By Talula Enis
After about thirty-one years of independence from Azerbaijan, the Armenian self-declared state within Azerbaijan’s borders known as Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, on September 28, announced its intent of dissolution by January 1st of 2024 after an attack and blockade by Azerbaijan. Thousands of Artsakh’s former inhabitants have fled to Armenia. Most had only minutes to pack, a fear of ethnic cleansing and a refusal to live under Azerbaijan rule fueling their retreat. These general sentiments among the refugee people of Nagorno-Karabakh are provoked by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, who has long stoked hatred of Armenians, and by the bloody history and hatred shared between the two peoples.
The prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinya, is facing pushback from the Armenian people for not sending aid to Artsakh. Thousands of Armenians have protested against Pashinya in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, for not sending troops to defend Nagorno-Karabakh as they mourn its depressingly speedy fall, shouting “Long live Artsakh.” These Armenians are especially wounded by these unfortunate events, given that Armenians had hoped that Nagorno-Karabakh would be an Armenia homeland after a bitter history of displacement and genocide. The regrettable destruction of Artsakh has deeply affected Armenians around the world who feel the loss of an independent ethnically-Armenian state.
To fully understand the tragedy that befell Nagorno-Karabakh, one must understand the bloody history of the Armenians. From 1915 to 1916, Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were subject to ethnic cleansing where what some call the first genocide of the twentieth century occurred. Armenians were brutally massacred in large numbers. A group trying to escape the genocide that now exemplifies the dispertion of the Armenian people fled to Egypt. After returning, in 1939, when the territory was under the rule of Turkey, fearing a repeat of the genocide in 1915-1916, many fled to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The Armenians in Anjar, Lebanon are a product of this, and are just one example of the suffering of the Armenian people.
In 1988, Armenians in Azerbaijan, which was, at the time, part of the Soviet Union, seceded from Azerbaijan and united with Armenia. An ethnic conflict ensued, resulting in many people on both sides being massacred and about a million people being displaced, mostly Azeris. When the Soviet Union fell, the ethnic Armenians won and took control of the Artsakh territory, establishing a government, a flag, a standing army, and all the necessities of a self-determined state. They declared independence in December of 1991, but were never recognized as an independent state by the world at large.
The despair at the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh is amplified by the sentiment some feel that Nagorno-Karabakh is a domino, that other Armenian cities will fall as well. With this, and the long blockade inducing hunger and sparsity of essential supplies within Artsakh and then the abrupt and bleak trek of ethnic Armenians from Artsakh to Armenia, Armenians are left feeling hopeless and abandoned.
