Canada has a role to play in the South Caucasus

Canada has had formal diplomatic relations with both Azerbaijan and Armenia since 1992, when it recognized their territorial integrity within the borders they had before the Soviet collapse. Acknowledging four United Nations Security Council resolutions from 1993, Canadian policy has always supported Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and opposed separatism, just as it has done in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Canada has a long history of co-operation with Azerbaijan and Armenia, starting with NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program in 1994. Beginning in 2001, tens of thousands of military aircraft and supply trucks transited Azerbaijan, carrying NATO forces and equipment to Afghanistan. Beginning in 2002, the Azerbaijani Peacekeeping Battalion participated in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. When the Northern Distribution Network was established in 2009, Azerbaijan continued to be a key link until it closed a few years ago. Like Canada, Azerbaijan gives tangible support to Ukraine. It sends large cargoes of humanitarian aid. The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic owns filling stations in Ukraine that give free fuel to such emergency services as ambulances and firetrucks. Azerbaijan recently provided Ukraine with emergency power generators for winter use. What can Canada do today? First, Ottawa should do more to help de-mine the full one-sixth of Azerbaijan’s territory—a region more than twice as large as the Greater Toronto Area—that was militarily occupied over the course of 30 years. Canada’s contribution to the de-mining effort in Azerbaijan has not matched its international prominence. Many countries, NGOs, and international organizations around the world contribute not only funding, but also personnel and training and education assistance to Azerbaijan’s long-term de-mining program. No fewer than 80,000 mines were discovered and neutralized around the single destroyed city of Aghdam. Estimates of the number of mines laid throughout the formerly occupied territories range upwards of one million. Canada should also encourage Armenia to fulfill its obligation under international law to turn over to Azerbaijan all maps of the mines that its forces laid during 30 years of military occupation. Second, Canada should open an embassy in Azerbaijan. The latest crisis on the Lachin road, indeed the whole political instability in the region, is currently engineered by Russia, which seeks to derail the peace process. The European Union, the United States, and other western powers all agree that only direct bilateral contacts and negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia will succeed in arriving at a definitive settlement. Azerbaijan has many times declared its willingness to embrace Armenia, to reconcile the two civil societies, and to build mutually beneficial co-operation economically and otherwise. Russia alone opposes this, because it does not want to be locked out of the region where it has been accustomed for so long to being the hegemonic power. Both Canada and Azerbaijan are genuinely multicultural middle powers that continually punch above their weight in international diplomacy. Both Canada and Azerbaijan have demonstrated their belief in a rules-based international order by their actions, by their conduct of international diplomacy, and by their participation in international co-operation and leadership of international organizations. If Azerbaijan is not as democratic as we might like, then without diplomatic representation we lose the chance to discover the real pluralism in Azerbaijani society, to engage in open dialogue, and to tell official Baku what we think. Azerbaijan is the most significant local geopolitical player in the broader region. Not only does it provide important support to Ukraine, but it is also a very important ally of Israel: which its neighbour Iran, ironically—like Russia—an ally of Armenia in the conflict, does not like. An embassy in Baku is essential not only to be better represented in the broader Caspian Sea region but also to get an even-handed view from the ground, sensitive to all the critical nuances upon which the whole future of the region will turn. Robert M. Cutler is a past fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. The Hill Times