Terra Incognita: History and tragedy - Caucasus war clouds

Like many conflicts, it shows the weakness of the current international system that obsesses over arbitrary borders that date back a hundred years.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN 04/03/2016 20:32

Over the weekend, fighting erupted in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As many as 30 soldiers were killed on both sides and there were also civilian casualties. An Azerbaijani helicopter was reported to have been shot down and reports noted the involvement of heavy artillery and tanks in the battle over a contested region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but functions as an autonomous Armenian-run self-declared republic.

This is an incredibly complex situation that threatens to draw in Turkey and Russia, as well as other regional powers, such as Israel and Iran, all of whom have relations and interests in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and long and convoluted histories with both. For some, the conflict has echoes of a Muslim-Christian confrontation, but others will see echoes of the ethnic conflicts of the First World War and persecution of Armenians. At the same time, the struggle fits into a pattern of “little wars” waged in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Balkans that have created a kaleidescope of breakaway republics, occupied landscapes and intractable conflicts with roots in the Soviet era and before.

To understand this conflict, we must go back to the early 19th century when Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire were competing over the Caucasus. What is now Armenia and Azerbaijan fell under Persian rule. The majority of the Azeri population, some 15 million out of 26 million people, for instance, does not live in Azerbaijan today, but in Iran. The majority of Armenians did not live in what is now the small landlocked state of Armenia, but lived throughout what is now Eastern Turkey before they suffered a genocide in 1915.

In 1813 and 1828 the Russian Empire marched into what is now Azerbaijan and Armenia and in the treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay, acquired the southern Caucasus from Qajar Persia. In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish war, the Treaty of San Stefano ceded Russia a section of Ottoman territory inhabited by Armenians in what is now Kars and the ruins of the ancient city of Ani.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-History-and-tragedy-Caucasus-war-clouds-450131