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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 02/02
Shusha's Pivotal Role in a Nagorno-Karabagh Settlement
Elchin Amirbayov
December 2001
Abstract
In an attempt to better understand how the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia could be advanced, we asked Elchin Amirbayov of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry what he thought Azerbaijanis would consider to be the chief necessary element of an accord between the two countries. His answer is that control of the Shusha region is of the greatest importance to Azerbaijanis. In the next brief, we will publish an Armenian analyst's answer to a similar question.
It is my sense that Shusha (referred to by Armenians as "Shushi") is something like the Jerusalem of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. Thus, its final status is the crucial element of the settlement, and, like Jerusalem in the Middle East, it is a highly contentious issue for people on both sides of the conflict. Considering that Jerusalem is the crux of the Middle East peace question, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators might have faired better if they had not left this question to the final stages, which only encouraged radicals to derail the peace in efforts to influence the final status of the city. In a similar fashion, the negotiators handling the Nagorno-Karabagh settlement would do well to consider the question of Shusha during the earlier stages of negotiation rather than leaving it until the end.
We hope that this policy brief will help raise the awareness of U.S. policymakers, other negotiators, and people in the Caspian region to the centrality of the Shusha question as part of a successful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict.
The author and I would like to thank John Grennan, a research assistant at the Caspian Studies Program, for his contributions to this brief.
Brenda Shaffer, Ph.D.
Research Director
Caspian Studies Program
Harvard University
