In the decisive battle of life, when there’s absolutely nothing to lose, there’s absolutely nothing to hide.
© Anshuman Rawat
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INTRODUCTION
Two decades of international community-administered talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijani territory, have failed to reach a resolution. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s petro-dollar-aided exponential increase in defence expenditure amid pitched rabble-rousing and frequent sniper skirmishes in the region has led many to fear that the disputed landlocked mountainous enclave in the Greater Caucasus could be one of the most likely sites of Europe’s next war. The sense was reiterated on March 28 by Arayik Haroutiounian, the secessionist enclave’s prime minister, who said in Paris that Azerbaijan and Armenia are unlikely to reach a deal this year and there is a risk of the region sliding towards war.
But is peace such an imminent casualty in Nagorno-Karabakh, and by extension in the Greater Caucasus?
THE REGION
The Caucasus is largely a mountainous region lying between the Black Sea in the west and the Caspian Sea in the east, and is situated where Europe and Asia converge. Running from the west-northwest to the east-southeast are two parallel mountain chains: the Greater Caucasus and the Lesser Caucasus. While the mountainous terrain in itself impedes navigable waterways for trade and continuous stretch of arable land for large societies, the Caucasus region on the whole offers as much natural and strategic advantage as any comparable region in the world.
High peaks with glaciers and permanent snow nourish river streams that water plains both to the north and the south, where a variety of crops can be grown and livestock grazed. The ample river activity cut innumerable deep valleys into the Greater Caucasus range, resulting in those distinct, protected shelters getting occupied by a host of minority groups. Over a period of a couple of centuries, socially cohesive groups of countless ethnicity got firmly entrenched in their respective – and self-sufficient – valleys and fiercely resisted any outside interference.
But outside interest, and the resulting conflicts, could not be avoided by the region because of a host of reasons. The Caspian Sea on the east provides an easy waterway to Central Asia and, via the Volga, to the heart of Russia. The Black Sea provides a sea link to Turkey, Ukraine, the Balkans, and through the Turkish Straits to the Mediterranean region. Importantly, vantage position in the region allowed both opportunity for and defence against transcontinental (Central Asia-Europe) expansionist designs of the powers that were – like the Ottoman Empire and Russia.
That strategic aspect gets exploited even in the present era.
Currently, the region is critical to the United States and NATO’s military interests.
For example, the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) played an important role in transporting the United States and NATO supplies out of Afghanistan when in November 2011 Islamabad closed supply routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan following a United States airstrike that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani troops.
The Caucasus has also been noted for its mineral wealth since ancient times. In the previous century, Azerbaijan’s oil fuelled much of the USSR’s economy during the Soviet period. Today, the region is a critical energy corridor for hydrocarbon resources en route to Europe from the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Three of the four major pipelines that transport Azerbaijani oil and gas to Europe lie close to the front line positions of Armenian and Azerbaijani forces stationed along both the Line-of-Contact between Azerbaijan and the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. In the event of a fresh war over Nagorno-Karabakh, these pipelines could become early targets for Armenian artillery, hitting Europe’s goal of diversifying its energy supply.
NAGORNO-KARABKH: INTRODUCTION
Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked secessionist enclave in the Greater Caucasus that is a subject of dispute between Azerbaijan, in which it lies, the Armenian ethnic majority of the enclave, and neighbouring Armenia.
With the roots of the conflict said to be dating back well over a century into the rivalry between Christian Armenian and Muslim Turkic and Persian influences, the history of Nagorno-Karabakh is the subject of furious argument between Armenian and Azeri historians about the original inhabitants of the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh claimed its independence for the first time during the first Congress of the Armenians of Karabakh in 1918. Following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Soviet Union’s leader Joseph Stalin in 1921 put the region of Nagorno-Karabakh under the control of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. The region came to be known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in 1923.
Though disputes were commonplace between Armenians and Azerbaijanis about the way the autonomy of the region was exercised in the NKAO, the smouldering frictions exploded into violence only in 1988 when the enclave’s legislature cited historical and ethnic reasons to pass a resolution in 1988 to join Armenia – a request that was swiftly denied by Moscow on the grounds of Azeri territorial integrity. In the same year, anti-Armenian pogroms occurred in Sumgait, and Armenians started getting expulsed from Azerbaijan.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Nagorno-Karabakh’s legislature unilaterally proclaimed their independence in 1991 and the enclave became a de facto republic (which no world body recognises as yet) – leading up to a full-scale war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1992. Within months, the Armenian army controlled the bulk of NagornoKarabakh and pushed further into Azerbaijani territory to establish the so-called Lachin Corridor, an umbilical cord linking the breakaway enclave with Armenia mainland. By 1993, Armenian forces had occupied nearly 20% of the Azerbaijani territory surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris. A year later, Russia brokered ceasefire between the two countries, which is where things stand at the moment.
As per a 1994 study by Human Rights Watch, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh resulted in an estimated 25,000 dead as well as around one million refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP) on both sides.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH: THE REGIONAL ASPECT
Apart from Armenia and Azerbaijan (and the geographical areas of Nagorno-Karabakh), Turkey, Russia and Iran play a significant role in the dispute.
Turkey, which is accused by Armenia of the ‘Great Crime’ (the 1915 massacre of over a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks), shares a ‘one nation-two states’ doctrine with Azerbaijan because of the cultural similarities between the two. Consequently, the Turkish government has been participating in the conflict through military cooperation with the Azerbaijanis and declared a blockade on Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan. Turkey has been refusing to re-open diplomatic relations and its border with Armenia until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved.
On the other hand, Russia is linked to Armenia by cooperation treaties, especially the 1997 treaty of friendship between both countries, which guarantees the support of Russia to Armenia in case the latter is subjected to foreign attacks.
The remaining major regional actor in the dispute is Iran, which has economic interests in the region and which, like Russia, wants to keep Western countries away from the region. Despite being an Islamic state, Iran has been a major partner for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and has helped the two fight the economic blockade enforced by Azerbaijan and Turkey after the war.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH: PEACE PROCESS AND THE CHALLENGES
Since 1994, there have been a number of attempts to broker peace by the so-called Minsk Group, a subset of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) chaired by Russia, the United States, and France. The Minsk group is currently working towards making the warring sides agree on the Madrid principles of 2010 which would include that (1) Armenian forces leave the occupied territories outside Nagorno-Karabakh, (2) an interim status is granted to Nagorno-Karabakh until a self-determination referendum, (3) the return of IDPs and refugees, (4) the establishment of a corridor linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in Lachin with the presence of peacekeeping forces.
One of the biggest obstacles to the signing of a peace treaty is the issue of sequencing: Azerbaijan wants Armenia to end its occupation first and withdraw its forces before discussing the republic’s final status; Armenia is seeking a resolution first on the status question before pulling out its forces; Nagorno-Karabakh wants its independence officially recognized prior to all other negotiations.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH: FORECAST 2013-14
While stubborn stances of the warring actors based upon ethnic and historical arguments and applicable competing principles of international law – the right of self-determination and territorial integrity – promise to make the coming years equally difficult for a negotiated agreement, the oft-repeated talk of a fresh war may not match up with the realities of limited abilities of the warring states to win a war outright, and dependence of external actors, notably the United States, Russia and Europe, on continued status-quo, if not negotiated peace, towards serving their economic and geopolitical interests in the region.
Given that hypothesis, there is a possibility of the following scenarios developing in the coming year (2013-14):
⇒ The United States, Russia and Europe expand their cooperative efforts in facilitating the resolution of a conflict towards pre-empting any threat to their respective interests in the Greater Caucasus. The efforts could rescue the U.S.-Russian ‘reset’, and signal a new era of European-Russian cooperation.
⇒ Sustained pressure at home in the wake of opinion surveys showing high levels of discontent in Armenia about corruption, poverty, and abuse of power could force Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to divert (at least a tiny) part of the military and economic resources from Nagorno-Karabakh – without changing the official stance on the dispute – to public welfare schemes in Armenia.
⇒ President Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan could up the rabble-rousing ahead of the October presidential elections, without walking the talk on the ground – both because of the dangers of getting into a war that he cannot win at the moment, and the prospects of a harsh response from the international community making his own position vulnerable at home.
⇒ As a lead up to the 20th anniversary of truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan, international rights groups could lead a sustained campaign at world bodies to force the two-nation take more action on the issue of the internally displaced people.
CONCLUSION
The ‘frozen conflict’ of Nagorno-Karabakh presents itself as an ideal case study for the Greater Caucasus region – and indeed other conflict zones of similar nature in Europe and elsewhere – to understand the conflict between ethnic minority groups’ fierce attachment to their socio-historical and geographical identities and modern world’s need for enforcement of legal principles. The conflict in this case is not about resources but is about identity – something that cannot be divided.
There are no easy political solutions to such complex disputes. While all-round mediation efforts by neutral parties should be encouraged, the effectiveness of those efforts is hostage to a host of internal, global, political, ability and intent issues. On the other hand, the welfare of the affected people – directly, as opposed to a trickle effect via the state – in a visibly unbiased and meaningful manner could provide the healing that functions as the foundation for a negotiated agreement.
Currently, the talk is more about the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” (BATNA). For Azerbaijan, it is war, and for Armenia, it is status-quo.
The future of Nagorno-Karabakh would tell the Greater Caucasus region what to do in such complex situations — or, what not to do. That future, however, may not arrive this year.
[This article was first published here on The Huffington Post]
The jury is still out on the cost of providing fast-track residency to affluent foreigners
There are many ways in which modern societies are getting shaped across the world. Australia cast its vote recently in favour of crafting one by handpicking well heeled citizens from other countries.
On May 25, Australia’s Immigration Minister Chris Bowen unveiled a new visa scheme that offers wealthy migrants a fast-track residency provided they invest around $5 million into either government bonds or Australian companies.
In the normal course of the procedure, migrants are ranked according to criteria like age, qualifications and English language skills, along with a requirement to reside in the country for a specified period of time before they qualify.
Terming the initiative as an ‘investment visa’ aimed to address shortages of skills and capital and boost job-creation in the country, Bowen said, “People who are willing to make a significant investment in Australia through various investments will receive concessional treatment when it comes to permanent residency.”
“The significant investor visa will provide a boost to our economy and help Australia to compete effectively for high net worth individuals seeking investment immigration,” he added.
The minister said that Australia expects to hand out 7,000 new investment visas through this fast track system, which will come into force on July 1.
The scheme would see Australia join the ranks of Asia-Pacific’s New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, which provide for migration on the basis of investment of a specified size and conditions.
Under New Zealand’s Investor Residence Scheme, immigrants can gain residency rights in the country by investing NZ$ 1.5 million (US$ 1.1 million) for a period of four years. This program requires the applicant to be under 65 years of age and have three years of business experience.
The Investor Plus Residence Scheme goes a step further and offers permanent residency to anyone who makes an investment of NZ$ 10 million in New Zealand for 3 yrs. No age, business or English language proficiency is required under this program.
In Hong Kong, millionaire migrants can earn residency rights via the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (CIES) by investing HK$10 million.
But nowhere in the world is the phenomenon more pronounced than in Singapore, which, as per a new report from global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), had the world’s highest density of millionaire households in 2011. The report, released this May, revealed that more than 17% of all households in the Southeast Asian city-state had private wealth of US$ 1 million or higher during the year.
What provides a telling perspective to the ‘badge of honour’ is that according to Singapore government statistics from 2011, Singaporean citizens make up just 63% of the country’s population – implying that more than one in three residents of the city-state are foreign-born permanent residents or temporary residents. Merely 11 years ago the figure was 74%, while in 1980 it was 91%.
Helping the rise of percentage of foreign nationals are government schemes like the Global Investor Programme (GIP), which allow wealthy foreigners to attain permanent residency status if they invest a minimum of $2.5 million in a new business or an expansion of an existing business, and have an annual turnover of at least US$30 million or more.
Permanent Residence visa is highly valued in Singapore among expatriates as the city-state has one of the world’s highest standards of living and is one of the nerve centres of Asia’s economy.
On the other hand, the small population of Singapore, quite like that in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, make it necessary for the country to invite foreign entrepreneurs to create new businesses, new products and new jobs – especially in tough economic times such as the present. According to government statistics, Singapore’s fertility rate of 1.2 is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 – implying that the country’s workforce would shrink drastically if more foreigners are not allowed in.
But the upsurge in the ratio of foreign nationals – both permanent residents and foreign workers – has led to a corresponding rise in the disaffection among the locals on the issue.
Many Singaporeans believe that permanent residents come to their country to reap the benefits without any obligations. A prevalent sentiment among the critics of government policies like the GIP is that foreign-born residents take jobs, push up property prices and add new strains on the city-state’s infrastructure. The impression is said to be responsible for the worst ever showing by the ruling party in last year’s elections.
Reacting to popular dissatisfaction, Singapore recently canceled a scheme that allowed wealthy expatriates to gain permanent residency (PR) in the Southeast Asian city-state if they brought in a minimum of S$10 million ($7.8 million) into Singapore for five years including using up to S$2 million on buying a property.
The Financial Investor Scheme (FIS) was brought to an end in April as it was believed that the scheme was used by many expatriates to buy property at inflated prices and fuel the country’s booming property market – thereby pricing locals out of the market.
The decision is seen to be in tune with the government’s decision of imposing an additional 10% property tax on foreigners last year to avoid Singapore becoming a place for only the rich.
But beyond concerns about rising property prices, the red carpet for foreign entrepreneurs has led to people like local Singapore journalist Jaya Prakash believe that the government is biased towards foreigners, allowing them to sweep up jobs that should be given to locals and fill places in schools meant for Singaporeans.
Some groups have even claimed that a large expat population – and its highly visible alternate culture – is threatening their sense of national identity.
Clearly, financial benefits travel only as far as they are allowed to by the socio-political costs of a policy.
Australia may want to learn from Singapore’s experience on the subject and pick the best path ahead for itself.
The fate of Bangladesh’s biggest infrastructure project hangs in the balance
DHAKA — Asian funding agencies, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) provided much needed, albeit temporary relief to the government on July 31 choosing not to cancel their loan for the US$2.9 billion Padma bridge project, for another month.
The Padma bridge project has been in peril since the World Bank cut its US$1.2 billion credit line for the 6km-long road-rail bridge over the Padma River on June 30, citing corruption concerns, in particular the government’s failure to investigate claims of high-level fraud in connection with the project.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had accused the World Bank of treating the country as “guinea pigs” and defiantly announced that Bangladesh would finance the project itself.
Apart from the US$ 1.2 billion that is to be provided by the World Bank, the ADB, JICA and the Islamic Development Bank have pledged to lend the government US$ 615m, US$ 400m and US$ 140m respectively for the project.
“[The] ADB and JICA have extended their loan agreement deadline by a month. It’s good news for us. Now, let us see what the World Bank does. I believe the World Bank has to come back,” Finance Minister AMA Muhith told reporters on July 31.
The government however is still under pressure to address the issues of corruption raised by the World Bank by the end of this month, failing which the ADB and JICA have warmed that they would not fund the country’s largest infrastructure project.
The two agencies would consider funding the project even without the World Bank if the corruption issues are properly dealt with senior government officials told local newspaper The Daily Star after talks between ADB, JICA and Bangladesh’s Economic Relations Division (ERD) on July 31.
In the meantime, Information & Communications Technology Minister Syed Abul Hossain who is at the heart of the corruption controversy has been asked to step down. Other senior officials working on the project have also been asked to go on leave.
The Padma bridge project is a key part of the ruling Awami League’s 2008 election manifesto and is Bangladesh’s most ambitious infrastructure project to date aimed at delivering development to the poor southern part of the country.
It is estimated that some 30 million people in the region could directly benefit from the new road and rail connection. At present all traffic across the Padma River has to rely on ferries, which are infrequent and often unsafe.
The bridge will also connect Bangladesh’s principal seaports and provide a direct link to the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway.
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An Even Match
[This article was first published here on The Huffington Post]
A November 2011 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a US congressional advisory panel, urged the White House and US Congress to scrutinize China’s military expansion and pushed for a tougher stance against, what it dubbed as, anticompetitive Chinese trade policies.
While China’s military, which benefited from a threefold increase since the 1990s in the military budget to about US$160 billion in 2010, does not pose a threat to the US, it does so to many nations in the region. Apart from building ports (also known as ‘pearls’) across the Indian ocean that form as its security eyes, China has, over the years, taken measures to boost its control of maritime resources in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
At the same time, China invested substantial efforts in the last decade in building economic relations with East Asian nations via regional bodies like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ASEAN+3 (ASEAN, plus China, Japan, and South Korea), and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).
With the help of the regional arrangements, China is replacing the United States as the economic engine of Asia. It buys up huge amounts of raw materials, goods and parts, and pours in large amounts of foreign investment into its Asian neighbours.
In that backdrop, the US government, in 2011, decided in favour of a renewed focus on Asia by hastening its decisions to forge relations with multilateral organisations in the continent from both economic and military standpoints.
In November 2011, Obama declared that the US hoped by December 2012 to see the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now being negotiated, become a high-quality trade and investment platform that will include the major economies of the Asia-Pacific.
The principles of TPP, which does not include China in the initial group of countries, greatly differ from China’s approach to trade, and are being structured around values that the US champions in terms of, amid others, transparency and protection of intellectual property.
In the same month, the US formally joined the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, Indonesia. President Obama used his inaugural speech to guide the EAS towards focusing on prickly security issues in the region, especially those involving maritime security. The suggestion was not to Beijing’s liking, but was supported by EAS participants that have disputes with China on the issue of dominion over South China Sea waters and regions.
The US continued its activism in the region in 2011 with a very high-profile engagement with the Myanmar regime in December 2011 via a visit by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The visit, the first in 50 years by a US secretary of state to Myanmar, was significant as it marked US having a dialogue with a regime that it not only does not officially recognize – on account of democracy and human rights violations by the military rulers – but also that has been supported by China during the last two decades of political isolation.
Continuing the surge in the region, the office of the US government spokesperson, in a press release in December 2011, informed that the US hosted Japan and India – both traditional rivals of China – for the first ever trilateral dialogue to “exchange views on a wide range of regional and global issues of mutual interest”.
The renewed, and frantic, US interest in the region – from South Asia to the Asia Pacific – and, more importantly, the growing relations between US and other Asian nations has not gone unnoticed in China, naturally.
But even as China has not so far made any comment on the developments, state-run China Daily, reacting to the emerging alliance of Asian nations with the US, reported, “Japan’s cooperation has been moving from bilateral to multilateral, trying to include the United States, Australia and India in its Arc of Freedom and Prosperity.”
It is difficult to predict the Chinese responses in 2012 to the current US crusading in the region. Much will depend upon China’s own economy and the preparedness of the smaller nations in the Asia-Pacific and East Asia to engage further with the US even at the risk of earning China’s wrath.
For the moment, the US is on an overdrive and China is observing the situation. The game is on.