Another Humanitarian Crisis Is Brewing in Europe

A blockade cutting off a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan may restart a simmering conflict.

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Azerbaijani servicemen stand guard at a checkpoint at the Lachin Corridor. (Photo by TOFIK BABAYEV/AFP via Getty Images)

When Emma Mamunts left the Armenian capital Yerevan to visit her family in December, she didn’t think she’d become part of an international humanitarian crisis. But for nearly two months the 23-year-old—along with about 120,000 ethnic Armenians—has been stuck in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed mountainous region sandwiched between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

“The impact on normal life is huge,” Mamunts said. “We lack almost everything, from food to household goods: sugar, butter, rice, pasta, buckwheat, canned food.”

Government-backed Azerbaijani civilians have been blocking the Lachin Corridor, the sole road connecting the region with Armenia, since December 12. They say they’re protesting illegal Armenian mining operations. But advocacy groups and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers say it’s more malicious.

“The purpose is ethnic cleansing,” Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, said this week. He and the newly formed Save Karabakh Coalition are calling on the U.S. government to do more to pressure the Azerbaijan government to lift the blockade of the long-fought-over enclave.

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  1. Trichwages

    https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/nagorno-karabakh-conflict

    More info for those interested

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    Ben Connelly

    Thank you for working to cover this, Harvest. It’s a sad situation, but such is the nature of the world.

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  3. Steve S

    Thanks for this piece - it's always sad, but important, to see the region stay in the news. Having been a Peace Corps volunteer in Azerbaijan, I'm deeply ambivalent about the situation, and have been for a very long time.

    It's undeniable that Ilham Aliyev is floridly corrupt - recall the leaked diplomatic cables in the mid-aughts that compared his government to the cast of The Godfather. Grift is genuinely an art form there. And Aliyev's government has done nothing but stoke the ethnic hatred that has variously simmered and erupted over thousands of years. The school I worked in held an annual "readiness day" to prepare for an attack by Armenia, with middle-school students donning gas masks and pretending to carry their friends out of school on stretchers, after the principal gave a rousing speech about the perfidious nature of the enemy. PC volunteers developed a code word for Armenia so we could talk about it in public without having old ladies on buses interrupt to tell us how evil their neighbors are.

    But the other simple fact here is that Armenian forces absolutely committed ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijani residents of Nagorno Karabagh in the early 1990s: the Khojaly Massacre is remembered for reasons far beyond mere propaganda (Thomas Goltz's book is valuable as a source of direct reporting on the fighting at the time). The UN Security Council recognized the violation in a 1993 Resolution 822, and that view - of support for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity - has not meaningfully shifted.

    A pox on the house of Aliyev, to be sure, but Armenia is not an entirely innocent victim in this, despite the propaganda messages of the diaspora in the US.

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  4. Mary Stine

    Thanks for this, Harvest. Excellent writing. Now I'll have to investigate why Armenians are always in danger of extermination by their neighbors...whatever have they done to deserve this constant assault?

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      Ben Connelly

      I’m not sure what they have or haven’t done but I had a Turkish hallmate (international student) in college. He hated Armenians and it was difficult to get a great answer from his as to why, but I think he did think they’d done something in the past to the Turks. Then again, he was kind of a nasty guy to be honest and easily took a disliking to both groups and individuals, so maybe he was just a bigot.

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    Barry Alexander

    Hard to see how the Armenians come through this still in possession of Artsakh. The west isn't going to stick its neck out in such an isolated and distant part of the world, and the Russians aren't going to give up their friendship with Erdogan. If the Turks tried for another genocide, I could see the world riding to Armenia's aid, not otherwise.

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  6. Sawinston

    Great piece, very informative and well written. I really appreciate these Dispatch articles that explain otherwise under reported stories and events. Thanks Harvest.

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  7. Shant_chalian

    This one hits a little close to home to me. Unfortunately, the Azeris (much like their patrons in Turkey) are never going to stop antagonizing Armenia.

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  8. Rossknode

    Excellent piece

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  9. Seth

    Good article! Thanks for writing stories about events and places otherwise overlooked.

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  10. Andrew Taylor

    Good article, although the fighting in September was within internationally recognized Armenian territory and not in Nagorno-Karabakh.

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