Since a 1994 ceasefire suspended hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh, this unresolved or “frozen” conflict has been subject to an international mediation effort aimed at forging a daunting negotiated resolution between Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. The mediation effort is led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – through its so-called Minsk Group, a tripartite body co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, working in close and effective cooperation with the parties to the conflict.

Over the past six months, however, tension has increased, attacks have escalated, and violations of the ceasefire have culminated into a real threat of a fresh war. Thus, the main focus of this diplomatic engagement has now gone “back to the basics,” moving away from outright conflict resolution and returning to the more basic need for conflict prevention. But the outlook is not promising, as the Azerbaijani leadership has only threatened to resume hostilities, warning of a military option to force a resolution to the conflict. This also suggests that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may quickly move from being a simmering, but manageable “frozen” conflict, into erupting as a new “hot” conflict.

For many people, the month of August is a time for summer vacation. For world leaders, August 2008 was also an opportunity to participate in the festivities of the Beijing Olympics. But for Georgia and Russia, August 2008 was a time of war. The sudden and surprising outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia caught most people completely off-guard. But there is a similar complacency that seems to ignore the warning signs of a possible renewed war in the South Caucasus- this time over Nagorno-Karabakh, the region’s sole remaining “frozen” conflict.

The warning signs of the possibility of renewed hostilities over Nagorno Karabakh have been only too obvious over the past year, and have included an escalation of attacks and clashes along the line of contact separating Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. Although there has been far too little appreciation of the danger of a return to armed conflict over Karabakh, some analysts have recently raised the alarm. In a January 2011 opinion piece in the Turkish daily newspaper “Today’s Zaman,” Amanda Paul, a Policy Analyst with the European Policy Centre (EPC), stressed that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict now “represents the biggest threat to security in the South Caucasus,” warning that given recent developments, “it would take only one cease-fire violation to spiral out of control and explode into a full-blown warfare-spreading catastrophe over the entire region, including key energy routes.” [1.]

[1.] Paul, Amanda, “Nagorno-Karabakh: more dangerous than ever,” Today’s Zaman, 23 January 2011

* Richard Giragosian is the director of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), an independent think tank in Yerevan.