Let’s talk about a mountain territory
that people are killing each other over.
It’s called Nagorno-Karabakh.
And the fight’s between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Soldiers and civilians are being killed.
So why are they fighting?
How long has it been going on for?
And why are countries like Turkey involved?
The first shots were fired in July
before all-out war broke out at the end of September.
It’s been the worst fighting there in 25 years.
But the grievances go back generations.
At the heart of the dispute is a region called
Nagorno-Karabakh.
And here it is in a crowded neighbourhood
known as the South Caucasus.
Nagorno-Karabakh lies entirely
within Azerbaijan’s borders.
It’s internationally recognised as being part of the country.
Full stop.
Here’s the thing.
It’s controlled by ethnic Armenians
backed by Armenia.
And surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh
are lands that Armenia controls.
Then you’ve got all the big neighbours.
Like Iran which borders both.
Turkey — it’s long been an ally of Azerbaijan.
And then there’s Russia.
It supplies weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
We’ll get into all the geopolitics later
but first here’s what Nagorno-Karabakh looks like.
It makes up 5% of Azeri territory.
But almost twice that much land around it
is controlled by Armenian forces.
About 150,000 people live here.
It holds its own elections and governs itself.
But right now it’s a warzone.
Many people are living in their basements
because of the shelling.
And local officials say half the people who live there
have been forced to leave.
The thing about this region is that it’s been fought over
for a long time.
Iran had control in the mid-18th century.
Then the Russians took over.
The British and the Ottomans were in there too.
But a key date in all of this is 1920.
That’s when Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war
over Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, backed by Russia
got control.
A year later it was promised to the Armenians
but Stalin turned around and made sure Azerbaijan
held on to it.
By 1988 the Soviet Union was crumbling.
And the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
took advantage of the power vacuum
and voted to join Armenia.
So when the Soviet Union finally fell apart in 1991
so did whatever was left of peace in the South Caucasus.
1992 was when the fighting really intensified
right after Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
declared independence.
Both sides accuse each other of atrocities.
Tens of thousands of local Azeris and Armenians
were killed
A million people had to leave their homes.
In the end the Armenians pushed Azerbaijan’s forces
out of Nagorno-Karabakh, seized territories around it
and it all finally ended in a ceasefire in 1994.
That ceasefire has been ignored
by both Armenia and Azerbaijan over the years.
And the sense of injustice over what happened in that war
the killings and mass displacement
hasn’t gone away.
And now both sides are tapping into that anger.
It’s full-scale war all over again:
trenches
tanks
air attacks.
Azeri forces have been attacking Nagorno-Karabakh’s
main city Stepanakert.
Armenian men there have been signing up to fight back.
Exact numbers are next to impossible to come by
but soldiers and civilians on both sides have been killed.
Armenian forces have been attacking Azerbaijan too.
The border city of Ganja has been among the hardest hit.
So how and why did the fighting start up again?
The answer depends entirely on who you ask.
Armenia says Azerbaijan attacked first.
Azerbaijan says it acted in self-defence.
What’s clear is that it’s not exactly an even fight.
Our colleagues at AJ Labs put together these infographics
to show just how much more Azerbaijan spends
on its military, how many more soldiers it has
and how much more artillery.
And the Azeris have been showing it off.
This is an actual music video released by the Azeri military.
The Armenians are rallying their people too.
But what’s making this particular fight different
from all the other skirmishes is that
other countries are getting involved in a big way.
Part of Turkey’s connection to Azerbaijan is cultural.
The Azeris are a Turkic-speaking people.
It’s got the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
looking for outside help too.
So how involved is Turkey in the actual fighting?
Well that’s difficult to pin down.
Azerbaijan’s using military drones supplied by
Turkey and Israel.
And Turkey’s accused of recruiting Syrian fighters
to help against the Armenians
which Turkey and Azerbaijan flatly deny.
So what’s in it for Turkey and Azerbaijan?
Beyond trying to get back what they see as Azeri land?
Well something to consider is that this region
is rich in oil and gas.
Pipelines snake across the region.
Oil and gas make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports.
And as for Turkey, Azerbaijan is now its biggest supplier
of natural gas.
So understandably any instability here
is bad for business all around.
Azerbaijan accuses the Armenians of attacking
a major oil pipeline which Armenia denies.
One thing’s for sure.
Azerbaijan’s oil-and-gas has come in handy.
The other reason Turkey and Azerbaijan say they support
the offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh
is that they think the dispute has been allowed to fester.
And now is the time to resolve it once and for all.
It’s true that over the years there’ve been
lots of negotiations.
The UN’s put out a bunch of resolutions
to stop the fighting.
And all the big international organisations
have weighed in too, including something called
the Minsk Group led by Russia, France and the United States.
They came close to getting the two sides to agree on
a peace plan in 2007 but it fell apart.
But like all the other plans so far
they’ve failed to overcome that deep mistrust.
Both sides accuse each other of terrible things:
massacres, ethnic cleansing and taking land
so it’s hard to make peace.
Ceasefires only pause the fighting
they don’t resolve it — and history has shown that.