The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: A Visual Explainer | Crisis Group
▻https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/nagorno-karabakh-conflict-visual-explainer
A change in power in Armenia in 2018 created a window for engagement with Azerbaijan toward breaking a 30-year deadlock over Nagorno-Karabakh. Over the past year, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders and diplomats have held a series of formal and informal talks. Since September 2018, new communication channels between security personnel and political representatives have minimised flare-ups and casualties.
Yet the risk of fresh military escalation is far from gone. Intermittent deadly incidents, including special operations and the use of attack drones and heavy weaponry, on the front lines demonstrate the ever-present risk of a wider escalation of the conflict. In April 2016, hostilities along the Line of Contact (LoC) devolved into four-days of fighting and resulted in more than 200 deaths.
The conflict is the longest-running in the former Soviet Union. In 1988, ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh demanded the transfer of what was then the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Soviet Azerbaijan to Armenia. War over the territory broke out from 1992 to 1994. It ended with Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts wholly or partially controlled by Armenian forces. More than a million people were forced from their homes: Azerbaijanis fled Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent territories, while Armenians left homes in Azerbaijan. Since a 1994 ceasefire, decades of negotiations – mediated by three Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chairs representing France, Russia and the U.S. – have failed to resolve the conflict.
