Akademik

   The region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which translates as “Black Garden Highlands,” was established as an autonomous oblast of Azerbaijan in the 1920s. Predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians, the region emerged as a site of ethnic clashes in 1988. After the region’s autonomy was stripped away by Moscow in 1989, Armenia proclaimed a union with the territory. Ethnic cleansing and emigration of the Azeri population soon followed. In a late 1991 referendum boycotted by the minority Azeri population, residents of Nagorno-Karabakh supported a declaration of independence from Azerbaijan, thus creating the internationally unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh on 6 January 1992. In the wake of the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), both sides scrambled to acquire military hardware as clashes turned into full-scale war. Linked by their Orthodox faith, many Russian military officers funneled weapons and equipment to the Armenians, effectively counter-balancing the Soviet-era military superiority of Azerbaijan. Armenia, fearful of invasion by Turkey, quickly joined the Commonwealth of Independent States in order to provide itself with safeguards under Russia’s collective security umbrella. Volunteers from the former Soviet Union rallied to both sides, and a significant number of former Soviet-Afghan War mujahideen came to the defense of the Azeris. Fighting between Karabakh Armenians, supported by Armenian forces, and Azerbaijani troops raged for more than two years, until a Russian-brokered cease-fire froze the conflict. In addition to controlling Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian forces ultimately occupied a significant portion of Azerbaijan including the Lachin Corridor connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. While Armenia emerged as the territorial victor, the conflict triggered an embargo from Turkey and has kept Armenia out of regional energy development schemes, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

   More than 25,000 perished in the conflict, and 200,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 800,000 Azeris from Armenia and Karabakh have been displaced by the chaos. Russia, France, and the United States co-chair the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Minsk Group, which has been attempting to end the dispute since the mid-1990s. However, the transfer of $800 million in weapons from Russia to Armenia in 2008 complicated Russia’s role as a fair arbiter and scuttled the recent improvement in relations between Moscow and Baku.