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During the last decade Azerbaijan has reached zero success on the Karabakh issue. Azerbaijan is spending a large amount of money on the military, but the problem of Azerbaijan is that the Armenian military still has advantages, said Senior Scientific employee Thomas de Waal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at the interview given to RFE/RL.

To the question how has the situation regarding Karabakh changed over the last decade, expert answered that the main thing hasn't changed -- which is the situation of basically post-1994, no war/no peace, as we call it. There is no active fighting, but also no resolution of the conflict. According to him that hasn't changed. A peace still looks further off than ever. People are beginning to talk about the possibility of conflict, which I also discuss in the book.

“Unfortunately, it's entered the phase of just being even more difficult. But the main thing that has changed is the kind of rise of an Azerbaijan that has oil and gas power,” said Thomas de Waal, according him to Azerbaijan is much more powerful than it was in 2000, 13 years ago.

“But the paradox is it has got nothing, nothing with regard to Karabakh. It has not recovered any territory; no refugees have gone home. So this has been zero success for Azerbaijan on the Karabakh issue,” he said.

As for Armenia the expert said is also a little more stable than it was, though its economy is obviously not as good as Azerbaijan's.
“Karabakh itself has changed quite a lot. Everything has been rebuilt and it's very hard to see ruins in Karabakh in the main Armenian settlements, roads, infrastructure,” noted Thomas de Waal.

He noted that it's much harder to see where the former NKO, the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, ends and the NKR begins.

Expert noted that Azerbaijan is spending a large amount of money on the military. However he thinks the problem of Azerbaijan is that the Armenians still have two advantages on the military side. “They have the landscape they are defending, which is mountainous, which is always easier to defend than to attack. And they can also buy weapons from Russia at reduced prices; Azerbaijan is also buying weapons from Russia, as you know, but at full price,” he said.

According to the expert if there were to be some new fighting even in a few days the destruction that could be done, on both sides, would be greater than the entire three years of war that we saw in the 1990s.

Thomas de Waal noted that though there is just no trust between the two sides, there is still quite a good agreement possible.
He also touched upon the protest against the Azerbaijan writer Akram Aylisli who was talking about peace and reconciliation, and called it a “bad message.”