Nagorno-Karabakh—better known as Artsakh—is a smallish (100,000 people) Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. It's long been recognized as Azerbaijani territory, but for many years it's been effectively controlled by Armenia.
Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when long-simmering conflict in the region ended abruptly with a lightning military takeover by Azerbaijani forces. Within a week, nearly the entire Armenian population had fled.
But did they depart on their own because they didn't want to live under Azerbaijani rule? Or were they forcibly expelled? In the LA Times today, a pair of academics insist on the latter. I read this with interest because I've seen very little evidence one way or the other, but in the end all I got was this:
Forced to surrender, Artsakh President Samvel Shahramanyan signed a decree stating that the republic would “cease to exist” on Jan. 1, 2024. In a matter of days, nearly the entire population had been forcibly displaced. For the first time in thousands of years, Artsakh is effectively absent Armenians.
That was it. An assertion of fact with nothing to back it up. The evidence of forcible displacement was, roughly speaking, just the fact that Azerbaijan and Armenia are historical foes and Azerbaijan is a dictatorship that can't be trusted. Those things are obviously both true, and I certainly wouldn't take Azerbaijan's word for anything. But that still doesn't answer the question of why everyone left. Were they literally forced out of their homes? Or do they simply not want to live under non-Armenian rule?
I don't know, and I'm surprised that we still don't seem to have hard evidence one way or the other. Even Armenia's prime minister said last month that there was "no immediate need for the region’s ethnic Armenians to leave their homes" (according to Al Jazeera's report). And when ethnic Armenians did flee, the Azerbaijani army was very restrained.
I may not be inclined to believe anything Azerbaijan has to say on the subject, but on the other hand there's no evidence of soldiers going door to door and tossing people on the street. Why is it that even now we have so little concrete information about what really happened?
It should be possible to find some of the refugees and ask them what happened.
Thomas C. Theiner has been following the conflict for years, and here is what he said about the conflict. It's in German, but that shouldn't be a problem.
https://medium.com/@noclador/the-last-gasp-7f6536a6b50f
Theiner also writes about the Russian-Ukraine war, here: https://nitter.net/noclador?cursor=DAABCgABF7xbAJh__-kKAAIXuXLxwhYQUwgAAwAAAAIAAA. He seems like a guy who easily calls an asshole an asshole. Personally, I trust his reporting, mostly.
I did a translation and here's how the piece starts. (Translate the rest if you want more of the story.)
I have to say that's all quite unlike the impression I'd idly acquired about this conflict.
"Better known"? I've heard of Nagorno-Karabakh, but "Artsakh" is new to me.
Artsakh is the Armenian name. My understanding is there's a large Armenian(-American) population in the LA area where KD resides.
There is Little Armenia in Hollywood. Glendale is predominantly Armenian and the Armenian Consulate is located there. And Pasadena, North Hollywood and Montebello also have sizable Armenian populations. In 2017/2018 the City of Glendale renamed a 2-block portion of Maryland Avenue to Artsakh Avenue (about the same time Nagorno-Karabakh renamed itself the Republic of Artsakh - learned that from Thomas C. Theiner's article "The Last Gasp", thanks to Adam for the link).
It seems to me similar to the establishment of Israel- a combination of justifiably feared violent expulsion of Palestinians, & actual warnings of potential expulsion. How I wish that the English had known how to depart territories in the Middle East & the subcontinent to lessen the obvious dangers, but then every such loss of empire or withdrawal like those in Vietnam & Afghanistan has had similarly deadly results.
I think they just ran pre-emptively, out of fear. Whether or not it would have happened is anyone's guess.
Armenian politics around the territory in question sound like they were pretty messed up - they were obsessed with holding it, and it pushed them to a maximalist position in bargaining with Azerbaijian from the 1990s onward that did them no good.
At the end of the 90s conflict, ethnic Armenians expelled ethnic Azeris. So the former only now needed to assume the later would act as their community did.
After months of escalating violence and the unilateral control of the borders, such that store shelves were empty and hospital supplies drained, it's not unreasonable for residents to be fearful of Azerbaijan's control over the region.
Was it coercion if KKK didn't threaten every Black family with violence?
Your perception might be a little different if you were the target, is all I'm saying.
There are no good options in this situation. There are no good/bad sides.
However, there's little evidence of Azeris threatening any Armenians in this conflict.
Which is almost weird.
They said that the fighting was to be over, and then rolled in.
The nationalist Armenian forces seemed to have done all the besieging and fleeing themselves.
I'm not sure I see much difference. If Mexico took over Southern California and had a long standing history of religious discrimination and lack of respect for property and individual rights, would you consider yourself forced to leave if you would rather not accept living as a second class citizen? There are too many historical precedents where staying was a death sentence. Exactly where do you draw the line at coercion?
This is where I'm at, too.
Is there a functional difference between "forcibly removed by soldiers" and leaving by other means of coercion?
The point is that everyone except the local Armenian nationalist is on record saying there's no need to flee.
And it's not at all like a border incursion - Azerbaijan completely surrounds, and has surrounded, this enclave for three decades.
Why flee now?
but on the other hand there's no evidence of soldiers going door to door and tossing people on the street.
You probably want to be long gone before it comes to that. The soldiers usually don't roll into ethnic enclaves looking to evict people. It's usually much much worse. Given Armenian history, particularly under Muslim-Turkic regimes, you can't really blame them.
True. History also has Armenians doing it just as often.
The pogroms against Armenians that took place in Baku (1990) and a few other places in Azerbaijan around the time the USSR dissolved led 99% of Armenians to believe the same fate would befall them in Artsakh. Additionally, Aliev, the current Azeri president has been fanning the flames of anti-Armenian sentiment in his speeches, Azeri state media has been coming up with posters depicting Armenians as vermin and Azeri soldiers using insecticides in Artsakh to "sanitize" it once they take over. And Aliev has also refused to go to the recent peace negotiations in Granada.
As far as actual violence used for ethnic cleansing, evidence is not yet in. It seems the capital Stepanakert was not heavily shelled, but outlying villages have, including at least once incident where a family with 5 children was shelled, killing 2 children, and where according to the survivors there were no Armenian armed forces nearby.
BTW, one of my high school friends is a victim of the Baku pogrom in 1990, despite being only 25% Armenian (rest is Russian/Jewish). One morning his family's neighbor gave them a "friendly" warning that they better pack up and leave by dark, because next morning all Armenians will be driven out.
I gather that this pattern happened to many Jews in Eastern and Central Europe in the 30s and 40s.
They promptly fled to Kharkov, then a few months later were accepted as refugees in US, and ended up in Portland, Maine.
Baku is now "pure Azeri", as opposed to the multi-ethnic city that it was until 1990. Details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom
To me that's ethnic cleansing, isn't it?
As to the effect of the Baku pogrom, it was permanent. According to wiki, Baku had 200000 Armenians, or 22.7% of the population before the pogrom (not to mention that until 1960, there were more Armenians than Azerbaijanis in Baku).
Now there are less than 100 left, mostly elderly people married to Azerbaijanis. Soon there will be zero, Armenians would be crazy to try to bring up children there, or even to participate in the workforce. They would be like lambs among wolves.
This explains very well the recent exodus, even if actual violence was rare (and the jury is still out on that, dead men tell no tales), it isn't actually needed. The only way this could have been prevented is if Aliev would have convincingly said that Armenian regions (not necessarily the whole enclave) would continue to have some degree of autonomy after the Reconquista.
Though we live in the 21st century, this is very similar to the anti-Armenian and anti-Greek pogroms in Turkey a century ago, which explains the disappearance of those communities from Turkey. The only difference is that unlike the Armenians in Turkey a century ago, Armenians in Karabakh have done ethnic cleansing too, three decades ago. Which doesn't excuse the ethnic cleansing taking place now, most of today's Karabakh Armenians weren't even alive then. Or maybe "today" is not the right word, they were ethnically cleansed two weeks ago.
I don't see how something that happened decades ago affects someone walking there today.
Then to say they were cleansed two weeks ago when literally no governments were telling them to move.
It seems awfully fast for such a large scale withdrawal for it to be self directed, just based on status quo bias of humans.
So I’d imagine there must have been at least an explicit, or barely implicit threat of harm.
How could it be so fast and not be self-directed?
Whether they were actually going to become victims of genocide or not, they clearly believed they were going to be. Given that Armenians have faced genocidal campaigns from their neighbors multiple times before, it's completely understandable that they chose not to risk it.
I'd expect any Armenian involved in the governance of that region to be arrested, so I'd expect local mayors, police and perhaps even teachers, and their families, to flee. I think only a few will be targeted for arrest immediately, so for the time being, they can flee without having to worry about check points.
That'a the thing, the Azeris said none would be. And there's not alot of evidence.
France 24 has really had outstanding English language coverage of this conflict and long story short is the previous war produced hundreds of stories of abuses of Armenians and desecration of Armenian dead by the Azeris. The Armenians simply don’t trust that if they live under an Azeri controlled government they will be treated fairly. Combine that with the fact that Armenia is a democracy and Azerbaijan is not, it’s a pretty easy choice.
"But did they depart on their own because they didn't want to live under Azerbaijani rule? Or were they forcibly expelled? ..."
"... they didn't want to live under Azerbaijani rule ..." is a rather euphemistic rewriting of "... they were afraid they would be killed if they stayed ...".
This from The Intercept provides a great deal of background, as well as reporting on the current events: https://theintercept.com/2023/10/04/intercepted-nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-armenians/
Granted that Kevin is sincere in his "just asking" take, but it is remarkably equivalent to what a gang of muggers might say to the cops: "me and my boys were just standing there and the guy handed over all his cash. Who knows why?"
People do not give up their home and the home of their ancestors because of a simple "change in politics".
Your last sentence is all the clarity Kevin should need.
Except that's what happened?
I do not wish to pick a side or even comment on the particulars, but I would point out that it is civilians that are always in between (←not literally) armies and it is they who suffer. Even with restraint. From Canaan to Constantinople to the plains of America to the partition of India...history, what there is of it, is pretty clear.
I support Armenia because they are Christian and more democratic than Azerbaijan evev if that only is the case because the bar is in the ground.