Ineluctable changes are fast approaching for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, as the points of support of the secessionist entity in which they have lived for thirty years crumble. The prospects are not encouraging: either forced integration into Azerbaijan, where the majority of the population is very hostile to them, or departure for neighboring Armenia, which no longer has the means, either military or economic or diplomatic to support Nagorno-Karabakh.
In the immediate future, it is hunger that accelerates history, while the blockade of the region, ordered by Baku, has been total for a month. According to Marout Vanyan, an Armenian journalist based in Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azerbaijani), “The shelves of the city’s five supermarkets are empty, except for those selling alcohol. The small shops are all closed. There is no more gas and very often no electricity. Women beg for washing powder and sometimes table salt. The men barter: petrol for cigarettes, etc. No one can cross into Armenia anymore. Even for the [2 000 soldats des forces de maintien de la paix] Russians, it’s complicated. Their helicopters fly over Stepanakert daily”.
Azerbaijan, which claims that its sovereignty over Karabakh is recognized by the entire international community, is tightening the screw, three years after its military victory against the Armenian forces. By gradually closing, since December 2022, the Lachin corridor, the only crossing point between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku is organizing a siege that risks leading to a humanitarian catastrophe.
At the end of July, Armenia tried to send humanitarian aid, but the convoy of dozens of trucks was blocked by Azerbaijan at the Lachin corridor checkpoint. Baku demands, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement of November 10, 2022, the opening of all the roads blocked by the Armenians. Those connecting Azerbaijan to Karabakh, but also that which connects Azerbaijan to the exclave of Nakhitchevan, wedged between Armenia and Iran.
Baku’s coercive measures come against the backdrop of a breakdown in the negotiation process for a comprehensive agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Baku and Yerevan had agreed in May to mutually recognize their territories, but the question of the status of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh remains unresolved. For Baku, there is no question of granting the least autonomy to the Armenians, who will be “Azerbaijani citizens with the same rights and the same duties as others”, affirms the indestructible Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, in power for twenty years. He has repeated it several times in recent months: “Either they live under the Azerbaijani flag or they leave. » This firmness pays political dividends to the president, in a context where resentment towards the Armenians remains very strong. During the first Karabakh war, nearly 1 million Azerbaijanis were brutally expelled from Armenia and Karabakh, while 350,000 Armenians were likewise expelled from Azerbaijan. The two peoples lived together until then.
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