Mass Starvation Impending in the Caucasus
Despite strong words, the Biden administration has been curiously inactive in the face of an impending atrocity.
ABOUT 120,000 ETHNIC ARMENIANS face impending genocide via blockade and starvation in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh)—a crisis directly caused by the authoritarian machinations of Azerbaijan and its leader, President Ilham Aliyev, in the wake of the country’s 2020 conflict with the Republic of Armenia. Time is running out to avoid a man-made famine. Former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo estimates that “without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”
To the alarm of genocide watchdog and human rights groups such as the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Amnesty International, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Armenian-majority enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan has been entirely cut off from the outside world since the beginning of Azerbaijan’s near-total blockade in December. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof noted that the attention focused on Ukraine has come at the expense of attention to the crisis, writing “for dictators, tragically, this isn’t a bad time to commit war crimes.”
While an early deal has been announced to restore several road links to the region from both Armenia and Azerbaijan, history suggests such agreements are shaky at best.
To avert mass death, a temporary agreement is welcome, but in the long term, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh will be safe only if the underlying causes of the crises are ameliorated. The abject failure of the Trump administration to play a meaningful role in any stage of the mediation during or after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War effectively gave Putin free reign in shaping the peace agreement among Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, to its own favor. The ceasefire agreement was contingent on Armenia ceding significant territory back to the control of Azerbaijan. To enforce the terms of the ceasefire, Russian “peacekeepers” were deployed to ensure that the mountainous Lachin Corridor—the singular point of entry providing food, medical supplies, and free movement to the beleaguered populace of Nagorno-Karabakh—would remain open and unobstructed.
This arrangement offered only a temporary peace at best, and even then it saw repeated violent provocations from the Azeri side. When Russia’s war against Ukraine didn’t go to plan in 2022, Russia turned its attention (and some of its “peacekeeping” forces) to Ukraine and away from the Caucasus, giving Azerbaijan an opportunity for further uninhibited escalations. Initially, the Aliyev regime implemented a total blockade on the remaining Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh piecemeal, first relying on government agents posing as “eco-activists” to blockade the Lachin Corridor, then dropping the disguise and instituting official checkpoints.
Crucial supplies have since dwindled, resulting in barren supermarkets, hours-long bread lines, and miscarriages and deaths due to malnutrition. Armenian farmers avoid harvesting their fields due to the threat of Azeri rifle fire. Satellite surveillance confirms the rampant erasure of Armenian historical and religious sites throughout Azerbaijan’s newly-acquired territories. As if that weren’t enough, in multiple cases, Azerbaijan has forcibly detained and kidnapped residents of Artsakh, including university students.
In response to an obvious act of ethnic and cultural genocide, both the Russian “peacekeepers” and the international community have delayed any serious actions to disrupt the blockade. Azerbaijan denies outright that any blockade or genocide is taking place, going so far as to accuse the International Red Cross of illegal smuggling to justify its heightened “security measures.”
The U.S. State Department has been lethargic in its response, lazily calling on both sides to negotiate—an approach which has failed to produce any change to the crisis. At a recent hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (the bipartisan human rights committee of the House of Representatives), Ocampo rebuked the State Department’s both-sidesism:
You cannot have real negotiations between the genocidaire and the genocidal; for that, the genocide must stop first. You cannot engage in negotiations where President Aliyev uses the genocide as a means of negotiations. If you go to it, knowing that President Aliyev is using the genocide and trying to deny it, then the U.S. is helping to deny the genocide and can be considered an accomplice.
If the Biden administration is willing to abandon some of its timidity, there are several things it could do to improve the situation.
The first would be to treat Azerbaijan as what it is: an autocratic, anti-democratic aggressor in the process of committing war crimes, rather than an equal, legitimate partner in negotiations. It has significantly greater financial and military capacity than Armenia, and a powerful regional ally in Turkey It’s not clear why President Biden can’t commit himself to opposing Aliyev with the same force with which he has opposed Putin. Biden’s rhetoric has promised more than his policies have delivered. On the campaign trail, Biden castigated the Trump administration for being “largely passive, and disengaged.” After his election, Biden was the first sitting president formally to recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The words of the American president count for a lot, but they won’t feed the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Biden administration is unlikely to press for the kinds of sanctions against Azerbaijan that it organized with allies after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As Europe looks for non-Russian sources of energy, especially natural gas, Azerbaijan is becoming a major supplier. Natural gas exports from Azerbaijan to Europe are projected to reach 11.6 billion cubic meters in 2023, according to Aliyev, up from 8.2 billion cubic meters in 2021. But there are other measures on which the administration might secure more allied cooperation. One is cracking down on the purchasing of repackaged Russian oil under Azeri auspices, which has the added benefit of strengthening the sanctions already imposed on Russia. Another is to implement personal sanctions on Aliyev and any of his lieutenants who have property in the West. Sanctions are notoriously poor at convincing countries to change their behavior, but at least they would send a signal that the United States and its allies don’t condone gross violations of human rights and are paying attention.
For a more immediate effect, the administration could take a page from Harry Truman’s book and airlift food and medical supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh. Some of the infrastructure for such an operation may already be in place thanks to the U.S.-Armenian joint military exercises, which started Monday. Even a small airlift would test the Azerbaijanis’ commitment to the blockade and dispense with the fantasy—really a time-wasting dodge from Baku—that negotiations should focus on “alternative road options.”
Until Georgia shows more signs of continuing down its path toward democracy, or Azerbaijan shows any signs of starting down one, the United States should recognize that Armenia presents the best opportunity to gain a democratic ally in the Caucasus. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has clarified that his nation is not an ally of Russia, and lamented that the country’s long-time dependence on Russia “in security matters” has been “a strategic mistake." Russia’s preoccupation in Ukraine presents the United States with an opportunity to make inroads.
Reports of Azeri troops massing along the border bring to mind Russia’s build-up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as earlier land grabs. Linking the predicted success of the invasion of Poland to the Ottoman Empire’s earlier genocide of 1.5 million Armenians, Hitler boasted, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Echoing similar sentiments, Aliyev recently asserted his own disbelief in the possibility of external opposition, asking “Is anyone ready to fight for Armenians against us? I doubt it.”
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