Last April, violence erupted in a place known as Nagorno-Karabakh. If this doesn’t sound familiar, how about Armenia and Azerbaijan? No? Perhaps the furthest southwest corner of the former Soviet Union, just east of Eastern Turkey? OK, try this: the other side of the world?
When hearing of this outbreak of violence and reading something of the history, it struck me that the situation offered a real-time opportunity to consider secession, decentralization and property rights; further, the issue of culture binding people together for purposes of defense and security. But I am getting ahead of myself – first some background about the place:
Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, lying between Lower Karabakh and Zangezur and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains. The region is mostly mountainous and forested.
It may be landlocked, mountainous and forested, but I don’t believe anyone will confuse it with Switzerland.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but most of the region is governed by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a de facto independent nation established on the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Azerbaijan has not exercised political authority over the region since the advent of the Karabakh movement in 1988. Since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, representatives of the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group on the region’s disputed status.
This post was published at Lew Rockwell on December 3, 2016.
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