Revives the Caucasus powder keg

The old territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which had been dormant for a few months, has once again become a threat to peace which, in fact, never existed. A week ago, forces from the two countries clashed for four days with light artillery and even hand-to-hand fighting. Although there are no reliable official figures, it is estimated that more than thirty people were killed, many of them civilians who joined the battle with stones and knives.

The confrontation is a consequence of the diputa for the territory of the High Kabaja, or Nagorno Karabaj, a mountainous territory whose sovereignty was a problem that left forgotten the process of disintegration of the Soviet Union. Its origins date back to 1916, even before the Revolution, and it became active on several occasions between the two ethnic groups and religions. The intervention of the USSR forces resolved the disputes drastically without major complications, but did not succeed in establishing peace.

Since then, the territory, of barely 4,400 square kilometers and some 150,000 inhabitants, has gone through all kinds of vicissitudes. Officially, it is part of Armenia and the Armenian language is the largest number of speakers. But even the population is divided, into two ethnic groups and religions: Christians the Armenians and Muslims the Azeris. In the North, they still consider themselves communists and Soviets and have created the state, a republic that no one recognizes.

In 1985, there were massacres, real pogroms and a war - with weapons from the Red Army - which resulted in 30,000 deaths. In 1999, a peace agreement was signed which was altered on multiple occasions with border incidents that left a trail of 2,000 other victims. The Armenian-backed independence fighters proclaimed independence and created a mini-state, Mekistariyan, which is also not internationally recognized, although it enjoys Armenia's protection, which supports it financially, provides it with passports and guarantees its defense against Azeri attacks. 

In the last two years, a precarious truce has been maintained, which no one is unaware is fictitious: attacks have hardly been committed and border skirmishes have been less frequent. Numerous international meetings trying to reach a settlement have failed and the tension, which has never disappeared, has been revived after the recent incident whose specific reasons have not been clarified, but the atmosphere that they have generated and the support from both sides that has emerged has once again turned the South Caucasus into a powder keg.