By Andres Fernandez Photo Credit: Istock by GettyImages
Trigger warning: As this is a discussion of war, we are placing a trigger warning for violence and sexual assault.
February 24th marks the second anniversary since the commencement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and February 7th will be the 4th month anniversary since the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Gaza Strip made its way into the international news cycle. Gen-z are the people who were born in the early 2000s, and many are starting to become globally conscious voters. For the first time in their lives, they are paying attention to the presence of a constant “global-conflict” news story such as the ones above. This leads to multiple questions including, will there be other international conflict news stories that attract massive attention from social media and Gen-Z? As of January 2024, a possible answer to that dilemma could be the brewing conflict in the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
Sunday, Jan. 29, 2024, during an Armenian Army celebration day address, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan informed the nation that his government had proposed a non-aggression pact to Azerbaijan’s government to protect their civilian populations if current Peace Treaty talks get delayed. Earlier in 2023, Prime Minister Pashinyan had warned his constituents, and the international community, that war with its neighbor, Azerbaijan, was imminent if a peace treaty was not signed soon. Tensions worsened in Azerbaijan when the government suspended traffic through a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor, the only road that connects ethnic Armenian communities in Azerbaijan with the country of Armenia and supplies them with necessities, after it claimed “various types of contraband” had been discovered in vehicles coming from Armenia. Due to the shutdown, many ethnic Armenians will lose access to their families, culture, jobs, or even basic human necessities coming from the other side of the border.
Conflict Origin & Timeline
The conflict orbits around the Nagorno-Karabakh region and is intrinsically connected to Russian History. The old Russian Empire conquered the territory where Armenia and Azerbaijan exist today between 1800 and 1864. From that point onward, Russia had sovereignty over the area. During the rest of its existence, until 1917, The Russian Empire used the region as a buffer zone against the Ottoman Empire. After 1917, when The Soviet Union rose, the new government in Moscow wanted to retain the Russian Empire’s historical holds and establish Soviet puppet governments. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, current-day Russia has remained politically allied in the area, providing military presence and diplomacy whenever there was conflict, and maintaining good economic relationships with the local economies that had grown dependent on the Russian market.
The “Nagorno-Karabakh conflict” can be described as the longest-running conflict within a post-soviet nation. Nagorno-Karabakh is a border region that ethnic Armenians have historically populated, but it has been under the control of Azerbaijani Authorities. After the fall of the Russian Empire, people from the region formed an emergency government and sought international recognition as part of Armenia. The Paris Peace Talks delayed the establishment of borders in the Caucasus region, a small region to the east of Turkey that was left without borders after the collapse of the Russian Empire. Shortly following this, the Soviet Union took control of the area. Soviet authorities settled on an unpopular compromise that was disliked by the majority of the ethnic Armenian population that granted Nagorno-Karabakh partial autonomy and left it under the control of Soviet-Azerbaijan. During the Soviet Union’s period (1917-1989), despite being majority Armenian, Armenian culture in the region was suppressed, and ethnic Armenians were often brutalized, abused, and tortured by Azerbaijani authorities. British journalist Thomas de Waal described this act in his book regarding Armenian history, “The roving gangs committed acts of horrific savagery. Several victims were so badly mutilated by axes that their bodies could not be identified. Women were stripped naked and set on fire. Several were raped repeatedly.” In 1989, The Soviet Union fell, and a referendum was held to transfer the region’s authority to Armenia; this led to war.
From 1989 to 1994, the first Nagorno-Karabakh raged in the region. When the fighting ceased in 1994, Armenian forces had captured the area and put it under their control. During this conflict, both sides were responsible for committing atrocities against civilians of the opposite side, and hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis and Armenians were displaced due to war, social pressure, instability, and violence. Even after the Russian-led peace treaty, although autonomy for the region increased and the Armenian military remained present in the area, it was still internationally recognized as Azerbaijani, and tensions amongst the national governments and people were still extremely high. After the use of attack drones and heavy weaponry on the border of the two states following the war, special operations forces exposed to the world the clear risk that conflict would reignite. Through April of 2016, hundreds were killed on both sides due to intense military clashing and fighting.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict today
In 2020, a second war broke out. The conflict lasted six weeks but left hundreds of civilians dead and saw the mobilization of thousands of soldiers in what was the most significant conflict in the region since 1994. The aftermath of the Russian Federation-brokered peace treaty resulted in the annexation of most of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijani control. The rest of the disputed territory became patrolled by Russian safekeeping forces, but local governments still claimed autonomy. After the war, Azerbaijani military presence grew closer to civilian centers in the region, and tensions between the nations grew once more. Although tensions remained high but steady throughout the pandemic until 2022, when Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, was taken from Azerbaijan in the 20th century. This came after earlier statements that his government would not recognize Armenian territorial integrity until the bordering nation signed his government’s proposed peace treaty. This led to an escalation of threats and violence in 2023; fellow Political Review at FSU writer Jacob Rampino wrote in great detail about the heightening of tensions in the second half of the year when a region within Nagorno-Karabakh, referred to as Artsakh by Armenians, rose in opposition to the Azerbaijani government from what they perceived as an occupation.
Although military conflict in the region has briefly dimmed out, threats of violence remain. The prime minister of Armenia has demanded a preemptive non-aggression pact before a deal is brokered. On Azerbaijan’s side, upon reopening the Lachin corridor and regaining complete control of Artsakh, President Ilham Aliyev threatened ethnic Armenians in the region to either accept Azerbaijani citizenship or abandon it entirely. Nagorno-Karabakh remains heavily militarized, and ethnic Armenians in the area still, after over 100 years of violence, have no clear solution available.