Trumpbrokered

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, his late father and predecessor Heydar Aliyev and some of their closest political allies hail from Nakhchivan.

The name of this tiny, mountainous and underdeveloped Azeri area sandwiched between Armenia, Iran and Turkiye sounds unfamiliar to those outside the strategic South Caucasus region.

But Nakhchivan’s name and geopolitical significance resurfaced after United States President Donald Trump hosted a White House summit between Azeri and Armenian leaders on Friday.

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a preliminary peace deal to end the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

In the early 1990s, ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region broke away from oil-rich Azerbaijan after a war that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Moscow brokered a truce in 1994, maintaining two military bases in resource-poor Armenia, supplying it with cheap energy while selling arms to Azerbaijan.

Even though the conflict did not involve Nakhchivan, it cut off the Zangezur Corridor, a 40km (25-mile) logistical umbilical cord to Azeri mainland that consists of a derelict road and parallel rusty rail tracks.

Air travel and hours-long, bumpy transit through Iran remained the only way to reach the exclave, whose authorities ruled it like a personal fiefdom, with laws and ways of life often contradicting those of the mainland.

After winning the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh and restoring control over it three years later, Baku has been eager to revive the corridor, demanding its exterritoriality and even pondering the use of military force.

‘A new reality in the region’

The reasons go far beyond restoring access to Aliyev’s ancestral land. The corridor could become a mammoth transport hub between Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

It may increase the flow of Central Asian hydrocarbons to Turkiye and further to Europe, boost the regional economy – and upend Russia’s two centuries of domination in the region that also includes Georgia.

Armenia was reluctant to allow Azeri access to the corridor, fearing that the emboldened Turkish-Azeri tandem may jeopardise its security.

But Trump cut through the Gordian knot on Friday, and his role “essentially, cements a new reality in the region”, according to Emil Mustafayev, the Baku-based chief editor of the Minval Politika online magazine.

“This is a serious shift in the security architecture and transport logistics of the South Caucasus,” he told Al Jazeera.

While in the White House, Aliyev and Pashinyan lavished Trump with praise and nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“What cracked me up is that [they] didn’t lose their way about how one has to communicate in Washington,” Andrey Kazantsev, an expert on the region, told Al Jazeera.

They also flattered Trump by naming the corridor the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) and leasing it to Washington for up to 99 years with exclusive development rights.

What looks like one of Trump’s favourite real estate deals actually heralds a tectonic shift.

“Trump’s administration has indeed been quick to find its way towards the long-due geopolitical pivot,” Kazantsev said.

China, which has been promoting its Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and Eastern Europe, may remain “neutral” to it, and Russia, which has two military bases in Armenia, may “ignore it, at least, publicly”, he said. “But for Iran, it’s a real blow.”

‘A boost of Washington’s clout’

To guard the TRIPP, Washington may use a private military company – and eventually build a military base that nominally safeguards Armenia but actually keeps an eye on Iran, said Ukrainian political analyst Aleksey Kushch.

“It means more potential pressure on Iran and a boost of Washington’s clout in the resource-rich Caspian region where US oil companies made sizeable investments” in the 1990s, he said.

And Moscow is also about to lose a lot.

“No matter how paradoxical it sounds, it’s Moscow that has been and still is a decisive factor in the peace settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in solving the latter’s problem of accessing Nakhchivan,” said Alisher Ilkhamov, head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a think tank in London.

“One of the main motives for rapprochement of both sides is their push to get rid of Moscow’s influence, of the peacekeeper’s role it has imposed on them,” he told Al Jazeera.

The new deal “only highlights how fictitious Moscow’s role as peacekeeper and middleman in peace settlement in the South Caucasus is”, Ilkhamov said.

However, the deal is not yet set in stone, and the Trump-hosted summit “sparked premature optimism”, said Kevork Oskanian of the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom.

This optimism “should be tempered by realism and historical precedent [as] many peace processes have failed despite promising starts”, he told Al Jazeera.

A deal not yet done

Baku, whose annual $5bn defence spending exceeds Yerevan’s entire debt-hobbled state budget, affirmed Armenia’s territorial integrity but did not withdraw from some 200sq km (77sq miles) of its land.

The TRIPP’s concept avoids Baku’s demand for the corridor’s extraterritoriality, balancing sovereignty with strategic access, Oskanian said.

But there are also questions as to whether Washington’s initiatives are “a principled intervention or opportunistic geopolitics”, he added.

Even without direct confrontation, Moscow and Tehran could try to undermine the deal.

“Their grudging acquiescence is essential – but far from guaranteed,” Oskanian said.

Iran threatened on Saturday that the TRIPP “will not become a gateway for Trump’s mercenaries – it will become their graveyard”.

Armenia is a democracy “polarised” over the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh and Pashinyan’s conflict with the Armenian Apostolic Church, Oskanian said.

To finalise the peace deal, Pashinyan would need to hold a referendum amending Armenia’s constitution that mentions the “reunification” with Nagorno-Karabakh – and win the 2026 parliamentary vote.

Therefore, the success of Trump’s deal depends on many intricacies of South Caucasus politics – and the West “must engage with nuance – not just geopolitics”, Oskanian concluded.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are expected to sign a United States-mediated peace deal on Friday following several months of conflict that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions in resource-rich eastern DRC.

Neither country is formally at war, but the DRC accuses its neighbour, Rwanda, of backing the M23 rebel group, which is waging war in eastern DRC. Rwanda denies this charge.

In January, a deadly offensive by the rebels – aided by Rwandan forces, according to a United Nations expert panel – escalated a decades-long conflict in eastern DRC. The M23 has since seized the strategic cities of Goma and Bukavu, and its attacks have raised fears of a regional war.

The peace agreement comes amid reports that the US is considering investments in the mineral-rich region in return for security and calm in an area where dozens of militias vying for resource control have operated since the mid-1990s.

Here’s what we know about the peace agreement to be announced:

What’s the background to the crisis?

The DRC and Rwanda conflict dates back to the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and centrist Hutus in 1994.

Following the overthrow of the genocidal government by the Rwandan Defence Forces, Hutu genocidaires fled into the neighbouring DRC’s poorly governed eastern region. They hid among civilian refugees and continued to launch attacks on Rwanda.

Kigali’s attempts to attack those forces led to the First and Second Congo Wars (1996-1997 and 1998-2003). Rwanda and Uganda were accused of targeting Hutu civilians, and looting and smuggling the DRC’s coffee, diamonds, timber, coltan and gold. Other neighbours similarly interfered, choosing Rwanda or the DRC’s side.

Eastern DRC has been in the throes of low-level conflict since then. More than six million people have been killed, and millions have been displaced. At least 100 armed groups taking advantage of a security vacuum operate in the area and control lucrative mines. The DRC has one of the world’s largest reserves of coltan and cobalt. It is also rich in gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten, which are critical for tech gadgets.

M23, which first emerged in 2012, is one of those forces. The group mostly comprises Congolese Tutsi soldiers who fought in the war and were to be integrated into the army. In 2011, they revolted, claiming ethnic discrimination in the force. M23 now says it is defending the rights of Congolese Tutsis. However, critics accuse the group of being a front for Rwanda’s ambitions to control the region – a charge that Kigali rejects. President Felix Tshisekedi has also accused longtime Rwandan leader Paul Kagame of backing the group.

A 2022 United Nations expert report noted that Rwanda is actively backing the M23 and that about 3,000 to 4000 Rwandan troops are on the ground in the DRC. The US has also said that Rwanda backs the group. Rwanda counters the allegations by accusing the DRC of working with other armed groups like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel outfit. Kinshasa insists that it does not work with the group.

Why did the conflict resurface?

M23, which was initially pushed back with the help of a UN force, resurfaced in 2022 with a series of violent, sporadic attacks. In January 2025, it launched a lightning offensive, armed with heavy artillery, seizing towns in quick succession and promising to march on Kinshasa.

An alliance of the Congolese Defence Forces, the FLDR, and a force from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) attempted to push the group back. In May, the SADC forces withdrew.

African Union-led mediation attempts like the Luanda Peace Process (2022) and the Nairobi Peace Process (2023) have failed to end the violence, as each side blames the other for violating ceasefires. In March, President Joao Lourenco of Angola, who attempted to strike a deal for months, stepped down as official mediator.

Meanwhile, the European Union has cut military aid to Rwanda and the United States has imposed sanctions on key Rwandan army officials for their involvement in the conflict.

In April, US Secretary of Defence Marco Rubio began negotiations with DRC Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner and her Rwandan counterpart, Olivier Nduhungirehe.

Qatar is also involved in the mediation. Tshisekedi and Kagame met Qatar’s emir in Doha in rare first face-to-face talks in March.

What’s in the peace agreement?

A full draft of the agreement to be signed on Wednesday has not been made available.

Earlier drafts during the negotiation process included standard provisions like:

• Either side’s respect for territorial integrity and a cessation of hostilities.
• Disengagement, disarmament and conditional integration of non-state armed groups.
• The return of refugees and displaced persons.

Earlier in April, the US Department of State released conditions that would guide the negotiations, although it is not confirmed if they were included in the final agreement. They were categorised as such:

• Sovereignty: Both sides agreed to recognise and respect each other’s territorial borders.
• Security: Both committed to not supporting any armed groups and to establishing a joint security mechanism to target militias.
• Economic issues: Both countries agreed to use existing regional framework structures, such as the East African Community, to expand transparent trade and investment opportunities, including those to be facilitated by “the US government or US investors” in mineral supply chains, hydropower development and national park management.

Is the deal a bargaining chip for DRC’s minerals?

Some critics have raised fears that the US could use the deal as leverage for greater access to the DRC’s minerals. Such a scenario, they warn, could cause a replay of the violence of past decades, when the DRC’s minerals were a major draw for interfering foreign governments.

These fears are rooted in a February pitch from the Tshikekedi government to the US. The DRC offered a minerals-for-security deal to Washington, essentially asking the US government to oversee the stability of eastern DRC in exchange for minerals.

US envoy to Africa Massad Boulos confirmed on a trip to DRC in April that Washington was interested in a mineral deal. Talks have been ongoing in parallel with the Rwanda-DRC peace deal, according to some reports, although there are no details yet.

Under President Donald Trump, Washington is racing to secure supplies of minerals used to manufacture high-tech gadgets and weapons.

“The intertwining of peace and mineral interests is deeply alarming, echoing a tragic and persistent pattern in the DRC’s history,” analyst Lindani Zungu wrote in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, recalling how colonial rulers exploited the DRC’s resources, and how its neighbours did the same during the Congo wars.

“This ‘peace deal’ risks becoming another instrument of neo-colonialism,” Zungu warned. “In this context, foreign capital is used not to build, but to extract – deepening the divide between resource-rich African nations and wealthy consumer economies.”

Will this fix the DRC crisis?

Questions remain over how this deal will fix myriad tensions in the DRC. The draft agreements do not mention remediation or resolution processes.

Chief among the issues, analysts say, is the overall weak governance and justice system in the country that historically sees corrupt officials and perpetrators of injustice go scot-free. Analysts point to some politicians in the country who were part of the Congo wars and who did not face trials.

Both the M23 and the Congolese armed forces have been accused of atrocities, including extrajudicial killings and sexual assault. One M23 rebel leader, Corneille Nangaa, was the head of the country’s elections commission before he fell out with President Tshisekedi over alleged “backroom deals” related to contested 2018 general elections. In December 2023, he announced that his Congo River Alliance was joining M23.

Another cause of tension is the discrimination that Congolese Tutsis say they face in the DRC, in the form of ethnic killings and workplace discrimination, among others. The minority group is largely associated with Rwanda, and hate speech by politicians canvassing for votes often inflames tensions with local Congolese. The M23 claims to be fighting for this group, although critics say that’s a pretext to justify its violence.