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West’s leading Karabakh expert says people’s aspirations for independence must be recognized

Emil Sanamyan talks to Tom de Waal

by Emil Sanamyan

Published: Saturday May 26, 2007

Washington - Tom de Waal is the Caucasus service editor at the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). With reporters on the ground throughout the Caucasus, IWPR prepares weekly news updates and in-depth stories from both the South Caucasus and Russia's North Caucasus. Mr. De Waal is the author of books on the conflicts in Chechnya and Karabakh.

Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, (New York University Press, 2003) was the first and remains the only major study to take an in-depth and nonpartisan view of the conflict.

Earlier this month, Mr. de Waal was in Washington to participate in a conference on the Caucasus and deliver a lecture at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on May 14, where he again called the continued standoff over Karabakh "the most serious conflict in Eurasia."

Mr. de Waal argued that the status quo "is not sustainable in the long term" and that greater international attention is needed to prevent a new, potentially much more devastating conflagration.

Looking at ways to address the conflict, Mr. de Waal noted that Kosovo's likely independence will set a precedent for other secessionist conflicts.

When looking at Karabakh and other breakaway regions in the Caucasus, one must understand that their "aspirations for independence are real" and have to be factored in into the peace process. The "idea of independence," he added, must be made part of the talks and positively leveraged to encourage more democratic policies.

In the end, some form of "surrender of sovereignty" by states involved "is the only way forward," according to Mr. de Waal. "There is absolutely no way you can persuade [Karabakh]" to become part of Azerbaijan.

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On May 11 our Washington editor Emil Sanamyan spoke to Mr. de Waal about the book, its impact, and more recent developments:

Reporter: Is your Karabakh book available for readers in the region?

De Waal: A Russian-language version is available. There are copies in Moscow and in the region. Last November I went to Baku, Yerevan, and Stepanakert, and I did presentations of the Russian version of the book. The Armenian translation is finished and the Azeri translation is about to be finished. So some time later this year it should come out in both Armenian and Azerbaijani.

Reporter: What kind of an impact are you hoping to generate? And what has been the response so far?

De Waal: Obviously, it's just one book. But I think there is some interesting information in there that puts the conflict in a different light, one that most people in the region have not seen or are not accustomed to seeing. My hope is that it might encourage more critical debate and self-criticism. That is the idea.

And a lot of readers have said that they enjoyed the book, enjoyed an outsider's perspective.

Having said that, there is still very much the tendency to look for information that is negative to the other side and concentrate exclusively on the bad things the other side did, and not own up to any of the bad things on one's own part.

Reporter: In terms of any of the criticisms that you have heard since the English version came out, have you rethought anything in the book?

De Waal: The big debate in Armenia that we had was basically about the flight of Azeris from Kapan and Meghri. As far as I am concerned, there is evidence that it happened sometime before [the anti-­Armenian pogroms in Sumgait in] February 1988.

Reporter: So at issue now are both Kapan and Meghri?

De Waal: Well, from Kapan basically, and these Azeris went to Baku and Sumgait. And I met an Armenian woman married to an Azeri, who said that she saw them at the railway station in Baku. So, I suppose there is evidence.

But since this became such an important issue in Armenia, my regret is that I did not do as much research on that particular issue. I did not go to Kapan.

For me, actually, it is not such a big issue. Because there were incidents, such as [anti-Armenian violence] in Chardakhlu [in Azerbaijan's Shamkhor district in the fall of 1987] that predated that. But obviously I can see where the Armenians are coming from, since if there was indeed violence in Kapan before February 1988 then that would mean that everything was not peaceful on the Armenian side before [Sumgait]. And that is very much a part of the Armenian narrative of Karabakh events - that "we are a peaceful people." So I can see why this is an important point.

But I can just say that conflicts escalate gradually. They start with a smaller incident and lead to a bigger incident. And for me this was part of gradual escalation and I don't particularly attach any great moral significance to that.

Reporter: The complaints from the Armenian side, though, focused on an impression one might get from the book that events in Sumgait were being given the same significance as whatever happened in Kapan, which was and still is largely unknown to most people on both sides. And that this was part of an effort by you to balance out grievances.