Hello and welcome to another Day Light Media explains the news, in this one we're going to be doing our best to explain the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan which has escalated over the last few days. Before we get on to the recent battles it's worth getting rid of context the fights are over a contested region called Nagorno-Karabakh also known as Artsakh, this mountainous forest region which has an average elevation of over 1,100 meters is considered by most of the international community to sit in the west of Azerbaijan and so to the east of Armenia. Until 1918 it was part of the Russian empire as were both Armenia and Azerbaijan so no one was really arguing over it however when the Russian empire fell in 1918, both the first republic of Armenia as it was then called and the Azerbaijan democratic republic claimed it for themselves there's a brief war over the area in 1920 but this didn't get the chance to come to conclusion because soviet Russia reclaimed the area in 1923. To avoid conflicts Russia put Nagorno-Karabakh within the Azerbaijan SSR but gave it some political autonomy. At this point it was known as the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast however as the soviet union started to collapse in the late 1980s Nagorno-Karabakh which at the time was by population, 80 ethnic Armenian decided it was time to jump ship and the legislature voted to join the Armenia SSR, but when the soviet union finally collapsed in 1991 the Azerbaijan SSR became just Azerbaijan and the Armenia SSR became just Armenia.
credits:theindianexpress
The Nagorno-Karabakh legislature held a referendum without the approval of the national Azerbaijani government on independence which would in practice mean joining Armenia the ethnic Azeri population boycotted the referendum which meant that 99.98% of voters voted in favour of independence, a few months later in early 1992 fulham war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the area by the time any sort of ceasefire was agreed in 1994 Armenia had taken Nagorno-Karabakh and much of the surrounding land between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh coming to about 19,000 square kilometres of Azerbaijani land. it's about 20% of Azerbaijan's total landmass estimates vary but around eight thousand Armenians and twenty-five thousand Azeri were killed somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 Armenians were displaced from Azerbaijan and somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million Azeri were displaced mostly from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Anyway, this has left Nagorno-Karabakh in a sort of isolation, it's considered by most of the international community to be a bit of Azerbaijan but it's de-facto controlled by the Republic of Artsakh which is basically just Armenia there have been occasional attacks and escalations since then but the recent attacks are by far and away from the biggest and this is it seems for three reasons- firstly, Azerbaijan thanks to its oil-driven economy now has a larger military than Armenia secondly for wider geopolitical reasons turkey seems to be backing Azerbaijan and thirdly the US seems relatively uninterested in mediating the conflict this time around.
WHAT HAPPENED SO FAR?
Before we go into these reasons in detail just a brief overview of the conflict so far on September 27th Azerbaijan fired artillery on Nagorno-Karabakh killing 18 people including a woman and a child and injuring about a hundred Azerbaijanis as it was responding to artillery fire but Armenia claims the attack was unprovoked. Armenia then fired back killing fighters early in response Azerbaijan declared a state of war against Armenia and Armenia declared martial law since then the two countries have just been endlessly shelling each other and notably both sides have been shelling civilian populations. Over the weekend 2nd- 4th of October Azerbaijan reported shelling on Ganja its second-largest city which has a population of 330 thousand. Armenia claimed it was aimed at ganja's military airport but there was some collateral damage, Armenia reported shelling on the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert and worryingly amnesty international corroborated reports of the use of Israeli-made cluster munition by Azari forces in residential areas. A cluster munition is indiscriminate and therefore illegal under international humanitarian law, so to see Azerbaijan using it is seriously concerning.
credits:DNA india
It seems Azerbaijan have reclaimed some territory as well according to official reports as of Friday, 376 Armenian soldiers and 22 civilians had died while Azerbaijan hasn't published its military casualties. It reported 31 civilian casualties making this by far the deadliest conflict in the region since the war in the 90s furthermore according to Noah Gorna Karabakh's rights ombudsman, Artak Berglarian some 50% of Kalabak's population 90% of women and children, so some 70 to 75,000 people have now been displaced.
WHY THE WAR IS HAPPENING NOW?
credits:businessinsider
1) Well, we'll start with the first reason Azerbaijan now has a way larger army than Armenia partly thanks to its oil-driven economy, Armenia today has a GDP of 13.5 billion dollars where Azerbaijan has a GDP of 47.1 billion dollars.
Armenia's military expenditure is 4.7 of his GDP so about half a billion dollars whereas Azerbaijan is 5.4 of his GDP so 2.75 billion
2) Secondly turkey seems to be heavily backing Azerbaijan presumably for three reasons firstly the Azaria Muslim majority and Turkic people culturally similar to the Turkish secondly turkey has been fighting a proxy war with Russia, Libya and Syria since 2012 and Russia has a defence pact with Armenia. So Nagorno-Karabakh looks like it's going to be the third theatre for the Russia-turkey proxy war.
3) Thirdly Azerbaijan has a lot of oil so they're a nice ally to have from turkey's point of view Erdogan the President of Turkey said turkey stands with and will continue to stand with the friendly and brotherly Azerbaijan with all our means and all our heart in response Emmanuel Macron accused Erdogan of warlike language and demanded him back down,
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA?
Anyway, Turkey claims it's only offering weapons and training but they performed joint military exercises with Azerbaijan last month and there have been reports by the guardian that turkey is sending over Syrian mercenaries to fight for Azerbaijan. Turkey denies these reports but The Guardian was able to track military flight plans from Gaziantep to Istanbul then onto Azerbaijan, and both Russia and France have supported the claim. Furthermore, Syrian bodies have been found on the battlefield perhaps most worrying is that according to the Guardian report Syrians are being recruited as early as September 22nd which is five days before the first rally of artillery which makes the current conflict look premeditated, Turkey's presence also raises tensions because of the history of the Armenian genocide when the ottoman empire systematically killed one and a half million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, in fact, the Armenian prime minister Nikola Pashinyan described Turkey's support for Azerbaijan as a policy of continuing the Armenian genocide and a policy of reinstating the Turkish empire.
The final reason the conflict looks to be so deadly this time around is that The US just isn't interested. The US was one of three chair members of the mints group along with France and Russia they've successfully negotiated the ceasefire in 1994. Historically it's been more active in calling regional tensions so in 2016 after brief encounters on the border the secretary of state John Kerry immediately got involved and everything calmed down. This time the US has distanced itself from the conflict partly because busy with elections and partly because of Trump's policy of foreign disengagement generally this leaves Russia as the mediator and while on Saturday Russia successfully negotiated a temporary ceasefire between the two countries Russia's ongoing proxy war with turkey makes permanent solution difficult to imagine so that's why the conflict looks to be especially deadly as Azerbaijan's has a military monopoly.
Turkey is backing Azerbaijan and the US just isn't interested in meditating as the last thing there might also be a local political dimension to it the Azerbaijan government is under political pressure at the moment apparently for its dull response to the coronavirus pandemic the Azerbaijani leave scheme only gave out 700 Azerbaijani manats monthly for 300,000 salaried workers and 270 Azerbaijani manats for 300,000 self-employed people, given the average monthly salary in Azerbaijan is about three thousand Azerbaijani manats so you know ten times that for the self-employed. It's being criticized as insufficient obviously this war is a reliable way for political leaders to look good.
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AbhishekRawat
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@DayLightMediaHouse
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