham Aliyev, who had in turn begun grooming his
17-year-old son to replace him. A former faculty
member at the Moscow State University, and
a ‘businessman’ with unspecii ed ventures in
Turkey, the new Aliyev assumed the presidency
in 2004 and has stayed in ofi ce ever since.
Under the second Aliyev’s leadership,
Azerbaijan prospered thanks to high commodity
prices and favourable ties with the West. Aliyev
made it a personal mission of sorts to re-arm
his country for a reckoning with Armenia. Since
2006 Baku’s annual defence budget has grown
until it consumed i ve per cent of annual GDP –
the highest among post-Soviet states.
Thousands of Armenians and Azeries
The country that isn’t lost their lives during the brutal six-
Armenia didn’t go down the path of dictatorship year Nagorno-Karabakh War
but prosperity has eluded it. When the war in
Nagorno-Karabakh ended, killing an estimated
30,000 people, it left the rogue province a
measure of anxious peace. Owing to Artsakh’s
location, its hardscrabble citizens were cut off
from the homeland except for a narrow highway
at the point closest to the Armenian border
called the Lachin corridor.
The comical tragedy of this state of affairs
can’t be emphasised enough because it
created real long-term antagonism between
former neighbours. For generations, Armenians
and Azeris had lived together, inter-married,
and shared the same troubles under the
Soviet system. In the brave new world of
independence, national politics demanded they
be mortal enemies. Gutted villages, abandoned
for decades now, aren’t uncommon in Artsakh.
These are where Azeris used to live.
Likewise Armenia wasn’t in great shape
during the 1990s. During the administration
of President Levon Ter-Petrosyan electricity
was down to four hours a day. To think Soviet
Armenia used to be a manufacturing hub where
40 per cent of the workforce had jobs in various
industries. After the 1988 earthquake, and the
ensuing war the Russian Federation had no use
for Armenian factories, the borders with Turkey
and Azerbaijan were closed.
What this national stagnation did accomplish
was to intertwine Armenia’s own aspirations
with those of Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh.
The current president, Serzh Sargsyan, along
with his two predecessors, Ter-Petrosyan
and President Robert Kacharian, are perfect
examples of this phenomenon.
A career ofi cer in the Soviet Army, Sargsyan
fought alongside the Armenian fedayeen –

1992 1994 2003 2014 2015
Fighting breaks out in A ceasei re ends the hostilities in A decade since usurping the An Armenian Mi-24 Hind Toward year’s end, exchanges
Nagorno-Karabakh as Azeri Nagorno-Karabakh, which is now presidency of Azerbaijan, gunship is shot down in of guni re between Azeri and
militias clash with Armenian inhabited by less than 150,000 Haydar Aliyev passes away at Nagorno-Karabakh by a Armenian troops in Nagorno-
i ghters determined to protect ethnic Armenians aspiring for their age 80. He is replaced by his shoulder-launched SAM. The Karabakh begins to escalate.
their homes and villages. The independence. Azerbaijan and son, Ilham, who builds airports, incident is the most brazen act Within the next six months
war drags on for three years Armenia proceed to rebuild their monuments, and buildings to of aggression by Azeri forces in more than a hundred are
and kills 30,000 people. battered economies. memorialise his father. more than a decade. killed on both sides.

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