After recent clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijan troops, India will export missiles, rockets and a wide range of ammunition, including indigenous Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers, to Armenia to help defend the nation against the neighbour Azerbaijan. The India-Armenia military deal amounts to at least $300 million, this wasn’t the first military deal India had with Armenia, in the year 2020 India exported 4 Swati radars to Armenia, a deal amounted to 350 crores, and the same are deployed on India-Pakistan & India-China border.
Before getting into the geopolitics involved in India-Armenia military deal, let us go through the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, its reasons, parties involved and their history. Let’s begin!
Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict
Armenia (Capital-Yerevan, 97% Christian populous) is a landlocked country with Azerbaijan (Capital-Baku, 94% Islam populous, Shia majority) on its east, Turkey on its west, Georgia in the north, Iran in the south, Nokchivan an autonomous region of Azarbaijan which is also the trilateral junction of Armenia, Turkey and Iran in the south-east.
Like most conflicts this one too is over territory, “Nagorno-Karabakh” is claimed and internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s territory which is currently occupied by Armenian separatists & Armenia supports this group both politically and militarily. Both nation share decades of animosity and conflict, from 1988-1994 both nations were engaged in the First Nagorno-Karabakh war which came to an end after Russia’s intervention in 1994 & a ceasefire agreement was signed.
In 2020 the conflict raised to violent clashes, and Azerbaijan populous conducted mass demonstrations and demanded the area of Nagorno-Karabakh be back in possession of Azerbaijan. Normally such conflict wouldn’t have gained much attention but seeing the parties involved and the pandemic, the issue was a hot topic in the international media.
The aforementioned parties are Russia and Turkey, let’s go through one at a time:
RUSSIA & ARMENIA & AZERBAIJAN
Russia being in Armenia’s corner isn’t new, Russia has one military base in Armenia both Russia and Armenia are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) which is an intergovernmental military alliance of 6 post soviet states: Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan & Uzbekistan. But Russia also has neutral relations with Azerbaijan, it supplies weapons to both Armenia and Azarbaijan. & let us not forget it was Russia that helped both nations to come to an agreement in 1994.
TURKEY & AZERBAIJAN
Both nations have unorthodox relations, Turkey is a Sunni majority Islamic state whereas Azerbaijan is a Shia majority state & the bitter split between the two goes back some 14 centuries over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the Islamic faith.
But the economic development and interests made this cordial relationship possible. East of Azerbaijan lies the Caspian sea which is a major contributor to oil & natural gas production. The 2 major pipelines:
- Baku-Tiblis-Ceyhan pipeline
- The trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline joins with the South Caucasus pipeline at the Georgia-Turkey border.
are very crucial in this economic relation as Turkey acts as a bridge between the market i.e. Demand and Azerbaijan i.e. Supply, furthermore, Turkey controls Bosphorus and Darnalles straight which gives it access to the only maritime route to the Black sea making it quite profitable to both Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Geopolitical angle to India-Armenia Weapons Deal
INDIA’s stand
A few days back UN general assembly meeting was held, during which Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the Kashmir issue. Now it is no news that Turkey supports Pakistan over Kashmir and Azerbaijan as explained above. Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar a few days later met with Turkey’s counterpart and raised the issue of Cyprus to even out the playing field. And then there’s the recent development of PFI, Popular Front of India has connections with radical Turkey groups and its ban.
India too has good relations with Azerbaijan in the fields of Agriculture, Culture, Economy & Education. And also International North-South Transport Corridore, INSTC which will connect India, Iran and Russia passes through Baku giving India access to Europe, the Caucasus region and the Mediterranean.
Then why sell weapons to Armenia? Well, International relations and diplomacy are always complex & never operate on the principle of Black & White, so and the answer to that question is it was purely transactional, Indian weapon system was more economic, with better specifications than its competition and the Armenian army are already familiar with Indian weaponry.
ISRAEL’s stand
But again Azerbaijan is also supported by Israel which whom India has good relations. The reason why Israel supports Azerbaijan is that Mossad Israel Intelligence group uses Azerbaijan as a springboard for their operations in North-East Iran. In 2020 Azerbaijan procured and used Israeli weapons against Armenia, thus both Israel and Azerbaijan share long-term strategic cooperation. Look at Iran’s populous it’s 1/3rd ethenic Azerbaijanis, this provides Israel with a soft power to carry out its operations in Iran without putting any boots on the ground. To understand Iran and Israel’s relations refer to Jerusalem Declaration.
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