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Since the end of September, a war has been fought in the South Caucasus: Azerbaijan and Armenia are fighting for the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which belongs to Azerbaijan under international law but has been controlled by Armenia for almost three decades.
The war cannot be said to have received much international attention. But the gap between perception and reality is particularly large these days: As the world is distracted by the spectacle of the US presidential election and the outcome, the war in Karabakh is headed for a decision. The fighting has reached the city of Shusha in the heart of the disputed region. If it falls, Azerbaijan would have won the war.
There was “extremely fierce fighting” during the night near Schuscha, reported the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia, Shushan Stepanjan, on Sunday morning. There is already fighting in the city itself, reported Russian blogger Semyon Pegov, who has been accompanying Armenian fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh for weeks.
Shusha, or in Armenian Shushi, is strategically located high above the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert. The most important highway connecting Armenia to Stepanakert also passes through Shusha. Both civilians and the military depend on them.
Due to its location high in the mountains, Shusha was protected from the Azerbaijani ground offensive for a long time. Because when trying to regain Karabakh, which was lost in the early 1990s, Azerbaijani troops initially advanced in the south, along the border with Iran. There it is flat, on the plain, the Azerbaijani army was able to develop its superior strength of equipment and heavy technology.
But in late October, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh, the region inhabited by Armenians is a republic not recognized internationally, admitted in a video that the fighting had occurred five kilometers from Shusha. He warned: whoever controls the city controls Karabakh.
After its successes in the south, the Azerbaijani army is apparently trying to advance towards the northern mountains. On the one hand, the goal is to cut the important road connection between Armenia and Stepanakert, near the city of Lacin. The other objective is to take the Shusha, which is also on the street.
Road blocked
In early November the highway had to be closed to civil traffic. And the Nagorno-Karabakh army spokesman spoke on Friday of “intense and heavy fighting” in Shusha and “dozens, if not hundreds,” of those killed on the enemy’s side. Although these high casualties do not conform to the language of the Armenian side, according to which you only fight individual Azerbaijani commandos and scouts. In fact, it does not seem to be commandos, but real infantry attacks, due to the mountainous terrain, however, almost without heavy equipment support.
From the Azerbaijani point of view, Shusha has not only strategic but also political significance. The city with its great mosque is a symbol of the Muslim heritage of the region. Both Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived here in the time of the Tsars. But when Nagorno-Karabakh was separated from Azerbaijan in a bloody war with the end of the Soviet Union, Shusha was inhabited almost exclusively by Azerbaijanis. Residents have been displaced and many apartments have since been empty or are inhabited by Armenian refugees, who in turn had to flee from other parts of Azerbaijan.
In Baku, it sparked outrage when the Armenian side celebrated the inauguration of the new head of Nagorno-Karabakh this summer in Shusha of all places. “Shusha has a special place in the heart of the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev told Turkish TV channel A Haber in mid-October. Without the capture of Shusha, “our cause cannot be considered complete.”
“I suspect that Azerbaijan wants to win some crucial political victories, like taking Shusha, and then switch to a war of positions where it can continue to wear down the Armenian troops,” said US military expert Michael Kofman. “If there is a ceasefire, they could take back the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh next year because Armenia cannot recover from its losses.”
Indeed, Azerbaijan, which has grown rich from oil and gas exports, inflicted heavy losses on its smaller and poorer neighbor in this war. It used Turkish combat drones to destroy Armenian tanks and air defense systems, especially in the first few weeks. In general, Turkey has supported Baku, also bringing Syrian mercenaries to fight on the Azerbaijani side.
“The situation is precarious”
However, the Armenian troops put up stiff resistance. In the mountains, technological imbalance is less of a problem and the autumn weather makes it difficult to use drones.
“It is surprising that the Armenian defense has not collapsed, given the losses so far. But their situation is precarious,” says Kofman.
The great Azerbaijani offensive in Karabakh began in late September after peace talks made no progress for decades. Several attempts by the Russian and American sides to negotiate a ceasefire failed. Ankara, on the other hand, publicly supports Azerbaijan’s military action. According to the Kremlin, Presidents Putin and Erdogan spoke “extensively” by phone about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday night.
The disputed area actually consists of two territories: on the one hand, the former “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region”, which already existed on Azerbaijani territory in Soviet times and in which some 150,000 people lived before the current war. Furthermore, in the early 1990s, Armenia conquered a much larger buffer zone, from which around 600,000 Azerbaijanis had been expelled. It has hardly been inhabited since.
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