Nagorno-Karabakh: The long history of enmity fueling exodus
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Transcript
00:00 Officials in Armenia say that more than half the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, or some
00:04 65,000 people, have fled the enclave and crossed into Armenia.
00:10 Azerbaijan took control of the territory last week, which is internationally recognized
00:13 as part of Azerbaijan, but mostly populated by ethnic Armenians.
00:18 The displaced are receiving humanitarian aid as they cross into Armenia before continuing
00:23 on to find refuge or to join relatives in other towns.
00:26 But for more on this story, let's bring in our chief foreign editor, Rob Parsons.
00:30 So Rob, let's start with this mass exodus.
00:33 Why are ethnic Armenians leaving the region in such huge numbers?
00:37 It's all about context, I think.
00:39 You have to bear in mind that for 35 years, Azeris and Armenians have effectively been
00:44 at war, and each side has tried to dehumanize the other through their propaganda.
00:49 And before that, there is a record of at least a couple of hundred years of enmity between
00:55 the Armenians and Azeris in the area.
00:58 So that's the context.
01:01 If you go back to 1988, as the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, the first pogrom
01:06 that took place in the former Soviet Union took place in Sumgait in Azerbaijan, just
01:11 north of the capital, Baku, Azeris attacking Armenians.
01:16 A little bit later, another pogrom in Baku.
01:19 Go forward a little bit, after the war in Karabakh in which the Armenians were victorious,
01:25 the Armenians treated Azeris equally badly in places like Khojaly and Aghdam.
01:33 The Armenians went on to occupy territories all around the outskirts of Karabakh, which
01:38 were formerly not part of Karabakh at all, but of Azerbaijan, forcing hundreds of thousands
01:44 of Azeris to flee their lands.
01:46 So that is the context.
01:49 Because of that dehumanization, because so many people have been killed, because there's
01:53 such contempt on both sides, each of the other, it's absolutely natural that today Armenians,
02:00 seeing the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh as an entity, are terrified for the future.
02:06 And they know that Azerbaijan is an authoritarian state, which has no room for dissent whatsoever.
02:13 And they fear that in the future, their rights will be trodden upon.
02:19 Already there's talk of all the institutions that have been created in Nagorno-Karabakh
02:24 being removed, the municipal organizations not even talking about the parliament, for
02:30 instance.
02:31 It's all going to go.
02:32 And they wonder, what's going to be left after all this?
02:34 Will we even be allowed to speak our own language?
02:38 The Azeris have offered some reassurances, but already, as we've been seeing, they've
02:42 been arresting prominent Armenians, like the former state minister, trying to leave Karabakh
02:49 to get to Armenia.
02:50 It doesn't build trust.
02:51 That is what it's all about, I think.
02:55 Existential fear, because of what's happened in the past and what they fear will happen
02:58 in the future.
02:59 Let's talk about Russia's role in all of this, because Russia's being blamed for failing
03:03 to avert this Azerbaijani offensive.
03:06 We know that Russian peacekeepers were there.
03:08 Is Moscow profiting in some way from the situation?
03:12 It's difficult, I think, for Moscow to profit much in this situation, because Russia is coming
03:18 to the southern Caucasus at the moment from a position of relative weakness.
03:22 In the past, it was the dominant power for the last 130 years in the region.
03:29 It used what has been referred to as frozen conflicts, like the one in Karabakh, like
03:34 the one in Georgia, in South Ossetia, in Abkhazia, but also you go to Ukraine, Donbass, and so
03:39 on, using them to manipulate its rivals in the region, playing off Azeris against Armenians,
03:46 Armenians against Azeris.
03:48 But the situation has changed enormously over the last few years, not least because of the
03:53 conflict in Ukraine.
03:56 Russia is considerably debilitated by the war in Ukraine.
04:01 It is not able to project power in the southern Caucasus, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, as it
04:06 has been in the past.
04:08 At the same time, Azerbaijan is much more powerful than it used to be.
04:12 It's benefited over the last couple of decades from the revenues from oil and gas.
04:16 Plus, it has the support of Turkey.
04:19 Azerbaijan is not ready to obey Moscow at this point.
04:23 It knows it's got the strength to push and win against Armenia.
04:28 So that's the context.
04:29 And Russia has been looking weak.
04:32 It has been the dominant partner, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which brings
04:37 together some former members of the former Soviet Union.
04:40 One of them is Armenia.
04:43 Incidentally, Azerbaijan decided not to become part of it, didn't want to.
04:48 But when it came to the crunch, under the terms of the treaty, Russia should have come
04:52 to Armenia's assistance.
04:53 It didn't.
04:54 It turned a blind eye.
04:55 It has peacekeepers, maybe as many as 2,000 in the region at the moment, in Karabakh,
05:01 but turned a blind eye, despite the fact that some of those peacekeepers were killed.
05:06 If you go back to 2008 and the Georgian war with Russia, one of the pretexts that the
05:10 Russians used for going to war was that some Russian peacekeepers were killed by Georgian
05:15 forces.
05:16 Today, the situation has changed completely.
05:18 Russia turns a blind eye because it no longer has the power in the region.