Thomas Fasbender: Restoration of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity offers real chance for peace with Armenia

The restoration of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Azerbaijan within the borders established by international law offers the first real chance for peace since the collapse of the Soviet Union - a situation that Ukraine, for example, can currently only dream of, German journalist Thomas Fasbender said in the article headlined "Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict: peace after 30 years and two wars?" published in Berliner Zeitung.

"After decades of tension, including two wars since the fall of the USSR, there is an opportunity for a real, lasting peace solution in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. It was a long, bloody road," the author says adding that hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict.

He believes that the South Caucasus region is at the doorstep of new opportunities.

"The starting position is not that bad. Azerbaijan, which is far superior militarily, fought an extremely short war in September," the author notes.

According to the journalist, it seems undisputed that the information spread in the first days after the war about alleged massacres and mass murders of Armenians was unfounded.

Leading representatives of the United Nations and Western states, including the EU, speak neither of expulsion nor of ethnic cleansing, and certainly not of genocide, in connection with the exodus.

The main motive for fleeing was probably the fear of a future, the author said.

"After Armenia occupied the Azerbaijani territory in the first Karabakh War, by 1994, at least 600,000 Azerbaijanis had become internally displaced; their towns and villages fell into ruins. The territories returned to Azerbaijan only in 2020," he said.

The article notes that the reason for the current cautious optimism is primarily "the restoration of national sovereignty within the borders established by international law - a situation that Ukraine, for example, can currently only dream of," adding that "there are obstacles."

Fasbender said that the Zangazur corridor is one that should not be underestimated.

He reminded that under the Trilateral Statement, Armenia undertook to ensure an "unhindered" transport connection between the main part of Azerbaijan in the east and the Nakhchivan AR further west.

"Given that both states continue to distrust each other, implementing such a corridor is unlikely to be an easy task; at least that's how it appears to the outsider," the journalist says.

The corridor isn't the only stumbling block either. Azerbaijan would like to see that the approximately 200,000 Azerbaijanis who had to flee Armenia towards Azerbaijan in the years after 1988 could return to their homeland. In return, Baku points to the possibility of the return of the Karabakh Armenians to Azerbaijan, Fasbender said.