Artsakh is gone. What now?

 

With the new year comes a change in the map that straddles the line between a de facto and a de jure development. As of January 1st, 2024, the Republic of Artsakh no longer exists, ending its 32-year history as an independent yet unrecognized state. The republic controlled most of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and until 2020 also other territories internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

On the 19th of September 2023 Azerbaijani military forces moved into the territory of Artsakh from multiple directions[1]. Fears of a third Nagorno-Karabakh war were halted by the surrender of the military of Artsakh the following day. With no support from the weakened Armenia and no hope of intervention by any great power, the government of Artsakh had no means to continue the fight alone. The surrendered government promised to dissolve Artsakh in January 2024[2].

Artsakh’s dissolution marks the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, but it may not end the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as a whole or satiate military thinkers in Azerbaijan. The 2020 ceasefire agreement has a provision that Azerbaijan claims to give them the right to establish what they refer to as the “Zangezur corridor” through Armenia’s Syunik province, which would connect the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakchivan to the rest of Azerbaijan[3].

As with any war, of course, the civilian population is the one left to suffer. Despite Azerbaijan publicly guaranteeing the safety of Armenians and asking them to stay and live as equal citizens in Azerbaijan, ethnic Armenians started leaving Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia as soon as hostilities were over[4]. By the start of October, over 100 000 Armenians had left the territory out of a population of 120 000 before the 19th of September[5]. Azerbaijan plans a return of internally displaced people from the war in the 90s to Nagorno-Karabakh in what they call the Great Return[6]. The plan of the Azerbaijani authorities will give 40 000 of Azerbaijan’s 600 000 internally displaced people a new home in Nagorno-Karabakh by 2026. If the remaining Armenians stick around, this will create a new Nagorno-Karabakh with half the population prior to the Azerbaijani takeover.

The crisis at the border, ongoing since 2021, has not ended. Azerbaijan still occupies border territories of Armenia proper and while the sporadic clashes seem to have halted, there has been reached no settlement to the conflict. Armenia seems to have been pivoting away from Russian support in hopes of gaining Western support already before the invasion of Artsakh[7]. The EU and US have both condemned the Azeri aggression at the border and expressed concern at the plight of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and military cooperation between Armenia and NATO is growing[8]. While the Caucasus is now home to one unrecognized state fewer and the Nagorno-Karabakh issue seems solved by force, Armenia and Azerbaijan still serve as the stage for a continuing story.

The history of the two Nagorno-Karabakh wars and the wider Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict has already been covered on this page, six weeks before the newer developments. For a more historically focused rundown, check out the other article if you haven’t already.


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