The last thing the complex, work-in-progress drive towards Eurasian integration needs at this stage is this messy affair between Iran and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus.

Let’s start with the Conquerors of Khaybar – the largest Iranian military exercise in two decades held on its northwestern border with Azerbaijan.

Zangezur is one of the strategic areas in the competition for connectivity routes in West Asia and the South Caucasus.

Among the deployed Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units there are some serious players, such as the 21st Tabriz Infantry Division, the IRGC Ashura 31 battalion, the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade and an array of missile systems, including the Fateh-313 and Zulfiqar ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 700 kilometers.

The official explanation is that the drills are a warning to enemies plotting anything against the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei pointedly tweeted that “those who are under the illusion of relying on others, think that they can provide their own security, should know that they will soon take a slap, they will regret this.”

The message was unmistakable: this was about Azerbaijan relying on Turkey and especially Israel for its security, and about Tel Aviv instrumentalizing Baku for an intel drive leading to interference in northern Iran.

Further elaboration by Iranian experts went as far as Israel eventually using military bases in Azerbaijan to strike at Iranian nuclear installations.

The reaction to the Iranian military exercise so far is a predictable Turkey–Azerbaijani response: they are conducting a joint drill in Nakhchivan throughout this week.

But were Iran’s concerns off the mark? A close security collaboration between Baku and Tel Aviv has been developing for years now. Azerbaijan today possesses Israeli drones and is cozy with both the CIA and the Turkish military. Throw in the recent trilateral military drills involving Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan – these are developments bound to raise alarm bells in Tehran.

Baku, of course, spins it in a different manner: Our partnerships are not aimed at third countries.

So, essentially, while Tehran accuses Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev of making life easy for Takfiri terrorists and Zionists, Baku accuses Tehran of blindly supporting Armenia. Yes, the ghosts of the recent Karabakh war are all over the place.

As a matter of national security, Tehran simply cannot tolerate Israeli companies involved in the reconstruction of regions won in the war near the Iranian border: Fuzuli, Jabrayil, and Zangilan.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdullahian has tried to play it diplomatically: “Geopolitical issues around our borders are important for us. Azerbaijan is a dear neighbor to Iran and that’s why we don’t want it to be trapped between foreign terrorists who are turning their soil into a hotbed.”

As if this was not complicated enough, the heart of the matter – as with all things in Eurasia – actually revolves around economic connectivity.

An interconnected mess

Baku’s geoeconomic dreams are hefty: the capital city aims to position itself at the key crossroads of two of the most important Eurasian corridors: North-South and East-West.

And that’s where the Zangezur Corridor comes in – arguably essential for Baku to predominate over Iran’s East-West connectivity routes.

The corridor is intended to connect western Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic via Armenia, with roads and railways passing though the Zangezur region.

Zangezur is also essential for Iran to connect itself with Armenia, Russia, and further on down the road, to Europe.

China and India will also rely on Zangezur for trade, as the corridor provides a significant shortcut in distance. Considering large Asian cargo ships cannot sail the Caspian Sea, they usually waste precious weeks just to reach Russia.

An extra problem is that Baku has recently started harassing Iranian truckers in transit through these new annexed regions on their way to Armenia.

It didn’t have to be this way. This detailed essay shows how Azerbaijan and Iran are linked by “deep historical, cultural, religious, and ethno-linguistic ties,” and how the four northwestern Iranian provinces – Gilan, Ardabil, East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan – have “common geographical borders with both the main part of Azerbaijan and its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic; they also have deep and close commonalities based on Islam and Shiism, as well as sharing the Azerbaijani culture and language. All this has provided the ground for closeness between the citizens of the regions on both sides of the border.”

During the Rouhani years, relations with Aliyev were actually quite good, including the Iran‑Azerbaijan‑Russia and Iran‑Azerbaijan‑Turkey trilateral cooperation.

A key connectivity at play ahead is the project of linking the Qazvin‑Rasht‑Astara railway in Iran to Azerbaijan: that’s part of the all-important International North‑South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

Geoeconomically, Azerbaijan is essential for the main railway that will eventually run from India to Russia. No only that; the Iran‑Azerbaijan‑Russia trilateral cooperation opens a direct road for Iran to fully connect with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

In an optimal scenario, Baku can even help Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to connect to Georgian ports in the Black Sea.

The West is oblivious to the fact that virtually all sections of the INSTC are already working. Take, for instance, the exquisitely named Astara‑Astara railway connecting Iranian and Azerbaijani cities that share the same name. Or the Rasht‑Qazvin railway.

But then one important 130km stretch from Astara to Rasht, which is on the southern shore of the Caspian and is close to the Iranian–Azeri border, has not been built. The reason? Trump-era sanctions. That’s a graphic example of how much, in real-life practical terms, rides on a successful conclusion of the JCPOA talks in Vienna.

Who owns Zangezur?

Iran is positioned in a somewhat tricky patch along the southern periphery of the South Caucasus. The three major players in that hood are of course Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Iran borders the former Armenian – now Azeri – regions adjacent to Karabakh, including Zangilan, Jabrayil and Fuzuli.

It was clear that Iran’s flexibility on its northern border would be tied to the outcome of the Second Karabakh War. The northwestern border was a source of major concern, affecting the provinces of Ardabil and eastern Azerbaijan – which makes Tehran’s official position of supporting Azerbaijani over Armenian claims all the more confusing.

It is essential to remember that even in the Karabakh crisis in the early 1990s, Tehran recognized Nagorno‑Karabakh and the regions surrounding it as integral parts of Azerbaijan.

While both the CIA and Mossad appear oblivious to this recent regional history, it will never deter them from jumping into the fray to play Baku and Tehran against each other.

An extra complicating factor is that Zangezur is also mouth-watering from Ankara’s vantage point.

Arguably, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who never shies away from an opportunity to expands his Turkic-Muslim strategic depth, is looking to use the Azeri connection in Zangezur to reach the Caspian, then Turkmenistan, all the way to Xinjiang, the Uyghur Muslim populated western territory of China. This, in theory, could become a sort of Turkish Silk Road bypassing Iran – with the ominous possibility of also being used as a rat line to export Takfiris from Idlib all the way to Afghanistan.

Tehran, meanwhile, is totally INSTC-driven, focusing on two railway lines to be rehabilitated and upgraded from the Soviet era. One is South-North, from Jolfa connecting to Nakhchivan and then onwards to Yerevan and Tblisi. The other is West-East, again from Jolfa to Nakhchivan, crossing southern Armenia, mainland Azerbaijan, all the way to Baku and then onward to Russia.

And there’s the rub. The Azeris interpret the tripartite document resolving the Karabakh war as giving them the right to establish the Zangezur corridor. The Armenians for their part dispute exactly which ‘corridor’ applies to each particular region. Before they clear up these ambiguities, all those elaborate Iranian and Tukish connectivity plans are effectively suspended.

The fact, though, remains that Azerbaijan is geoeconomically bound to become a key crossroads of trans-regional connectivity as soon as Armenia unblocks the construction of these transport corridors.

So which ‘win-win’ is it?

Will diplomacy win in the South Caucasus? It must. The problem is both Baku and Tehran frame it in terms of exercising their sovereignty – and don’t seem particularly predisposed to offer concessions.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects are having a ball exploiting those differences. War, though, is out of the question, either between Azerbaijan and Armenia or between Azerbaijan and Iran. Tehran is more than aware that in this case both Ankara and Tel Aviv would support Baku. It is easy to see who would profit from it.

As recently as April, in a conference in Baku, Aliyev stressed that “Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia and Iran share the same approach to regional cooperation. The main area of concentration now is transportation, because it’s a situation which is called ‘win‑win.’ Everybody wins from that.”

And that brings us to the fact that if the current stalemate persists, the top victim will be the INSTC. In fact, everyone loses in terms of Eurasian integration, including India and Russia.

The Pakistan angle, floated by a few in hush-hush mode, is completely far-fetched. There’s no evidence Tehran would be supporting an anti-Taliban drive in Afghanistan just to undermine Pakistan’s ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The Russia–China strategic partnership looks at the current South Caucasus juncture as unnecessary trouble, especially after the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. This badly hurts their complementary Eurasian integration strategies – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Greater Eurasian Partnership.

INSTC could, of course, go the trans-Caspian way and cut off Azerbaijan altogether. This is not likely though. China’s reaction, once again, will be the deciding factor. There could be more emphasis on the Persian corridor – from Xinjiang, via Pakistan and Afghanistan, to Iran. Or Beijing could equally bet on both East-West corridors, that is, bet on both Azerbaijan and Iran.

The bottom line is that neither Moscow nor Beijing wants this to fester. There will be serious diplomatic moves ahead, as they both know the only ones to profit will be the usual NATO-centric suspects, and the losers will be all the players who are seriously invested in Eurasian integration.

thecradle.co

The foreign minister of Turkmenistan, Rashid Meredov, recently met with the secretary general of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council), Baghdad Amreev, to discuss closer cooperation between the Central Asian nation and the Turkish-dominated bloc.

Turkmenistan is the only Turkic-speaking former Soviet republic in Central Asia that is not currently a member of the Turkic Council. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are members along with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

It has never joined either the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) or the Russian- and Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), although the other four Central Asian nations have joined all three.

The above meeting occurred in the capital of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, where the parties deliberated over “the current level and prospects of cooperation between Turkmenistan and the Turkic Council, aimed at promoting constructive partnership between the countries of this format,” to quote an Azerbaijani news source.

Turkmenistan’s relationship with the Turkic Council was praised by the latter; particularly the regular participation of its president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, “in high-level events organized by the Council.”

At a summit of the Turkic Council this March the Turkmen president spoke of a common approach to “resolving urgent tasks of the global and regional agendas.”

The recent meeting also discussed the prospects of Turkmenistan being granted special status in the Turkic Council. Currently Hungary has special status. Ukraine has expressed interest becoming an observer, as has Afghanistan recently. The latter two nations have Turkic-speaking minorities. The Hungarian government’s claim to ethnic kinship with the Turkish people is the subject of another article.

Uzbekistan joined the council in 2018 after leaving the CSTO six years earlier. That trajectory may be replicated with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; and perhaps with the SCO as well as the CSTO. (Azerbaijan and Georgia withdrew from the CSTO in 1999.)

Russia’s accommodation (the kindest word for its behavior) of Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh last year and against Armenia starting this May sounded the death knell of the CSTO.

Three members of the SCO that are not majority Turkic have Turkic minorities: Russia, China and Tajikistan. So does observer state Afghanistan. On Russia’s initiative Turkey was admitted to the SCO as an observer in 2012.

The Turkic Council was set up in 2009 with Turkey as its prime mover, five years after the nation hosted the NATO summit in Istanbul that recorded the largest-ever expansion of the military bloc. Seven new nations joined – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – including for the first time former republics of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The summit also launched NATO’s military partnership with nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative.

Its web page says of its founding mission that it was not to be limited to Turkic-speaking-majority nations but had a broader purview. It reads in part that “by promoting deeper relations and solidarity amongst Turkic speaking countries, it aims to serve as a new regional instrument for advancing international cooperation in [the] Eurasian continent, particularly in Central Asia and [the] Caucasus.”

Its mandate is nothing less than the Eurasian continent.

The SCO has no military, hasn’t even a security component. The CSTO is a shrinking paper organization. When NATO member Turkey invaded CSTO member Armenia this May (it still has 1,000 troops there) Armenia appealed to the CSTO. The latter did nothing.

When violent clashes occurred between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (which is non-Turkic) in late April, the CSTO played no effective role in ending the conflict. However the Turkic Council met on the issue and stated, “The Turkic Council will continue to maintain close contact with brotherly Kyrgyzstan, a founding member of the Turkic Council.” Expect to see Kyrgyzstan follow Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan in departing from the CSTO.

Two weeks before the Kyrgyz-Tajik crisis the aforementioned leader of the Turkic Council, Baghdad Amreev, spoke of last year’s war against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and said: “We are very glad that Azerbaijan has liberated its de-occupied territories. We, the Turkic states, express our solidarity with Azerbaijan.”

The moribund CSTO has never occupied itself with anything other than crossborder crime and immigration. It has no real military role. The SCO has not even pretended to be a security much less a military alliance.

An expanding Turkic Council under Turkish domination will assuredly have a military component. One it will not hesitate to employ.

ANTI-BELLUM

By Lindsey SNELL

In the first week of October 2020, Ahmad Hadad* and more than 20 other fighters from the Hamza Division faction of the so-called Syrian National Army stood in the middle of a mountain range in Azerbaijan near the Iranian border. They were lost.

After the Armenian army unleashed a bout of heavy bombardment on the mountains, the Azerbaijani soldiers who had been positioned behind the Syrians quickly fled, leaving the Syrians by themselves in unfamiliar terrain. An artillery shell landed near one of Hadad’s commanders, Muhammad Shaalan, killing him instantly.

Two of the youngest, strongest fighters in the group carried Shaalan’s body and made their way out of the mountains to look for their base. When the men became overwhelmed with fatigue, they dropped the body and let it roll down the mountain slopes to save them the effort.

Hours passed, and the Syrians realized they were no closer to finding the way back. Three fighters decided to sit with Shaalan’s body to wait for the others to return with help, knowing that if they didn’t, the body would likely be lost in the mountains forever.

After the other men left, the three who remained were met with a flurry of bullets from the south. Another Syrian National Army militant, Hussein Talha, was struck and killed. The two surviving men fled to the northeast until they reached a point where other Syrian fighters from the Hamza Division had gathered.

“The situation was tense, with our commander coordinating with the Turks to find out why the Azerbaijanis had abandoned us,” Ahmad Hadad said. “They recovered the bodies and returned them to Syria. But things got worse for us. I mean, many more of us died in Azerbaijan.”

Sultan Suleiman Shah militants pose with Azerbaijani soldiers in Karabakh. (Credit: SNA source)

A flight to Baku

It was last July when men from the Syrian National Army (SNA), a collective of militant Syrian opposition factions supported and supervised by Turkey, learned that they might be deployed to Azerbaijan, a country few of them had even heard of. They were told they would be acting as border guards, and that the assignment would be easy and combat-free.

On September 22, 2020, a source from the Sultan Murad faction of the SNA sent me a photo of dozens of militants on a cargo plane. “They’re going to Baku,” he wrote. “Now. And more will follow.”

Syrian opposition fighters flying to Azerbaijan in September 2020 (Credit: SNA source)

Five days later, Azerbaijan launched an offensive on the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, a flashpoint of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It relied heavily on support from Turkey and the mercenary forces it drew from the ranks of the Syrian militants it had spent years supplying in a failed and disastrous bid to topple the government in Damascus.

The myth of the moderate Syrian opposition

Since the start of the Syrian war, Turkey has been the most aggressive state supporter of the Syrian armed opposition. Turkey hosted the first military operations room of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and was integral in facilitating support from Western and Gulf countries.

Turkey partnered with the United States and Saudi Arabia to create the train-and-equip program, an ill-fated venture which aimed to provide training and weapons to militants from so-called “moderate” opposition factions in Syria.

In 2014 in Aleppo, I interviewed fighters from Harakat Hazm and Jaish al-Mujahideen, two FSA factions deemed “moderate” by the US government.

“There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim,” one Jaish al-Mujahideen militant in Aleppo told me. “We are all Muslims. We all have beards. We all pray. Your government says we are moderate, but you will not find a moderate fighter in all of [opposition-held] Syria.”

Shortly after the first FSA militants from the Harakat Hazm faction were trained and given weapons, Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, fought and defeated them. Jabhat al-Nusra raided their weapons warehouses and stole their vehicles. Essentially, the train-and-equip program indirectly armed al-Qaeda.

Outside of the train-and-equip program, Turkey directly armed Jabhat al-Nusra. “I picked up weapons from the Syrian border three times in 2013 and 2014,” said Ziad Ibrahim*, a militant formerly from the Jaish al-Mujahideen faction of the FSA. “We would go to the border, meet a Turkish agent, and drive back to our headquarters with three cars’ full of equipment. Then, we would take a portion of the weapons Turkey gave us and leave them in a specified location. Jabhat al-Nusra would pick them up from that location.”

From the beginning of the war until 2016, Turkey’s border with Syria was virtually wide open for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and FSA militants to travel between the two countries. Ilyas Aydin, a Turkish ISIS leader now held prisoner by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a predominantly Kurdish, US-backed militia in northeastern Syria, said that he had meetings with Turkish national intelligence agents on the Turkish-Syrian border to discuss the passage of fighters and weapons.

“This isn’t about Islam,” Aydin said. “Erdogan doesn’t want an Islamic caliphate. He wants an Ottoman caliphate. For a time, ISIS was useful to him, because we controlled the areas of Syria along the border with Turkey. He wants Turkey to control the areas that we occupied.”

Only after ISIS was defeated in the parts of Syria bordering Turkey and replaced by the Kurdish SDF, Turkey constructed a border wall.

“We were already mercenaries and thieves”

In December 2017, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) became the Syrian National Army (SNA), further unifying militant opposition factions under Turkish control. In January 2018, using factions from the newly named SNA, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Afrin, a Kurdish-majority city in northwest Syria.

In March 2018, after capturing and occupying Afrin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech highlighting the areas of Syria that Turkey planned to target next. “Next will be Manbij, Kobani, Ras al-Ain, Tel Abyad, Qamishli,” he said. In October 2019, Turkey and their SNA proxies attacked and captured Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad. They are regularly attacking the Manbij area now.

“Afrin was when we started fighting just for Turkey,” said Mahmoud Azazi*, a Hamza Division militant who was in Azerbaijan for the duration of the war. “Afrin was fighters on their worst behavior. The [SNA] stole property and cars. They kidnapped Kurdish civilians and charged their families ransom. They killed civilians, and they raped women.”

“When Erdogan decided to send [SNA fighters] to Libya two years later, we were already mercenaries and thieves,” he added.

In December 2019, after Turkey signed an agreement with Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), SNA militants were flown to Libya to support the GNA’s fight against their rival, the Benghazi-based Libyan National Army. Before a ceasefire agreement took hold last June, SNA sources estimated that Turkey had sent more than 15,000 Syrian mercenaries to Tripoli and Misrata.

Before the ceasefire, the SNA militants in Libya reported being used by the GNA and Turkey as infantry forces in the most dangerous battle zones. As in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the mercenaries complained that they were lied to about the reason for their deployment to Libya. “They told us there would be minor combat,” one Sultan Murad militant said. “But now, our dead soldiers are lying in the streets.”

It has been relatively easy to keep in touch with SNA militants throughout their time in Libya. They have sent pictures and videos from well-appointed villas in Tripoli, long abandoned by civilians who fled the clashes and militia oppression rampant in Western Libya.

SNA fighters have spoken candidly about how they loot civilian homes and strip electrical wires for scrap metal, turning to the Libyan militants affiliated with the Government of National Accord to sell the items on their behalf.

In February 2020, Erdogan admitted that SNA militants had been sent to Libya. “Turkey is there with a training force,” he said. “And there are also people from the Syrian National Army.”

The difference in Turkey’s handling of the Syrian mercenaries in Azerbaijan was immediately apparent. On September 25, two days before Azerbaijan and Turkey started the war in Karabakh, Ahmad Khaled*, a Hamza Division militant in Idlib, fretted that he was unable to reach any of the Syrians deployed to Azerbaijan. “My brother, three of my cousins, many more people from my village… none of them have been on their phones since they left from Turkey,” he said.

Shortly after the war began, Khaled finally received a series of frantic voice messages on WhatsApp from his brother in Azerbaijan. “They took our phones at first,” he said, heavy explosions audible in the background. “And now, the internet usually doesn’t work. They threw us into battle directly. They told us before we left that there would be no fighting, and we would just be guarding the border for the Azerbaijanis, but already five from our group have died from shelling. We don’t know where we are. We need to leave this place.”

In the first few days of the war, SNA militants leaked two videos that Twitter users were quickly able to geolocate to Nagorno-Karabakh. Mainstream media outlets began to publish reports about the Syrian mercenary presence. Officials from Russia, France, and the US indicated that they had evidence of Turkey sending the SNA militants to Azerbaijan.

On October 11, a fighter from the Hamza Division filmed the corpses of Armenian fighters and posted the video on Facebook, where it quickly spread.

In an October 14 interview with France24, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev denied the presence of Syrian mercenaries in Nagorno-Karabakh. On the same day, Turkey’s Erdogan addressed the mercenary accusations in a speech. “It is said that we have sent Syrians fighters to Karabakh,” he said. “Syrians have jobs in their own land. They didn’t go there.”

That evening, Ahmad Hadad, who was based in the same camp as the Hamza Division fighter who had posted the video, watched as Azerbaijani and Turkish intelligence pulled up in trucks. “They beat him. They kicked him. They did this in front of all of us, to instil fear,” Hadad said. “The Turks took this man away, and we haven’t heard from him since. They were very determined to stop information leaks from the Syrians in Karabakh.”

As the war continued, contact with SNA fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh was increasingly scarce. SNA commanders regularly warned their men not to share any information from the front lines. On October 25, Fahim Issa, commander of the Sultan Murad faction, disseminated a voice recording to his men. “Do not take pictures!” he bellowed. “Do not send anything to anyone, or you will be arrested!”

The war in Nagorno-Karabakh ended on November 10, 2020 with a trilateral peace agreement between Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia. By the end of November, the SNA mercenaries had been returned to Syria.

As time has passed and the fear of arrest has waned, more of the SNA men have been willing to share accounts and photos from their time spent embedded with Azerbaijani forces.

Sultan Murad commander Hossam Deeb with Azerbaijani forces and the Azerbaijani flag. Geolocated by Armenian researcher to have been taken at a military base in Jabrayil in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Credit: SNA source)

The Turkmen advantage

Syrian National Army sources say that Turkey sent an estimated 2,700 SNA militants to Azerbaijan. In a likely attempt to give the Turkish government deniability, mercenary logistics were handled by SADAT, a Turkish private defense contractor owned by Adnan Tanriverdi, President Erdogan’s former chief military counselor. (SADAT also handles the mercenary logistics for the thousands of SNA fighters Turkey has sent to Libya.)

Khaled Turkmani Abo Suleiman, a Turkman commander from the Sultan Murad faction, is believed to have acted as liaison between the SADAT and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Khaled Turkmani Abo Suleiman with Sultan Murad commander Fahim Issa (Credit: SNA source)

The SNA militants in Nagorno-Karabakh primarily came from three factions: Sultan Murad, Sultan Suleiman Shah, and Hamza Division. Mahmoud Azazi says that around 500 of those sent were Syrian Turkmen, a Turkish minority concentrated mostly in northern Syria.

“There were five camps of mercenaries in Azerbaijan,” he said. “Hamza Division and Sultan Murad had two camps each, and Sultan Suleiman Shah had one. Each of the five camps had a Turkmen brigade.”

Khaled Turkmani Abo Suleiman (Credit: SNA source)

Mustafa Kassab*, a former SNA commander, says that ethnic Turkmen in the SNA enjoy special status. “There is a clear distinction between us, the Syrian Arabs, and them, the Turkmen. We started calling them ‘the new Alawites.’ The way Alawites [a minority sect to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs] in the Assad regime were better off than anyone else in Syrian society, this is how the Turkmen are. Because, to Turkey, they are Turks. We’re just Arabs.”

“It was never more clear than in Azerbaijan how Turkey values the Turkmen differently than us,” Mahmoud Azazi said. “The Arabs were in the most dangerous conditions. The Turkmen fighters were our translators, or they worked in the kitchen, or they guarded us to prevent us from leaving our camps. I don’t think a single Turkmen SNA fighter died in Azerbaijan.”

The battles in Nagorno-Karabakh

A Sultan Murad militant recalled an especially brutal day in early October: “My cousins and I have fought in Syria this whole war, and we’ve never seen anything like this. We were lost. We had no idea about the terrain, and only a rough idea of where we should go. Most of us only had AK-47s. In one battle, 45 of us were on some small hills. One sniper killed eight men from Sultan Murad and two from Hamza Division. The snipers are like we see in movies.”

The Sultan Murad militant said that Turkish military personnel were nowhere near the SNA in Karabakh. “I didn’t see anyone from the Turkish military after the plane ride to Azerbaijan,” he said. “Sometimes Azerbaijani soldiers were there, but they were standing 200 meters behind us.”

A Sultan Suleiman Shah militant who was in Azerbaijan for almost two months said the Azerbaijani soldiers cruelly abused the Syrian mercenaries. “Honestly, we were more afraid of the Azerbaijanis than we were of the Armenians,” he said. “They would beat anyone from the SNA who was afraid to go to battle. They treated us like dogs.

“Things were so badly organized, especially in the beginning,” the Sultan Suleiman Shah fighter continued. “Some of the men recruited into the SNA to go to Azerbaijan had never really fought before. They were just desperate men, living in the camps in Syria. And the coordination between us and the Azerbaijani army was terrible.”

“More than once, SNA men were mistakenly hit by Azerbaijani artillery,” he continued. “One time, after the men were hit with artillery, the Azerbaijanis accidentally ran over them with an armored vehicle. Seven men died because of this.”

Mahmoud Azazi said that after two weeks of enduring heavy casualties, around 500 SNA militants simply refused to keep fighting. “They told the SNA leadership they wouldn’t raise their weapons against anyone, and they demanded to be returned to Syria. When the leadership refused to return them, they began to protest. They threatened to storm out of the camp and disappear into Azerbaijan, something they knew the Azerbaijanis were very afraid of. Eventually, they returned around 300 of the men to Syria. They arrested the 10 men they believed to be responsible.”

Hamza Division notice condemning the arrest of some of their fighters in Azerbaijan. (Credit: SNA source)

The brutal conditions and heavy losses did not deter the SNA mercenaries from replicating the bad behavior they engage in in Syria and Libya. “Whenever we were in an area with houses, the men looted whatever they could. They complained that it wasn’t like Libya. There wasn’t much of anything good enough to steal,” Mahmoud Azazi said.

“Some of the Syrians started stealing cows and sheep and selling them to Azerbaijani brokers,” he added. “But this was very disturbing to the Azerbaijani soldiers, and it made them nervous about what else the Syrians might do. So they made a rule that no Syrian was allowed to leave his camp, ever, unless he was going to a battle.”

The payment promised to SNA militants deployed to Azerbaijan was roughly $2000 per month. The same amount was promised to the mercenaries in Libya, though, according to more than 50 men who fought from December 2019 to present, none ever received more than $400 a month.

“The commanders told us when we returned to Syria that, if we kept quiet, we would quickly get what we were owed,” Azazi said. “And we learned that the commanders already got paid, and most of the Turkmen fighters did too.”

In January, the sister of a Sultan Murad militant said that she had yet to receive the compensation SNA officials promised for the death of her brother, who had been killed alongside a Sultan Murad commander in the second week of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“This is what the sultan, the Ottoman caliph, did to us,” said Azazi, in a derogatory reference to Turkish President Erdogan. “Who knows where we will be sent next. We hear Yemen. We hear Qatar. We are like a disposable force for Turkey to achieve their goals. We have battle experience. No one cares if we die.”

“Everyone in the SNA, even the most loyal to Turkey, knows that Turkey is not trying to help the Syrians,” he continued. “They are not supporting our revolution [against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad]. Because the revolution no longer exists. Turkey destroyed it, and now we are just fighting for Turkey’s interests. I swear to God, a growing segment of us here wish we could go back in time to how we lived before 2011, before the war. Because living with [Turkey’s] authority on our necks, this is worse than living under Assad.”

*Aliases used to protect the identities of SNA personnel, who would face arrest for speaking to a journalist.

thegrayzone.com

Phillips embodies a neolib/neocon leaning U.S. foreign policy establishment narrative, which over the course of time has proven to be hypocritically faulty. This bias explains the negative highlighting of Armenia signing under duress, unlike 1990 Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro), relative to Kosovo. In the latter instance, Phillips spins Kosovo as having been “liberated”, as in taken away from Serbia.

In the aforementioned National Interest commentary, Phillips’ disparaging of Russian peacekeepers is hypocritically inappropriate and inaccurate; especially when considering his comparatively tame response to the post-1999 Albanian nationalist abuses against Serbs in Kosovo, under the NATO led KFOR peacekeeping operation. Then again, the Serbs were often enough typecast as the overwhelmingly heavy bad guys in the 1990s period of Balkan area fighting – never mind the facts to the contrary, which reveal a more nuanced situation.

The conflict involving Armenia and Azerbaijan is another such reality. The Armenians unjustly suffered in the past – something that modern day Turkey and Azerbaijan (as well as some others) downplay. As the Soviet Union was breaking up, the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh sought to be separate from an independent Azerbaijan. Shortly thereafter, numerous Armenians experienced violence in the Azeri capital Baku.

After the Soviet breakup, Azerbaijan was headed by a pro-Turkish/anti-Russian tilted government, when the Armenians were militarily more adept than the Azeris. During this period, the Armenians established a clear dominance in the areas of the former Azerbaijan SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic) which they controlled. Many Azeris fled these areas with harsh stories.

As the years passed, the Aliyev family (father then son), have governed Azerbaijan, with improved Russian-Azeri relations, as Russia sought to maintain good ties with Armenia. Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel wealth and larger (compared to Armenia) population didn’t bode well for the future of Armenian dominance on some former Azerbaijan SSR land.

The Azeris have never gone against the position that the boundaries of the former Azerbaijan SSR remain in place as an independent state. This posture has solid international backing. In a certain sense, Armenia has diplomatically contradicted itself by not formally recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence (unlike some individual states and towns within several countries and a few disputed former Soviet territories which do), or formally recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as a part of Armenia.

With considerable Turkish support, the successfully recent Azeri military advance took many by surprise. It’s first and foremost the responsibility of Armenia to be best informed of any potential armed action against it. In a world where might often still makes right (whether one likes it or not), Armenia isn’t a major power.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, didn’t help Armenia’s standing with Russia, by saying and implementing some Russia unfriendly stances. The recently signed peace agreement involving Russian peacekeepers saved Armenia from a greater loss. A BBC segment included a withdrawing Armenian soldier, approving of the war’s cessation, saying that he and his comrades would’ve been annihilated. For the immediate future, the Russian peacekeeping role and increased global attention, serves to diminish the likelihood of further violence in the former Azerbaijan SSR.

Russia has good reasoning to seek positive relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Over the decades, the U.S. has jostled over Greek-Turkish differences, including the matter of northern Cyprus.

Pashinyan comes from a media background. Another BBC segment said that the Armenian public’s outrage over the deal stemmed from the Armenian government not initially giving an accurate portrayal of how the recent fighting was actually going. Like the former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (now criminally wanted in Georgia) and some other Soros preferred neolib slanted individuals from the former Communist bloc, Pashinyan’s image as a democratic reformer has been challenged.

Regarding the Armenian-Azeri dispute, another Russia bashing moment is evident in the November 11 Al Jazeera Inside Story show “Will the Latest Ceasefire Bring Peace to Nagorno-Karabakh?“. This particular show highlights that Armenian officials declined an appearance. Meantime, there was no mainstream Russian representation, as that country’s role was denigrated.

One of the guests, Turkophile Matthew Bryza, belittles Russian peacekeepers, by noting their presence in the former Georgian SSR, with a questionable take on how the 2008 war in the former Georgian SSR started. It was the Georgian side under the neocon/neolib preferred Saakashvili, which brazenly went into South Ossetia killing Russian peacekeepers and some other Russian citizens.

Bryza said that Armenia has just suffered its greatest defeat since the Bolsheviks and perhaps before them. What utter BS, given the genocide of the Armenians, which isn’t recognized by Turkey, Azerbaijan and the U.S. My anti-Communism aside, the USSR provided Armenia with a republic. Prior to the Soviet Union, Armenians were slaughtered and driven from their homes en masse, largely on account of the belief that they generally favored Russia over Turkey.

Russia just ended a bloody war on its former territory by diplomacy. Watch the video and read more in the Editorial article.

During six weeks of intense fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces which erupted on September 27 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory, it is estimated that up to 5,000 lives were lost. As many as 100,000 civilians were displaced. The ceasefire brokered this week by Russia has to be welcomed as preventing further escalation and suffering which could have presaged a wider war in the Caucasus region.

The truce this week is the fourth attempt at bringing about a cessation over the past 44 days. But the latest ceasefire which came into effect on Tuesday appears to be holding because both sides have given a firmer public commitment to abiding by the agreement. A joint statement was issued by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev along with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Crucially, Turkey has also agreed to support the cessation. Ankara’s supply of advanced weaponry to Azerbaijan had given Baku a decisive advantage against Armenian forces in the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

The enclave is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan’s national territory but it has been ruled by ethnic Armenians since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. A war in 1992-94 saw 30,000 dead and expanded territorial control by the Armenian side. Much of those past territorial gains have been recovered by Azerbaijan in the latest conflict. However, the Armenians still retain governance of the capital city Stepanakert in the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. The internationally unrecognized republic is also known as Artsakh which is aligned with the Republic of Armenia. The Artsakh leadership has given its consent to the ceasefire.

The ceasefire is being implemented with the deployment of 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops who arrived this week and will patrol the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh and a corridor linking the territory to Armenia. The peacekeeping arrangement is to hold for five years on a renewable basis in order to give parties to the conflict time to negotiate a final settlement on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenian side had no choice but to accept the ceasefire. From a military point of view, it stood to lose all of the disputed territory. Casualties were bound to be even greater if the war continued. Furthermore, the conflict was endangering the entire Caucasus region if Armenia and Azerbaijan had hurtled towards direct hostilities between the two nations. Russia due to a defense pact with the Republic of Armenia could have been dragged into war with NATO member Turkey which backs Azerbaijan with which it shares Turkic ethnicity.

It was therefore imperative to halt the slide towards disastrous war. Russian diplomacy achieved a vital way out of spiraling hostilities.

Moscow has friendly relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan. It is thus in Russia’s interest to maintain peace among its southern neighbors. One wonders if there was a hidden agenda by foreign powers in reigniting this conflict in the Caucasus. The deployment by Turkey of mercenary fighters from Syria and Libya in support of Azerbaijan had the potential for dangerous escalation. Azerbaijan borders Dagestan and Chechnya in Russia’s southwest where Moscow waged a war against Islamist extremists in the late 1990s. It is remarkable how absent the United States and European powers have been in helping to resolve the crisis.

The situation remains perilous. But having Russian peacekeepers separating combatants will give peace a strong chance of holding and diplomacy working. It is not going to be easy to negotiate. Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Armenian side is obliged to cede areas of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan which it had controlled for nearly a quarter of a century since the 1992-94 war.

In Armenia there are bitter recriminations over the ceasefire deal. Protesters decrying it as a “sell-out” stormed government buildings in Yerevan demanding the resignation of premier Nikol Pashinyan. Critics point out too that since Pashinyan came to power in 2018 he has pursued an adventurist policy of declaring Nagorno-Karabakh independence which provoked Azeri nationalist reaction. Many Armenians, however, seem resigned to accept the reality that a ceasefire was the only option to avoid more grievous losses. Russia has a defense pact with the Republic of Armenia, not Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow is not a guarantor of Yerevan’s external aspirations.

Russia’s standing as a peace broker in Syria and its trusted diplomatic power was no doubt key to averting the brink of disaster in the Caucasus.

The airstrikes marked the end of a seven-month ceasefire which Russia had negotiated with Turkey to maintain a de-escalation zone in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. The Russian-brokered truce was seen as a brake on an offensive by the Syrian army to rout retreating militants in the border region with Turkey whom Ankara has sponsored during the nearly decade-long war in Syria.

In the attacks this week, it was reportedly a joint operation between Syrian armed forces and their Russian ally. That suggests that Moscow is giving Damascus a green light to resume its offensive to reclaim all its territory from Turkish-backed rebels. The gloves are coming off again, it seems.

The target was reportedly the main training camp of Islamist group Faylaq al Sham, which is also known as the Sham Legion. The Western media refer to the group as “moderate rebels” but it is in league with known terror affiliates, such as Ahrar al Sham and Jaysh al Islam. It is also associated with the Jihadist propaganda outfit, the so-called White Helmets.

The Sham Legion is reportedly Turkey’s go-to Islamist group in Idlib through which it networks with other militants. It is therefore a lynchpin in Turkey’s illicit covert operations in Syria.

For Russia and Syria to launch such a pulverizing blitz against an important Turkish asset can only be seen as an emphatic warning to Ankara.

A warning over what? It doesn’t seem to have been triggered by anything happening in Syria of late. Rather, the shock-and-awe attack seems to have been Moscow’s way of telling Ankara to stop pushing aggression in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Russia’s South Caucasus region.

The eruption of the Azeri-Armenian war on September 27 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory has been an alarming security concern for Russia. Hundreds if not thousands have been killed in the past four weeks in what is the worst episode of violence since the two sides ended a six-year war in 1994 which saw a death toll of some 30,000.

There is little doubt that Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan is fueling the conflict. Ankara’s belligerent rhetoric about liberating Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenians has emboldened Azerbaijan to pursue a military solution.

Turkey has armed its historic ally Azerbaijan with advanced weaponry, such as missiles and drones, as well as supplying F-16 fighter jets. There are credible reports that Turkey has transferred thousands of its mercenary assets from northern Syria to fight alongside Azeri forces.

There are also reports that Turkey has deployed over 1,200 of its own special forces to the mountainous Karabakh region.

Ankara’s upping of the ante in the conflict could explain why three attempts to broker a ceasefire by Russia over the past month (and latterly involving the United States as a mediator) have foundered despite vows from the Azeri and Armenian sides to commit to honoring the truces.

There is a suggestion that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking revenge for Russia’s assisted defeat of Ankara’s plans for regime change in Syria by making trouble for Moscow in its immediate southern neighborhood. If the Azeri-Armenian war escalates, Russia could be dragged into the conflict because of a defense pact it has with Armenia. That is something Russia would be loath to do since it also has friendly historic relations with Azerbaijan.

Moscow has repeatedly urged for a diplomatic solution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and for external actors to back off, meaning Turkey.

Ankara did not seem to have heeded Russia’s stern message – up to now. It is pushing Azerbaijan on a mission to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh by force and with maximalist rhetoric dismissing Armenian rights.

Rather than confronting Turkey head-on in the South Caucasus, it seems Moscow has decided to hit Ankara with a knock-out blow to its assets in Syria. Ankara might just take heed now.

Notably, the day after the Russian air strikes in Syria, Turkey’s Erdogan initiated a phone call October 27 with Putin “to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria”.

According to the Kremlin press service: “The Russian side expressed deep concern about the ongoing military action [in Nagorno-Karabakh], and the growing involvement of terrorists from the Middle East,” reports Tass agency.

Looks like Erdogan got the memo.

In a phone call this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly backed Moscow’s efforts at mediating a ceasefire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Notwithstanding, Erdogan appeared to deliver an ultimatum to his Russian counterpart. He said that there must be a “permanent solution” to the decades-long territorial dispute.

Erdogan and his Azerbaijan ally have already made it clear that the only solution acceptable to them is for Armenian separatists to relinquish their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey and Azerbaijan – bound by common Turkic culture – have long-called the Armenian-held enclave an illegal occupation of Azerbaijani territory since a border war ended in 1994.

When hostilities flared again last month on September 27 initial reports suggested the clashes were of a haphazard nature with both sides trading blame for starting the violence. However, it has since become clear that the actions taken on the Azeri side seem to have been a planned aggression with Turkey’s full support.

Following a previous deadly clash on July 12-13 involving about a dozen casualties among Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, there then proceeded massive military exercises in Azerbaijan involving 11,000 Turkish troops beginning on July 29. For nearly two weeks into August, the maneuvers deployed artillery, warplanes and air-defense units in what was evidently a major drive by Ankara and Baku to coordinate the armies from both countries to fulfill joint operations. Furthermore, reports indicated that Turkish forces, including F-16 fighter jets, remained in Azerbaijan following the unprecedented military drills.

Alongside the drills, there was also a dramatic increase in military arms sales from Turkey to Azerbaijan. According to Turkish export figures, there was a six-fold increase in weapons deals compared with the previous year, with most of the supply being delivered in the third quarter of 2020 between July and September. The armaments included drones and rocket launchers which have featured with such devastating impact since hostilities erupted on September 27.

A third factor suggesting planned aggression was the reported transport of mercenary fighters from Syria and Libya by Turkey to fight on the Azerbaijani side. Thousands of such militants belonging to jihadist brigades under the control of Turkey had arrived in the Azeri capital Baku before hostilities broke out on September 27. The logistics involved in organizing such a large-scale deployment can only mean long-term planning.

Armenian sources also claim that Azeri authorities had begun impounding civilian vehicles weeks before the shooting war opened. They also claim that when the fire-fights erupted on September 27, Turkish media were present on the ground to give live coverage of events.

It seems indisputable therefore that Turkey and Azerbaijan had made a strategic decision to implement a “final solution” to the protracted dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

That’s what makes Russian efforts at mediating a cessation to hostilities all the more fraught. After marathon talks mediated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a ceasefire was introduced on October 10. However, within hours the truce unravelled with reports of resumed exchange of fire and shelling of cities on both sides. The main violations have been committed by the Azerbaijani side using advanced Turkish weaponry. Armenian leaders have complained that the Azeri side does not seem interested in pursuing peace talks.

More perplexing is the widening of the conflict. Azerbaijan air strikes since the weekend ceasefire broke down have hit sites within Armenia, extending the conflict beyond the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has also claimed that Armenian missiles have hit cities within its territory. Armenia flatly denies carrying out such strikes, which begs the question: is a third party covertly staging provocations and fomenting escalation of conflict?

What is challenging for Russia is that it has a legal obligation to defend Armenia as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (1992). With Armenia coming under fire, the pressure will be on Moscow to intervene militarily.

This would see Russia being embroiled in another proxy war with NATO-member Turkey. But this is not in Syria. It is the Caucasus region on Russia’s southern border. There are concerns among senior Russian military figures that such a scenario is exactly what Turkey’s Recep Erdogan is aiming for. Turkey was outplayed by Russia in the proxy war in Syria. Erdogan and NATO’s plans for regime change in Damascus were dealt a bloody nose by Russia. It seems though that conflict in the Caucasus may now be Erdogan’s revenge.

Moscow may need to seriously revise its relations with Ankara, and let Erdogan know he is treading on red lines.

When Ben Franklin spoke those words in 1776, the elder statesman was stating a simple truth that unless the early colonies overcame their differences, fears and prejudices to unite under a higher unifying self interest that transcended their “local” concerns, they would all be mutually destroyed.

Today, these same words apply just as well to those modern states who, though not American, have everything to lose by clinging onto historic resentments, prejudices, and Cold War traditions. These same states have all to gain by joining hands and working together on projects which will benefit each others’ children and grandchildren.

A special case can be seen in today’s conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan whose clashes over the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh which began on September 27^th as the Azerbaijani government began firing upon the small pro-Armenian enclave within its territory.

It was heartening to witness certain progress towards a peace agreement take shape with the Macron-Putin-Trump joint statement of October 1^st, and advanced upon by the recent peace treaty brokered by Russia signed on October 10^th by the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. In spite of these positive steps, belligerent hotheads in Azerbaijan and beyond have chosen to “hang separately” and have wasted no time demonstrating their commitment to total war as missiles, and other heavy artillery reined down upon civilian and military targets alike only minutes after the treaty was to come into effect.

What makes this issue so dangerous during our current age of renewed thermonuclear sabre-rattling on Russia’s southern and Arctic borders, is that it is but one of a wide array of hotspots that are simultaneously being lit on fire under a strategy which is comparable to the same sort of asymmetric warfare that characterized much of the world during the dark days of the Cold War. These were the days when such luminaries as Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke openly of playing the “Islamic card” against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and as millions of dollars moved through CIA fronts and into radical madrasas throughout the Arab world.

From renewed conflict in Kyrgyzstan where recent election results are being disputed, to anarchy in East Ukraine, to Belarus where a full color revolution was recently put into motion, to Georgia where Saakishvilians have seen a rise in popularity leading into October elections to Moldova’s Transnistria autonomous zone which remains a point of contention waiting to be sparked… it appears that the seeds of discord are being sowed all across Russia’s soft underbelly among ethnic groups of the former Soviet Union.

Recognizing the danger of radical Islamic terror groups from Syria and Libya spreading into Russia via Azerbaijan amidst the current crisis, the head of Russian Intelligence Sergei Naryshkin stated that “We cannot but be concerned that the South Caucasus is capable of becoming a new launchpad for International terrorist organizations, from where militants can subsequently enter states neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia, including Russia”. Naryshkin was referring to the vast throngs of Islamic militants from such sects as Jabhat al-Nusra, Firkat al-Hamza and Sultan Murad who have been deployed as mercenaries alongside over 150 Turkish officers working in Command positions in Azerbaijan.

So rather than idly sit back and watch terrorism burst into Russia, Europe and beyond, a more useful question to ask is: What sorts of pathways would a creative statesman focus upon which might defuse these conflict zones, and transform hopeless discord into harmonious collaboration?

For starters, President Trump and other western statesmen would do well to continue on the positive momentum begun on October 1^st by giving his full backing to the recent peace agreement brokered by Russia.

Trump displayed the right instincts in his earlier September 4^th peace initiative between Serbia and Kosovo in the White House and a continuation of that display in the current Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict would be a welcomed follow up. Just as the Serbia-Kosovo agreements were driven by an understanding that economic development had to lead (and not follow) any durable formal effort at peace, the same principle applies to the current crises in the Caucasus and other parts of Central Europe being lit on fire.

Just as the American Development Finance Corporation, in tandem with the Export Import Bank committed to fund strategic railways and roads connecting Serbian and Kosovo capitals, provide long term loans to SMEs and build a rail to the deep sea port on the Adriatic to the tune of $1 billion, similar projects involving both Armenia, Azerbaijan and other Central Asian nations await construction requiring only support from the west. The principled driver for these long term programs involves the vast multimodal International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

This corridor is a 7200 km network of rail, roads, and ports connecting India with Russia via the ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas in Iran through a vast network of rail towards Russia.

First established in 2002 by Russia, Iran and India, the INSTC has grown to include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Syria, Belarus and Oman (with Bulgaria having recently joined as an observer). This program in many ways parallels the new model of long term investment pioneered by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and involves integrating and unifying nations into spheres of common interests rather than competing over diminishing returns of resources or other points of divisions. By avoiding the Suez Canal, this project will cut 15 days off the transit of goods from India to Russia. Meanwhile Russia is finalizing a free trade zone with India and the Eurasian Economic Union (comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan) and has just finalized another free trade agreement between the EEU and Serbia. Both the EEU and Belt and Road Initiative have signed integration agreements already bringing the INSTC and BRI into greater harmony and defusing ever more tension.

Since the extension of the BRI into Russia’s Far East and Arctic via the Polar Silk Road, the INSTC has taken on a new identity as a harmonious segment of this new development complex. What is stopping the USA from investing in these projects?

Under these dynamics the long overdue Southern Armenian Railway could be built with financial assistance from the USA providing the missing 316 km link of the North South Transport Corridor between the Black Sea and Persian Gulf. This project involves an incredible 84 bridges (19.6 km) and 60 tunnels (102.3 km) through the mountainous terrain ultimately connecting the Persian Gulf’s main artery to Europe with vast benefits for all nations and people involved. Of course, this would involve a total re-think of America’s anti-Iranian agenda… but we are talking about avoiding World War after all.

One of the greatest causes of strife and division which has continuously thwarted peacemaking initiatives over the years has been poverty and insecurity. The INSTC, BRI and other great infrastructure projects would not only create new relationships and open up new markets over the course of many years, but would also provide the basis for new industries, increased productive potential and incredible investment potentials for all interests regardless of religious, ethnic or other differences which imperialists have sought to exploit for eons.

If President Trump pushes forward with political and economic support for this positive orientation, then the foundation for durable peace can finally be created and the terrible threats of anarchy, terrorism and war may be averted.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Then we have the resurgence in armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A key factor in all this too is NATO’s long-term plans to expand membership of the U.S.-led military alliance in the Caucasus and Central Asia along Russia’s southern periphery.

Political analyst Rick Rozoff comments that the flare up in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is fully consistent with Turkey’s years-long agenda of bringing Azerbaijan into NATO membership. He says that Ankara is trying to force a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute in favor of Azerbaijan whereby the latter reclaims its historic territory from Armenian separatists.

For NATO to move forward with absorbing Azerbaijan into the alliance there must be a settlement to the long-running frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The two sides last went to war during 1988-1994 and have had cross-border skirmishes ever since. At the end of last month, the conflict blew up again on account of a recent surge in rhetoric from Azeri leaders and their Turkish patrons about recovering sovereign lands.

Rozoff says there is an analogy here to other post-Soviet frozen conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria. For NATO to incorporate Georgia and Moldova, as it intends to do, there is a requirement of Georgia and Moldova to gain control over their respective breakaway regions. The brief war in 2008 between Georgia and South Ossetia – when the former attacked the latter only to be repelled by a Russian intervention – was triggered by NATO’s ambition to recruit Georgia.

The analogy with Azerbaijan today is that the country is trying to settle its Nagorno-Karabakh question at the prompting of NATO member Turkey in order to make the nation an acceptable entrant for the alliance. Turkey has long endorsed Azerbaijan as the “next NATO member”. Ankara’s greatly increased military supplies to Azerbaijan is also part of the process of bringing the candidate country up to NATO’s standards.

But NATO’s expansionism is not merely about militarism for militarism sake. Yes, to be sure, having American missiles stationed further around Russia’s underbelly is to be desired in the game of “great power rivalry”.

However, there is a more specific and equally enormous strategic aim, and that is the supplanting of Russian (and Iranian) energy supplies to Europe with an alternative route from the south. The Caspian oil and gas riches have long been sought after. It was a driving goal for Hitler’s Wehrmacht to reach as it battled across the Russian space.

The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline is proposing to supply natural gas from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan through the crucial Azerbaijani hub of Baku and on to Turkey from where it can join existing pipeline networks into central Europe. With a projected annual supply of 30 billion cubic meters of gas the Caspian pipeline could well go a long way towards substituting for the Nord Stream-2 project (55 billion cubic meters). The alleged poisoning of Russian blogger Alexei Navalny and his valorization by assorted European leaders appears to be paving the way for axing the Nord Stream-2 project.

Washington and transatlantic allies in Europe would surely welcome the completion of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline as a means to undermine Russia’s importance as gas supplier to Europe.

To guarantee the security and political alignment of that alternative route, it would be imperative for NATO to consolidate its relations with the key countries of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. For this reason, NATO has been busy courting these nations as prospective members.

What Turkey gets out of this is increased geopolitical influence in the Caucasus and beyond as the presumed linchpin between Europe and Asia. As well as a lot of transit fees for facilitating the fueling of continental Europe. Ankara already enjoys such a position with regard to linking Russian gas to Europe through the Turk Stream corridor. But for Erdogan, the Machiavellian Turkish leader, hitting Russia’s Nord Stream-2 means more profits for Ankara from boosting the aggregate capacity of the Southern Energy Corridor.

Turkey is unlikely to want to see a full-blown war in the Caucasus, especially one that would drag in Russia. Hence Russia’s recent efforts at mediating a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh have received the nominal backing of Ankara.

Nevertheless, the bigger strategic picture of pushing NATO expansion further into the Caucasus and Central Asia and the objective of replacing Russian energy to Europe with a Caspian alternative, all that means that the resurgence in conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh could be a prolonged proxy, low-intensity war.

Indeed, Rick Rozoff, the political analyst, predicts that the present war will feed into renewed conflict in Georgia and South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria. There too the geopolitics of NATO seeking to gain advantage over Russia and cornering strategic energy trade with Europe are the same and loom large.

Countries should beware though of being pawns for NATO. It comes with a heavy price.