Pope Francis has expressed concern about the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe in the Caucasus. Some 120,000 Armenian Christians, resident in the landlocked Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, sometimes referred to as the Republic of Artsakh, are currently enduring an economic blockade.
The blockade of Artsakh has been imposed by Azerbaijan, and means a shortage of bread and other basic food, as well as the cutting off of gas supplies, for Armenians living in Artsakh, which is connected to Armenia via the Lachlin Corridor. The Lachlin Corridor is currently controlled, but only just, by hard pressed Russian troops who have been tasked with keeping the peace in the region.
Artsakh is 99.7 per cent ethnic Armenian, and almost its entire population are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world’s most ancient community of Christian believers. Evangelised by the Apostles Thaddeus (Jude) and Bartholomew in the first century AD, Armenia became Christian in 301 AD – the first country in the world to become so.
Although the Armenian Church did not accept the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, it believes that its position, in respect of the dual nature of Christ, is in keeping with the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria. The Armenians also deny that they are Monophysites – the heresy that maintains that Christ had only a divine, and not a human, nature.
During WW1 an estimated one million Armenian Christians died at the hands of the Ottoman Government. The genocide included the forced Islamisation of Armenian women and children, and the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, force-marched by the Ottoman Army into the Syrian desert.
This destruction of the Armenian community helped prepare the way for the establishment of a secular ethno-nationalist Turkish state in 1923, in much the same way that the Ottoman persecution of Syrian and Greek Christians had also helped.
But the governments of both Azerbaijan, most of whom are ethnic Turks, and Turkey continue to deny that the genocide by the Turkish authorities ever took place, and Turkish government funded disinformation campaigns continue to contest it internationally.
After the post WW1 break- up of the Russian Empire, which had controlled much of the Caucasus since the nineteenth century, Stalin, who was notorious for his hatred of Armenians, incorporated Artsakh into Soviet-controlled Azerbaijan, and the issue of whether Artsakh was Armenian or Azerbaijani remained unresolved.
Amid the turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90s there was a flare-up of age-old tensions. Then, between 1991 and 1994, the Nagorno Karabakh war took place, during which there was a series of ethnic cleansing incidents.
Between 300,000, and 500,000 Armenians were internally displaced before a ceasefire was finally agreed in 1994.
In 2020 this ceasefire broke down, and war between Artsakh and Azerbaijan resumed. Azerbaijan succeeded in capturing back territory previously lost to Artsakh, before another ceasefire was agreed and Russia agreed to send in a peacekeeping force. During this second Nagorno-Karabakh war Azerbaijan took control over many territories, including several ancient churches and monasteries, that are fundamental to Armenian identity and culture.
On 12t December 2022, groups of so-called environmental activists from Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin corridor. This group of activists is believed to have links with the Azerbaijani government, and be part of a Baku-based campaign to put pressure on the Armenian government in Yerevan.
Although the Lachin Corridor has been guarded by Russian peacekeepers since the ceasefire agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, Russian military obligations in Ukraine, as well as creeping Azerbaijani influence in the region, have combined to erode the effectiveness of the peacekeeping forces and, as of 14 December 2022, Russian peacekeepers have been unable to reopen the Lachin Corridor for large-scale movement of traffic.
Russian peacekeeping efforts have been further hampered through their strict adherence to Rules of Engagement that prevent them from using force. Against this tense background, Baku has stepped up its propaganda operations in Karabakh, which includes the use of deliberate misinformation campaigns.
Recent events show that the simmering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is as divisive and volatile as ever, even though Baku and Yerevan pledged to refrain from armed conflict at a summit convened by President Putin in Sochi, Russia, on 31 October 2022.
In the immediate future the re-opening of the Lachin Corridor is a priority if a humanitarian crisis is to be avoided.
Inevitably, wider geopolitical issues are also impacting on events in Artsakh. The EU’s desperate search for oil partners, following the 2022 imposition of sanctions on Russia, means that it has a powerful disincentive from taking action that might alienate Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani oil supplies are key to the success of EU efforts to break its dependence on Russia for oil.
Secondly, Russia’s involvement in Artsakh reflects Russia’s continuing claim to be a guarantor of security for marginalised Christian communities in the Middle East and the Caucasus, many of whose identities are threatened, not just by the forces of militant Islam, but also by the secularising influences of a West that is increasingly ambivalent about its own Christian roots.
It will be interesting to see whether or not the current EU preoccupation with the securing of oil deals with Azerbaijan will override any support for Armenian Christians, who believe that they are on the verge of suffering a humanitarian emergency. This desperate situation, overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, needs to be addressed seriously. The Pope’s concern is welcome, but this crisis for Armenian Christians calls for the urgent attention of all Western governments.
(Photograph credit: Getty images. Smoke rises after shelling in Stepanakert during ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. )
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