Nearly the entire ethnically Armenian population of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh has left the Caucasus Mountains region since Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on the war-torn region earlier this month, Armenian officials said Saturday morning, forcing more than 100,000 people to flee.
Armenian officials said Saturday morning the number of people who have fled to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh climbed to 100,437, with more than 34,000 of them receiving government-provided accommodations in Armenia, state news agency Armenpress reported.
The mass exodus out of the region in the Caucuses comes just under two weeks after Azerbaijan’s military launched a military attack, declaring an “evacuation” of ethnic Armenians from the area, which it labeled “dangerous,” according to a translation by Politico.
Armenian officials called for a ceasefire one day after the attack—which included an explosion at a gas station that left more than 100 people injured—calling the “actions of the international community” to resolve the conflict “inadequate,” according to a translation by Reuters.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had “reaffirmed U.S. support for Armenia’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity” in a call with Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, with a State Department spokesperson adding the ethnic Armenian population in the region “should be able to remain in their home in peace and dignity” and that any residents who flee and return should be allowed to do so with assistance from a “neutral, independent third party.”
The decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as a region of Azerbaijan despite having a majority Armenian population, intensified in recent months amid a series of failed negotiations between the two countries, which both regained their independence in the fall of the Soviet Union and have fought over disputed region ever since. The bloodiest instance came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a war between the two sides left roughly 30,000 people dead. Conflict in the region, which had been governed as a self-declared sovereign state called the Republic of Artsakh, escalated once again in September 2020, killing at least 6,500 people, though that war lasted less than two months.
Following the attack, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch released a report stating “thousands of civilians” in the region “have dire humanitarian needs” including food and medication shortages as a result of the attack and a preceding nine-plus-month blockade of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in and out of the region.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s press secretary Nazeli Baghdasaryan, who condemned Azerbaijan’s “large-scale aggression” in a post on X after Azerbaijan’s invasion nearly two weeks ago, claimed the attack is part of a larger effort to “complete its policy of ethnic cleansing,” following more than three decades of conflict in the region. Azerbaijani officials, however, have argued the attack was launched to combat growing “provocations” in the region, while ally Turkey’s Foreign Ministry claimed the military operation was the start of “anti-terrorism measures exclusively targeting military elements” in direct response to armed conflicts by “illegitimate Armenian armed elements” in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenia says 100,000 refugees flee region (BBC)
A Stunningly Sudden End to a Long, Bloody Conflict in the Caucasus (New York Times)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/09/30/why-over-100000-people-have-fled-nagorno-karabakh-in-just-two-weeks-after-azerbaijans-military-crackdown/?sh=5679edad7ff5