JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Pages 28-29

The Armenian-Azerbaijani Dispute As Seen From the U.S.—Two Views

Turkish, Azerbaijani Blockades of Armenia and Karabakh Waste U.S. Tax Dollars

By Ross Vartian

One of the most misunderstood conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union is that between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave assigned to Azerbaijani rule by Joseph Stalin in 1921, has been fighting for self-determination since 1988. In fact, the enclave never did accept Stalin's gerrymandering, making no fewer than 13 official appeals for separation from Azerbaijan to Soviet authorities between 1921 and 1988.

The people of Nagorno-Karabakh watched in horror as anti-Armenian pogroms in Baku and nearby Sumgait created 300,000 refugees, swelling Armenia's post-earthquake camps. Next, in 1990-91, the Azeri Ministry of the Interior, with the help of the Soviet army, began deporting people from Nagorno-Karabakh. When it became abundantly clear that the 1987-88 petition for secession—made according to the letter of the law of the time—was being ignored, Nagorno-Karabakh finally took up arms to protect itself from complete elimination by the Azeri military.

The people of Nagorno-Karabakh have rebounded from the brink of extinction to liberating their entire region and opening a lifeline to their co-ethnics in Armenia. In the process, they have had to occupy Azeri territory to protect their villages from Azeri artillery fire. However, the government of Nagorno-Karabakh has repeatedly stated that it will withdraw from these territories in return for real international security guarantees.

The Azeri reponse, until recently, has been to feign negotiation while seeking a military solution to the conflict. This method of conflict resolution led them to believe that blockading the Republic of Armenia—which received 85 percent of its needs through Azerbaijan until 1988—would destroy the will of Nagorno-Karabakh. This blockade effectively dragged Armenia's standard of living down from being one of the highest in the former Soviet Union to that of a land of cold, darkness and hunger where people have no heat or electricity, and where shortages of bread and other basic foodstuffs are commonplace. The will of the people, however, remains stoically resolute.

In response to Azeri aggression, the U.S. Congress included Section 907 in the Freedom Support Act which became law in the summer of 1992. The mandate of this section is to prevent the U.S. from providing direct government-to-government assistance until the government of Azerbaijan takes "demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh." The U.S. will not reward irresponsible behavior as long as each successive Azeri regime—and there have been five since 1992—continues to blockade and use force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Section 907 was never intended to deny humanitarian aid to the 750,000 Azeri refugees who, like Armenians, have been affected by the conflict, and this was reaffirmed in the foreign operations bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton last August. Azerbaijan received $35 million in humanitarian aid in fiscal year 1994, disbursed through non-governmental and private voluntary organizations such as the International Red Cross/Red Crescent and the UNHCR.

On the other hand, Armenia—a stable, democratic state which has instituted some of the most wide-ranging market reforms in the former Soviet Union—is being punished by its neighbors. Although Congress approved $75 million in mostly humanitarian aid for Armenia in fiscal year 1995, a significant portion of this money will be spent trying to get it to Armenia. Why is this?

Azerbaijan has blockaded Armenia since 1988 and sealed off the land-locked country completely with a total blockade in effect since 1992. More alarmingly, Turkey—a supposedly staunch American ally and member of NATO—has closed its border to enhance the damage of the Azeri blockade. Thus America is forced to ship its aid around Turkey through the Black Sea—slowing delivery—to ports in war-torn Georgia where the aid is further delayed or, worse yet, stolen by bandits, appropriated by the Georgian government for its own people, or put at risk by ethnic Azeri saboteurs who destroy railroad bridges in Georgia. This fall $13.5 million of U.S. reserve wheat allocated for Armenia was delivered at a cost of $12.5 million. In some cases, the aid must be flown in. We, as U.S. taxpayers, should be outraged.

Armenia's desperate situation is known to President Bill Clinton, who has said, "I deplore the closure of Turkey's border to aid shipments to Armenia." Nevertheless, his administration did not support bipartisan legislation endorsed by such unlikely bedfellows as Senators Robert Dole (R-KS), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL). During the 103rd Congress, Senators Dole and Paul Simon (D-IL) and then-Representative Rick Lehman (D-CA) introduced the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act in both houses. The objective of this bipartisan legislation was to cut off foreign aid to any state which prevents or impedes the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance to another nation.

The repeal of Section 907 would send a terribly wrong signal. Such backsliding would encourage the current regime in Baku to continue on its present disastrous course, and it would reward Azerbaijan for contracting top-dollar American public relations firms to lobby their case in Washington.