A major ethnic cleansing operation has been underway in the South Caucasus and it has been carried out at lightning speed. In the space of a week, Azerbaijani forces have taken total control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, forced the separatist Armenian authorities to lay down their arms on September 20 and dissolve the autonomous republic they had set up, and put nearly 100,000 Armenian inhabitants – over 80 % of the population – on the road to exodus. People have left everything behind, convinced that their community is no longer safe.
For Armenia, this came as the bitter and brutal end of a project born over 30 years ago out of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the confusion in Moscow, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh had made their first attempt to rid themselves of the guardianship of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the fruit of the Stalinist legacy. The following three decades were marked by two bloody wars, reversals of fortune for the warring parties and extreme fragility under the watchful eye of Moscow and Ankara, protectors of Christian Armenians for the former and Turkish-speaking Azerbaijanis for the latter.
Few experts in the region were surprised by the recent turn of events. Baku has been in a position of strength since the war of 2020, its sovereignty over the territory now recognized by all, including Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian. Talks organized by the European Union turned into a dialogue of the willfully deaf between Pachinian, who insisted on the rights and security of the Armenian population, and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, who spoke only of territorial integrity. The blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only route linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, organized by Azerbaijani forces since December 2022 in order to cut off the population of Nagorno-Karabakh from all supplies, was a clear sign of Baku's determination to put an end to the Armenian presence in this territory, despite its long history.
In order to carry out his coup, Aliyev not only took advantage of the domestic political situation, that of an authoritarian regime – he is himself the son of the president who ruled Azerbaijan with an iron fist under the Soviet regime. But he also understood that the geopolitical context, where force increasingly prevails over law, was favorable to him.
Russia, distracted by its 18-month war with Ukraine, has given up on protecting Armenia. The 2,000 Russian troops stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, theoretically tasked with ensuring compliance with agreements negotiated in 2020, did not lift a finger to ease the blockade at the Lachin corridor, nor to protect the Armenians living in the territory. Aliyev also knew he could count on support from Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey, always eager to assert its influence. For the rest, the West was busy elsewhere, the European Union also grappling with the conflict in Ukraine, the UN paralyzed and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in crisis. The path to success was clear.
It would be unrealistic to ask Brussels to resolve this conflict. Europeans can, however, ensure that vital humanitarian aid reaches the refugees and that Yerevan is not overwhelmed. At the very least, they must also put an end to buying gas supplies from Azerbaijan, which for some have replaced Russian gas.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.