Global Courant
MOSCOW – Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians will leave for Armenia because they do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan and fear ethnic cleansing, the breakaway region’s leadership told Reuters on Sunday.
What’s going on and what does it mean?
WHY ARE THEY LEAVING?
The Armenians of Karabakh, an area internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but previously outside Baku’s control, were forced to declare a ceasefire on September 20 after a lightning 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani army.
“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan. Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic country,” David Babayan, adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, the president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters.
“The fate of our poor people will go down in history as a shame for the Armenian people and for the entire civilized world,” Babayan said.
Azerbaijan says it will guarantee their rights and integrate the region, but Armenians say they fear repression – and ethnic cleansing. Azerbaijan has denied any such intentions.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, what is known as the First Karabakh War (1988–1994) broke out between Armenians and their Azerbaijanis. About 30,000 people died and over a million people were displaced.
Karabakh’s Armenian leaders said in a statement that all those left homeless by the latest Azerbaijani military operation and wanting to leave would be escorted to Armenia by Russian peacekeepers.
WHERE WILL THEY GO?
If 120,000 people move to Armenia via the Lachin corridor, the small South Caucasian country could face a humanitarian crisis.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Friday that space has been allocated for at least 40,000 people.
“If good conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, it is more likely that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will find exile from their homeland as the only option to see.” way to save their lives and identities,” Pashinyan said on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear where 120,000 people in Armenia, which has a population of just 2.8 million, could be housed before the winter.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had started registering people who were looking for unaccompanied children or who had lost contact with loved ones.
WHAT DOES AZERBAIJAN SAY?
For Azerbaijan, the Armenian exodus from Karabakh is a major victory, seemingly ending many years of war and bickering over the region.
President Ilham Aliyev said his iron fist had consigned the idea of an independent ethnic Armenian Karabakh to history and that the region would be turned into a “paradise” as part of Azerbaijan.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE WIDE REGION?
A mass exodus could change the delicate balance of power in the South Caucasus, a patchwork of ethnicities crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran vie for influence.
Armenian Pashinyan has said the crisis has shown that his country cannot rely on Russia to defend its interests, although Moscow has responded that Armenia has few friends other than Russia.
Many Armenians blame Pashinyan, who lost the war against Azerbaijan over Karabakh in 2020, for the loss of Karabakh. Protests this week in the capital Yerevan called for his resignation.
Pashinyan said unidentified forces were trying to unleash a coup against him, and accused Russian media of waging an information war against him.
Russia has a military base in Armenia and considers itself the main security guarantor in the region.
This month, Armenia organized a joint army exercise with the United States, which has criticized Azerbaijan’s military operation. Turkey, a NATO member, supports Azerbaijan. REUTERS
