A Close Call in the Caucasus

Karl Rahder

Politics, Eurasia

Just days ago, Nagorno-Karabakh almost boiled over.

That was close.

Most of the world wasn’t watching in early April when a new and destructive war very nearly broke out in the South Caucasus mountain range, an area encompassing Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. But the war that didn’t happen is still a very real possibility, and if it does, the entire region could go up in flames over a parcel of land not much larger than the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

That verdant and contested piece of real estate is Nagorno-Karabakh, the storied “highland black garden” tucked into the foothills of the South Caucasus. Karabakh was the prize in an all-out war between Armenia and Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991 and the majority Armenian population of Karabakh declared independence. The conflict that emerged, lasting until 1994, cost newly independent Azerbaijan control of Karabakh, took roughly thirty thousand lives and sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Today’s self-declared “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” (NKR) is recognized by no one—not even its patron, Armenia—and has become a tiny, ethnically defined garrison state in the unenviable position of being under the constant threat of annihilation.

In short, Karabakh is cursed—as is the entire region—by geopolitics, ethnic and religious hatred, and the forces of nationalism and sovereignty. Just a few weeks ago, these forces came very close to blowing up the fragile pseudo-peace that has hung on by a thread for roughly twenty years. In the most serious violation of the cease-fire brokered in 1994 at the end of the war, the Azerbaijani army, in the predawn of April 2, launched a multipronged offensive that pushed back ethnic Armenian forces in what well could have spiraled into an out-of-control conflict.