“By recycling conspiracy theories and distorted versions of the past, the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders only prolong their unresolved conflict over the territory of Nagorny Karabakh,” Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region, said in an article entitled “Time for an Armenia-Azerbaijan history ceasefire” which focuses on the Munich panel discussion between Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
According to the analyst, Aliyev and Pashinyan tried at times to be constructive, but their performance showed that this three-decades-old conflict over the Karabakh territory is “bigger than two men.”
“In Munich, Aliyev and Pashinyan were not so much leaders as conduits for the dark narratives of two nations. They reechoed the traumas and conspiracy theories of their own peoples and had no real message for the other side,” he said.
“The end of February is always a hard moment in the calendar for this conflict, as Armenians and Azerbaijanis each commemorate the horrible atrocities committed at Sumgait in 1988 and at Khojaly in 1992.
“With the dispute still unresolved, it is too much to ask to have the leaders acknowledge their own side’s guilt for these episodes – as a Serbian president finally did in 2013 for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. But both Aliyev and Pashinyan are actively obstructing conflict resolution by recycling conspiracy theories,” Thomas de Waal wrote, reflecting on the mentioned events and his previous interviews on the matter.
“The Munich fiasco will have shown neutrals how Armenians and Azerbaijanis are still deeply trapped in the Karabakh conflict and the chronic need for a third alternative narrative that does not merely rehearse two distorted versions of the past.
“History can also be deployed to support such a third narrative. Someone should perhaps reprint the text of the 1724 Persian-era friendship treaty signed between the Armenian lords of Karabakh and the Azerbaijani khans of Ganje (against the Ottoman Turks!).
“Otherwise, before the next international forum stages a similar event, the organizers should ask the two leaders to sign a ceasefire agreement on historical issues, to prevent bad history from further poisoning present negotiations,” the article read.
