Lexington Books
Pages: 262
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9½
978-0-7391-7827-0 • Hardback • February 2013 • $107.00 • (£82.00)
Bahruz Balayev holds a JSD in Intercultural Human Rights from Saint Thomas University School of Law.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Delimination of the Problem and Clarification of Goals
Chapter 2: Identification of Conflicting Claims and Claimants
Chapter 3: Past Trends in Decision and Conditioning Factors
Chapter 4: Prediction of Future Trends in Decision
Chapter 5: Appraisal, Recommendations and Conclusion
Nagorno Karabakh is a landlocked, mostly mountainous and forested region in the South Caucasus. It is located within the boundaries of what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan. During the Sovietization of the Caucasus, Joseph Stalin and the USSR's Caucasus Bureau decided to incorporate Nagorno Karabakh and its largely Armenian population into the newly created Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, thus planting the seeds of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In the waning years of the USSR, Karabakh Armenians began challenging the Azeri authorities and called for unifying Karabakh with Armenia. The conflict and the ensuing civil war have caused devastation in the area. Although a no-war, no-peace situation currently exists, Azerbaijan has lost effective control over the area. The resulting uncertainty about the satisfactory resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains a major source of instability in the strategically important South Caucasus. This book, based on the author's doctor of the science of law dissertation, provides a detailed political and legal analysis of the emergence of this conflict. Balayev examines ways the principle of the right of self-determination can help in resolving this conflict. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.
— Choice Reviews
Bahruz Balayev has undertaken to analyze and find solutions to one of the festering problems in the wake of the breakup of the USSR: the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-proclaimed, but unrecognized Armenian enclave state within the recognized state, and former Soviet republic, of Azerbaijan. Usefully, he puts this issue of self-determination in the broader historical and political context of the region, i.e. the South Caucasus. In the process, a fascinating picture emerges with different views as to the criteria for lawfulness of such endeavors based on the interests of the powers involved."
— Siegfried Wiessner, St. Thomas University School of Law
Mr. Bahruz Balayev's The Right to Self-Determination in the South Caucus (Nagorno Karabakh in Context) is a meticulously researched overview not just of the 'frozen' conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the erstwhile Azerbaijani (and now Armenian-occupied) Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabakh, but the related tragic conflicts in the Caucasus region upon the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Providing well-sourced data back to the early 19th century and Russian conquest of the region, but mainly focusing on the post-Soviet experience, Mr. Balayev's approach towards the seemingly diametrically opposed concepts of "self-determination" and "territorial integrity" is drawn from a rich mixture of history, local experience (and myth-making), and even from something we might call "Soviet-psychology. Highly recommended.
— Thomas Goltz, Montana State University