Roads and railways for peace in the Caucasus: Armenia plans to become a confluence of routes | International

On July 30, the Armenian envoy for negotiations with Turkey, Ruben Rubinian, and the Turkish representative for negotiations with Armenia, Serdar Kilic, each crossed the bridge over the Aras River from their respective countries. The purpose was to celebrate the fifth meeting of the normalization process that the two countries maintain, but perhaps the most symbolic: the meeting place was a border crossing closed for three decades between two countries without full diplomatic relations.

Until recently, the buildings on both sides of the border lay unused, but on the Armenian side, work to rebuild and modernize the border post has been completed and the authorities hope to make it operational again in the not too distant future. This is because Yerevan attaches great importance to this crossing as part of a larger strategy: to turn its country – now blocked to the east and west by the closure of its neighbors’ borders – into a confluence of routes that encourage trade and exchange and thus contribute to strengthening the decades-long precarious peace in the region.

There was a time when the South Caucasus was truly a crossroads between Asia and Europe. Then came nationalist conflicts; then the Cold War and the Iron Curtain and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, wars, ethnic cleansing and the closing of borders between states that were part of the same country only a few years earlier.

“Our region needs lasting peace, a situation in which all countries of the region live with open borders, are connected by economic, political and cultural ties, accumulate experience and have a tradition of solving all problems through diplomatic means and negotiations,” writes Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the project brochure.Crossroads of Peace(Crossroads of Peace) was sent to the region’s governments for evaluation. In a presentation given a few months ago in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Pashinyan summarized it this way: “Without roads, it will be very difficult to build peace.”

Open border crossings

Armenia’s plans include opening two crossings on its border with Turkey and another five on its border with Azerbaijan, which will join three existing crossings on the northern border with Georgia and Iran’s crossing in the south; in addition to restoring railways from the Soviet era and building new roads, through Armenia, the main cities of the region (from Tabriz to Tbilisi, from Baku to Yerevan and Kars) are connected and have access to ports on the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian and the Mediterranean Seas. “This project will shorten distances and reduce transportation prices,” explains an official Armenian source.

These are all advantages on paper, but local disputes sometimes prevent us from looking to the future. The main obstacle is Azerbaijan, which, after defeating Armenia and reconquering the region of Nagorno Karabakh (from which it expelled more than 100,000 Armenians), feels stronger to impose conditions.

“For the project to be viable, real peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is necessary,” says Benjamin Poghosyan, an analyst at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) in Yerevan. This should be achieved through a definitive peace treaty negotiated by the two countries. But, according to Poghosyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is not ready for this position: “He needs an external enemy and a national idea to unite the population under the leadership of his family. Between 2003 and 2023 the idea was to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh, now it needs a new idea and it has started using the discourse that Azeris should return to their ancestral lands of Western Azerbaijan, i.e. the current territory of Armenia.

So far, the Baku government has demanded that Yerevan implement the so-called Zangezur corridor, a section through southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to its region of Nakhichevan, to which both countries had committed in the Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement to end 2020. However, as planned, the corridor remained under the control of the Russian FSB border service and involved a transfer of sovereignty that was difficult to swallow for the Armenian government, which is already being questioned by the more nationalist opposition due to its search for a peace deal with Azerbaijan. In Yerevan they feel that, since Baku has not complied with the rest of the measures contemplated in the 2020 agreement, the provisions on the corridor should not be binding on Armenia. They therefore propose the inclusion of a highway through the south of the country that fulfills the same connectivity functions, but under the control of Armenian institutions.

However, there was a positive development in the matter in early August. Azerbaijan announced that, for the time being, it is going to lay down its demands on the controversial corridor. “We do not want to complicate the process of negotiating a peace agreement,” said Azerbaijan’s special envoy Elchin Amirbekov after holding meetings in the United States.

Opposition to Russia

Armenian sources say that Iran and Georgia welcome the Armenian proposal, despite the fact that, so far, they have benefited from the blockade by the construction of communication routes between Azerbaijan and Turkey that encircle Armenia through their territory. Even Turkey, which is a strong ally of Azerbaijan due to their cultural and linguistic ties, is also favorable, since Ankara is willing to support all kinds of projects that provide business to its builders and means that ensure that their products reach other countries faster and cheaper. The problem is that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is not going to complete its normalization with Armenia until Azerbaijan gives the go-ahead: already in 2009, when the two countries were about to resume their diplomatic relations, Aliyev’s pressure ruined it, along with the negotiations.

“If some positive pressure is exerted from abroad on Azerbaijan and Turkey, and some kind of project is offered as a reward, they might accept the project,” says the official Armenian source. Indeed, the European Union and the United States have warmly welcomed the project. Crossroads of Peace,

One that does not see this so clearly is Russia, whose leaders have made public their discomfort with the fact that Armenia wants to leave its sphere of influence. In recent months, Pashinyan’s government has ordered Moscow to withdraw its troops from Yerevan airport and the border with Azerbaijan, although Russian troops are still patrolling the borders with Turkey and Iran.

On the contrary, the Kremlin is trying to move closer to Baku – which over the past three decades has been an important partner of Washington in the region and a major supplier of hydrocarbons to the EU. This week, during an official visit to Azerbaijan, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed his sympathy for Aliyev. The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, took the opportunity to attack the “Armenian leadership” and accused them of blocking peace talks by not implementing the Zangezur corridor, to which the Armenian Foreign Ministry responded harshly: “This statement is not only regrettable, but also calls into question Russia’s constructive participation in the process of normalizing relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” The Armenian source concluded, “Moscow opposes our project, because more connectivity and fewer conflicts mean fewer chances for Russia to establish its control in the region.”

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