The world’s elites ignore a horrendous case of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh– and will do so again
In a decade defined by war, notes the author in his Introduction, the destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh is destined to be no more than a historical footnote. The exodus of its entire population in September 2023 was not met with the headlines or outrage that have accompanied other human catastrophes in the region. But without learning the lessons of what happened, it is quite likely to be repeated elsewhere. Arguably, it already is.
Background
It was the Soviet Communist authorities that placed Nagorno-Karabakh, three-quarters of whose population was Armenian, under the control of Azerbaijan. As the Soviet Union began to collapse, a peaceful rally in Yerevan, demanding the transfer of the region to Armenia, provoked a violent response in Azerbaijan that saw thirty Armenians killed in a pogrom in Baku. Ethnic violence exploded and a mass two-way exodus began.
As the USSR fell apart, Soviet soldiers sold off their weapons to the highest bidders. Across the region, villages were torched, houses looted and civilians killed. The war resulted in a decisive victory for Armenia which occupied a much wider area than the original land of Nagorno-Karabakh – yet it was reluctant for diplomatic reasons to annex or recognize the independence of the new territory.
Over the next decades, Azerbaijan’s larger population and massive oil revenues swung the balance of power in its favor. Its dictatorship promoted authoritarianism and nationalism. “The state doctrine became more and more virulently anti-Armenian,” writes Gavin. In one school textbook, Armenians were blamed for Stalin’s purges and even earlier, bloodier atrocities.
New wars broke out in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, culminating in victory for Azerbaijan and the end of Nagorno-Karabakh. Gavin’s book covers this most recent period.
Azerbaijan ascendant
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War started in September 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic. It ended 44 days later, with a withdrawal from most of the territory Armenia had earlier occupied, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh isolated within Azerbaijan’s territory. Russian ‘peacekeepers’ would be deployed to prevent further bloodshed.
Jubilant crowds celebrated in Azerbaijan while Armenians saw the deal as a total capitulation. Not for the last time, Armenia’s reformist Prime Minister Pashinyan was blamed. He in turn accused his oligarchic predecessors of a level of corruption that left the army ill-prepared for battle.
In 2022, a two-day war broke out when Azerbaijan attacked Armenian territory. When Russia’s President Putin visited Armenia in November, public hostility was unprecedented, due to the strong sense that Russia had abandoned Armenia to Azerbaijan’s aggression. Reflecting the antipathy, Pashinyan at the last minute refused to sign a joint declaration with Russia on their continued economic cooperation. Amazed, “Putin dropped his pen,” reports Gavin.
This was courageous of Pashinyan, given Russia’s control of Armenia’s borders and its grip over its economy. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan was mounting a professional and effective PR campaign to win western support. In 2022, more than 200 ‘journalists’ visited the country, mostly on trips funded by the government. The following year, that number more than doubled.
The blockade
Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh began in December 2022. As food, medical and energy supplies in the enclave began to dwindle, Armenians again directed their anger at Russia for its failure to stop Azerbaijan’s tightening of the noose.
As reported on Labour Hub at the time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the blockade and the International Court of Justice of the United Nations ordered Azerbaijan to “ensure unhindered traffic” on the highway connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh. The European Court of Human Rights also called for free travel. Both rulings were ignored by the Azerbaijan regime.
In August 2023, a session of the UN Security Council ended without conclusion. A text condemning Azerbaijan was killed off by a Russian veto – possibly payback for Armenia’s previous criticism of Moscow. Prominent Russian voices were also beginning to rebuke the Armenian government for “flirting with NATO” and providing aid to Ukraine. Armenia had also become a major destination for Russians escaping conscription in the war on Ukraine.
The following month when the author interviewed the Armenian Prime Minister, Pashinyan made it clear that Russia’s role as peacekeeper in the region was over and he was now putting his faith in the West to uphold the rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
That faith would prove misplaced. Pashinyan might have read the signals better, for example, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s July 2022 visit to Baku to sign a memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan, hailing it as a “crucial energy partner” and doubling the supply of gas from Azerbaijan to the EU. In any case, EU officials, in their attempts to mediate in the dispute, were completely out of their depth, in Gavin’s analysis.
Nor was the US any more reliable, with Washington’s ambassador to Yerevan saying the Karabakh Armenians could live safely under Baku’s rule – just months before Azerbaijan’s final attack. Azerbaijan’s rising status as an oil power, plus its historic antipathy towards neighboring Iran, made it a vital regional partner for the West. The fate of 100,000 Armenians was not going to get in the way of that.
The final assault
On September 19th 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against the Armenian enclave, as Russian ‘peacekeepers’ hurriedly pulled out. Around 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded, including old women and children. Turkey’s President Erdogan expressed support for Azerbaijan’s military aggression. Within two days, Nagorno-Karabakh was forced into unconditional surrender. The wholesale evacuation began and the world’s media arrived to cover the story.
“For a year,” writes Gavin, “these people had been living under a blockade that the world, and the media, had virtually ignored… begging for coverage in the sincere belief that if the world paid attention, it would do something. It didn’t. Now that they had lost everything, we were going to put them on the front page.”
In Azerbaijan, trials began of leading Karabakh Armenians. But the regime also took advantage of the situation to crack down on academics, journalists and other opposition figures at home. Running for a fifth term in a far from democratic election, President Aliyev was re-elected with 92% of the vote.
The following month, the Karabakh parliament building was bulldozed. Little remains now of the centuries-long Armenian presence amid the boarded up houses and ransacked apartments. The dereliction was presented by Azerbaijan at the COP28 in Dubai as an environmental breakthrough: the region, emptied of its inhabitants, had achieved climate neutrality. The next COP in Baku went ahead as planned in November 2024, although that too was preceded and followed by renewed repression of government critics.
Consequences
The shameful way the world’s elites looked away from Azerbaijan’s aggression and ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh has consequences. It emboldens President Putin who feels nobody is going to do much in the face of his unprovoked aggression towards Ukraine and elsewhere. As for the Armenians, their brave pivot towards democracy looks like being abandoned in an international order devoid of honest principles.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leaders remain in prison. In January 2025, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a new resolution calling on Azerbaijan to release them along with other Armenian prisoners of war.
The Aliyev regime meanwhile continues to ratchet up its rhetoric, calling an independent Armenia a threat to the region and “a fascist state in its nature”. The characteristically emollient Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded by urging Azerbaijan to cool tensions and stick to dialogue. Devoid of international support, it’s hard to see what else he might do.
