Seven thousand people were killed in just six weeks in the brutal war in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh three years ago. So when Azerbaijan launched a new military offensive on Tuesday, many feared the worst. About 100 people were reportedly killed in the first few hours.
Within a day, a ceasefire was announced. The agreement includes the disbanding of the local Armenian government’s military, in what seems to be a capitulation to Azerbaijan, which had described its offensive as an “anti-terrorist operation”. Talks are due to take place on Thursday. But if the ceasefire holds, the future of desperate residents remains in doubt. Baku has demanded the dissolution of the local government in Nagorno-Karabakh and has said it plans to “reintegrate” the Armenian population. Regional officials have accused Baku of preparing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Longstanding tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan reignited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the region – which lies within Azerbaijan’s territory, but has a mostly Armenian population – declared independence. Since then it has run itself with Armenia’s support. But in 2020, emboldened by backing from Turkey, Azerbaijan launched an offensive and regained much of the land it had lost in the 1990s. Russian peacekeepers moved in to guard the Lachin corridor, the one road still linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Yet since December, Nagorno-Karabakh has been in the grip of a humanitarian crisis due to a blockade of the corridor, implemented by activists with Baku’s support. Residents describe it as an attempt to starve them into submission, forcing them to leave as supplies of food and medicine were exhausted. Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, suggested it amounted to genocide through the “secret weapon” of starvation. Fears of another conflict grew when Baku recently began massing troops along the border with Armenia and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Foreign mediators stepped up their efforts to reach a peace agreement. Then came Tuesday’s bombings.
Russia brokered the deal to end 2020’s fighting and has played a key role since the 1990s, co-chairing the Minsk group with France and the US. That cooperation is out of the window, and this time Moscow has been strikingly absent from the crisis, despite requests for help from Armenia, a long-term treaty ally. Its peacekeepers stood aside. Waging war in Ukraine is its priority, limiting its capacity and attention to deal with other matters. But many suspect that Moscow’s inaction is also payback for Armenia “flirting” with Nato, including holding joint military drills with the US. It is irked by the prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who recently complained that Russia has not protected it from Azerbaijan’s aggression, and it will enjoy the domestic discontent he now faces.
A frozen regional conflict has heated up again thanks to shifting international relations. Multiple foreign players have an interest in the region, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to reverberate and to reshape the world. The European Union’s hunt for alternative energy supplies has led it to court Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, but also gives it potential leverage. This will be necessary. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh must be safeguarded now.