Azerbaijan

The article was published in IPS Journal. After Azerbaijan’s latest offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, the South Caucasus will likely see further escalations and suffering for decades to come On 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale offensive along the line of contact with the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The military operation followed approximately nine months of blockade, which brought the population of Nagorno-Karabakh to the brink of mass starvation. After 24 hours of intensive hostilities, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities accepted the demands of Azerbaijan, including the disarmament and dissolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh defence army and the start of discussions with Azerbaijan on an ‘integration’ within the framework of the Azerbaijani constitution. The humanitarian implications of the latest military offensive are immense. Thousands of civilians are missing, many were probably killed, as villages are cut off from the outside world while surrounded by Azerbaijani troops. Up to 5,000 civilian Armenians found asylum at the headquarters of the Russian peacekeeping mission around the Stepanakert airport. There is a lack of internet and mobile connection in the area, as Azerbaijani troops destroyed mobile towers and other telecommunication equipment during the first hours of the operation. The future of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is unclear. The absolute majority would like to leave the region, as there are no guarantees for the protection of their fundamental rights under Azerbaijani rule. But even the evacuation of Armenians from their homeland, which equals ethnic cleansing, is not guaranteed, as thousands of Armenian men are under investigation in Azerbaijan and can be arrested while passing through the Lachin checkpoint. The representatives of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians met with the Azerbaijani side in the Azerbaijani town of Yevlakh on the morning of 21 September. However, while the meeting was still underway, Azerbaijan resumed the shelling of Stepanakert (the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh), and Azerbaijani troops entered the city, putting the 60,000 residents in direct danger. Further implications of Azerbaijan’s offensive Besides the tragic humanitarian implications, Azerbaijan’s renewed attack against Nagorno-Karabakh will have significant consequences for regional security, appearing like a signal to all regional actors that hard power is the only currency worth anything. Just five days before this new offensive, Acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim stated during the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the United States would not countenance any action or effort – short- or long-term – to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. And the EU leadership, including President of the European Council Charles Michel, made several calls to end the Lachin corridor blockade and emphasised the necessity to ensure the rights of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. Azerbaijan’s apparent contempt towards these calls and demonstrative use of force makes it clear that the West has no real leverage to influence the developments in the region. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani offensive also humiliated Russia, whose peacekeepers were deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh after the 2020 war to protect the civilian Armenian population. If Azerbaijan can violate previous agreements and defy both the US and Russia, what are the guarantees that any new agreement will not be thrown into the dustbin of history within a few weeks or months? In recent weeks, the Armenian leadership itself took several steps to irritate Russia and send messages to the West – such as the visit of the first lady to Kyiv, the decision to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – probably hoping that the US and the EU would stop the upcoming Azerbaijani offensive. Reality proved them otherwise. The Azerbaijani offensive and its dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh both revoke the statement of 10 November 2020, including the agreement to restore communications and establish a connection between Azerbaijan and its exclave Nakhijevan via Armenia. Azerbaijan’s actions will make it extremely difficult to successfully finish the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace negotiations. If Azerbaijan can violate previous agreements and defy both the US and Russia, what are the guarantees that any new agreement will not be thrown into the dustbin of history within a few weeks or months? The upcoming years, if not decades, in the South Caucasus will be marked by additional escalations, wars and human suffering. The second humiliation of Armenia in three years will also destabilise the Armenian domestic political situation. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has already lost a significant part of his support. In the 17 September Yerevan municipal elections (Yerevan is the capital of Armenia, with some 40-45 per cent of the entire population living there), Pashinyan’s party received 33 per cent of the votes — in September 2018, it still got around 80 per cent. The voter turnout was extremely low at less than 30 per cent. The de facto dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh, huge losses among the civilian population and the potential influx of some 70-80,000 refugees to Armenia will further weaken Pashinyan’s position. The opposition, on the other hand, had already formed a committee to achieve his resignation, and clashes took place between protestors and police in downtown Yerevan during the rallies on 19 and 20 September. In the long term, Azerbaijan’s decision to ‘end’ the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with brutal force will perpetuate the cycle of violence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Many people in Armenia and the diaspora will focus on strengthening Armenia and on taking revenge. Given Azerbaijan’s actions to cultivate the concept of ‘Western Azerbaijan’, which declares most of Armenia as Azerbaijani historic lands, and Azerbaijani and Turkish demands to open the so-called ‘Zangezur corridor’ to connect Azerbaijan with Nakhijevan and Turkey, the upcoming years, if not decades, in the South Caucasus will be marked by additional escalations, wars and human suffering.

For the first time since the end of the 2020 War, Azerbaijan has launched a full-scale military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. At 1:15 pm Yerevan/Baku time on Tuesday, September 19, the government of Azerbaijan began intensive shelling of the Armenian-held areas of Nagorno-Karabakh. Within twenty-four hours local Armenian authorities signed a de facto capitulation agreement, accepting the long-held demands of the Azerbaijani government – issues that had previously been expected to be the subject of negotiations through ongoing peace talks.  By achieving its aims through a military assault, Azerbaijan has missed an opportunity to defuse the Nagorno-Karabakh issue through peaceful reconciliation with local Armenians. Moreover, it has added significant animus to the interstate peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has also clearly signaled a willingness to depopulate the region, suggesting at one point the evacuation of residents through the Lachin corridor; a mass exodus of refugees through that route may still occur.  While Azerbaijan claimed to be targeting military infrastructure held by the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, by Wednesday there were multiple accounts of civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including a lack of access to food and electricity. The operation comes after what appeared to be substantial planning and preparation, with a heavy build-up of Azeri military hardware since the start of September. It also comes after more than nine months of a blockade by Azerbaijan that cut off the normal supply of food, medicine, and basic supplies to the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, diminishing local capacity for emergency response. On Monday, September 18, the day before the attacks started, the International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed to deliver food to the region for the first time since June, but the free movement of people, vehicles, and cargo through the Lachin corridor had not been restored. Below are some of the major implications of Azerbaijan’s military operation, based on the collective assessment of APRI Armenia’s research team: Where Do We Go From Here? The coming days will show the extent to which Azerbaijan’s military offensive has succeeded in achieving its full political agenda—namely, the full reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh without international security guarantees for the Armenian population. It will also become clear how dramatically the combination of the Lachin corridor blockade and the September 19 offensive have resulted in an exodus of the Armenian population. Those outcomes, as well as the degree of diplomatic pushback against Azerbaijan for resolving its issues by force, will determine the future course of the region and its approach to handling coming disputes. If Azerbaijan is able to use its military and resources advantage to gain substantially from this week’s operation, at little diplomatic or economic cost, then it will be incentivized to launch similar initiatives in the future. As the region manages the fallout of the military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, international partners should immediately secure the safe evacuation of Armenians who do not want to remain in Azerbaijan under the current conditions. They should guarantee secure passage for evacuees and ensure that no Armenians are harmed, detained, or incarcerated while passing through the Azerbaijani checkpoint on the Lachin corridor. The United Nations and other relevant organizations should provide support for the emergency needs of Armenian evacuees, who could number up to 100,000. Alongside other measures, international partners should invest in a more substantial presence in Armenia, extending the EU Civilian Monitoring Mission beyond February 2025 as well as expanding its mandate and capacities. Investments in infrastructure and defensive military capacity in Armenia will also be crucial to deterring future escalations. The path forward for Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will depend on the commitment and substantive engagement of the international community. The region is at a critical turning point; the degree and scope of stabilization efforts will determine whether the conflict expands across borders or produces other forms of ongoing turmoil between neighboring states.