Marcelo Cantelmi
Translated by Vartan Matiossian
The evolution of the complex geopolitical table of the Southern Caucasus shows that any step involving the countries of that region must take different conflicting interests into consideration.
On June 4, 2012, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, as part of her tour of the Southern Caucasus that included Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Baku, in Azerbaijan.
But that day something else happened: three Armenian soldiers were killed in a strife with Azerbaijani soldiers in the borderline region of Tavush, on the northwest of the country. Several hours later, on June 5, five members of the military, this time Azerbaijani, died in two separated combats with Armenian troops near the city of Azhag (*), again in the northwest. Before that, in April, Armenia had denounced that Azerbaijani soldiers had opened fire against civilian targets, hitting an ambulance near the so-called contact line, as well as a school and a private car in the village of Aygepar. Three Armenian soldiers were in the car and all of them died.
The repetition of these grave incidents, which the interested parties blame on each other, reflects a dangerous broke of the ceasefire in force after the fierce war these countries fought between February 1989 and 1994 for the sovereignty of the Nagorno Karabagh enclave, leaving some 25,000 deaths. But it also shows the depth of the confrontation between both nations and the evidence that the state of war, technically ongoing, is hanging from an ever-thinning thread.