Apparently nobody wants to address the deeper geo-political struggle behind the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, now flared up again and invading the front pages world-wide. A decades-long story about a localized enclave in a deeply isolated zone – how can it have wider ramifications in terms of the global power balance? How can it affect, say, China or Europe or the Mideast? Seems fanciful but what happens between Armenia and Azerbaijan, even specifically the control over mountainous Karabakh, does potentially shift far-flung inter-continental alignments. Only the neighboring countries talk about that – if they choose to. Some don’t because it’s the elephant in the room. This column is not about the historical grievances or human rights outrages of the Karabakh conflict. Those are important but exhaustively covered elsewhere. What you don’t see anywhere is a proper look at the superpower stakes hidden in the geography.
Take a close look at the map of Karabakh, an outcrop of the Caucasus mountains inside Azerbaijan that, in maximal extent, reaches far enough south to touch the border with Iran. Logistically whoever controls the Karabakh heights in Azerbaijan potentially dominates that sensitive stretch of border, which offers a clue to the decades-long bloodshed. Now this part of the argument cannot advance without some serious attention to geographical detail. We’ll call it the tale of two corridors. First, the Zangezur Corridor. Along that Iran-Azerbaijan border zone, overlooked by Karabakh’s mountains, runs the putative ‘Zangezur Corridor’. The corridor then goes across a sliver of Armenian territory, thereby directly connects Azerbaijan to Turkey – a long cut-off connection which the two Turkic countries aim to restore. Here’s an article about the Zangezur project. The Iranians are against it. The Armenians are against it. Moscow used to oppose it. Why is it so important? Answer: because the ‘Zangezur Corridor’ is potentially the last leg of a much longer north-south route called the ‘Middle Corridor’ that would connect Central Asia’s Turkic republics to Turkey proper via Azerbaijan. We’re talking a rail and road lifeline, and various fuel pipelines, that can revive the ancient Silk Road trade route which Moscow cut off two centuries ago under the Czars.
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