{"id":7559,"date":"2021-01-13T12:57:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T12:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149487"},"modified":"2021-01-13T12:57:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T12:57:00","slug":"the-new-old-frontier-demarcation-sparks-tensions-as-azerbaijani-control-returns-along-southern-armenian-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/13\/the-new-old-frontier-demarcation-sparks-tensions-as-azerbaijani-control-returns-along-southern-armenian-border\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Old Frontier: Demarcation Sparks Tensions As Azerbaijani Control Returns Along Southern Armenian Border"},"content":{"rendered":"
SYUNIK, Armenia — The ruined buildings are easy to miss if you\u2019re not looking for them.<\/p>\n
Degraded and dismantled, the slight remains of perhaps a dozen houses are clustered tightly between the river and the highway, about 10 kilometers south of the city of Goris, in southern Armenia.<\/p>\n
But this is not Armenia. This is the village of Eyvazli, in Azerbaijan. And while there’s not much of it left, it now sits at the heart of the latest tensions between the two historical rivals and the uncertainties of the new border demarcation process here.<\/p>\n
The southern Armenian province of Syunik, which hosts Goris, forms a tendril of land stretching down from central Armenia to border Iran. On both sides, it is flanked by Azerbaijan — the Azerbaijani exclave of Naxcivan to the west and the Azerbaijani provinces (rayons) of Qubadli and Zangilan to the east.<\/p>\n
For the past 27 years, the latter border did not exist in reality. Qubadli and Zangilan were captured by Karabakh Armenian forces in 1993 and administered by Stepanakert until three months ago, when Azerbaijani forces retook them during a sweeping offensive.<\/p>\n
A Russia-brokered cease-fire ended 44 days of fresh fighting in the long-simmering war over Azerbaijan’s territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions on November 10, enshrining Azerbaijani control over the two. Now, for the first time since the border between then-Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan was drawn nearly a century ago, it is being officially demarcated.<\/p>\n
A glance at the map makes the problem immediately evident.<\/p>\n