The UN Security Council will hold an emergency talks today about Armenia and Azerbaijan’s clashes over the long-disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nearly one hundred people, including civilians have been killed since violence erupted Sunday.
Fighting has intensified along the effective Armenian-Azerbaijani border around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Both countries have called up their reserves and declared martial law at home, as well as a state of war in some regions.
It’s the great forgotten conflict of the Soviet breakup, a war from 1992 to 1994 that both nations still obsess over and that was barely noticed by the public in the West despite at least 20,000 people dead and a million displaced through ethnic cleansing about 70 per cent of them Azerbaijanis fleeing Armenian-held territory, and the rest Armenians fleeing Azerbaijani-held territory.
The heart of the war is Nagorno-Karabakh, a beautiful highland region-its name literally means “mountainous black garden”– that plays a powerful role in the romantic imagination of both countries.
Both Russia and Iran have offered to negotiate an end to this newest round of hostilities. But the most likely prospect may be a painful, relatively small war followed by another unresolved peace.
