The announcement of the return of the four non-enclave villages of Baghanis Ayrim, Ashagi Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili comes as a welcome development. Situated in that part of Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region under Armenian control since the early 1990s, they were initially mentioned in an early version of the November trilateral ceasefire statement before being removed from the final version. In January, President Ilham Aliyev raised them again and after the issue became central to the work of the border commissions, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last month acknowledged that they were indeed not de jure part of the Republic of Armenia.
Whatever his reasons, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a bold, courageous, and some would argue, necessary move by doing so, despite the ire it would inevitably attract. A sea of disinformation and existential narratives re-emerged but rather than backtrack he instead visited local settlements adjacent to the provisional border to assure residents that their concerns, real or perceived, would be addressed by the government. This focus on those Armenian settlements also highlighted how they had hitherto been ignored by almost everyone.
Even prior to the 44-day War, Tavush had been a frontline in the conflict between the two countries, quite unlike that part of the Armenian border adjacent to the then occupied Azerbaijani regions of Kelbajar, Lachin, Qubadli, and Zangilan. With the exception of the non-enclaves discussed today, Gazakh was not otherwise taken and remained populated by Azerbaijan. With a distinct lack of adequate road communication to other parts of Tavush, the area around Noyemberyan and Voskepar often felt isolated in the administrative region. Poverty and out-migration was high and some arable land was unreachable because of landmines planted along the border. The potential dividends from the new deal for this small part of Armenia are therefore not insignificant, if development follows.
That is not to say that there won’t be problems as the physical process of delimitation/demarcation takes place, and military forces are replaced by border guards, and nor does it ignore the distinct lack of trust between Yerevan and Baku, but it does highlight the need for more focused work in order to build confidence between the sides. Pashinyan has already hinted at the idea of trade between the two communities at some point in an albeit distant future but this is also a region that has experienced significant cross-border incidents for over 30 years.
The task won’t be simple, but civil society in both countries could and should play an important role alongside the work of the two governments. To date, only one such project is known to have included residents of Gazakh and Tavush – Georgi Vanyan’s “Tekali Process” in Georgia close to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Sadly, it was a project implemented before its time but now it would be essential. His eventual aim was to establish a cross-border market to encourage more people-to-people contact in the same way that the old nearby cross-border Bagratashen-Sadakhlo market once did.
Resurrecting these ideas again seems only natural in this new reality, and long overdue. While the two communities remain in close proximity there will soon be no armies deployed in-between. Instead, border guards will replace them while the area also falls under the responsibility of monitors from the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) operating from Ijevan. An Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) as the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) operates in Georgia is unlikely to emerge as things stand, though something similar could be implemented by the authorities in cooperation with local residents.
Projects directly benefitting the communities would also go a long way in alleviating any sense of isolation, deprivation, and insecurity. This could also include those organisations willing and able to take on the coordinated task of landmine awareness on both sides of the border as some could still remain. There will also be the always-present issue of shared water resources and accidental crossings of the border too.
That there are now protests in the area surrounding Voskepar and Kirants shows that the communities will need to be engaged in the long-term. Pashinyan has already referred to the return of the villages and demarcation as a pilot project. Indeed, as Azerbaijanis return to their homes in other border regions, the same issues will emerge there and perhaps even more so.
But there is reason for hope. One of the main concerns of those protesting is that one of two main routes from Armenia to Georgia passes through a small part of territory soon to be returned, though a bypass will likely be constructed. Ironically, its final destination is the ethnic Azerbaijani border village of Sadakhlo in Georgia, itself part of the majority ethnic Azerbaijani Marneuli municipality. Not only does all of Armenia’s passenger traffic via those two roads pass through that region with no problem, but so too does a sizeable amount of freight. Inter-ethnic trade already exists, albeit in that third country, while the issue of crossing the border by accident is addressed even for ethnic Armenians in Georgia that inadvertently get lost.
It could be that this is where things will inevitably lead anyway. There is much pressure on local communities to rebuff the new agreement, and while the involvement of local administration heads in a working group newly announced under the Commission on the Delimitation of the State Border is positive, some have reportedly already pulled out. But as always in the South Caucasus, time will be of the essence lest another window of opportunity be lost. Civil society could help here, but sooner rather than later.
source: Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, photojournalist, and consultant from the U.K. who has covered the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict since 1994.
photo: On April 23, 2024, the first border post was installed on the border between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia within the framework of the process of specifying the coordinates based on geodetic measurements on the ground.
The views expressed in opinion pieces and commentaries do not necessarily reflect the position of commonspace.eu or its partners
