By Mark Dovich
Russia’s proposal at the United Nations last week to reopen the Lachin corridor in tandem with the opening of a road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and Azerbaijan is drawing renewed attention to the long-shuttered route.
‘Aghdam is the road of death’
Last month, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov first put forward a proposal to deliver humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh via Aghdam, a ruined town Yerevan ceded to Baku after the 2020 war.
Azerbaijan is ready to facilitate deliveries of “essential goods” using the long-closed road connecting Aghdam with the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Askeran, Bayramov told the head of the local International Committee of the Red Cross office.
As news of the proposal spread, a group of Askeran residents set up a preemptive roadblock on the route in an attempt to prevent the reopening of what they called “the road of death.”
The authorities in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, have also dismissed the possibility of agreeing to aid deliveries through Aghdam. Nagorno-Karabakh Foreign Minister Sergey Ghazaryan said last week reopening the Aghdam road would “legitimize” Azerbaijan’s ongoing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh
Meanwhile, senior European Union officials mediating between Yerevan and Baku said they “note” Azerbaijan’s proposal but that it “should not be seen as an alternative to the reopening of the Lachin corridor,” the sole overland route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
For its part, the Red Cross confirmed last month it remains unable to supply aid to Nagorno-Karabakh through either the Lachin corridor or Aghdam “despite persistent efforts.”
Azerbaijan has blocked nearly all traffic from the Lachin corridor for more than eight months, pushing Nagorno-Karabakh’s roughly 120,000 Armenians to the brink of famine and prompting the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to warn of genocide.
What happened at the UN?
The United Nations Security Council convened last Wednesday at Armenia’s request for emergency talks on Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
While France, the United Kingdom, and the United States all urged Azerbaijan to abide by a February ruling from the UN’s top court ordering the country to lift its blockade of the Lachin corridor, Russia raised eyebrows by floating a proposal to reopen the corridor “simultaneously” with the Aghdam road.
Russia’s foreign minister put the proposal to his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts at their latest three-way meeting in Moscow last month, Russia’s representative said, calling the plan a “realistic, compromise-based solution.”
Following the talks, the 15-member Security Council failed to issue a joint statement or legally binding resolution.
The meeting was the Security Council’s second emergency session on Azerbaijan’s blockade and its second time opting not to issue a statement or resolution on the crisis. A previous round of talks ended last December amid reported diplomatic fighting between France and Russia, who, as permanent members, have veto power.
A ‘Syrian model’ for Karabakh?
Though the Security Council failed to issue a resolution after last week’s talks, a diplomatic deal from nearly a decade ago authorizing cross-border relief deliveries to rebel-held areas of Syria could provide a blueprint for getting desperately needed humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh.
That is according to David Akopyan, the former head of the UN Development Program in Syria from 2017 to 2019, who told CivilNet the precedent applies to Nagorno-Karabakh, even while conceding “it is not a simple copy-paste.”
In 2014, the Security Council unanimously adopted a binding resolution to allow the UN to deliver aid to parts of Syria beyond President Bashar al-Assad’s control without his government’s consent.
“Security Council members have been getting used to this logic of cross-border aid deliveries,” Akopyan explained, arguing Armenia should keep pushing for the body to adopt a similar measure for Nagorno-Karabakh. “For them, it is not an out-of-the-blue, totally unknown solution.”
In the decade-or-so since the Syria resolution was first adopted, it has been watered down to the point where only one of four original border crossings is still functioning, but the aid remains a lifeline for millions of vulnerable people.
“It is up to our mastery of diplomacy and our intellectual ability to try to present the case,” Akopyan said.
