When the end came, it came suddenly. The Republic of Artsakh – a breakaway state in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, within Azerbaijan’s borders but intrinsically connected to neighbouring Armenia – had long been the site of intermittent conflict. But a major Azerbaijan military offensive launched on 19 September quickly proved decisive. A ceasefire the following day confirmed Azerbaijan’s victory. On 28 September, Artsakh President Samvel Shahramanyan signed a decree dissolving all government institutions by 1 January 2024, bringing the unrecognised state’s 32-year existence to a close. By then, most of the population had already fled to Armenia.

History of the conflict

The immediate origins of the conflict lay in the break-up of the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh, with its largely ethnic Armenian population, was disputed between the two countries prior to the Soviet Union’s formation, upon which it became an autonomous region within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Ethnic Armenians were long the focus of discrimination and ethnic Azeri people were encouraged to move to the region to shift the demographic balance.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan gained independence in 1991. On independence, Azerbaijan revoked Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomous status, which prompted a December 1991 regional referendum that saw a 99.9 per cent vote for independence, albeit with most of the ethnic Azeri population boycotting.

When the territory declared independence in January 1992, a simmering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan turned into all-out war. That war ended in May 1994 with Armenia the victor, with all of the Nagorno-Karabakh region and some surrounding areas of Azerbaijan under the Republic of Artsakh’s control. It continued as a de facto independent state, neither fully integrated with nor detached from Armenia. No United Nations (UN) member state recognised it and four 1993 UN Security Council resolutions reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over its territory, calling for withdrawal of occupying forces and a negotiated resolution.

Violations of the rights of the territory’s Azeri population followed, with many forced from their homes, as narratives of hatred were stoked on both sides. A negotiated solution was needed but none came. With occasional skirmishes, the situation remained deadlocked until September 2020, when Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s support and the use of superior drone technology, went on the offensive and made major territorial gains. The November 2020 ceasefire agreement saw large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh returned to Azerbaijan’s control. A shrunken Artsakh now depended on a narrow strip of land, the Lachin corridor, for its connection to Armenia, policed by around 2,000 Russian soldiers deployed as peacekeepers.

Now in the stronger position and with a much more powerful military, Azerbaijan pressed home its advantage. In December 2022, people from Azerbaijan blocked the Lachin corridor. Officially, these were protesting environmental activists, although on closer inspection they appeared to be a mix of plainclothes military personnel, state officials and members of pro-government groups.

Azerbaijan is an authoritarian state where two generations of the Aliyev family have been in power since 1993. Unlike in Armenia, where people are relatively free to protest – and many have done so to express their anger at the government’s handling of the situation – in Azerbaijan’s closed civic space, protests are rare and usually quickly suppressed with violence and detentions. However, the protests in the Lachin corridor were suspiciously free to last as long as they wanted.

They were followed in April by the creation of an Azerbaijani military checkpoint, in violation of the ceasefire agreement. Azerbaijan also shut down key infrastructure, including energy and internet. Russian peacekeepers who were supposed to uphold the ceasefire stood by and did nothing. With Artsakh dependent on supplies of essentials from Armenia, the blockade quickly caused a humanitarian crisis. There were widespread shortages and rationing as the territory ground to a halt.

The blockade continued, with very limited access, for 10 months despite appeals from UN human rights experts and orders from the International Court of Justice. Then, with the territory weakened, Azerbaijan launched its final, decisive attack.

Nagorno-Karabakh empties out

The victory was quick and casualties were in the hundreds, compared to the thousands who died in the 2020 offensive. In 2020, Azerbaijan had dropped its commitment to preserve Nagorno-Karabakh’s special status and stated it would integrate it into Azerbaijan. For ethnic Armenians, this was at best a promise of exclusion, with a population of perhaps 120,000 to be subsumed into a country of over 10 million. At worst, given a past history of hatred and violence and Azerbaijan’s authoritarianism, they feared genocide. So when the Azerbaijani authorities reopened the Lachin corridor to allow a one-way trip to Armenia, most people needed no further invitation to flee.

What followed was an exodus. Over 100,000 ethnic Armenians – almost all who’d lived in the territory – fled to Armenia. People who’d never lived anywhere else moved with what they could carry, along an incredibly crowded and slow-moving line. A lack of vital supplies on the route exacerbated the challenges for those fleeing. Civil society scrambled to meet essential needs. Those few who stayed were left with none of the basics of a functioning society.

This is forced migration and, with Nagorno-Karabakh now almost emptied out of its ethnic Armenian people, could reasonably be called ethnic cleansing. The Azerbaijani government simply made it impossible for a beaten-down and fearful population to risk remaining. It’s hard to see how people could ever have the confidence to return.

Shifting dynamics

Azerbaijan has marked its victory by arresting and detaining key officials of the former breakaway state and recently staged a military parade in the region’s de facto capital. Further conflict can’t be ruled out, with Azerbaijani figures recently describing the region of Armenia adjoining the Lachin corridor as ‘western Azerbaijan’. There are also fears of a potential move to institute a land corridor to Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave on Armenia’s west.

The conflict’s conclusion marks an apparent shift in power relations in the Caucasus region, which is often characterised as a bridge between Asia and Europe, and a zone in which tensions between Russia, western states and others play out.

Azerbaijan, benefiting from its fossil fuel wealth, has increasingly asserted itself as a valuable partner on all sides. It’s engaged in what’s been called ‘caviar diplomacy’, a vast lobbying exercise to influence European politicians through lavish hospitality. It joined the Council of Europe in 2014, somehow navigating the body’s commitment to uphold democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Its increasingly glitzy capital, Baku, has played host to a range of international sporting events, including the European Games. There’s clear evidence of Azerbaijani bribes to European politicians to help portray the regime positively and soften criticism. In July, in response to these influence operations by Azerbaijan and other states, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for reform of anti-corruption rules.

Beyond these incentives, European states have been prepared to downplay criticism of the regime’s appalling rights record because it offers a non-Russian source of fossil fuels; last year the European Union (EU) did a deal to double gas imports from Azerbaijan. There’s also a desire to not give Azerbaijan excuses to move closer to Russia and keep it as a bulwark against its neighbour Iran.

Russia was traditionally Armenia’s ally and both are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a common defence pact. But recent years have seen some moves from Armenia’s government to reorient towards Europe, incurring Russia’s displeasure. In a further sign of worsening relations, since the end of the conflict Armenia has ratified the Rome Statue to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), something Russia – where Vladimir Putin is the subject of an ICC arrest warrant – strongly opposed.

With Russia’s energies occupied with its needless war on Ukraine, Azerbaijan may have sensed the moment was right, trusting Russia not to interfere. In recent years, relations between Azerbaijan and Russia have strengthened. Last year Azerbaijan agreed to import gas from Russia, helping offset European countries’ declining demand for Russian gas and presumably replacing the gas Azerbaijan sells to Europe. Russia adopted a position of neutrality in the latter stages of the conflict and quickly took the line that the territory should be integrated into Azerbaijan.

The outcome is also a victory for Turkey, long Azerbaijan’s ally and one of its key suppliers – along with Israel – of military hardware. Turkey has also looked to benefit from Russia’s distraction to try to position itself as the key regional relations broker.

Towards peace and justice?

Among democratic states, the human rights and humanitarian crisis that Azerbaijan created should prompt some reflection on the state’s gilded diplomacy efforts. The European Parliament, which has several times called for sanctions on Azeri officials over human rights abuses, has urged the EU to reconsider its relations with Azerbaijan. Fossil fuel giant BP, the regime’s major extractive partner and thereby key source of elite wealth, should also face questions.

Having long used the security situation in Nagorno-Karabakh as the pretext for repression, Azerbaijan should also now face fresh inquiry about its willingness to democratise.

Peace may prevail. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, under pressure at home, has recently announced a peace proposal based around improving regional integration. Now the status of Nagorno-Karabakh has, through conflict, been settled, it’s to be hoped that’s where the violence ends. But reconciliation can only come if the winning side is humble rather than triumphalist, and the signs on that aren’t positive.

Above all, peace must mean justice: there must be accountability for human rights violations committed in the context of the 2020 conflict and the most recent combination of blockade, offensive and exodus. Those left with no choice other than to flee need long-term resettlement support from international partners. And for an inclusive peace to be built, something needs to happen that Azerbaijan in particular won’t be comfortable with: civil society needs to be fully involved to ensure that grievances are heard, historical narratives of hatred are unravelled and people’s needs rather than the calculations of elite statecraft come first.