Azerbaijan launches operation against Nagorno-Karabakh and demands surrender

Azerbaijan launches operation against Nagorno-Karabakh and demands surrender

Subject: IR

Section: Places in news

Why has fighting broken out in Nagorno-Karabakh?

• For the past nine months, Azerbaijan has imposed an effective blockade on the only route into the enclave from Armenia, known as the Lachin Corridor.
• Azerbaijan said it had launched its operation in response to the deaths of six people, including four police officers, in two landmine explosions on Tuesday morning.

Nagorno-Karabakh Region

• Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous and heavily forested region that under international law is recognised as part of Azerbaijan.
• The landlocked mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh is the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute between Azerbaijan, in which it lies, and its ethnic Armenian majority, backed by neighbouring Armenia.
• It is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but much of it is governed by the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, also known as the Republic of Artsakh.
• In 1988, towards the end of Soviet rule, fighting between Azerbaijani troops and Armenian secessionists left the de facto independent state in the hands of ethnic Armenians when a truce was signed in 1994.
• Russian peacekeepers have been deployed since 2020 to monitor a new Moscow-brokered ceasefire, and also to ensure safe passage through the so-called “Lachin corridor” – which separates Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia.
• While Armenia itself has never officially recognised the region’s independence, it has become its main financial and military backer and the breakaway territory functions as a de facto part of Armenia.
• Talks have so far failed to produce a permanent peace agreement. Russia, France and the US co-chair the OSCE’s Minsk Group, which had been attempting to end the dispute but this has been thrown into doubt by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, The EU is also seeking to aid a peaceful resolution of the issue.
• However, ethnic Armenians who constitute the vast majority of the population there reject Azeri rule (the legal system of Azerbaijan).
• After Azerbaijan’s troops were pushed out of the region following a war in the 1990s, these ethnic Armenians have been in administrative control of Nagorno-Karabakh, with support from Armenia.

Strategic Significance:

• The energy-rich Azerbaijan has built several gas and oil pipelines across the Caucasus (the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea) to Turkey and Europe.
• Some of these pipelines pass close to the conflict zone (within 16 km of the border).
• In an open war between the two countries, the pipelines could be targeted, which would impact energy supplies and may even lead to higher oil prices globally.