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A war has raged in the South Caucasus since the end of September: Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting for the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which belongs to Azerbaijan by international law but has been controlled by Armenia for almost three decades.
It cannot be said that the war has received much international attention. But the gap between perception and reality is particularly wide these days: while the world is distracted by the spectacle of the US presidential election and the outcome, the war in Karabakh is heading towards a decision. The fighting has reached the city of Shusha, in the heart of the disputed region. If it falls, Azerbaijan would have won the war.
There was “extremely fierce fighting” during the night near Schuscha, the spokeswoman said from the Armenian Ministry of Defense, Shushan Stepanjan, Sunday morning. There are already fighting in the city itself, Russian blogger Semyon Pegov, who has been accompanying Armenian fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh for weeks, reported on Saturday evening.
Shusha – or in Armenian Shushi – is strategically located high above the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert. The most important road connecting Armenia with Stepanakert also runs through Shusha. Both civilians and the military depend on them.
Due to its mountaintop location, Shusha was protected from the Azerbaijani land offensive for a long time. Because in an attempt to recapture Karabakh, which had been lost in the early 1990s, Azerbaijani troops initially advanced south along the border with Iran. It is flat there, on the plain the Azerbaijani army was able to develop its superior force of heavy equipment and technology.
But at the end of October, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh – the region inhabited by the Armenians is a republic not recognized internationally – admitted in a video speech that the fighting had taken place within five kilometers of Shusha. He warned: whoever controls the city controls Karabakh.
After their successes in the south, it appears that the Azerbaijani army is attempting to advance into the mountains to the north. On the one hand, the goal is to cut the important road link between Armenia and Stepanakert near the town of Lacin. The other goal is to take the Shusha, which is also on the street.
Road blocked
At the beginning of November the road was to be effectively closed to civilian traffic. And the Nagorno-Karabakh army spokesman spoke this Friday of “intense and heavy fighting” in Shusha and “dozens, if not hundreds” of those killed on the side of the enemy. Although these high losses do not fit the language of the Armenian side, according to which only reconnaissance and individual Azerbaijani commandos are fought. In reality, it does not appear to be commandos, but actual infantry attacks – due to the mountainous terrain, however, almost unsupported with heavy equipment.
From the Azerbaijani point of view, Shusha is not only of strategic importance, but also of political importance. The city with its large mosque is the symbol of the region’s Muslim heritage. Both Armenians and Azeris lived here in the times of the tsars. But when Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan in a bloody war with the end of the Soviet Union, Shusha was almost exclusively inhabited by Azeris. Residents have been displaced and many apartments have remained vacant since then or are inhabited by Armenian refugees, who in turn have had to flee elsewhere in Azerbaijan.
In Baku it sparked outrage when the Armenian side celebrated the inauguration of the new head of Nagorno-Karabakh this summer in Shusha of all places. “Shusha holds a special place in the hearts of the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev told Turkish TV channel A Haber in mid-October. Without Shusha’s capture, “our case cannot be considered over.”
“I suspect Azerbaijan wants to win some crucial political victories, like taking Shusha, and then moving into a war of position where it can continue to wear down Armenian troops,” said US military expert Michael Kofman. “If there is a ceasefire, they could get the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh back next year because Armenia cannot recover from its losses.”
Indeed, Azerbaijan, which has become rich in oil and gas exports, has inflicted heavy losses on its smaller and poorer neighbor in this war. It used Turkish combat drones to destroy Armenian tanks and air defense systems, especially in the first few weeks. In general, Turkey supported Baku, including bringing Syrian mercenaries to fight on the Azerbaijani side.
“The situation is precarious”
However, the Armenian troops put up stiff resistance. In the mountains, the technological imbalance is less problematic and the autumn weather makes the use of drones more difficult.
“It is surprising that the Armenian defense has not collapsed given the losses so far. But their situation is precarious,” said Kofman.
The great Azerbaijani offensive in Karabakh began in late September after peace talks had brought no progress for decades. Several attempts by the Russian and American sides to broker a ceasefire failed. Ankara, on the other hand, publicly supports Azerbaijan’s military action. According to the Kremlin, Presidents Putin and Erdogan spoke “extensively” on the phone about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday evening.
The disputed area actually consists of two territories: on the one hand, the former “autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh”, which already existed on Azerbaijani territory in Soviet times, and in which about 150,000 people lived before the current war. Also, in the early 1990s, Armenia conquered a much larger buffer zone from which some 600,000 Azerbaijanis had been expelled. It has hardly been inhabited since then.
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