ETHNIC CLEANSINGNagorno-Karabakh: The World Should Have Seen This Crisis Coming – and It’s Not Over Yet
The global community and its institutions, including the EU, arguably let Azerbaijan get away with its military adventures, which only spurred the country on. As a result of the Azerbaijani attack on the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19 and the forced exodus that followed it, this region will soon be empty of Armenians – for the first time in more than two millennia. The lesson of the tragedy now unfolding in Nagorno-Karabakh is that verbal condemnations and appeals do not stop the aggression of authoritarian states.
As a result of the Azerbaijani attack on the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19 and the forced exodus that followed it, this region will soon be empty of Armenians – for the first time in more than two millennia.
This was a tragedy that could have been avoided. The New York Times recently wrote about what’s now happening in Nagorno-Karabakh that “almost no one saw it coming”. Nothing could be more wrong. Armenians, as well as those who have followed the conflict, have warned for a long time that this was coming.
The global community and its institutions, including the EU, arguably let Azerbaijan get away with its military adventures, which only spurred the country on.
In the summer of 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Baku and concluded an agreement on gas supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe. She has several times since then praised the country as the EU’s “reliable energy partner”.
Bolstered by this backing, a few months later Azerbaijan launched an attack, not on Nagorno-Karabakh but on several areas inside Armenia itself. Since then, Azerbaijan has occupied more than 100 square kilometers of Armenia’s uncontested and internationally recognized territory.
The EU could only appeal for restraint and was relieved when the fighting stopped after two days.
Global Inaction
In December 2022, Azerbaijan began a blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. In February, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a binding order that Azerbaijan must immediately allow the unimpeded movement of people and goods along the corridor. Azerbaijan ignored this.
During the summer, the situation worsened for the 120,000 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, with acute shortages of food, petrol and medicine. Malnutrition was rife. The situation became so serious that several organizations warned of a possible genocide.
At the beginning of August, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an expert opinion, in which he stated that what Azerbaijan was doing “should be considered a Genocide under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention”.
The article in question gives one definition of genocide as: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
During the more-than-nine months that the blockade lasted, western leaders condemned it and demanded that Azerbaijan lift it. But no measures of force whatsoever were put behind this demand and there were no sanctions, or even threats of sanctions.
