The clashes that left three Karabakhi Armenian police officers and two Azerbaijani soldiers dead on 5 March 2023 are part of a tally of casualties that observers of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are unfortunately well acquainted with. This latest incident, however, takes place in the context of a blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh that has been ongoing for exactly three months today.
Since 12 December 2022, the movement of goods and people on the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, has been reduced to a bare trickle. Backed by Azerbaijan’s government, demonstrations by self-described Azeri environmentalists who claim to oppose the exploitation of Karabakh’s mineral resources have blocked the road for all but a few vehicles of Russian peacekeepers and of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). As a result, the estimated 120,000 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have been plunged into a humanitarian crisis in the midst of the winter and Nagorno-Karabakh’s project of self-declared independence is being dramatically undermined.
These events fit into a wider campaign by Azerbaijan to increase its control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory within its internationally recognized borders mostly inhabited by ethnic Armenians. Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence in 1991, and a full scale war ensued. Since a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, the region has existed as a de facto state, backed by Armenia. In September 2020, Azerbaijan carried out a successful military offensive that led it to capture vast territories around and in Nagorno-Karabakh. This war is often referred to as the “second Nagorno-Karabakh war”. A ceasefire agreement was signed on November 9, 2020, but violence has resumed between Armenia and Azerbaijan since.
