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GORIS, Armenia — For more than three decades, the self-declared Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh strove for independence and international recognition, defying U.N. resolutions that affirmed Azerbaijan’s sovereign claim to the region.
On Thursday, barely a week after a lightning military operation by Azerbaijan, that quest for statehood — and the dream of a separate homeland for its overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian population — died.
Samvel Shahramanyan, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh, signed a decree to dissolve the breakaway state, which Armenians call Artsakh, and all of its institutions on Jan. 1.
In some respects, Thursday’s stunning outcome reinforced the international order by restoring Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. That could offer some hope to countries like Ukraine whose borders have been violated and territories stolen, and potentially serve as a warning to regions like Catalonia in Spain and Kurdistan in Turkey and Syria that want to redraw maps to match their aspirations for ethno-nationalist self-determination.
But the same U.N. resolutions that recognized Azerbaijan’s borders had long denounced the displacement of civilians and demanded a durable cease-fire and peaceful negotiations to resolve the territorial dispute.
Last week’s brief and brutal military offensive by Azerbaijan, which was condemned by the international community, caused still-untallied civilian deaths, forced the government of Nagorno-Karabakh to capitulate, and set off an exodus of the mountainous region’s residents who say they fear genocide and, in any case, are unwilling to live under Azerbaijani rule.
More than 76,000 people — over half the region’s residents — have crossed the border to Armenia, and some officials said they believe the entire population will leave.
Azerbaijan’s military action also highlighted the futility of decades of international diplomacy known as the Minsk process, and also the failure of a Russian peacekeeping force, which was deployed in 2020 to uphold the terms of a fragile cease-fire following a 44-day war in which Azerbaijan seized back most of the territory it originally lost during a war in the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.
“This is the end of Artsakh and centuries old Armenian presence in the region,” said Kevork Oskanian, a lecturer in comparative politics focused on the former Soviet Union at Exeter University in Britain. “It is yet another trauma added to the traumas of the past.”
Oskanian said the loss of Artsakh would also mean the loss of culturally important sites to Armenia, and would potentially create enduring political instability and bitterness in society.
For decades, Azerbaijan had complained about the loss of its culturally important sites, and the enduring political instability and bitterness caused after Armenia seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azerbaijani regions, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani residents.
Exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh: ‘I never imagined we would ever leave’
On Thursday, Azerbaijani officials and diplomats insisted that Baku was not seeking the mass exodus of the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh and was prepared to reintegrate them. But many local residents said they would not risk persecution or even death at the hands of a country they viewed as a sworn enemy for most of their lives.
During talks with Karabakhi Armenians in recent days, Azerbaijani officials did not offer autonomy or any plans for a locally-elected government, but promised equal cultural and religious rights to those who stay.
“The Armenian population in Karabakh can now breathe easy. They are our citizens,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said last week. Only “those at the top of the criminal regime” in Nagorno-Karabakh would be held accountable, Aliyev said.
The push by Baku for that accountability appeared to be underway.
Prominent members of the Nagorno-Karabakh government have been arrested or have surrendered at the demand of the Azerbaijani authorities. Many calls and messages to Artsakh ministers went unanswered, amid reports that the phone network in Nagorno-Karabakh had been shut down.
David Babayan, the longtime spokesman for the breakaway government who also briefly served as its foreign minister, said he planned to hand himself over to authorities in Shusha, a city now controlled by Azerbaijan.
“You all know that I am included in the black list of Azerbaijan, and that the Azerbaijani side demanded my arrival in Baku for an appropriate investigation,” Babayan wrote on Facebook, referring to a list rumored to include the names of hundreds of Nagorno-Karabakh officials that Baku is seeking to arrest.
“This decision, of course, will cause great pain and stress to my loved ones, but I am sure they will understand,” Babayan said. “My failure to appear or worse, my escape, will cause serious harm to our long suffering people.”
Azerbaijani border guards said Wednesday they had detained Ruben Vardanyan, the former state minister of Artsakh, and on Thursday, Azerbaijan’s State Security Service announced several charges against him, including financing state terrorism.
Azerbaijani authorities published a video of Vardanyan in handcuffs being escorted by masked, armed guards at a detention center in Baku. He faces at least 12 years in prison, officials said.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, explained
In the border city of Goris, Armenian officials have converted the drama theater into a refugee center. Outside the theater, Zelita Babayan, 63, and her family were unloading bundles of their belongings onto the pavement on Thursday afternoon. The family had just arrived.
One of girls, Alisa, 12, sat on the bundles and cried. Babayan, still dressed in the bathrobe and house shoes she was wearing on the day she was evacuated, described how the family had barely two hours to pack their life’s belongings. A local military unit put them and 29 others from their village, called Chartar, into a truck and drove for three days to reach Goris.
“We loved our life there we can’t live without it,” Zelita Babayan said, when asked about the official dissolution of the Republic. “I think we can’t live here long in Armenia without it — our motherland.”
Babayan said she experienced extreme fear while passing though an Azerbaijani checkpoint — a feeling described by others fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh as the reason they do not believe reintegration plans would ever succeed. “We couldn’t live like, that with them ruling over us,” Babayan said.
The long corridors of vehicles streaming into Armenia, and the wrenching images of exhausted children, and multiple generations of families abandoning their homes with few belongings, drew parallels with other historic displacements — in the Balkans, in Israel-Palestine, and of course in Nagorno-Karabakh more than a generation ago.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been fiercely contested by predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan and predominantly Christian Armenia, for decades.
On Dec. 10 1991, in a referendum boycotted by local Azerbaijanis, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh voted for the creation of an independent state. A formal declaration of independence was issued in January 1992.
That first Nagorno-Karabakh war ended with a decisive Armenian victory in 1994. Massacres were committed by both sides, but ultimately the vast majority of Azerbaijanis — hundreds of thousands — were forced to leave the territory.
In the 2020 war, Azerbaijan recaptured most of the occupied areas. For roughly 10 months before last week’s surprise offensive, Azerbaijan had blocked the sole road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, hindering supplies of food and essential goods.
The failure, or refusal, of Russian peacekeeping forces to prevent the blockade drew fierce criticism from Yerevan and has raised suspicions about Moscow’s motives and intentions. The Kremlin has been distracted by its war in Ukraine, but also has expressed disdain for the government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Russia also has cultivated its relationship with Turkey, which is a strong backer of Azerbaijan.
Thousands flee Nagorno-Karabakh as U.S. demands protection for civilians
The 2020 cease-fire brokered by Moscow left uncertain the fate of Armenian residents remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh, particularly the 50,000 or so in the region’s capital city, Stepanakert.
After the 2020 war, the government in Nagorno-Karabakh was left in disarray amid disagreements about whether to engage in talks with Baku. There were multiple resignations and reshuffles. In May, the breakaway state denounced Pashinyan after he said that Yerevan recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
In August, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, resigned. In his final decree he appointed Shahramanyan, 44, a close associate of another former president, to be state minister. Shahramanyan was inaugurated as president on Sept. 10 after an election by parliament in which he was the sole candidate,
Some refugees streaming out Nagorno-Karabakh spoke of betrayal, with some blaming Russia for failing to protect them, and others blaming Armenia or the Artsakh government. But most acknowledged that the fading, war-exhausted Artsakh Republic had few resources or the capability to oppose the Azerbaijani army.
Elina Mkrtchyan, 22, who had arrived in Goris on Wednesday night with her 2-year-old daughter, Gabriela, did not blame Shahramanyan for signing Thursday’s decree. She said the Artsakh government “hadn’t estimated Baku’s real powers” and that the presidency should have been given to someone who could sit and negotiate with Azerbaijan.
“I don’t think they were working to achieve peace in the end — they were just doing what Yerevan told them to do,” she said, adding that the Artsakh republic had effectively ended the day Pashinyan recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial sovereignty.
Another refugee, Artur Babayan, 26, said that “if there are no Armenians there, there is no need to have a Nagorno-Karabakh state. A president would have no people.”
Artur Babayan said he has no plans to return to Azerbaijani-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, but would fight to reclaim his homeland. “But I’m ready to get the country back at any cost,” he said. “If we have what we need to go and fight for it back, I’ll be ready to fight. I’d go back tomorrow.”
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