Corporate DispatchPro MARK TREVELYAN VIA REUTERS
Who’s fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, and why does it matter? Fierce fighting has broken out between Azerbaijan and its ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a new and dangerous eruption of a decades-old conflict. WHERE AND WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH? It’s a mountainous, forested patch of land that sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. But the ethnic Armenians who make up the vast majority of the estimated 150,000 population reject Azeri rule. They have been running their own affairs, with support from Armenia, since Azerbaijan’s troops were pushed out in a war in the 1990s. A ceasefire was agreed in 1994 but at least 200 people were killed in a violent flare-up in 2016. Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora. WHY HAS FIGHTING BROKEN OUT NOW? Tensions between the two sides have been building over the summer, and spilled into direct clashes on Sunday. The timing is significant because the outside powers that have mediated in the past - namely Russia, France and the United States are distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the upcoming U.S. presidential election and a list of world crises from Lebanon to Belarus. Lower-level clashes in July prompted only a muted international response. Turkey, which held large military 41
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