Page 5 - Caucasus Outlook 2024

appears to want to achieve his objectives by threats.
As for Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is determined to achieve peace, even at the cost of cutting Nagorno-Karabakh adrift. The real question this year is to what extent he is prepared to make significant concessions to reach a deal, notably on the issues of the return of refugees, the redrawing of borders, and a “Zangeur Corridor” connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan.
So far the weakness of the political opposition has enabled Pashinyan to ride out the storm of the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh, as he did in 2020 when Azerbaijan routed Karabkh and Armenian forces. Armenia also seems to be coping well with integrating the Karabakh refugee wave.
A peace deal would offer Yerevan the chance to open up transport connections with both Azerbaijan and Turkey that could transform its economy and that of the region. It would also provide an opportunity to push Russia out of the southern Caucasus, as it would no longer be needed as a guarantor of the peace – a role it has anyway flunked. Armenia has already begun to strengthen its links with the West, notably France. Yet Russia still has many levers it can pull inside Armenia. Pashinyan’s challenge in the coming year is going to be manoeuvring between Russia and the West, without provoking Moscow into even more overt attempts to bring him down.
In Azerbaijan, Aliyev looks increasingly impregnable following Baku’s victory over the tiny Nagorno-Karabakh army. Taking advantage of this, he has called early presidential elections to be held in February, a year earlier than originally planned. But the Aliyev family, which has ruled the country for 30 years, is taking no chances in the façade elections. It has launched a wave of arrests and currently more than 200 people are held as political prisoners.
Georgian dreams
The other big event of the year was the European Commission’s decision on December 14 to finally grant candidate status for EU membership to Georgia, after turning it down in 2022. The green light was more a reflection of the geopolitical environment than any progress Tbilisi has made to fulfil the conditions the EU had set. Failing Georgia again could have pushed the Georgian Dream government to accelerate its already worrying drift towards Moscow.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Georgia steered a middle course, refusing to join sanctions on Moscow but also not obviously acting as a backdoor to help the Kremlin evade them. But last year Georgia appeared to be moving closer to Moscow, with deepening economic ties and a resumption of direct flights.
5 Central Asia & Caucasus Outlook 2021 www.intellinews.com