User:Pocopocopocopoco/sandbox/Nagorno-Karabakh War
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The Nagorno-Karabakh War refers to the armed conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the small ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh (I) in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the predominantly ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, became enveloped in a protracted, undeclared war in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb a secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting itself with Armenia and a referendum was held with the vast majority of the Karabakh population voting in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia, which proliferated in the late 1980s, began in a relatively peaceful manner; however, in the following months, as the Soviet Union's disintegration neared, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between the two ethnic groups, resulting in claims of ethnic cleansing by all sides.[5][6]
Nagorno-Karabakh War | |||||||||
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File:ArmenianFighters1989.jpg Armenian guerrillas fighting against Azeri forces in trenches in Karabakh. | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Republic of Armenia[1] CIS mercenaries |
Republic of Azerbaijan | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Samvel Babayan, Hemayag Haroyan, Monte Melkonian, Vazgen Sargsyan, Arkady Ter-Tatevosyan, Anatoly Zinevich |
İsgandar Hamidov, Suret Huseynov, Rahim Gaziev, Shamil Basayev[3] | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
20,000 | 42,000 | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
6,000 dead, 25,000 wounded |
11,000 dead,[4] 30,000 wounded |
The war was the most destructive ethnic conflict in both terms of lives and property that emerged after the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991.[7] Inter ethnic fighting between the two broke out shortly after the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous oblast in Azerbaijan, voted to unify the region with Armenia on February 20, 1988. The declaration of seceding from Azerbaijan was the final result of a "long-standing resentment in the Armenian community of Nagorno Karabakh against serious limitations of its cultural and religious freedom by central Soviet and Azerbaijani authorities",[8] but more importantly, as a territorial conflict "fueled by a consuming attachment" to the land.[9]
Along with the secessionist movements in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the succeeding movement characterized and played a large role in bringing the downfall of the Soviet Union. As Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union and removed the powers held by the enclave's government, the Armenian majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan, and in the process proclaimed the enclave the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
It should be noted that at the time of the dissolution of the USSR, the United States government recognized as legitimate the pre-Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 1933 borders of the country (the Franklin D. Roosevelt government established diplomatic relations with the Kremlin at the end of that year[10]). Because of this, the George H. Bush administration openly supported the secession of the Baltic SSRs, but regarded the questions related to the independence and territorial conflicts of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest of the Transcaucasus — which were integral part of the USSR with international borders unaltered since the 1920s — as internal Soviet affairs.[11]
Full-scale fighting erupted in the late winter of 1992. International mediation by several groups including Europe's OSCE failed to bring an end resolution that both sides could work with. In the spring of 1993, Armenian forces captured regions outside the enclave itself, threatening the involvement of other countries in the region. By the end of the war in 1994, the Armenians were in full control of not only the enclave but also held and currently control approximately 9% of Azerbaijan's territory outside the enclave.[12] As many as 400,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and nearly 600,000 Azeris from Armenia and Karabakh have been displaced as a result of the conflict.[1] A Russian-brokered cease fire was signed in May of 1994 and peace talks, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, have been held ever since by Armenia and Azerbaijan.