Two Armenian fighters and an Azerbaijani soldier were killed on Wednesday in violence near Nagorny Karabakh or Nagorno-Karabakh.
Earlier the same day, two members of the Armenian separatist forces were killed and 14 injured in an Azerbaijani drone strike.
The authorities of the separatist enclave supported by the capital Yerevan and which seceded from Azerbaijan immediately denounced a “flagrant violation of the ceasefire”.
As for the leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh separatists, Arayik Haroutiounian, he immediately signed a decree proclaiming a partial military mobilization in this territory.
After a first war that killed more than 30,000 people in the early 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed again in the fall of 2020 for control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Tensions have since remained high between the two former Soviet republics and this new outbreak of violence could compromise negotiations to reach a peace treaty.
20 Minutes
takes stock.
Nagorno-Karabakh is at the center of a long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
While since the end of the armed conflict in the fall of 2020 tensions have remained high between the two rival ex-Soviet republics of the Caucasus, since Wednesday a new escalation of violence has revived the risk of war in this mountainous enclave.
Under the leadership of Russian diplomacy and international mediation, Armenia and Azerbaijan are in the process of negotiating a peace treaty.
To what do we owe this renewed violence?
As war rages in Ukraine, can Moscow instrumentalize these tensions?
Can peace talks be compromised?
20 Minutes
takes stock of the issues surrounding the rebel region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
But, by the way, what is Nagorno-Karabakh?
Considered a central region of its history by Armenia, Nagorny Karabakh (meaning mountainous Karabakh or Nagorno-Karabakh in Russian) has changed hands multiple times.
Integrated into the Armenian kingdom in Antiquity, this region of approximately 146,000 inhabitants spread over 4,400 m2, came under Arab influence in the Middle Ages before a revolt brought it back into the bosom of Armenia.
After a period of Persian influence, it was finally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1813. Finally, since the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over the territory populated mainly by Armenians of Christian faith and attached to Azerbaijan in 1921 by Stalin.
The region will become autonomous from 1923, a status which will remain unchanged until the last hours of the USSR.
What happened this Wednesday in Nagorno-Karabakh?
Azerbaijan claimed to have taken control of “several important heights” there, including hills, and destroyed Armenian targets.
Three people, two Armenian separatists and an Azerbaijani soldier, died during this reprisal operation dubbed “Revenge”.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry quickly added that its forces were fortifying these positions.
Azerbaijan responded with force, as earlier "heavy fire" had targeted a position of its armed forces in the Lachin district, a buffer zone between the Armenian border and Nagorny Karabakh.
In the process, the leader of the Nagorny Karabakh separatists, Arayik Haroutiounian, signed a decree proclaiming a partial military mobilization throughout the mountainous territory.
What is the origin of the conflict?
It goes back… a long way.
Either in the Middle Ages, as explained above.
But the height of recent tensions for control of Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to the early 1990s and a war that left more than 30,000 dead.
This armed conflict has also led to significant population displacements, with nearly 700,000 Azerbaijanis fleeing Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and 230,000 Armenians fleeing Azerbaijan.
Then, the two ex-Soviet republics clashed again in the fall of 2020.
More than 6,500 people will be killed in six weeks in this new war which ended in a crushing defeat for Armenia.
A ceasefire agreement is then negotiated.
It is sponsored by Moscow, which is rapidly deploying peacekeepers to Nagorny Karabakh.
Armenia is forced to cede to Azerbaijan territories it has controlled since its victorious war in the 1990s: three regions forming a glacis around Nagorno-Karabakh.
This agreement was experienced as a humiliation by Yerevan, where several opposition parties have been demanding since the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, whom they accuse of having made too many concessions to Baku.
Despite a timid diplomatic relaxation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, tensions remain high.
As proof, violence between the Azerbaijani army and Armenian separatists broke out again on November 16, 2021, killing 13 people on both sides.
However, the Azerbaijani government began in January to organize regular bus trips to the “liberated lands”.
This is the first step in what Baku calls the "Great Comeback," an ambitious $1.3 billion government plan to repopulate Karabakh with its former Azerbaijani population.
How is the international community reacting?
The Armenian Foreign Ministry on Thursday urged the international community to take steps to stop "Azerbaijan's aggressive attitude and actions".
Nikol Pashinian called on Azerbaijan to recognize “the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh” and the “Lachin corridor”, which connects the separatist enclave to Armenia.
The Prime Minister also called on Russia to act, waiting "for every attempt to breach the line of contact to be prevented by the contingent of peacekeepers".
For its part, Russia accused Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire, adding simply that its peacekeepers deployed in the region were seeking to "stabilize" the situation.
"We call on the parties to show restraint and respect the ceasefire," Russian diplomacy said in a statement, adding that Moscow was in "close contact" with Baku and Yerevan.
The European Union, for its part, called for the “immediate cessation of hostilities”.
As for the United States, they said they were "deeply concerned".
Can this violence jeopardize the peace negotiations?
Yes, assure most of the experts quoted by AFP, especially since what is being played out between Armenia and Azerbaijan could easily spill over the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Indeed, Russia and Turkey could come and put their grain of salt into negotiations to reach a peace treaty that have been underway for several years.
Moscow, which sponsored the ceasefire, regards the Caucasus region as its backyard.
While the battle for Donbass is being played out in Ukraine, the Caspian Sea is now a strategic and logistical asset for the Russian Navy, serving both as a platform for firing "hypervelocity missiles at very long range" and as a reservoir of force. , said Captain Eric Lavault, spokesperson for the French Navy.
For his part, Igor Delanoe, deputy director of the Franco-Russian observatory, goes even further: if Turkey's position changes and it decides to influence its ally, Azerbaijan, "to reactivate through Baku a conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, one can imagine Moscow mobilizing the Caspian fleet to do "gunboat diplomacy" in order to show the Azerbaijanis that they would be well advised not to play the game too much Turkey's game.
Our file on Karabakh
This without taking into account that Azerbaijan, strong in its oil reserves, has armed itself with great luxury in recent years.
The country has equipped itself like Armenia with the Russians, but has also acquired more modern equipment (drones) with Turkey and Israel.
“I think that there will be no way out of this conflict until Azerbaijan resolves to recognize a form of Armenian sovereignty over Karabakh (…) and if it does not obtain a form compensation “, confided in 2020 to
20 Minutes
Frédéric Encel.
The lecturer at Science Po then spoke of an "inextricable" conflict, also assuring that Azerbaijan did not want "a ceasefire" and that Turkey, "totally biased country", should have nothing " to do in this conflict.
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