The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

The South Caucasus
Armenia and Azerbaijan, along with neighbouring Georgia, make up the South Caucasus region connecting Asia and Europe. Armenia has an estimated population of 2.9 million, while Azerbaijan has a little over 10 million. The region became part of the Russian empire in the 19th century.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region
In the early 1920s, Soviet rulers established the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan. Nagorno means “mountainous” in Russian, while Karabakh means “black garden” in Azeri. Armenians call the region Artsakh, an ancient Armenian name for the area. Stepanakert – Khankendi, in Azeri – is an administrative centre of the region. The breakaway region is not recognised by any country including Armenia, which supports it politically and financially.

A man looks at a crater in a road surface after recent shelling in Stepanakert.

Stringer for Reuters

Ethnic tensions
Nagorno-Karabakh is located within Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up the vast majority of the estimated 150,000-strong population reject Azeri rule. Long-standing tensions in the region between Christian Armenians and their Muslim neighbours flared in the late 1980s.

The conflict escalated into war in 1991 between Azerbaijan’s troops and Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia. An estimated 30,000 people were killed and many more were displaced. This map shows the areas in the two countries with a predominant share of Armenians and Azeris as of 2019.

Armenian-controlled regions
After a Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other Azeri regions (which did not have any special status during Soviet time) were left in the hands of Armenians. These regions, which serve as a buffer zone for Nagorno-Karabakh, are Aghdam, Fizuli, Jabrail, Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadli and Zangilan. Aghdam and Fizuli are under partial control of the Armenian forces.

A man removes the debris of a building following recent shelling in Stepanakert.

Stringer for Reuters

Violent clashes
Azerbaijan and Armenia have regularly traded accusations of violence around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Azeri-Armenian border over the last 25 years. Past outbreaks of fighting have killed some 30,000 people since 1988 – most of them servicemen.

Clashes over control of Nagorno-Karabakh violently flared in April 2016, when the International Crisis Group (ICG) said at least 200 people were killed. Efforts to secure a permanent settlement of the conflict have failed despite mediation led by the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States.

Internally displaced people
Azerbaijan claims that 1 million people were forced to flee their homes during the conflict in the 1990s. Data from the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan estimates there were 651,458 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Azerbaijan at the end of 2019, of which around 300,000 have been temporarily housed according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Many originate from the Armenian-controlled regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia says thousands of Armenians fled from Azerbaijan in the 90s.

Five-year-old Bahtiyar Elnur, who was injured during a blast, plays with his sister Sehla, in the Azeri city of Ganja. Azerbaijan says the city was bombed by Armenian forces – Armenia denies the claim.

Umit Bektas for Reuters

Turkey allies with Azerbaijan
An escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may draw in surrounding countries. Turkey backs its ethnic Turkic kin in Azerbaijan, and closed borders with Armenia after the conflict in the 90s. Armenia has its own long history of tensions with Turkey: some 1.5 million Armenians were killed under Ottoman rule between 1915 and 1923. Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

Two major oil and gas pipelines pass through Azerbaijan and end in Turkey. Turkey’s exports of drones, rocket launchers and other military equipment to Azerbaijan have risen six-fold this year, and Azerbaijan has also purchased arms from Israel, Russia and others.

Russia attempts to broker peace
Russia is also a big player in the region, maintaining close economic ties with Armenia and Azerbaijan and supplying weapons to both. But its relationship with Yerevan is deeper – Armenia hosts a Russian military base and is part of a Russia-led security bloc and the Eurasian Economic Union.

Moscow brokered a humanitarian ceasefire that went into effect on Oct. 10, though it quickly came under strain. Another ceasefire agreement was brokered a week later, but both sides accused each other of violating the truce. Two major pipelines (one gas and one oil) originate in Azerbaijan and pass through Russia.

Potential fuel supply disruptions
Escalating clashes could disrupt oil and gas exports from Azerbaijan. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline accounts for around 80% of the country’s oil exports, and the Southern Gas Corridor is the first direct route for Azeri gas to markets in Europe. Both pipelines pass through the 60-mile wide "Ganja gap”.

There have been three strikes on Ganja since fighting broke out on Sept. 27, and 25 civilians have been killed. Ganja was shelled in early October, and the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh said his forces had targeted a military airbase located in the town, miles away from the conflict zone. Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have denied shelling civilian settlements.

Vesile Mehmedova sits in front of debris of her brother's home as her relatives search for belongings at a blast site in Ganja. According to official figures from both sides, more than 100 civilians have been killed since the fighting flared on Sept. 27.

Umit Bektas for Reuters