Nagorno-Karabakh

So this just happened: https://eurasianet.org/nagorno-karabakh-surrenders-to-azerbaijan 

Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the first international geopolitical conflicts I became aware of in the post-Soviet early 1990s. It helped shape my interest in geopolitics along with HW’s Iraq War, the IRA/ETA insurgencies (and the coming-of-age European institutions), as well as a band of former Afghan mujahideen who would become Al Qaeda. I remember my PolSci 10 professor being surprised that enough of us in the class knew about Nagorno-Karabakh, where it was and why there was a conflict. That was in 1996.

Fast-forward to 2007 and I was in Baku for a project doing a household survey on poverty and remittances. While the local consultants—Vagif and Yashar—were touring me around the city, we passed by some poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, with people peeking out tenement housing and the car harangued by beggars. They said the neighbourhood was for internally displaced persons—refugees—from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict about a decade ago. These people, they said, were kicked out of their homes by the Armenian victors of that conflict who set up the Republic of Artsakh and its capital Stepanakert. Next on the tour were the natural gas plantations along the Caspian Sea.

Fast-forward again to 2020 and, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a renewed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This time, with a few decades’ worth of Azeri petrodollars going into military spending, plus a Turkey eager to bring back the days of the Ottomans in more ways than one, and a Russia more focussed on its Western flank than the Caucasus, Azerbaijan had the upper hand. A 6-week conflict with Armenia ended with newly (re)occupied territory in Artsakh and a Russia-brokered peace deal to keep Stepanakert connected to Yerevan through the Lachin Corridor.

Now comes 2023. Russia is distracted with a protracted war in Ukraine and couldn’t be bothered with a conflict in some Azeri-owned boondocks, if one goes by international recognition. Azerbaijan took the initiative, starving Artsakh for months by blockading the Lachin Corridor; any trade or aid going into Artsakh had to go through Azeri-controlled territory. With a weakened and hungry Artsakh, a distracted Russia, and an Armenia still hurting from 2020, it was only a matter of time before Azerbaijan got rid of a 3-decade pain in the neck. And so it did.