2023-09-19 18:20:00
Three years after the second Karabakh war ended, the tension and ghosts of the conflict return to the mountains of the Caucasus. For nine months, Azerbaijan the region is blocked Alto Karabakh, also known as Nagorno Karabakhformally within Azerbaijani territory but populated by Armenians and governed by the ‘de facto’ republic of artistic. In recent weeks, with the region lock and a situation of humanitarian emergencythe sabers ring again in a conflict more than centuries old.
Everything exploded from the dissolution of the Russian empire in 1917: in the Caucasus, borders had never existed until then. The region, full of steep mountains and difficult-to-access valleys, had never had marked boundaries. A town populated mostly by Armenians She was a neighbor of another Azeris, followed by another from Armenians and Georgians. But the empire in the north fell, and three new states were born in the region: Georgia, Armenia y Azerbaijan.
And so, these new independent States wanted to delimit themselves, impose their lines on others. There the first fights arose for the Alto Karabakh, a region of forests and mountains on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. High in the mountains, most of the population was Armenian. In the valleys, below, Azeri.
That little war lasted a year, until the troops of the Red Army and they conquered the entire region, which became the territory of the next Russian empire, the Soviet one. Officially, Karabakh remained within the territory of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Since Armenia was also part of the Soviet Union, the border disappeared.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the first Karabakh war
The conflict went into the freezer of history until the 1980s, when the perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev awakened nationalism within the USSR. The Armenians of Karabakh began to demand their integration in Armenia and tension between ethnic communities increased. In 1988, marked by the Sumgait and Baku pogroms against the Armenian community, tension led to open war.
In 1991, at the same time that Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independencethe Karabakh Armenians did the same with a referendum not recognized by Baku that would result in Republic of Artsakhthe ‘de facto’ government in the Alto Karabakh despite its lack of international legitimacy. When the armistice in 199430,000 people had died and a million had fled their homes.
Armenia won that first war and went on to control a 20% of the territory of Azerbaijanincluding the Upper Karabakh enclave.
Armenian victory and frozen conflict
Their victory was almost total: the Armenians of the Alto Karabakh They created their own ‘de facto’ republic – not recognized by any country in the world – and in the fervor of military victory, they conquered and forcibly emptied all the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.
These regions, populated almost entirely by Azerbaijanis, became ghost placesinaccessible due to the ravages of war and the thousands of antipersonnel mines that were planted during the conflict. Thus, after the armistice and the Armenian victory of 1994, the conflict returned to the freezer again with Intermittent outbreaks of violence. It continued there until 2020.
The second Karabakh war
Emboldened by the oil money and his alliance with TürkiyeAzerbaijan reactivated the conflict in September 2020. Within six weeks, the victoria azerbaiyana was overwhelming: Baku reconquered all the territories surrounding the Alto Karabakheven the second largest city in the region, Downloadwhich before the first Karabakh war had had a mixed population of Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
If in the war of the 90s, the Armenians expelled all Azerbaijanis from the conquered territories, this time it happened the other way around. The second Karabakh war ended with a armistice negotiated by Russia. Moscow sent peace troops to the region and went on to formally establish itself as the guarantor of the conditions of the armistice. Some 6,000 people lost their lives in that war, closed with a ceasefire so fragile that it has never really been respected.
The blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh
During these three years, fighting, although sporadic, has been frequent, and the deaths of soldiers, especially Armenians, have been almost monthly. Azerbaijan maintains military superiority, and Baku’s threats to relaunch the conflict again continue while some peace talks which, to date, have been completely unsuccessful.
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Furthermore, since December, Azerbaijan has blocked the only road connecting Karabakh with the world. Its 120,000 Armenians live besieged and trapped by Baku’s policies, which demand their integration into Azerbaijan and the dismantling of the institutions with which they ‘de facto’ govern the Republic of Artsakh. The Armenians, for their part, consider that Azerbaijan is trying to expel them from the territory with a covert operation of ethnic cleansingwhile recognized international jurists They denounce that the blockade pursues the genocide of the Armenians of Karabakh.
Since June, not even humanitarian aid has entered, which has generated, according to the United Nations, a very serious humanitarian crisis due to shortages of food, medicine or cleaning products.
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