In 1992, photojournalist Dani Duch went to Agdam to cover the first Nagorno-Karabakh war for La Vanguardia. In his images you can see how this city, with an Azeri majority, close to Azerbaijan, was devastated by Armenian bombings. At the end of that first war, Armenian forces took control of Agdam and came to govern the entire territory of Nagorno-Karabakh (also called Nagorno-Karabakh).
31 years ago, Duch photographed Azeri refugees, until then residents of the disputed enclave, fleeing to Azerbaijan. By the late 1990s, more than half a million Azeris had left their homes behind, escaping the conflict. So, it was mainly Azeris, the minority ethnic group in Nagorno-Karabakh, who left the territory.
The situation now is totally different. In recent weeks, images of Armenian refugees have flooded the news. Since last September, Baku has carried out a military deployment in Nagorno-Karabakh, which demonstrates a desire to eliminate the Armenian community from this territory and which is also acquiring characteristics of ethnic cleansing, as denounced by the Armenian president. How have the balances of power changed between the two ethnic groups so that it is now the Armenians who escape from Nagorno-Karabakh?
To understand the recent dissolution of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh and the displacement of 80% of its inhabitants, almost all of them Armenians, it is necessary to rewind in time. The origins of the conflict date back to the territorial division of the USSR, which in 1923 formed Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous oblast (region) within the then Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. This meant that a territory inhabited by Christian Armenians was surrounded and controlled by Azeris of the Muslim religion. A configuration destined for disaster.
First Nagorno-Karabakh War
In the eighties of the last century, still under the USSR, the first demands for union with Armenia began. Following the Nagorno-Karabakh regional parliament's vote in favor of accession to Armenia in 1988, clashes between the two ethnic groups began. But it was in 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the unilateral proclamation of the independent republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, when the conflict took on greater significance.
Armenian forces won that first war, conquering seven Azeri districts located around the historic Nagorno-Karabakh region, which allowed continuity between Armenia and the enclave. The fighting left some 25,000 dead and numerous cities destroyed, such as the Agdam that Duch visited, which was looted and burned after the Armenian forces took power. In the eighties, Agdam had a population of around 30,000 inhabitants, but the conflict caused the departure of almost all its inhabitants, thus becoming a ghost town.
In 1994 a ceasefire, brokered by Russia, ended the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. Officially, this area remained within Azerbaijan, but has since been ruled by the separatist Armenian majority. The cessation of hostilities ushered in a period of fragile stability, but the ceasefire agreement has been consistently violated by members of both sides in recent decades.
Segunda guerra del Alto Karabaj
For the Azeri government, recovering control of those territories from which they were expelled in the nineties became a true patriotic mission. So in 2020, a much strengthened Azerbaijan decided to launch an offensive to regain control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Gas and oil exports and support from other states allowed the modernization of the Azeri army. Azerbaijan's technical superiority in 2020 came from Turkey, a historical enemy of Armenia, which supplied weapons to Azerbaijan, and from the massive purchase of Russian weapons, something seen as a betrayal for Armenians.
Russia has traditionally supported Armenia and both participate in the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), an organization made up of several former Soviet republics, but relations between the two countries had been strained in recent years. Furthermore, since the conflict took place outside Armenian territory, Russia did not intervene.
The Azeri army completed its offensive over the course of just 6 weeks. The so-called second Nagorno-Karabakh war ended with Baku's dominance over all the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh that had been taken from it in 1994, including Agdam. Azeri forces would encounter what analyst Thomas de Waal called the Hiroshima of the Caucasus, a city completely in ruins and littered with anti-personnel mines. The case of Agdam is particularly heartbreaking, but the war left the entire Karabakh region in a similar state of destruction.
Azeri offensive in September 2023
With the advances acquired in the fall of 2020, its military superiority and European dependence on its gas, especially in the context of the war with Ukraine, the Azeri offensive this September left the Armenians of Karabakh practically without options. In a few days, the Azeri troops managed to prevail over the separatist Armenian government, which declared last Thursday the dissolution of all the institutions of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh by January 1, 2024.
This Tuesday, Armenian forces detained three former Karabakh leaders and the head of the Nagorno-Karabakh Parliament. The last president of the Karabakh Parliament, David Ishkhanián, was also arrested and transferred to Baku, as were other separatist leaders who have been detained since the capitulation of the separatist Armenian government on September 20.
Despite Azeri President Ilham Aliev's promise to respect the rights of the enclave's Armenian population, fear of repression by Azeri troops has caused some 100,000 of its 120,000 inhabitants to flee to Armenia. With the majority of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians displaced, everything indicates that the area will definitively come under Baku control.
Following the 2020 victory, Azerbaijan deployed a “Great Return” plan, which seeks to rebuild and repopulate the recovered territories. In Agdam, for example, communication routes are being repaired and residences, administrative and cultural centers are being built. These projects are now likely to extend throughout Nagorno-Karabakh. Perhaps the Azeri refugees photographed by Daniel Duch in 1992 will return home soon.
As happened to the Azeris in the 1990s, the Karabakh Armenian refugees, who have abandoned their homes in recent weeks, are now embarking on a period of great uncertainty. It would be the latest chapter in a conflict that, in the last 30 years, has caused tens of thousands of displacements on both sides.
