After the defeat of the separatist forces against Azerbaijan, almost the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh fled: more than 100,000 refugees have already arrived in Armenia according to Nazeli Baghdassarian, the spokesperson for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian.
According to official figures, around 120,000 Armenians lived in the enclave before the announcement of the dissolution of this self-proclaimed separatist republic on Thursday September 28, a week after the victorious offensive by Azerbaijani forces which ended the one of the oldest “frozen conflicts” of the former USSR.
“There are at most a few hundred civil servants, emergency workers, volunteers and people with special needs left, who are also preparing to leave,” the former Upper East African rights ombudsman wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Karabakh, Artak Beglarian, specifying that this information is “not official”.
Residents burned their personal belongings
The UN announced the sending this weekend of a mission to Nagorno-Karabakh to mainly assess humanitarian needs, even though the organization had not had access to this region “for around thirty years”.
The enclave decreed on Thursday the dissolution “of all government institutions (…) on January 1, 2024,” thus marking the end of the existence of the self-proclaimed “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” more than three decades ago.
In a few days, despite calls from Azerbaijan to stay in the territory, more than 80% of residents left their homes for fear of reprisals by burning their personal belongings before joining the refugee column.
This predominantly Christian region, which seceded from predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan at the disintegration of the USSR, opposed Baku for more than three decades, notably during two wars between 1988 and 1994 and in the fall 2020.