Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh by the local Armenian population, or Karabakh for short, is a landlocked area in the South Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute over Nagorno Karabakh is more than 100 years old, pre-dating the establishment of the independent national republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1918.
The creation of the Armenian autonomy of Karabakh within Soviet Azerbaijan (1921-91) helped freeze and preserve the conflict over the territory that reignited with the unraveling of the Soviet Union.
The war over Karabakh of 1991-94 began as an ethnic cleansing campaign against Karabakh Armenians and ethnic Armenians living in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgait. As Armenians resisted, hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes on both sides of the conflict. Since 1990, there are no more Armenian communities on Azerbaijani-controlled side of the conflict and no Azerbaijani communities on the Armenian side.
Azerbaijan – ruled by the Aliyev family for almost half a century – since the first war has demanded complete control over Nagorno Karabakh, which amounted to a call for its total ethnic cleansing. For decades, Azerbaijan has prohibited entry to ethnic Armenians (or even people with Armenian-sounding names) independent of their citizenship. Azerbaijan has also charged its citizens who visited Armenia with treason. Any peace-building efforts were discouraged.
At different critical junctures throughout the multilateral conflict settlement processes, the Armenian side has agreed to the proposed peace plans—such as in Key West 2001, mediated by the USA, or in Kazan 2011, mediated by the Russian Federation—assuming mutual concessions. However, Azerbaijan has repeatedly backed down from initial agreements, putting forward more maximalist demands, thus torpedoing the peace process.
Relying on its growing military might supported by the hydrocarbon exports to the West, Azerbaijan strategized to achieve nothing less than maximum gains through talks, otherwise planning to achieve them through war, as its army has reached significant disparity with those of Armenian forces. This trend and determination of the strategy have become apparent since the late 2010s when Azerbaijan’s small-scale attacks on Armenia and Karabakh became frequent, growing into the 2016 April 4-day war.
The Second Karabakh War in the Fall of 2020 was jointly launched by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Aliyev. Turkish air force and mercenary forces from Syria helped displace more than 30,000 Armenians; Artsakh’s civilians and infrastructure were attacked, with dozens of civilians killed, hundreds injured, and tens of thousands displaced.
In just 44 days of active combat, more than 3,500 Armenians, more than 3,000 Azerbaijanis, and more than 500 Turkish Syrian mercenaries were killed.
There are documented reports of war crimes committed by Azerbaijani forces and Turkish mercenaries, including the execution of prisoners, both civilian and military, beheadings, and other degrading treatment.
As a result of the November 10 cease-fire agreed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, Russian forces have been introduced to protect the Armenian-populated parts of Karabakh and a narrow corridor from Karabakh to Armenia. A joint Russian-Turkish “monitoring center” was set up in Aghdam adjacent to the Russian-controlled area.
The agreement in force has not meant an end to the conflict. In particular, in violation of the agreement, Azerbaijani forces continued to move their positions forward to capture more territory as well as prisoners of war and civilian hostages. Since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan, in violation of the agreement, blocked the Lachin corridor, effectively severing supplies of basic goods and transfers.
The blockade lasted almost 10 months with severe humanitarian consequences for Karabakh’s 120,000 Armenian population, which former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo has characterized as an act of genocide. Azerbaijan did not lift the blockade; instead, on September 19, 2023, its armed forces launched a 1-day attack of unprecedented scale upon the starved population, bringing about their mass exodus to Armenia and ethnically cleansing the region of Armenians for the first time in its millennia-old history.
Currently, dozens of Armenians captured in Karabakh or from Armenia’s border, most since after the cease-fire, are detained in Azerbaijan. Aliyev has refused to release them. Twenty-three of them are being illegally detained in Azerbaijan, including eight political prisoners (Artsakh’s former Presidents and other high-ranking officials), nine hostages, and six prisoners of war confirmed by Azerbaijan, while their actual number remains unknown.