A sudden end to a decades-long conflict in the Caucasus
Region regained by Azerbaijan in less than a day
Tens of thousands died fighting for and against it, destroying the careers of two presidents — one Armenian, one Azerbaijani — and tormenting a generation of American, Russian, and European diplomats pushing stillborn peace plans. It outlasted six US presidents.
But the self-declared state in the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh — recognized by no other country — vanished so quickly last week that its ethnic Armenian population had only minutes to pack before abandoning their homes and joining an exodus driven by fears of ethnic cleansing by a triumphant Azerbaijan.
After surviving more than three decades of on-off war and pressure from big outside powers to give up, or at least narrow, its ambitions as a separate country with its own president, army, flag, and government, the Republic of Artsakh inside the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan collapsed almost overnight.
Until last week, the tiny selfdeclared republic, with fewer than 150,000 people, had been an enduring feature of the political and diplomatic landscape of the former Soviet Union. Russia, Armenia’s traditional protector and ally since 1992 in a Moscowled collective security organization, sent peacekeepers to the area in 2020 and promised to keep open the only road linking the enclave to Armenia, a vital lifeline for Artsakh.
But Moscow, distracted by its war in Ukraine and eager for closer economic and political ties with Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey, did not intervene this year when Azerbaijan closed that route, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, and medicine. The Kremlin ordered its peacekeepers to stand aside during last week’s lightning assault on Artsakh’s thin defenses.
Hardly anybody, including the US government, foresaw the rapid collapse.
“We are all in shock. Everyone understands that this is the end — the complete destruction of Artsakh,” said Benyamin Poghosyan, the former head of the Armenian defense ministry’s research unit. “The only thing that really matters now is getting people out safely.”
Nagorno-Karabakh, which declared independence in 1991, has for more than three decades been a byword for diplomatic failure — an interminable problem akin to the Israel-Palestine dispute or Northern Cyprus.
Almost in the blink of an eye, however, Nagorno-Karabakh has now been “solved” — by force of arms, leaving terrified ethnic Armenians at the mercy of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, a leader who has for years stoked hatred of Armenians.
In 2012, Aliyev pardoned, promoted, and hailed as a hero an Azerbaijani military officer who had been convicted in Hungary of murdering an Armenian classmate in a NATO course with an ax. After serving six years of a life sentence in Hungary, the murderer was sent home to Azerbaijan, which had promised to keep him in jail. He was met at the airport with flowers and set free.
Unverified reports of mass killings and rape have flooded social media, stirring fears of a repeat of the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire.
Artsakh has been erased, but the idea still has many supporters.