ARMENIA-AZERBAIJAN

Nagorno-Karabakh, a stretch of forested, low mountains and valleys within Azerbaijan, became an international conflict in 1992. That year’s collapse of the Soviet Union escalated warfare in which Nagorno-Karabakh’s majority Armenian population sought to unite the territory with Armenia. Fighting from 1988 to 1994 killed tens of thousands of people. Armenians took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azerbaijani farming districts, expelling hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from their ancestral homes. Following a 1994 truce, peace efforts by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the United States failed to usher Armenia and Azerbaijan to a resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh and related disputes. Over the next 26 years, Azerbaijan used its ample oil and gas revenues to build up its armed forces. Armed with game-changing aerial drones from its ally, Turkey, Azerbaijan launched an offensive in 2020 that reversed the military advantage in the conflict, seizing the Armenian-occupied districts around Nagorno-Karabakh. This time, tens of thousands of Armenians were displaced. - USIP United States Institute of Peace