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Armenia declared martial law and general mobilization after clashes with Azerbaijan in the Nagorno Karabakh region resulted in the death of civilians. The two sides exchanged accusations about the initiation of the attack, so what do we know about the disputed territory between the two countries?
The Nagorno-Karabakh region lies within the territory of Azerbaijan and is predominantly Armenian, and is supported by neighboring Armenia.
The word Nagorno in Russian means heights, while Karabakh means black garden in the Azeri language.
And ethnic Armenians prefer to use the old Armenian name for the region “Artsakh”.
In 1988, near the end of the Soviet rule, the Azerbaijani forces and the Armenian separatists entered into a bloody war that ended with the signing of the armistice in 1994, but the negotiations did not lead to a permanent peace treaty until this time, and this conflict it remains one of the “frozen conflicts” of the post-Soviet era.
The roots of the conflict go back more than a century, when the region was the scene of competition for influence between Armenian Christians, Turkish Muslims and Persians.
The area was inhabited for centuries by Armenian and Azeri Christians, and became part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
Its inhabitants lived in relative peace, although some brutal acts of violence committed by elements of both sides at the beginning of the 20th century are still etched in the memory of their children.
After the end of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the new Soviet regime established at that time, within a policy of divide and rule in the region, an autonomous region in Nagorno Karabakh inhabited by an Armenian majority within the borders of the former Azerbaijan Soviet Republic in the early 1920s.
With the decline of Soviet control in the late 1980s, disputes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis turned into violent acts after the region’s parliament voted to join Armenia.
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The conflict between the two countries has been going on for almost a century
It is estimated that the conflict between the two sides resulted in the deaths of between 20,000 and 30,000 people, with the Armenian majority taking control of the region, then seeking to occupy an adjacent area within Azerbaijani territory to create a demilitarized zone. linking Karabakh with Armenia.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Karabakh declared itself an independent republic, escalating the conflict into all-out war. The “de facto” state was not recognized from the outside, not even by Armenia itself.
Although Armenia did not formally recognize the independence of the region, it remained its main financial and military support.
truce
A ceasefire was signed with Russian mediation in 1994, putting Karabakh and swaths of Azerbaijani lands in this enclave under Armenian control.
During the conflict, which caused the displacement of more than one million people, the Azeris (representing about 25% of the population) fled Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, while the Armenians fled Azerbaijan. People from the two ethnic groups have not been able to return to their homes since the end of the war.
Soldiers on both sides were killed during separate incidents of armistice violations. The closure of the borders between Turkey and Azerbaijan caused serious economic problems for Armenia, as it is a landlocked country.
Since the truce was reached, things have been at a dead end between Azeris, who are resentful about losing a land they consider their right, and Armenians who are unwilling to give it up.
Russia, France and the United States assume the presidency of the so-called Minsk Group – within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – that is striving to mediate to end the conflict.
Offenses For a truce
During the referendum held by the region in December 2006 that Azerbaijan deemed illegal, the region passed a new constitution.
Some signs of progress appeared from time to time during the intermittent meetings between the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Image posted, Getty Images / Melik Baghdasaryan
Army personnel and volunteers are gathering in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, at a time when the country has announced a general mobilization.
Significant progress was made during the talks between the two leaders in 2009, but they did not continue, and since then there have been several serious violations of the armistice, notably the killing of dozens of soldiers from both sides in mutual hostilities in April 2016.
On Sunday, clashes broke out between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces, and an Azerbaijani helicopter was shot down and there were reports of civilian casualties on both sides of the border.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan of launching air and artillery strikes against his country’s forces, while Azerbaijan said it was responding to Armenian artillery shelling along the border.
