To outsiders it might seem like a relatively obscure conflict, but Armenia’s latest battle with Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is already dangerously embroiling bigger global players says Foreign Editor David Pratt. 

It was back in 2008 and I was on my way to another war. It would later be called by various names including the Russo-Georgian War, the August War, or as those journalists like myself who covered its brief and bloody events simply referred to it, “the five-day war.” 

Short it might have been but complex it certainly was, like so many of the conflicts that have wracked the Caucasus region over the decades.  

With the airport in the Georgian capital Tblisi out of commission due to Russian bombing, I had flown to the neighbouring country of Armenia from where a driver would ferry me over the border into Georgia. I well remember that drive and how most of it was undertaken during nighttime. 

During one stretch the sight of watchtowers, fortified fences and signposted minefields had me mistakenly thinking we were nearing the Georgian border only to be told by my driver that we were in fact travelling along the frontier that separated Armenia from long time regional rival Azerbaijan.  

Here I was having come to report on one war between neighbours, only to be reminded of another conflict that has festered on and off for years between another pair of regional rivals.  

For almost three decades now Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at loggerheads over the long-disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Mountainous and forested this patch of land sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. But the ethnic Armenians who make up the vast majority of the estimated 150,000 population reject Azeri rule.  

Ever since Azerbaijan’s troops were pushed out in a war in the 1990s, these Armenians have been running their own affairs with support from the Armenian government based in the country’s capital Yerevan.  

Today, Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora. 

Back in 1994 before a ceasefire was agreed, the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azerbaijani districts resulted in tens of thousands killed and a million people displaced.  

Then came another flare up again in 2016 before the current bout of bloodletting which observers say is by far the worst since those dark days of 1994.   

As journalist and author Thomas de Waal, an expert on Nagorno-Karabakh and the Caucasus region has pointed out, it would be a mistake to underestimate just how much is at stake for the protagonists in what to many outsiders might seem like a distant and relatively obscure conflict.    

“Armenia’s statehood and its independence are inseparable from Nagorno-Karabakh. It is Armenia’s Jerusalem,” de Waal told The Economist last week. 

And when seen from Azerbaijan’s perspective, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh was traumatic and its government is now trying to regain its national pride with military action, de Waal added.  

But why now at this precise moment should things boil over again? What too does the conflict tell us about the shifting dynamics of the bigger geopolitical struggles going on behind the scenes and their wider implications? 

To take the timing issue first, it’s been increasingly clear that tensions between the two sides have been building over the summer. In July there were low level direct military clashes but these prompted little by way of an international response. Since then the world might have been caught off guard, but many more astute observers insist they could see trouble coming.  

As far back as 2016 in a Chatham House report written in the wake of the flare up then, Dr Laurence Broers a Research Associate at the Centre of Contemporary Central Asia & the Caucasus (SOAS), and a leading authority on the conflict, warned that both Armenia and Azerbaijan were “suspended in a dangerous security vacuum that needs to be filled by multilateral international action.” 

In a detailed assessment Broers pointed out how institutional and procedural inertia, geopolitical rivalries in neighbouring theatres and the cynicism and mistrust between both Armenia and Azerbaijan, posed “significant risk that a large-scale war could occur by default.”  

In more immediate terms though, observers point to a number of factors that have acted as triggers to the latest conflict. In local terms changes in the leadership in Nagorno-Karabakh and a hardening of the new administration’s actions, are seen by the Azerbaijani side as a provocation according to Thomas de Waal.  

Then there are the wider geopolitical circumstances and neglect that have helped prepare the ground for war. A leadership crisis within the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is a key mediator in the crisis, has allowed an already tense situation to worsen. The OSCE in other words has been slow to defuse rising animosity between both countries. 

Likewise the timing of the latest escalation is significant because the outside powers that have mediated in the past known as the “Minsk Group” - namely Russia, France and the United States - are distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the upcoming US presidential election and a list of other world crises from Lebanon to Belarus.  

But it is how the latest hostilities have ratcheted up tensions between Russia and Turkey that has been the real cause for concern among international observers.  

Turkey, which held large military exercises with Azerbaijan in July and August, has been even more conspicuous in its support compared with past crises.  

With Russia and Turkey already on opposite sides of the civil wars in Syria and Libya, fears have grown in the West that the conflict could spiral into a full-blown war embroiling Ankara with Moscow, which has a military treaty with Armenia.  

Should both be drawn in directly it has the potential to destabilise the South Caucasus region, an important corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to Europe. 

Last Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin weighed in on the crisis to call for fighting to stop. He described the conflict as a “tragedy.” 

Putin, who holds major sway in the area, which was part of the USSR for much of the 20th century, also said he is in constant contact with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He also spoke to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, according to Russian news agency TASS. 

The dangers of Turkish proxy involvement and how it might antagonise the Kremlin and others was highlighted by reports cited in the magazine Foreign Policy (FP) last week. Citing sources within the Syrian National Army (SNA), the umbrella term for a group of opposition militias backed by Turkey, around 1,500 Syrians are said to have so far been deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh to fight on behalf of Azerbaijan.  

“The first fighters were transferred in late September to southern Turkey and then flown from Gaziantep to Ankara, before being transferred to Azerbaijan on Sept. 25,” FP reported. 

“According to fighter accounts, SNA commanders arrived earlier to explore the region and coordinate with the Azerbaijani army about the distribution of troops... 

Fighters are offered four-month contracts for $1,500 a month, paid in Turkish lira,” FP added. 

Analysts say Turkey’s role is two-fold. The first is transporting these mercenary fighters from Syria and possibly Libya, but is also conducting command and control on the battlefield.  

On a wider level too analysts believe Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to expand his “sphere of influence” and assume a greater role in Azerbaijan and a more significant presence in the South Caucasus as his main policy objective.  

This it is thought would help Turkey to further engage in geopolitical trade-offs with Russia and the West.  

Just last week Erdogan made clear that Ankara would stand by Azerbaijan “with all its resources and heart”. He did not however directly address whether Turkey is supplying the Azeri side with military experts, drones and warplanes, as Armenia and others has alleged and Azerbaijan denied. 

Whatever the truth, not surprisingly Turkey’s latest posturing, if not direct involvement in the conflict, has fuelled a fresh fight within NATO, with alliance members pushing Ankara to dial back its aggressive foreign policy and support a cease-fire in the Caucasus. 

It was left to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last week to call on Turkey to defuse the situation, given its decades of support for Azerbaijan.  

“We are deeply concerned by the escalation of hostilities. All sides should immediately cease fighting,” Stoltenberg said during a visit to Ankara. “I expect Turkey to use its considerable influence to calm tensions.”  

Erdogan and his government however show few signs of heeding Stoltenberg or joint call from the Minsk Group for an immediate cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh.  

“We look at the calls coming from around the world, and it’s ‘immediate cease-fire.’ What then? There was a cease-fire until now, but what happened?” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week during a visit to Azerbaijan.  

The tough talking has been matched by the violence on the battlefield with ordinary citizens caught up on both sides of the Armenia - Azerbaijan divide.  

Since the fighting restarted both sides have accused the other of shelling areas populated by civilians and thousands of people have been displaced by the clashes. 

The de-facto capital and administrative centre of Nagorno-Karabakh, the city of Stepanakert, is dotted with wide craters and unexploded ordnance following days of shelling. 

As the deadliest fighting over the region since the 1990s entered its third week Armenia accused Azerbaijan of bombing the historic Ghazanchetsots (Holy Saviour) Cathedral. 

It has also been reported that half of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh have been displaced since the latest fighting erupted. 

“According to our preliminary estimates, some 50% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population and 90% of women and children - some 70,000 to 75,000 people - have been displaced,” the region’s rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. 

Nearly 290 people have been killed since the most recent clashes erupted, including 47 civilians.  

During the fighting both sides have also been accused of using banned cluster bombs. Media and human rights organisations have confirmed the use of Israel-made M095 cluster munitions, which have scattered hundreds of bomblets, or submunitions, on residential areas of Stepanakert, which is being targeted by Azeri forces. 

Under the convention on cluster munitions (CCM), a treaty signed by more than 100 states these weapons are banned but neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan are signatories to the treaty. The indiscriminate nature of the scattering of the bomblets, some of which can fail to explode on impact, can pose a threat to civilians long after conflicts have ended. Right now there are only a few signs that a ceasefire is in sight.  

On Friday Azerbaijan’s president Aliyev ruled out making any concessions to Armenia ahead of talks aimed at halting the deadliest fighting in the South Caucasus region for more than 25 years. 

“Let those holding talks in Moscow know that it’s our territory and we won’t be making any concessions,” Aliyev was reported as saying by Reuters news agency after Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov flew to Moscow.  

Aliyev said he had proved there was a military solution to the dispute: “We are winning and will get our territory back and ensure our territorial integrity,” the Azeri president insisted said. “Let them abandon our territory in peace.”  

Meanwhile Armenia’s president Armen Sarkissian has demanded that international powers do more to stop Turkey’s involvement warning that Ankara is creating “another Syria in the Caucasus.”  

Few doubt that Russia potentially holds the key to this crisis. While having a mutual defence pact with Armenia and a military base there, Moscow also enjoys good relations with Azerbaijan and has no interest in the conflict spreading 

But feelings are running high right now and old wounds have been reopened. Any announcement of progress towards a ceasefire from the talks in Moscow this weekend, would come as welcome relief, not least to those citizens caught in the crossfire of this decades old dispute. 

“Azerbaijan chose a moment when all other countries were occupied with their own problems, and nobody cares about the South Caucasus,” observed Alexander Iskandaryan, head of the independent Caucasus Institute in Yerevan speaking to the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor.  

His view that the world was caught off guard is echoed elsewhere. But so too is the view that a new geopolitical order is being shaped and determined by players like Turkey.  

The world might have been looking elsewhere when this latest round in the seemingly endless battle for Nagorno-Karabakh got underway. But it will find it difficult to keep looking away if ceasefire talks fail and Russia and Turkey find themselves even more embroiled.