By Fuad SHAHBAZOV, Baku-based independent regional security and defence analyst

On February 22, the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made an paid official trip visit to Moscow to discuss and sign a new declaration on allied cooperation with Russia. The visit came just a day after President Putin's infamous decision to recognize the independence of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk Peoples' Republic in Eastern Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin’s “unexpected” decision deteriorated relations with Ukraine, even more and was followed by the new round of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S and the EU.
President Aliyev's visit to Moscow triggered debates in Azerbaijan and Russia, respectively , on whether the main text of the declaration was pre-negotiated between the two leaders, or prepared amid the escalation around Ukraine. READ MORE

• February 28, 2022

By Eugene KOGAN, Tbilisi-based defence and security expert

Moscow and Beijing are likely to discover that their initial joy over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan may be premature. Afghanistan under the Taliban remains divided, insecure and uncertain about its current and future path. Without stability and security, neither Beijing nor Moscow will provide economic assistance while the international community will continue to shun Afghanistan.
Russia’s Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, noted that “The Taliban were easier to negotiate with than the old “puppet government” of the exiled President Ashraf Ghani.” The latter was seen by, and from Moscow, as a puppet of the West and contacts that Russia maintained with Hamid Karzai’s successor were either downgraded or revised. At the same time, contacts between Russia and the Taliban only increased. With the West’s departure, Moscow is seizing up the opportunity indirectly to recognise the authority of the Taliban, which it officially designated as a terrorist organisation back in 2003 though without burning its bridges with the militant group. READ MORE.

• February 22, 2022

By Fuad SHAHBAZOV, Baku-based independent regional security and defence analyst

Since its emergence in the 1980s, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been a significant source of concern to the state of Turkey. With the escalation of conflict between the Turkish state and the ethnic Kurdish community in the 1990s, the level of violence explicitly increased, and the civilian death toll rose to its highest point. Though the PKK could not ensure absolute authority in large, predominantly Kurdish provinces in the southeast, it gradually shifted to a new strategy —urban violence— to undermine the Turkish state's authority in Kurdish regions.
According to theories of violent resistance, violence is the only practical and productive tool of mass mobilisation of ethnic insurgencies against political systems. In the case of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey, many scholars argue that Turkey's policy of ethnic nationalism has had a decisive role in shaping Kurdish ethnic nationalism throughout these years. READ MORE

• February 22, 2022

Are Russian forces getting ready for war in Ukraine? At least 130,000 Russian troops are positioned within reach of Ukraine's borders as Russia demands security guarantees from the West.

• February 16, 2022

Russia has positioned about 130,000 troops - equipped with everything from tanks and artillery to ammunition and air power - close to Ukraine's border.

• February 11, 2022

The US president is to send troops to Poland and Germany amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• February 2, 2022

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West not to create panic amid the build-up of Russian troops on his country's borders.

• January 28, 2022

By Alan Whitehorn, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, The Royal Military College of Canada

Without a doubt, Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin is the greatest factor in the risk of war between Russia and Ukraine. Yet paradoxically, Putin is perhaps the best hope for peace in the South Caucasus, at least as far as Azerbaijan and Armenia are concerned. The Georgian situation is, however, another matter. But one should take one step at a time in this exceptionally dangerous and conflict-prone region.
The recent 2020 Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and Armenia was, in effect, a continuation of the bitter 1990s ethno-religious territorial war over Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) that emerged between the two newly independent states in the midst of the break-up of the Soviet Union. The 1990s conflict produced thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of displaced civilian ethnic minority refugees. It was a humanitarian catastrophe for families on both sides of the border. READ MORE

• January 16, 2022