Sunday is the last day in the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh, the autonomous mountain region captured by Azerbaijan in September. On January 1, the Armenian authorities of the area officially dissolved. Posthumous of a 100-year-old region founded by Stalin.
Tom Vennink31 December 2023, 06:00
It was 1921 and Joseph Stalin was drawing boundaries on a map of the Caucasus. As People’s Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin had to ensure that non-Russian peoples would feel comfortable in the new Soviet Union. He transferred a disputed area with an Azerbaijani majority to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, and another area he added to the Soviet Republic of Armenia.
But what to do with a mountain region with about a hundred thousand inhabitants, called Nagorno-Karabakh?
Karabakh (a Turkish-Persian mixture for ‘black garden’) had been inhabited for centuries by both Armenians and Azerbaijanis. It was in Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 20th century, but there were more Armenians living there, although every summer a lot of Azerbaijani shepherds arrived and herded their sheep to the mountain region (Nagorno is Russian for ‘mountainous’).
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Tom Vennink writes for de Volkskrant about Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He regularly travels to the war in Ukraine. Previously he was a correspondent in Moscow.
The members of Stalin’s nationalities committee initially voted in favor of transfer to Armenia, but changed their mind a day later. They did not want to offend Azerbaijan, with its oil reserves. On July 7, 1923, they founded the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh: an autonomous area with an Armenian majority (94 percent), but part of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. The time bomb had been set.
During the Soviet Union, there was little conflict between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh. Even before the arrival of the Bolsheviks, the two groups got along quite well, writes Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal in Black Garden, a book about the history of the region.
The area was not known for infighting, but for fighters and poets. Around villages with Armenian churches and around the mosques and theaters of the city of Shusja. To plateaus and valleys with mulberries, grapes and silk. Also occurring in Nagorno-Karabakh: marriages between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
Timeline: a century of conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh
19th century The Russian Empire swallows up region inhabited by Armenians and Azerbaijanis
1918 Armenia and Azerbaijan become independent and claim region
1920-23 Soviet Union divides Nagorno-Karabakh into Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, but with autonomous status
1991 Soviet Union collapses and Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declare independence
1992-94 First war: Armenia expels Azerbaijanis from region and occupies areas around Karabakh as a buffer zone
1994-2020 Conflict freezes after mediation by Russia, but occasional ceasefire violations
2020 Second war: Azerbaijan retakes areas around Karabakh. New agreement on ceasefire brings Russian peacekeeping force to region.
2023 Third war: Azerbaijan overruns region after months of blockade of any road between Karabakh and Armenia. The regional board agrees to its own dissolution as of January 1, 2024.
Argument after the collapse of the Soviet Union
The quarrel arose when the Soviet Union was coming to an end. An underground Armenian nationalist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh saw its opportunity during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and demanded that Moscow transfer the region to Armenia.
At the same time, tensions were also rising between Armenians and Azerbaijanis outside Nagorno-Karabakh. In Azerbaijan pogroms took place against Armenians, in Armenia Azerbaijanis were expelled.
Things escalated when Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed Nagorno-Karabakh as independent countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Armenians in the region declared independence and received support from the Armenian army, which had formed faster than the Azerbaijani armed forces after the fall of the Bolsheviks. Shortly afterwards the first and heaviest war for the area began. An estimated 30,000 people died between 1992 and 1994.
The winner was Armenia. The country captured not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also Azerbaijani areas surrounding the region. In addition, the Armenians built a road to Armenia, which would later be used for (military) supplies – the Laçin corridor. The centuries-long diversity of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population came to an end: all Azerbaijanis fled or were expelled. After the war, only Armenians lived there.
Not internationally recognized
The major problem for the inhabitants was that their self-declared republic was in conflict with international law. The countries that emerged from the Soviet Union retained their borders as Soviet republics as far as the United Nations was concerned. For that reason, Armenia decided not to annex or recognize the area. The only people who recognized the state of Nagorno-Karabakh were the Armenian authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh itself.
A peaceful solution did not emerge after the first war, despite the efforts of international mediators. Although Russian mediation led to a ceasefire in 1994, occasional fighting took place between Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers until 2020.
A military post near the city of Agdam in Nagorno-Karabakh, at the end of 2020. Skirmishes took place regularly at the time.Image Freek van den Bergh / de Volkskrant
Meanwhile, the balance of power in the Caucasus shifted. Azerbaijan benefited from wealth from oil and gas and overtook Armenia militarily and economically. Azerbaijan also strengthened military cooperation with Turkey.
In 2020, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev struck for the first time, with the encouragement of Turkish President Erdogan. He broke the ceasefire and sent his army to Nagorno-Karabakh, with air support from drones from Turkey. In a six-week war, Azerbaijan reconquered the areas surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliev had the helmets of fallen Armenian soldiers hung in a triumphal park in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
Russia, a military ally of Armenia, but also an important economic ally of Azerbaijan, brought both parties to the table again. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Aliev sign a new ceasefire agreement. Aliev promised to leave the road between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh open. To reassure the Armenians, a Russian peacekeeping force arrived to monitor the ceasefire.
Food blockade by Azerbaijan
An anxious time began for the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh. A year after the war, Aliev broke his promises and had the road blocked to all traffic, including trucks carrying food, medicine and fuel. Aliev ignored calls from world leaders to reopen the road and starved the people of Nagorno-Karabakh for nine months. On September 19, 2023, he ordered a devastating attack. Russia, distracted by its own war against Ukraine, did not intervene.
Within 24 hours, the region’s armed forces surrendered. Almost all residents fled to Armenia, leaving behind a deserted Nagorno-Karabakh. After expelling the Azerbaijanis from the region 30 years earlier, they have now suddenly been expelled from the region they consider historic Armenian soil. From Armenia they now have to watch how Azerbaijan will populate the region with Azerbaijanis.
“We showed them that Karabakh is Azerbaijani,” President Aliev said last week during a football match in the empty capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. The fans in the stands had been brought from Baku by buses.
A century after Stalin’s creation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, there are no more Nagorno-Karabakhs.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev in Khojaly in Nagorno-Karabakh in mid-October. Image AFP
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2023-12-31 05:00:07
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