An Armenian police officer guides refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh at a registration centre close to Kornidzor, 24 September 2023
Alain Jocard · AFP · Getty
In a two-day army offensive launched on 19 September, Azerbaijan took again management of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as a part of its territory; most of its Armenian inhabitants have since fled. In accordance with Armenia, Azerbaijan’s nine-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, its refusal to ensure the cultural and political rights of the Armenian inhabitants, and the hate speech coming from the Azerberjaini authorities in Baku created a local weather designed to impress the exodus and quantity to ethnic cleaning. Formally, the Armenian inhabitants are free to return, however a scarcity of concrete safety ensures and the resentment that has constructed up over greater than three a long time recommend few will achieve this.
The battle over the enclave began in February 1988, when its Armenian inhabitants demanded independence and the federal government of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to unite with Armenia, which got here to their help. The primary Nagorno-Karabakh battle (1988-94) adopted: Armenia occupied the enclave and the encompassing space (practically 13% of Azerbaijan’s territory), driving out its Azeri inhabitants.
Is Azerbaijan’s repossession of the enclave the top of the matter? Most likely not. The propaganda from Baku – which refers back to the Republic of Armenia as ‘Western Azerbaijan’ – hints at extra preventing to come back.
Unable to reorganise
Armenia stands alone towards these threats. It has not been capable of reorganise or re-equip its armed forces after the heavy losses they suffered in 2020, within the second Nagorno-Karabakh battle. Russia, its conventional safety associate, has didn’t ship on an arms contract price $400m. And neither Russia nor the Collective Safety Treaty Organisation (CSTO, of which Armenia is a member) condemned Azerbaijan’s army incursions in 2021-22, when it captured strategic heights, enabling it to redraw the border in its personal favour. Nor did they intervene to guard Armenia’s territory. (…)
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(1) ‘Declaration on allied interplay between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation’, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 22 February 2022, president.az/.
(4) Adrien Pécout and Faustine Vincent, ‘Arménie: la hausse des importations de gaz d’Azerbaïdjan met l’Europe dans l’embarras’ (Armenia: Rising fuel imports from Azerbaijan put Europe in an embarrassing place), Le Monde, Paris, 7 October 2023.
(7) Russian peacekeeping pressure in Nagorno-Karabakh, infographic (in Russian), 11 November 2023, mil.ru/russian_peacekeeping_forces/infograf.htm/.
(8) ‘Importer/Exporter TIV Tables’, SIPRI, 2023.
(9) Avi Scharf and Oded Yaron, ‘92 flights from Israeli base reveals arm exports to Azerbaijan’, Haaretz, Tel Aviv, 6 March 2023, and Isabel Debre, ‘Israeli arms quietly helped Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh, to the dismay of area’s Armenians’, Related Press, 5 October 2023.
