What Does Azerbaijan’s Blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh Mean?

By Alex Avaneszadeh, MALD 2023 Candidate, The Fletcher School

Trapped inside the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh are 120,000 Armenians on the brink of starvation. In early December 2022, a group of self-proclaimed Azerbaijani eco-activists, openly backed by the regime in Baku, mobilized to block the only road via Armenia connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to the outside world. Severe shortages of food, medical supplies, and goods have occurred as a result. Critically-ill patients have needed to be transported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) out of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia for treatment, as hospitals in the region are suffering from dwindling resources created by the blockade. With grocery stores quickly running out of inventory, Karabakh authorities have responded by instituting a rationing system for various food items. The Russian peacekeepers who are responsible for ensuring freedom of movement through the road known as the Lachin Corridor have been unsuccessful (or unwilling) in mitigating the situation. Emboldened by Russia’s distraction with the war in Ukraine, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has raised the stakes in the South Caucasus, using the blockade to hold an entire population hostage as a means to force various concessions out of Armenia and the de facto Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Since the start of the blockade, President Aliyev has outlined two main goals: to force an extraterritorial corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhichevan, and for the entirety of Nagorno-Karabakh to finally come under Azerbaijan’s control. The humanitarian crisis created by the blockade is meant to pressure Armenia to concede on the former, while trying to achieve the latter through the Artsakh government’s capitulation. In a rare moment of political unity, the United States, Russia, and the European Union have called on the Azerbaijani government to reopen the Lachin Corridor, including non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Freedom House.

Despite the world’s rhetorical pressure campaign against Azerbaijan, no punitive steps have been taken to hold Baku accountable for the crisis. Though a marginal player in global energy security, Azerbaijan’s role as an oil and gas supplier comes with the benefit of political impunity. In an effort to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen visited Baku in July 2022, having jointly signed a memorandum of understanding with President Aliyev to double Azerbaijani gas exports to Europe by 2027. This is despite the fact that Azerbaijan’s increase in gas exports is tied to Baku’s laundering of Russian gas to western markets. Nevertheless, in the shadow of the Russia-Ukraine war, Azerbaijan’s impunity as an energy provider, combined with the growing power vacuum in the South Caucasus, has only exacerbated Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh’s security vulnerability. Therefore, Armenians have but one option amid this geopolitical quagmire: to endure the situation and resist making devastating concessions to Baku.

It is important to understand that Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh is an act of political desperation by the Aliyev regime. To put this into perspective, the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh has deterred Baku from initiating another full-scale war. Similarly, Azerbaijan’s two-day military offensive against Armenia in September 2022 resulted in a ceasefire after France raised the issue at a UN Security Council meeting. Prior to the ceasefire, United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had called on President Aliyev to disengage forces. Shortly thereafter, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Yerevan in a show of support for Armenia’s sovereignty. The soft diplomacy of the United States effectively signaled to the Azerbaijani government that Armenia’s territory was off-limits. With Baku realizing the limitations of using force against Armenia and Artsakh to achieve its goals, the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh became the regime’s new strategy.

The Azerbaijani protesters on the Lachin Corridor claim that the Artsakh government is illegally operating and mismanaging mining sites in Nagorno-Karabakh. The irony here is that Azerbaijan’s economy is primarily supported by its oil and natural gas resources, which account for roughly 88% of its export revenue. Being one of the most authoritarian states in the world, Azerbaijan has a long history of violently cracking down on demonstrations. Arguably, if those same so-called eco-activists protested against their own government’s exploitation of fossil fuels that has polluted the Caspian Sea for decades, they would likely face the wrath of Azerbaijani authorities. Therefore, the legitimacy of the protests along the Lachin Corridor is highly questionable. Likely orchestrated by Baku, the protests are being used as a pretext to block the corridor and suffocate Nagorno-Karabakh until Aliyev’s desired concessions are made.

In a recent press conference with state-affiliated media outlets, President Aliyev made a statement denying the existence of a blockade, in which he inadvertently ended up admitting to the contrary. He mentioned that the ICRC is granted permission every time it applies to use the Lachin Corridor. Prior to the blockade, movement along the Lachin Corridor did not require the permission of any government, and was monitored only by the Russian peacekeeping contingent per the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement. If a humanitarian crisis orchestrated by Baku was not unfolding, then the ICRC, or anyone else for that matter, would not have to apply to the Azerbaijani government for permission to use the Lachin Corridor in the first place.

Politically speaking, Baku is desperately rolling the dice with its blockade strategy. With all its ‘chips in the pot’, a game of political chicken has ensued between Armenia, the de facto Republic of Artsakh, and Azerbaijan. Will Armenia, out of concern for its ethnic kin in Nagorno-Karabakh, provide Azerbaijan with an extraterritorial corridor to Nakhichevan in exchange for lifting the blockade? Will Karabakh Armenians, under the pressure of the blockade, submit themselves to Azerbaijan? Or will the humanitarian crisis worsen to the point where the international community, particularly the United States and/or the European Union, will be compelled to intervene?

As international condemnation continues to mount, time is not on Azerbaijan’s side; the situation may get worse before it gets better. Combined with decades of systemic hate speech against Armenians by the Aliyev regime and Azerbaijani public officials, the blockade represents Azerbaijan’s long-desired outcome of ethnically cleansing Nagorno-Karabakh of its Armenian population. In President Aliyev’s own words, “the [Lachin] road is not closed, it is open. They [Armenians] can leave whenever they want; no one would stop them.”

While Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh remain vulnerable amid a fragile world order and the Russia-Ukraine war, Baku’s desperation to achieve its goals could lead to crossing the line of impunity. If Armenia and the people of Nagorno-Karabakh can endure, then it is possible that Baku’s growing aggression could backfire on the regime. What those consequences will be, and how the current geopolitical and humanitarian situation unfolds, remains to be seen.

This piece is republished from The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.

Armenian Army Day, 28 Jan 2009 is by Sedrak Mkrtchyan and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0