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Winter 2004-05
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The
New Battleground: Central Asia and
the Caucasus
Following his first meeting with
President Vladimir Putin in June
2001, President George W. Bush
heaped praise on his Russian
counterpart, hailing a new era in
relations between the two countries
and claiming he had gained a sense
of the Russian leader's soul. Just
three and a half years later,
however, the strategic partnership
forged between the two leaders in
the wake of the September 11 attacks
faces a new obstacle. Recent
geopolitical developments, combined
with expanding strategic agendas in
Moscow and Washington, are ushering
in a new era of competition in
Russia's near abroad of Central Asia
and the Caucasus. |
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December 2003
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Azerbaijani Policy
and the Karabakh Problem
The refusal of the Armenians to
contemplate a political entity with
Azerbaijan is not just a simple
matter of difference of language,
culture, religion, history and
traditions. This is the consequence
of the Azerbaijani policy carried
out since 1930 aimed at the
disappearance of Armenians from the
territories separating Turkey from
Azerbaijan in order to achieve the
unification of the Turkish speaking
world from the Mediterranean to
western China. Apropos, a similar
experiment (the 1915 Genocide) was
carried out at the beginning of 20th
century by the unconditional ally of
Azerbaijan, Turkey, which resulted
in the ethnic cleansing of the
Armenians from their ancestral lands
- 300,000 sq km in Eastern Anatolia.
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July
2003
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The Genocide against the
Armenians 1915-1923 and the
application of the 1948 Genocide
Convention
A groundbreaking report by Dr.
Alfred de Zayas regarding the
applicability of the 1948 UN
Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
to the Armenian case. According to
his findings, the UN Convention
applies retroactively to the
Armenian Genocide, making the
Turkish state fully responsible for
reparations.
Dr. Alfred de Zayas, an
international law expert, historian,
and former UN official on human
rights; is an American of
Spanish-French descent. After law
school at Harvard, de Zayas went to
Germany on a Fulbright fellowship,
took doctorate in History at the
University of Goettingen. Based in
Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. de Zayas
teaches international law at several
European and North American
universities. |
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April 2003
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The Armenian American
Community and U.S. Foreign
Assistance Policy
Presented by Kenneth V. Hachikian,
ANCA Chairman
Testimony before the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on
Foreign Operations, Export Financing
and Related Programs |
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March 2003
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"When Does Genocide
End? The Armenian Case"
"When does genocide end? The
expected answer is "when the killing
stops." The Holocaust can be said to
have ended with the liberation of
the extermination camps or the
termination of the Second World War
or perhaps the Nuremberg Trials. In
any case it is an historical fact
universally accepted even by the
perpetrator state. The more recent
genocide in Cambodia is also clearly
over even though those responsible
have not been properly brought to
account. The genocide in Rwanda can
also be said to have ended and
punishment for the perpetrators has
been in progress. Yet other
genocides or genocidal acts remain
unacknowledged, unpunished, unknown,
or simply denied. |
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March 2003
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Caucus Election Watch
On February 19, 2003, Armenia held
its fourth presidential election
since gaining independence in 1991.
According to international
observers, the election was
generally calm and well
administered, but was marred by
serious irregularities and flaws and
thus cannot be viewed as a sign of
progress in Armenia's
democratization efforts. Because no
candidate managed to meet the
50-percent-plus-1 threshold in the
first round of voting, a runoff
election was held between the top
two vote-getters - incumbent Robert
Kocharian and Stepan Demarche.
Kocharian won the runoff and will
remain president. |
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May
2002
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U.S. Policy in the Transcaucasus
The Transcaucasus region of the
former Soviet Union, comprising the
newly independent states of Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia, continues to
be an important element of U.S.
foreign policy. The geopolitical and
strategic value of this region is
most obviously defined in its
geographic importance as a transit
area for the offshore energy
reserves of the Caspian Sea. The
region’s strategic importance has
been further enhanced by the U.S.
campaign in Afghanistan and due to
the need for stability in nearby
Central Asia. |
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May
2002
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U.S. Eyes Caspian Oil In "War
On Terror"
The arrival of US military advisors
in Georgia 29 April raised as many
glasses in Ankara and Baku as it did
jitters in Moscow. Touted as a new
front in the war on terror, the US
is in reality scrambling for Caspian
oil in a bid to oust Russia from its
traditional backyard. |
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January 2002
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Armenia And The War
On Terrorism: Delicate Times Ahead
It is now clear that the "War On
Terrorism" (WOT), declared after the
September 11 terrorist attacks
against the United States, will not
end with the final defeat of the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan nor
with the dismantling of the Bin
Laden-led "Al-Qaida" terrorist
network, but will carry on to a next
stage, still to be determined. For
much of the developing world, the
priority is to stake out a secure
place within this new geopolitical
matrix, a priority necessitated by
the U.S. recasting of the world
along a new "with us or against us"
axis. Among the smaller, weaker
states, this need to demonstrate
allegiance to the U.S. WOT has
resulted in a near comical
collective statement of support
ranging from such improbable states
as Sudan, Libya, and even Somalia.
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September 2001
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The War on
Terrorism: Implications for the
Caucasus
The still unfolding US campaign
against global terrorism poses
several significant changes to the
traditional geopolitical landscape,
ranging from a convergence of
interests among the United States,
Russia, Iran, and even China, to a
focus on Central Asia as a region of
newly-enhanced strategic importance.
The implications are both profound
and comprehensive, but their
potential for altering the situation
in the Caucasus are striking.
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July 2001
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The Bush Administration
and the Caspian Oil Pipeline
Among the major issues where the
Bush Administration will have to
cope with the Clinton legacy, is the
Caspian pipeline project. The State
Department invested heavily in a
grandiose strategy that has been to
press the Caspian countries and
international consortia operating in
the region to export their oil and
gas westward through pipelines that
would terminate in Turkey. These
costly projects, the Baku-Ceyhan oil
pipeline and the Trans-Caspian gas
pipeline from Turkmenistan, never
made obvious economic sense.
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May
2001
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Meghri: The Pan-Turkish
Superhighway and Other Wrong Turns
Rumors about the Meghri region of
southern Armenia just won't stop.
Armenia supposedly was to hand over
Meghri to Azerbaijan in exchange for
Armenian sovereignty over Karabakh.
That always seemed highly
improbable: Meghri is an essential
link to the outside for landlocked
Armenia. More likely - if recent
reports can be believed - Azerbaijan
will receive internationally
guaranteed access rights across
Meghri so as to connect the Azeri
enclave of Nakhichevan with
Azerbaijan. Not because Armenians
want that to happen, but because the
U.S. State Department ("USSD"),
Turkey, and Azerbaijan see Meghri as
the long sought-after Pan-Turkish
corridor, and part of a larger
strategy. |
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April 2001
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Key West: Seeking
Resolution or Sidelining Russia?
In a symbolic gesture marking the
conclusion of the latest round of
mediation seeking a negotiated
resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, U.S. President George Bush
welcomed the Armenian and Azerbaijan
presidents in separate White House
meetings on 9 April. Those meetings
followed an intensive round of talks
in Key West, Florida, brokered by
the representatives of the three
co-chairs of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe's
(OSCE) special working group on the
Karabakh conflict, the "Minsk
Group." |
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March 2001
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Javakhk: Stability
Through Autonomy
Recent developments in Georgia have
given rise to new concern over the
state of affairs in the
Samtskhe-Javakheti region of
Georgia, a strategically located
region of southern Georgia with an
ethnic Armenian majority population
concentrated in the districts of
Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda (known
as Javakhk to the Armenians). The
start of the partial Russian
military withdrawal from Georgia and
the internal political tension
between the central Georgian
government and the increasingly
assertive leaders of Ajaria, and the
continuing stalemate over the
Georgian conflict with Abkhazia,
have added new complications to an
already tenuous stability in Javakh.
The situation in Javakhk, with its
overwhelming Armenian population,
complicates Armenian-Georgian
relations and threatens to add a new
internal dimension to the obstacles
of resolving the relations between
Tbilisi and the Ajarian and
Abkhazian governments. |
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July 2000
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The Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
and the Nagorno Karabakh Conflict: A
Compilation of Analyses
The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE):
- Background and Analysis
- Involvement in Nagorno Karabakh
- Chronology of Key Military and
Diplomatic Events January 1992-May
2000 |
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September 1999
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Karabakhis Preside
Over An Uneasy Truce
The front line between the armies of
Azerbaijan and the breakaway state
of Nagorno-Karabakh has an air of
permanence. The Karabakhi trenches,
bunkers and earthworks are well dug
and reinforced with concrete posts,
wooden palings and empty ammunition
boxes. Wire fences and minefields
separate the two armies, which
observe each other warily through
binoculars across a kilometer of no
man's land. Almost daily, there are
exchanges of sniper fire.
Considerable resources in men and
materiel have been committed to
holding this line. Behind the lines
of infantry trenches, a deep moat
has been excavated. Area commander
Colonel Mofses Hakoupian claims:
"This is our anti-tank defense. It
is 179km long and stretches all the
way from the Iranian border to
Armenia." These formidable
front-line defenses, built since
1994, stretch along the entire
eastern and northern flank of
Nagorno-Karabakh and are home to
some of the most committed troops in
the Caucasus. |
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June 1999
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Post Election Analysis:
The New Armenian Parliament
Signifying another step on the road
to strengthening multiparty
democracy in Armenia, the Armenian
electorate went to the polls on May
30th and elected a new parliament.
The new 131-seat parliament, or
National Assembly, represents yet
another break with the controversial
Ter Petrosian period of organized
crime, governmental corruption,
political assassination and
intimidation, and the flagrant
misuse of state power against the
political opposition. The new
composition of the recently elected
parliament offers renewed optimism
that the institutionalization of
democracy and the establishment of
the rule of law can finally be
achieved in Armenia. |
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