ABSTRACT
It is now over ten months since the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, have been barely surviving with dwindling reserves of food, medicine, gas, and electricity. The aftermath of resumed Armenian-Azerbaijani hostilities has forced the migration of 5 out of 6 inhabitants to the state of Armenia, with the remaining population being deprived of dignified living conditions. To understand this humanitarian crisis and why it is nigh constitutive of a genocide, this article will delve into a brief history of the region and the territorial dispute that has surrounded it for decades, understanding the motivations behind the actions of both countries and how they have evolved overtime.
BY Andrés Rodríguez Pérez
The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, extending over 4,400 km2 across the South Caucasus, has been a point of territorial dispute for decades. This is mainly due to its location within the state borders of Azerbaijan but predominantly Armenian population (most recently estimated at 120,000 people) [1]. The region was previously known as the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, but was renamed in 2017 to the Republic of Artsakh, and has held an independent status for three decades. Despite the very scarce international recognition of its statehood, the region nonetheless counts upon Armenia for financial, military, and political support [2]. As it stands, then, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh is de jure part of Azerbaijan but de facto a separatist Armenian microstate. For the sake of clarity, the name Artsakh will henceforth be used to refer to the region as the contemporary Armenian-majority independent polity, while the use of Nagorno-Karabakh will be reserved for historical and territorial designations of the region.
Brief history of the region
Nagorno-Karabakh has historically been an Armenian territory, harking as far back as the 9th century BC as Urtekhe-Urtekhini [3]. However, the Persian concession of the Karabakh Khanate to the Russian Empire via the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan is often seen as the contemporary prologue to Armenian-Azerbaijani disputes over the region. With the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent legalisation of the right of secession in 1917, the First Congress of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh declared the region a separate administrative unit in 1918, starting a first stage of Armenian-Azerbaijani legal disputes and aggressions over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh [4].
The incipient conflict was temporarily frozen through the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Republic's establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast in 1991, an enclave isolated from Armenia and a legally constituent part of the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR [5] [6]. The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh resisted this conferral, with armed fighting between both countries beginning in 1988, following the region's declaration of intent to unify with Armenia [7]. A full-blown war would erupt in 1991, when the dissolution of the USSR gave way to the declaration of the establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and a subsequent referendum that gained a nearly unanimous vote for independence [8].
The ensuing First Karabakh war lasted until 1994 and had important demographic costs, with up to 30,000 casualties and the displacement both of Azeris out of Nagorno-Karabakh and of ethnic Armenians (est. 235,000) out of Azerbaijan and back to their home country [9]. Importantly, it also permitted Artsakhi territorial gains around the region, namely the Lachin corridor, a mountainous roadway connecting the region to Armenia [10]. The trilateral ceasefire (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh) of 1994 stabilised the independent status of the region and marked the formal cessation of hostilities. However, intermittent armed clashes interspersed the following sixteen years, with both parties deploying attack drones, shelling, and special operations, and with a four-day spell of bilateral attacks of unprecedented intensity in April 2016 [11].
The Second Karabakh War and its aftermath
On 27 September 2020, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to regain territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, with over 7,000 casualties on both sides. After six weeks of increasingly intense conflict, a mutual ceasefire was signed with Russia as its broker. Under this deal, around 75% of the Artsakhi territories gained in the previous war were lost to Azerbaijan, and the Lachin Corridor was put under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers to ensure safe passage from Artsakh to Armenia [12]. Violations of the ceasefire ensued, most notably several border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan during September 2022. This resulted in some one to three hundred casualties, as well as the evacuation of nearly 3,000 civilians from Armenia after the Azerbaijani attacks on the state's mainland [13].
Importantly, despite the ceasefire compelling Azerbaijan to guarantee the security of transit along the Lachin Corridor, in December 2022 Azerbaijan began its effective blockade by deploying state-backed "environmental activists'', with no intervention from the Russian peacekeeping forces [14]. This situation escalated in April 2023 with the establishment of an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Corridor. While its nominal intent was to deter Armenian military shipments, it elicited Armenian protests over the discernible motive of isolating Artsakh and solidifying Azerbaijani control over the region [15]. The increasing chokehold on the Lachin Corridor has quickly escalated into a humanitarian crisis, with the restriction of passage of foodstuffs and medical care reflecting a clear-cut attempt from Azerbaijan to strong-arm Artsakh into surrender [16].
The most recent Azerbaijani offensive against Artsakh was launched on September 19th, causing around 200 deaths and the evacuation of over 7,000 Artsakhis to Armenia, amidst the non-intervention of Russian peacekeepers [17] [18]. Most importantly, on September 28th, the Republic of Artsakh officially announced its dissolution, to be made effective on 1 January 2024 [19].
A genocide in the making?
The humanitarian crisis engendered by the protracted conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh may constitute genocidal action, as argued by former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampos. According to Article II of the Genocide Convention of 1948, genocide encompasses any act with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a demographic group by means of (a) murder, (b) serious bodily or mental harm, (c) deliberate infliction of destructive conditions of life, (d) prevention of natality within the group, and/or (e) forcible transfer of children to another group, among which the three first conditions are evidently present. [20].
With an estimated 82 Artsakhi civilians dead and nearly 400 injured since the resumption of conflict in 2020, it is easy to identify the conditions of murder and bodily harm [21] [22]. As reported by Amnesty International, both warring parties incurred in indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks often targeting civilian living areas, with the use of cluster munitions, unguided artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems [23]. On the count of mental harm, there is evidence of severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression found among military officers as well as civilians having suffered physical injuries and/or the injury or loss of a loved one [24] [2].
The ongoing blockade of the Lachin Corridor clearly constitutes a deliberate infliction of destructive conditions of life on the Artsakhi people. Restricting the arrival of basic food staples such as eggs, sugar, grains, dairy products, and cooking oil is tantamount to mass starvation. The cutoff of gas and energy and the rolling electricity blackouts impair proper cooking as well as the heating of homes and infrastructure. Beyond individual transport, fuel supply restrictions affect the operation of ambulances, adding to the general decline in the healthcare system: debilitated functioning of health centres, depletion of sanitary reserves due to restrictions on medicine and hygiene products, checks on the arrival of external medical care and paramedic services, etc. [26] [27] [28].
Simply put, the blockade is enforcing a systematic degradation of humane living conditions in Artsakh through the exertion of various methods of attrition upon the population at large, disregarding the innocence of civilians in this collective punishment. This degeneration of socioeconomic conditions has also impelled mass forcible migrations to Armenia across the Lachin Corridor. The most recent estimate points to over 100,000 refugees, about a third of them children, dwindling the ethnic Armenian population in Artsakh to as few as 50 to 1,000 [29]. Refugees are completely dependent on humanitarian aid coming from Armenia, UNICEF, the WHO, the WFP, and the soon-to-be-finalised Inter-Agency Response Plan (IARP) of the UN in coordination with the Armenian Government [30].
CONCLUSION
While the territorial recapture by the state of Azerbaijan in the 2020 War may be argued in terms of its sovereign claim to the region, there is no denying that the erosion of buffer zones around Artsakh and the deliberate blockade of the region with no regards as to the wellbeing of the civilian population constitute an illegitimate means of attaining definitive control over the disputed region. This, at the very least, amounts to ethnic cleansing and at worst, genocide. As evidenced by the recent blockade of the Gaza Strip, such actions constitute a strategy of systematic violence, of indiscriminate lethality and unbridled proportions, seeking the destruction of human lives and habitability through non-aggressive yet brutal means.
What is more, with the forthcoming dissolution of a Republic of Artsakh that was never recognised by the international community, the future of Nagorno-Karabakh is increasingly coming into question. Will this be the end of over a century of majority Armenian population in the mountainous region, and the beginning of its absorption into the state of Azerbaijan? Will Armenia be capable of ensuring humane living conditions for Artsakhi refugees? Is further conflict on the horizon of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, with mutual claims of occupation and sovereign entitlement? Or will the Republic's dissolution prompt the de-escalation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces? If anything is certain, it is that any effort to maintain durable peace in Armenia and Azerbaijan’s bilateral relations must necessarily address, and seek a swift end to, this humanitarian crisis.
References
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