A decades-long conflict in the Caucasus flared up this week, as Azerbaijan on Tuesday launched an “anti-terror” strike aimed at Nagorno-Karabakh — the semi-autonomous, majority-Armenian region within its internationally recognized borders.
For the second time in three years, Azerbaijan’s government made decisive gains: the government of Nagorno-Karabakh has agreed to dissolve its military, and the future of the region’s semi-autonomous status has been put into serious doubt. It’s a result that could echo far beyond Azerbaijan’s borders, as it has escalated an already difficult humanitarian crisis, and is roiling Armenian politics.
Though there’s no suggestion of imminent war between the neighbors, regional experts said there is concern that continued crises like last week’s strike could inflame longstanding tensions, resulting in continued conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that could also pull in other regional powers like Iran and Turkey.
“This could become a regional war,” Benyamin Poghosyan, Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia, an independent think tank in Yerevan, told Vox. At the very least, he said, “I am afraid that for years to come […] the South Caucasus and Armenia and Azerbaijan will be volatile.”
This week’s crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, explained
The trouble in Nagorno-Karabakh didn’t just start this past week. The region has been the locus of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but animosity between the two countries goes back to the turn of the 20th century.
After the region was absorbed into the USSR, the Soviet Union designated a majority-Armenian autonomous region within Azerbaijan in 1923 — today known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
Conflict between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan started in earnest in 1988, when the region began agitating for independence. Between 1988 and 1990, Azerbaijan carried out multiple pogroms…
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