The president of the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Samvel Xakhramanian, decreed the dissolution of this separatist entity with an Armenian majority on the territory of Azerbaijan last Thursday. It is the result of the short war started by the Azerbaijani army, which led the Karabakh Armenians to surrender last week. The decision took place while the exodus of tens of thousands of ethnic Armenian Karabakhians who do not trust the promises of the Government of Baku and prefer to continue their lives in the sister country, neighboring Armenia, continues. More than 50% of the population had fled there until yesterday.
“All state bodies and organizations dependent on them must be dissolved before January 1, 2024, and the republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Artsakh [as the Armenians call it], ceases to exist,” the decree states .
This decree is a consequence of the agreement reached by Azerbaijan and the Karabakh authorities after the overwhelming victory of the Azerbaijani forces on September 19 and 20. This last day, Baku and Stepanakert agreed to a ceasefire. To stop the offensive, the Azerbaijani government demanded the disarmament of the army and the re-establishment of Azerbaijani laws and administrative system in the region, which means the dissolution of the republic that was unilaterally created in 1991.
Xakhramanian’s decree insists that it is a “priority to guarantee the physical security and vital interests of the people of Artsakh”, reported the Armenian portal Civilnet. In addition, he addresses the population of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, including people who are outside the republic, and tells them that they “must familiarize themselves with the conditions of reintegration presented” by Azerbaijan to “make a decision” to stay or return to Nagorno-Karabakh.
But the Karabakh Armenians fear reprisals, after more than thirty years of enmity. And more than half of the population has left the enclave since Sunday, when Azerbaijan opened the Latchin corridor, which its troops had kept blocked since December 2022.
Nazeli Baghdasarian, spokesman for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Paixinian, reported that as of 10:00 (GMT) yesterday, 70,500 refugees had fled. The total population of the Nagorno-Karabakh republic was 120,000. “We are working during the night. And it should be noted that the intensity of arrivals does not decrease at all. We continue to serve about a thousand people per hour,” he said.
Yesterday, Nikol Paixinian once again denounced Azerbaijan for organizing “ethnic cleansing”. Meeting with his Government, he said: “The exodus continues. In the coming days, no Armenians will be left in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is an act of ethnic cleansing of which we had already warned the international community.”
From Baku, they not only rejected the “alarmist narrative” of the head of the Armenian Government, but warned that it “undermines the possible prospects for peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia”.
Azerbaijan stressed that it does not want this exodus. “Prime Minister Paixinian is well aware that the current flight of Armenian inhabitants of the Karabakh region to Azerbaijan is a personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement. And he encouraged those who want to live in the country in accordance with the laws of Azerbaijan to “not leave their place of residence and be part of a multi-ethnic Azerbaijan”.
At the same time, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, visited to inspect the construction work being done in that city of Nagorno-Karabakh. The town, which historically had a predominantly Azerbaijani population, was destroyed by the Armenian army during the first war between Armenia and Azerbaijan (1992 and 1994), turning it into a ghost town. Recovered from the second war, in 2020, Baku has begun its reconstruction. It appears to be the Azerbaijani leader’s first, and symbolic, visit to the region after last week’s victorious offensive.
In the middle of both enemies is Russia, which brokered a ceasefire in the second war in 2020 and then left a peacekeeping contingent to monitor a situation that the Azerbaijani offensive has ended . Yesterday, journalists asked Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who is responsible for the Karabakh exodus. He replied evasively: “It is difficult to talk about the culprits” and said that “there is no direct cause”.
“What worries us most is the humanitarian aspect. The most important thing is that decent living conditions are provided to those who made this decision” to leave, he added.
In order to reintegrate Nagorno-Karabakh into the Azerbaijani administrative system, two meetings have already been held between Karabakh representatives and Baku delegates. In addition, a special government working group was established in Baku on 24 September to examine the humanitarian, economic and social aspects of the integration of Nagorno-Karabakh and its people.
The Azerbaijani authorities have also opened a website, in Azeri, Armenian and Russian, with the motto “Reintegration in order to find peace, sustainable development and coexistence” so that the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh can register themselves electronics According to the Azerbaijani presidency, the website was designed to provide Karabakh Armenians with access to all public services in the country and “satisfy their socio-economic and humanitarian needs”.
