In November 2022, I travelled to Azerbaijan with a Spanish press delegation. I've since spent the past year trying to sell the article I wrote after the trip. In the end, no one would publish it, so I'm sharing it now with you.
Please bear in mind this last draught of the article was finished in early August. It does not cover the surrender of Nagorno-Karabach that took place this week nor the Armenian exodus that followed. For that, kindly refer to your preferred news provider, as it is currently making headlines the world over.
This article is intended to shed light on Azerbaijan’s long-term geopolitical ambitions, and in that sense it is still relevant, even after this watershed moment.
Without further ado, here is the article.
The Ambitions of Azerbaijan
A unit of the army of Azerbaijan has invited us to tea in a minefield. We leave before dawn from Baku, a city on the shores of the Caspian Sea that owes its monumentalism to the profits generated by its enormous oil and gas reserves. As we leave the city behind, black Mercedes are replaced by Soviet Ladas, skyscrapers by slums and women disappear from the public space.
Escorted by a police convoy, we drive for more than half a day along a road ravished by the 2020 war, a war initiated by Azerbaijan with the aim of expelling the Armenian troops that had been stationed in these lands since 1993. The lands in question are the seven Azeri districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan populated by a separatist Armenian majority that functions, in practice, as a puppet state of Armenia. Both countries claim the region as their own and have been at each other's throats over it for three decades. The Azeri offensive was successful and they are now eager to boast about the results.
We arrive at the base. The army has set up a table with sweets on a gravel helipad. A young soldier in an ushanka hat prepares tea in a samovar next to a cluster of dilapidated buildings. It is the first time our government escorts have set foot on these lands, occupied since their childhood, and the driver leaves us to go wash his face in the Aras River, despite the Colonel’s flailing to remind him that we are in an active minefield.
It is the last week of November 2022 and I am travelling with a Spanish press delegation. We have been invited because Azerbaijan wants to win the affections of Europe, a key player in Azerbaijan's current geopolitical strategy, which begins with the recovery of these regions adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh and culminates in the transformation of the South Caucasus into an economic hub.
Short-term ambitions
"Our priorities in the liberated territories are: decontamination, reconstruction and repopulation," Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev told us the previous day in a restaurant in Baku. He is soft-spoken and eloquent. When he thinks, he rubs his chin with the stalk of local herb that tastes like liquorice.
The reclaimed regions are currently scorched tracts of land covered with red flags, which indicate the location of a mine. This is the so-called "decontamination", a mine clearance operation being carried out with support from the UK. "Reconstruction" involves rehabilitating the destroyed villages, as well as developing infrastructure to bring economic life to the region. Efforts include the construction of two airports and a railway line connecting Baku to Turkey via the Zangezur Corridor, a transport route that crosses Armenian territory to connect Azerbaijan with its exclave, Nakhichevan.
"Repopulation" has to do with the half a million Azeri IDPs who were forced to leave these lands as a result of the Armenian occupation. This occupation was the result of a war between the two countries when, during the collapse of the USSR, Nagorno-Karabakh decided by popular referendum to secede from Azerbaijan and become part of Armenia. The war ended in 1994 with Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian control and the seven Azeri districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian military occupation, an occupation condemned by the UN Security Council.
Azeri IDPs have spent the last thirty years living in Baku, as Rovshan Rzayev, chairman of the state committee for refugees and IDPs, tells us: "Azerbaijan is now taking these families and, after obtaining their consent, sending them to live in newly built settlements in the liberated territories. For now, these villages are separated from the rest of the country by hundreds of kilometres of desolate wasteland. It seems that the priority is to repopulate the areas near the Armenian border.
Azerbaijan reclaimed these territories three years ago, but its reconstruction efforts have intensified since the start of the war in Ukraine. Traditionally, Russia has provided military support to Armenia: both are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a mutual defence alliance, the counterpart to NATO of the former Soviet states. But now that Russia is pouring its military forces into the war in Ukraine, it is unlikely to become involved in another armed conflict. Azerbaijan has seen this as an opportunity to consolidate its control over the region, break the territorial link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, regain territory and advance its goal of becoming an economic hub.
Long-term ambitions
The South Caucasus is bordered to the north by Russia and to the south by Iran, two economies crippled by Western sanctions. Azerbaijan sees this as an opportunity to turn the Caucasus into a trade route connecting Europe with Asia.
"Since the Armenian occupation in 1993, our economy collapsed and Azerbaijan almost ended up as a failed state," recounts Hikmat Hajyev, whom we met at the Presidential Palace in Baku. He is President Ilham Aliyev's right-hand man: if Aliyev is the sultan, Hajiyev is the grand vizier. "We did not lay down our arms, as the EU demanded. We wanted to take back the territories. Now that we have them, we are interested in a future of peace and economic prosperity. The idea of the trade corridor between Europe and Asia is key to this."
But they must secure the cooperation of the other two Caucasus countries that would benefit from such an operation: Georgia and Armenia. Both Hajyev and Rzayev claim that Azerbaijan has the support of Georgia, with which they already enjoy good trade relations, but understand that normalisation of political and economic relations with their long-time enemy Armenia will be necessary for success.
What at no point is said out loud is that, for Azerbaijan, this normalisation means consolidating its control over all disputed territories, including Nagorno-Karabakh. Rzayev points to Armenia's "bellicose attitude" as the main obstacle to peace, but the decision is not an easy one for Armenia: what is expected of them, in exchange for hypothetical economic prosperity (it is currently the poorest country in the region), is to reconcile with their enemy and abandon the idea of "liberating" Nagorno-Karabakh. If this happens, the more than 100,000 Armenians living in the separatist region will either have to integrate into the Azeri population (this seems unlikely due to the ethnic hatred proferred on both sides) or claim their independence without external support.
[INSERT: When writing the article, I didn’t want to spell out the possibility of exodus, forced displacement or worse. Call it a personal weakness, but I’d rather describe present dilemmas than make catastrophic predictions. Now we know the conclusion to this story: after Armenia surrendered the territory, the locals chose to flee rather than risk living under Azerbaijani rule.]
Hence Armenia's procrastination in negotiations since the ceasefire that followed the 2020 war. The main point of contention: the railway line connecting Azerbaijan to Turkey, the constructions works of which we are shown to be well underway, must pass through the Zangezur Corridor, which is in Armenian territory. For Azerbaijan, a trade artery running through Armenia that could bring benefits to both countries would reduce the chances of a future armed conflict. "For now Armenia says it supports the construction of the road, but in practice they only make excuses for not starting work on their land," explains Rzayev. Nor has Armenia withdrawn its troops positioned in Zangezur, threatening the strip that connects Azerbaijan with the Nakhichevan exclave. Armenia procrastinates because what it wants, Nagorno-Karabakh, they cannot ask for openly without being thrown out of the negotiations. Without wealth, incentives to offer or military allies, they are the weaker party in the negotiations and as such can only try to drag them out.
But if Armenia procrastinates, Azerbaijan tightens the screw. In September 2022, when Russia, overseer of the peace negotiations, was busy with the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkov, Azerbaijan shelled Armenian military bases (Armenia asked Russia for help, invoking the collective security treaty, and was ignored). In December, Azerbaijan cut off the Lachin Corridor, the only territorial connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and in March this year it blocked a second road that Armenians used to bypass the blockade, effectively cutting off all contact between Armenia and the separatist region. The European Parliament has denounced this action, saying that cutting off access to food, fuel and medicine could worsen the humanitarian crisis there.
In May, after protracted negotiations brokered by the EU and the US, Armenia's Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, told parliament that his government recognises Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. This seemed to indicate that they recognised Azeri sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh. But the declaration has had no effect, negotiations remain stalled and over the past few months the two sides have accused each other of carrying out sporadic bombings in different border areas, which could be attempts to unblock negotiations by other means.
Relations with the European Union
The other element necessary for its trade path to be fruitful is to improve its diplomatic relations with the EU. Trade between Azerbaijan and Europe is already rich and burgeoning. Hayjev claims that since Russia cut off its gas supplies to Europe, ten member states have come to ask them for a budget. It shows: in 2022, the EU imported more than twice as many Azeri goods as in 2021, 99% of which were mineral fuels, a category that includes gas and oil. In July last year, the European Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan to double its gas imports by 2027. By far, the largest buyer of Azeri oil in Europe is Italy (buyer of almost 50% of total Azeri exports), followed to a lesser extent by other southern countries such as Greece, Spain and Bulgaria. All of these buyers obtain the oil through the Southern Corridor, which runs through Georgia, Turkey and the Adriatic. This pipeline has helped reduce the south's dependence on Russian oil.
But at the diplomatic level, the Azeri top brass feel that the EU is largely pro-Armenia and this worries them. "We don't get it," said Rzayev, "is it because Armenians are Christians and we are Muslims?"
Maybe. But Azerbaijan is still an autocracy and, as such, its form of government clashes with many of the values that Europe holds dear, such as freedom and dignity, and this creates a reluctance to forge closer ties. To win their sympathy, Azerbaijan tries to show Europe that, despite their differences, they have common ground. In Hayjev's words: "We are a Muslim-majority country, and as such we believe that our strong secularism deserves Europe's attention and friendship."
During our visit, our escorts go out of their way to show us how much Azerbaijan resembles Europe. They proudly point out the Christmas trees that line the streets (despite only 2% of the population being Orthodox Christian, as we are told by the State Committee of Religious Associations), the bare heads of the majority of women in Baku, the bottles of vodka on the bar tables...
Even the reconstruction of the reclaimed territories in 2020 seems designed to impress Europeans more than the locals: neighbourhoods of little white houses with private gardens and no trace of local architecture or character. We visited Agali, the pilot village of the repopulation operation. A sign at the entrance describes it as a "Smart Village": the houses are solar-powered; instead of a primary health-care centre, each house has an iPad for video consultations with doctors in Baku; and the schools use digital whiteboards and online classes. In short, it is a village near an enemy border with low maintenance costs and remote control administration. But what matters to them is that Europe sees that it is high-tech and sustainable because they seem to think that Europe likes that sort of thing.
New threats
Our driver returns in one piece from his romp in the waters of the river Aras. Good; we'll be able to go home. But across the river lies the latest threat to Azeri ambitions. Covering a mountainside above a distant village, we see a gigantic portrait of Ayatollah Khaminai. This river acts as a natural border with Iran.
Despite the fact that Iran and Azerbaijan are Shia-majority neighbours (and that, interestingly, more Azeris live in Iran than in Azerbaijan), Iran and Azerbaijan have had a tense and conflictual relationship for decades. It is curious to note the very different paths the two countries have taken over the years: Azerbaijan with its official secularism with post-Soviet overtones and Iran with its Sharia-based legal code brought about by the Islamic revolution.
Since Armenia can no longer count on Russia's support, it has begun to forge closer ties with the Ayatollah regime. The land we are treading on was reclaimed by Azerbaijan with Harop drones and Barak-8 defensive batteries provided by Israel, which Iran has repeatedly threatened to destroy. Now that Iran has an Israeli outpost on the border, it has openly positioned itself on the Armenian side in this neighbouring conflict.
In response to the rapprochement between Israel and Azerbaijan, Iran conducted a massive military exercise in which thousands of soldiers rehearsed a ground invasion of Azerbaijan. The exercise took place just days before the opening of an Iranian consulate in the Armenian region of Kapan, through which the Zangezur Corridor is meant to pass. A month later, the Azeri parliament approved the opening of an embassy in Tel Aviv. The embassy opened in March 2023 and is the first embassy of a Shia country in the Jewish state. Since then, every few months there have been reports of Iranian cells being arrested in Azerbaijan. The most recent was in April, when Baku reported that it had arrested six Iranian intelligence agents planning a coup d'état.
By contrast, one country openly in favour of the Zangezur Corridor is Turkey. Now that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has guaranteed his continuity in power by winning the May presidential elections, he has come to the Corridor's defence. Apart from being one of Azerbaijan's oldest and closest allies- (Azerbaijan's victory in 2020 would also not have been possible without the Bayraktardrones provided by Turkey), Turkey has an interest in the construction of the Corridor because it would increase trade between the two Turkic states.
Moreover, if a pipeline is built along the Corridor, it would also facilitate the transport of gas from Baku to Turkey and from there to Europe. Gas now passes through Tbilisi (Georgia), with the additional transit costs that this entails. Consequently, beyond its subsidiary wars with Israel, it is also in Iran's interest to support Armenia because if Azerbaijan consolidates its position as the region's main gas exporter, this would damage Iran's future economic prospects as an oil exporter, should sanctions be lifted in the future.
Conclusion
Now that Azerbaijan has established itself as both the strongest and most supported country in the South Caucasus and one of the largest gas suppliers to Europe, its leadership has glimpsed a future of prosperity that they believe would end their territorial disputes with Armenia to their benefit. To achieve this, it is making a major public relations effort to portray itself to the players who can help it do so as a reasonable agent; but this is no easy task when Azerbaijan resorts to coercive means, such as blocking the Lachin Corridor, to move peace negotiations forward and Armenia procastinates in the talks. But the map of international alliances is changing fast, and as quickly as it opened, this window could close again.