Genocide threat to the world’s oldest Christian nation
By Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack, TCW:
THE Armenian Christians of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh face yet another threat to their existence. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous and landlocked region in the South Caucasus. Its population is nearly 100 per cent Christian ethnic Armenian, members of the oldest Christian nation on earth (301 AD). They are surrounded by Azerbaijan which is 99.2 percent Muslim, with only one road connecting them to Armenia.
Armenians were the victims of genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey between 1915/16, with further massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian survivors carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement after World War I. Today the Christian Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh face another possible genocide, at the hands of Azerbaijan and modern-day Turkey.
The present conflict began in 1988 during the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded the transfer of Karabakh from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. This escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s which died down into a low-intensity conflict and erupted again in a four-day war in April 2016. This was followed by another full-scale war in 2020. Since the Russian-brokered agreement in November 2020 there have been ongoing border tensions.
Last Monday Azerbaijani agitators, citing environmental reasons and backed by the Azerbaijani army, blocked the Lachin Corridor, a mountainous road which is the only access Nagorno-Karabakh has to Armenia, provoking a humanitarian crisis. Nagorno-Karabakh’s gas supply has been cut off and fuel is strictly rationed.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
