The Armenia Azerbaijan conflict

 

First Nagorno Karabakh war

In 1988, prior to the fall of the USSR, ethnically inspired riots started breaking out in the South Caucasus between Azeris and Armenians, especially in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Soviet leadership, looking elsewhere, was incapable of hindering the soaring violence. The Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic had been legally part of the Azerbaijan SSR, so when the Union was broken, Nagorno Karabakh, despite being populated by a majority of Armenians, was considered to be legally a part of Azerbaijan. At the end of 1991 Nagorno Karabakh was declared the independent and Armenian led Republic of Artsakh by its people, but it did not receive any diplomatic recognition, including by Armenia. The young republic of Azerbaijan was outraged, and did not intend to allow a breakaway state from forming.

Nagorno Karabakh here shown in a brighter shade of yellow than the rest of Azerbaijan (image source wikimedia)

The ethnic and political conflict slid into war as forces of the newly formed Azerbaijani military entered Karabakh and laid the regional capital of Stepanakert under siege. This did, however, not break the will of the breakaway republic. It simply escalated the conflict, and soon Armenia was involved. The siege of Stepanakert would end with a joint Armenian-Artsakh offensive that secured a land connection between Armenia and Artsakh. By the end of 1992, Azerbaijan was on the backfoot in the Karabakh region. Chechen, Turkish, and Afghan citizens flocked to support their muslim brothers in 

Country	Soldiers	Armored vehicles	Warplanes
Azerbaijan	42 000	1500	60
Armenia	30 000	650	3
Artsakh	10 000	130

Estimated military force gathered throughout the war. Though Azerbaijan’s forces were better equipped with tanks, artillery, and planes they could not gain a major upper hand. "Thousands" of muslim volunteers to Azerbaijan are not shown here.

In 1993 the Azerbaijani front collapsed when faced with a series of Armenian offensives. Their army had been bogged down in an area where the people were against them, and the territories between Armenia and Artsakh were practically surrounded by Armenia. Beginning in Kalbajar in the spring, Azerbaijani forces found the position impossible to hold and withdrew after only a week of combat. The fall of Kalbajar recontextualized the war in Azerbaijan to one about defending the nation as a whole, as the district had an Azerbaijani majority population. The war in Karabakh going slowly could be explained by the Armenian ethnic majority there, but Kalbajar should by that logic have been easily defended. Internationally, the offensive caused outrage as it was no longer about the right of self-determination of the Armenians in Karabakh already dubious under international law. The president of Turkey threatened military intervention and the UN demanded that Armenia would leave the area, but nothing came of it. The internal political ramifications of the defeat in Azerbaijan would be immense.

The Azerbaijani colonel Surat Huseynov had been accused of giving up Kalbajar, and his arrest was ordered. Instead of going with the troops come to arrest him, he used his privately funded brigade to march on the capital of Baku. The president fled, and the new president, Heydar Aliyev (father of the current president) declared Huseynov prime minister to stop Huseynov's insurrection. The chaos caused by the march on Baku caused another series of defeats even more devastating than the loss of Kalbajar. 

Starting in late June 1993, shortly after the march on Baku, Armenian forces attacked district after district of Azerbaijan. In late June all Azerbaijani forces fled central Karabakh. In July the district of Agdam fell, directly east of central Karabakh. August brought the largest offensives of the war thus far, with Zangilan falling followed by Fuzuli and Jabrayil, securing the entire region directly south of Karabakh to the border with Iran. These developments would largely define how the borders looked de facto after the war. 

During early 1994 Azerbaijan made some small offensives in the northeast of Nagorno Karabakh, but by this point both sides were done with fighting. The only areas where the population was not the same ethnicity as the army controlling it were Azeri, and the Azeri army was too battered to attack the now entrenched Armenian forces. Armenia for their part had won almost all they could hope for on the ground, and sought to end the conflict with them in the advantaged position. The war ended by Russian coordinated ceasefire in May with the agreement being that captured areas were kept under the current occupier. 

Situation by the end of the war. The brightest area is the total area under control of the Republic of Artsakh, and the orange is areas in Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani control. (image source wikimedia)

The human cost had been great, especially pronounced in the flow of refugees. Artsakh’s capital of Stepanakert had been shelled by artillery and multiple massacres had been carried out by the irregular militias the countries had called up in haste. The population of the Nagorno Karabakh region fell from 190 000 to 120 000 as the entire Azeri population there was expelled. The non-Karabakh districts occupied by Artsakh would be depopulated as the Azeris there left for Azerbaijan. The sheer amount of internally displaced people in Azerbaijan have caused something of a social crisis in both countries, with tens of thousands still living in camps almost thirty years later. 

People	Population	Soldiers dead	Civilians dead	Refugees
Azeris	7 300 000	11 557	16 000	700 000
Armenians	3 600 000	5 856	4 000	500 000

Interwar

The civilian governments of the countries had different ways to cope with the results of the war. Azerbaijan maintained a claim on the entirety of the lost territory, including Nagorno Karabakh itself, and would launch sporadic border attacks, preventing the conflict from properly ending. After a coup attempt in 1994 Huseynov was forced to leave the country, and Aliyev won almost complete power. The sale of oil and gas boosted the Azerbaijani economy to new heights, which coupled with the growing population of the country allowed it to allocate enormous resources to the military, resources Armenia would eventually be unable to contend with. 

Artsakh was practically annexed by Armenia with a completely open border and common currency. Armenia has had a close to stagnant economic development and a slightly decreasing population since the end of the first war, with conscription actively enforced to attempt to match the military of Azerbaijan. Where Armenia succeeded was both in building a constitutional democracy and by creating a robust diplomacy. Armenia joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization, meaning Russia on paper guarantees Armenia’s territorial integrity. Azerbaijan signed a similar bilateral treaty with Turkey.

There were reports of clashes after 1994, but information is scant. Between 2000-2008 the situation was mostly peaceful, but after a constitutional crisis in Armenia in 2008 clashes broke out again. These clashes were sporadically fought with small arms by small numbers of soldiers, without making territorial changes. 

Dead	2008	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Early 2016
Azeris	4-8	3	2	19	12	19-39	64	4
Armenians	0-12	0	4	14	7	14-27	42	4

Number of combat deaths on the border per year. Numbers from the International Crisis Group.

In 2016 a new war broke out. Armored formations and air forces on both sides were in use, and new territory was taken for the first time since 1994, though the changes were minor. According to each sides’ estimate of their own losses, and by international estimates, 91 Armenian and 94 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, as well as a total of 15 civilians. Armenia also lost 14 tanks while Azerbaijan lost 1, as well as 14 drones and a helicopter. This therefore marked the first loss of heavy equipment since the first war, with the exception of an Armenian helicopter in 2014. Clashes continued after the brief war in 2016 and would last until 2020, when the conflict would escalate again.

Dead	Late 2016	2017	2018	2019	Early 2020
Azerbaijan	6	11	1	???	14
Armenia	15	8	6	???	6

 Same as above. Numbers for 2020 end in september. 

2020 Nagorno Karabakh war

By 2020 Azerbaijan had increased its military to a level of strength far above that of Armenia and was confident in its ability to win the next war. Azerbaijan maintained a military budget higher than the Armenian national budget, leveraging its four times as large gdp. The war started late September of 2020 and would only last 6 weeks.

Country	Soldiers	Armored vehicles	Warplanes
Azerbaijan	56 000	1400	39
Syrian mercenaries	2 500	0	0
Armenia	45 000	900	22
Artsakh	20 000	250	0

Military balance at the start of the war.

Both countries were accusing the other of having attacked first, though it would quickly become clear who was on the offensive. Using a combination of more modern tanks, more modern artillery, drones and greater numbers the Azerbaijani army broke through the Armenian defensive lines. The offensive moved along the border with Iran in the south, in a mirror move to Armenia's summer offensive in 1993. Azerbaijan used soldiers from the Free Syrian Army, a Turkish-backed opposition group in Syria, to commit the most deadly and hopeless offensive actions. Their use of large Turkish Bayraktar drones and Israeli kamikaze drones was unlike anything seen before, and the aging Armenian air defense was hopelessly outmatched. Where Azerbaijan could thank Turkey for disposable troops and years of training and material support, Armenia stood alone. The article 4 of the CSTO treaty was not activated, as the assault was on Artsakh and not an internationally recognized part of Armenia. No Russian help would arrive. 

In just six weeks Azeri forces captured 1/3 of Artsakh’s territory. The new ceasefire agreement was again coordinated by Russia. The agreement gave back all land outside of Nagorno Karabakh proper to Azerbaijan, and they kept the land in Nagorno Karabakh they captured. Artsakh retained a corridor between it and Armenia, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to guard this Lachin corridor. Azerbaijan argued for their need for a corridor between its main territory and their Nakchivan exclave, but the terms of such a corridor's existence were never made clear and it was never granted. 

People	Dead soldiers	Dead civilians	Refugees
Azeris	2 906	100	40 000
Armenians	3 825	85	100 000
Syrians	541	0	0

Losses of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war. 

Once again the majority of the human cost was caused by the new flow of refugees. The Azerbaijani government has stated their intention to resettle refugees, most of them from the first war, in the regained territories, but the demining of the region and facilitation of livable communities will take years and may take decades. Azerbaijan has received harsh words for fighting their war of reconquest, but nothing in terms of sanctions or other real ramifications. The Armenian political system, on the other hand, was launched into chaos. The resignation of the prime minister was widely demanded, ending in his resignation and swift reelection. The other goal of the protests, to prevent the ceding of the lost territories of Artsakh, was not achieved, and the conflict was not yet over. 

New clashes and the situation today

Since the end of the war new clashes have been fought, and Azerbaijan is for the first time occupying parts of internationally recognized non-exclave Armenian land. This time, unlike the interwar clashes of the 2010s, the fighting does result in change on the ground. Azerbaijani forces are slowly encroaching on Armenian land, while building up defensive structures as they advance. Artillery shelling is used to drive Armenian troops out of areas to then occupy those areas with infantry. In clashes, which intensified in september 2022, at least 91 Azerbaijani troops and at least 232 Armenian troops have lost their lives. 

Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, has made multiple claims that parts of legally recognized Armenia is historic Azeri land. These vague territorial claims are coupled with more real demands to gain a corridor to Nakchivan and to fully integrate all of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Artsakh itself will not be attacked as long as Russian peacekeepers are there, which may explain why Armenia proper is the target. In addition to the attacks on Armenia the Lachin corridor has been blocked by Azeri forces, who appear to economically ruin Artsakh and perhaps force them into trading through Azerbaijan. 

Russia has declined to support Armenia, even though Armenia has triggered CSTO article 4 and Azerbaijan has encroached on sovereign territory that should be protected. While these clashes have been going on Russia has been caught up in their own war of conquest in Ukraine, leaving them militarily distracted. Western governments and intergovernmental organizations all make sure to condemn Azerbaijan, but no real action is taken, same with condemnation from Iran. The country most involved in the conflict is Turkey, which claims that Armenia is in fact the one encroaching on Azerbaijani territory. The conflict viewed in a wider scope is the defeat of a Russian ally at the hands of a Turkish one, which can have implications beyond the Caucasus.