[LINK] "Ax murderer's pardon stirs fears of war"

[rfmcdonald]

Via nwhyte comes Joe Sterling's CNN article warning that Azerbaijan's rehabilitation of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani soldier who killed an Armenian soldier while both were being trained by NATO, could lead to renewed war.

Sabine Freizer, director of the International Crisis Group's Europe program, said world powers have taken note.

"There is an awareness among government officials, both in the United States, Russia, and among European officials, that this conflict is getting worse. There should be something done to stop it," Freizer said.

"This takes us a whole step downward," said the Carnegie Endowment's de Waal.

The tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh reflect strong cultural attachments for both peoples, what Sergey Markedonov, visiting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, likens to a "Jerusalem for both societies."

Animosities over the disputed territory have simmered since the end of World War I. The Soviet Union's collapse in the 1990s triggered a war from 1992 to 1994 that killed 22,000 to 25,000 people and uprooted more than a million others.

The war ended "with a shaky truce," the International Crisis Group said.

The disputes between the countries over Nagorno-Karabakh and other territories remain an "unresolved conflict of the Soviet period," Freizer said. Amid the creation of newly independent countries after the Soviet collapse, she said, "no one was focused on the conflict."

"The kind of support for Yugoslavia," whose breakup led to major wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, was "never given to this region."

Over the years, violence has flared. Both countries occasionally talk tough about each other. And Azerbaijan's oil and gas wealth is making its way into the budget for a military preparing for war, Freizer said.

"Since 2011, we feel the situation has gotten worse," Freizer said.

The killer's pardon prompted a certain outrage factor, she said.

"People were shocked by this."