This is diplomacy

Amidst sporadic firefights on the border, an interesting UN resolution on Karabagh has Azerbaijan up in arms:

The UN General Assembly on March 14 adopted a nonbinding resolution demanding the "immediate, complete, and unconditional" withdrawal of all Armenian forces from Azerbaijan's territory.

Thirty nine countries voted in favor. But more than 100 countries abstained. Seven countries, however, including Russia, the United States, and France, voted against.

The three countries are co-chairs of the Minsk Group, which is trying to facilitate a negotiated settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They argued that, as mediators, they had to remain neutral.

The "no" vote by the Minsk Group members has raised the hackles of most people here, from the government to the press to the fractious opposition.

Of course, no one is happy with the outcome of the vote.

Meanwhile, food prices continue to rise in the face of Dutch Disease.

When violence works for everyone

Amid continuing violence in the aftermath of Armenian presidential elections, there's been a flareup in the Garabagh border standoff.

Azerbaijan claims that the violence is an attempt to divert attention from the protests, and that isn't entirely unbelievable. According to the Defence Ministry:

You see, Armenians are trying to divert the attention of their citizens and the world community from the internal and domestic unrest and bloody actions. That is the reason why Armenia resorted to this. Azerbaijani armed forces courageously and bravely repelled the enemy, prevented their attacks and gave deserving retaliation.

However, that's not the only issue at play here -- the actual violence comes in the direct aftermath of a salvo launched by Azeri president Ilham Aliyev:

"Official Baku will never make concessions to the separatist regime of Nagorno Karabakh and will never give up its principles. We are for the peaceful resolution of the problem in the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity with observance of norms and principles of international law. But we should also be ready to the problem settlement by other ways," Aliyev noted.

He said in this issue country's leadership attach special attention to army strengthening. "For this purpose we use all capacities. Strengthening of the army will influence the negotiation process and settlement of the problem", the president said.

These broadsides, however, are a matter of course in Azeri politics, and one more or less could hardly rock the boat of Azer-Armenia diplomacy.

The Armenians, of course, responded; given the tensions between the two, it's impossible to guage the level of sincerity, but with Armenia effectively in control of Karabagh, there doesn't seem to be much need for the Armenians to escalate violence:

"Azerbaijan has made announcements on purchase of arms and the forced resolution of the Karabakh conflict, however, talks on the peaceful resolution of the conflict are being held", [Prime Minister Serj Sarkisian] told reporters in Yerevan.

Sarkisyan said he is optimistic on the case and considers that normal civilized logics will win and Garabakh problem will be settled peacefully.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Karabagh, there's precious little "normal civilized logics" on either side. Indeed, even the numbers are a purely political game. At the moment, the Azeris are claiming to have lost three soldiers dead and one wounded to an Armenian loss of 15 dead; Sarkisian claims, meanwhile:

But I would like to inform that this position is currently under our control and the enemy has given up with numerous casualties.

A view from the ground on the thwarted attack

A terrorist attack was thwarted here on Monday, and it's getting some play in the news and the blogosphere. The attack has temporarily shut down the British Embassy and greatly reduced operations for American concerns in Baku.

There are a few interesting aspects to the event as I see it here. The first is the Shiite angle, which does a few interesting things. Iran certainly is a neighbor, but I think it is probably not the driver of this attack. Despite a certain growth in religious self-identity in the country since the Soviet collapse, I don't see much indication that it has penetrated very deeply, or turned toward radicalism. In the south, Wahhabi mullahs are making inroads, but from what I've seen, they're viewed with suspicion. Beards are not only not worn, for example, but seen as slightly suspect. The north has a greater number of Sunni adherents, and although that could suggest ties to Daghestani and perhaps Chechen Sunnis, I've seen little sign of that, either. Most of the religious influence seems to be coming from Jordan and Turkey, and especially in the case of Turkey, seems more directed at fostering stronger inter-governmental ties than at fostering any kind of fundamentalism.

Moreover, border control seems fairly strong. It's hardly surprising to me that the would-be terrorists used local weapons (which lead to the timely discovery that these weapons were missing): drug interdiction efforts are very strict (hardly a day goes by when we don't see some drug runner getting caught on the 5 o'clock news), and guns are even harder to get in, due to worries about said weapons getting to Garabagh.

The north is equally quiet. I know a police officer in a mountain town who got into a gunfight with a group of Chechens quite a few years ago. However, it was long ago, and the men were gangsters, holding up cars for money, not radicals. Since those four men were shut down, there haven't been any real problems that I'm aware of.

Another brief word about the military connection. Given the fact that every Azeri male must serve two years, it isn't impossible that some more or less fanatical young man might get access to weapons - as apparently happened here. But as this incident has illustrated, the corruption in the military seems to extend only to the huge sums of oil money being kicked toward the top brass. So it isn't surprising that when a weapons cache went missing, it was discovered fairly quickly. And the soldier in question marked himself even more conspicuously by deserting - a very major red flag for this country.

One other thing has struck me about this attack - that's the much-repeated quote about a "horrifying, large-scale attack." I can't really imagine an attack using 20 grenades, a few automatic rifles, and a machine gun as being terribly large-scale, especially if directed against two embassies (either simultaneously or not). I wonder what we're not being told in this regard?

The overall mood here seems very quiet, and not at all anti-American. I doubt, overall, that this will amount to much.