Hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles were lined up neatly on the ground while a dog snoozed next to grenade launchers. Tanks, some bruised and battered, stood disarmed against a horizon of dark mountains. “Our trophies,” a major said with a smile.
This was Azerbaijan’s victory lap.
Last month, the oil-rich Caucasus country dealt a crushing blow to its longtime enemy, a breakaway ethnic Armenian statelet in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, seizing the enclave’s weapons and leading to an exodus of almost its entire population.
In just 24 hours, Azerbaijan took over the control of the region, in a stunning victory and a legacy moment for its president, Ilham Aliyev. But instead of heralding a new era of peace, Baku’s tone has neighbouring Armenia fearful that its ambitions may be bigger, and the conflict not over yet.
“We have been saying over and over to Azerbaijan: you are the victor, you can afford to be magnanimous,” one western diplomat said. But no “rhetorical ceasefire” has followed Baku’s military triumph, observers say, and no meaningful steps have been taken to reconcile two societies bitterly divided by decades of war.
Azerbaijan’s leader was filmed last week walking through the empty streets of Stepanakert, the region’s capital, and trampling its flag. His victory speech focused on the past and mocked Karabakh leaders that are now jailed in Baku.
“We have returned to our lands, we have restored our territorial integrity . . . we have restored our dignity,” Aliyev said.
In its blitz offensive, Azerbaijan took complete control over lands that lie within its internationally recognised borders, but which had been de facto independent since the ethnic Armenian population fought and won a secession war in the 1990s.
Now, silence hangs over the villages and valleys of mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh, deserted within days by more than 100,000 Armenians. Inside one farmer’s home, food stands half-cooked on the kitchen table, abandoned in haste. A card game lies unfinished on the side.
Azerbaijanis feel that justice has been restored.
“We were waiting for this moment for 30 years,” said Major Anar Kazimov, as he explored a hilltop bunker his soldiers had seized just two weeks earlier. He showed a text message sent by his government to local numbers during the offensive, calling on Armenians to stay.
But few trusted that message. Now, just a handful of Armenians are left, Kazimov said. He had visited the city, which Armenians call Stepanakert, and Azerbaijanis call Khankendi; the Financial Times, able to travel to Karabakh only on a trip co-ordinated by the Azerbaijani government, was not allowed in.
The refugees who fled took a single winding route out of Karabakh. A week later it was dotted with prams, broken cars, even a bathtub — while burnt patches showed where people started fires to keep warm.
The road along the Lachin corridor leads to southern Armenia, which in itself is a narrow strip squeezed on two sides by Azerbaijan. Residents there fear they could be next, pointing to incidents in recent years where Baku has used force, inching into sovereign Armenian land.
Azerbaijani officials strongly deny having such plans. “We don’t have any military goals on the territory of Armenia,” said Hikmet Hajiyev, a top government adviser. With Karabakh returned, he said, “Azerbaijan is complete. It’s full and whole.”
But such promises to respect Armenia’s territorial integrity have been made in the past, only to be undermined — most recently by Aliyev’s last-minute decision to skip peace talks mediated by the EU.
“We want to take them at their word, but then there’s the ‘but’,” the western diplomat said. If there are no further military aims, he asked, “why are we having such difficulties getting the leaders together? . . . If you’re saying you’re committed to peace, please sign on the dotted line.”
Two diplomats said they had received assurances right up to the start of the one-day war that no military action would be taken in Karabakh. “We felt betrayed and bitter,” one of the people said. When it comes to the risk of further hostilities, “the prudent attitude is to trust, but verify”, the second person said.
Even if Aliyev snubbed the Europeans, he will eventually come back to the negotiating table, including under Russian mediation, analysts said. While Armenia’s traditionally close relations with Russia have soured, Baku seeks to keep a balanced approach, involving both Russia and the west.
Russia still has peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh to prevent a war, but their future in the region is now unclear. Some of their outposts have been shut down, while others still stand, decorated with the “Z” sign spotted on Russia’s military in Ukraine. There, soldiers appeared to be packing up, taking down billboards advertising their presence, with the slogan: “Wherever we are, there is peace!”
In Baku, celebrations have been a far cry from the nationalistic fervour that gripped the country after a previous victory in 2020, which clawed back some of Karabakh’s territory. Some analysts said this was out of respect for the refugees, with officials insisting that Karabakh Armenians are welcome to return.
But reconciliation is a distant prospect. Over 700,000 Azerbaijanis were forced to flee Karabakh during the 1990s war. Many people have friends and relatives killed in battle.
At a cemetery in Baku, Aysu Shapazova, a 19-year-old student, prayed with an imam by the grave of a friend who died during his deployment in the blitz offensive. “He had one dream,” Shapazova said. “Every day he heard about people who were killed, and he wanted to go and fight himself.”
“My friend died in the army. We hate Armenians,” the young student said.
A “rhetorical ceasefire”, observers say, would have to start in the education system. “It’s pretty extreme, what’s taught in schools,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe. “From as young as five, you are learning about Armenians as vandals and terrorists and occupiers.”
In one school outside Baku, located in a housing complex for people displaced in the 1990s, the lobby was plastered with life-sized images of soldiers. Tanks, grenades and the slogan “Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” dominated a display of children’s art.
Günay, a 46-year-old mother of two, said she ran with joy when she heard of the victory. “You can’t believe how much I was shouting, here in the corridors, that we have our lands back,” she said.
She had fled with her family in the 1990s after pogroms in their village. For three decades she was unable to return home or visit her mother’s grave, she said. “I cannot forgive these people, I wanted to kill them,” she said. “Now they say we have to live together. I don’t want to buy my bread and water in the same place.”
Instead of being spread out and integrated, displaced Azerbaijanis have been housed in dedicated apartment buildings. Some appeared modern, but conditions in Günay’s were grim: two dozen families inhabited each floor, living in single rooms along a narrow communal corridor fitted with one bathroom. A few people lived in shacks on the roof, children and chickens scampering between satellite dishes.
Aliyev’s next big, patriotic project is “the Great Return”. Minibuses regularly depart at dawn from just outside Baku, transporting displaced families back to lands now reclaimed by Azerbaijan. Günay expects to be relocated soon. All her neighbours said the same.
In Fuzuli, south of Karabakh, a handful of finished apartment blocks and a new supermarket are welcoming returnees. Most of the families departing Baku expressed delight at their relocation, though few seemed aware of the landmines and war-torn landscape surrounding the area they were headed for. One teenager departing for Fuzuli said she felt pressured to go. “I will miss my friends,” she said.
For decades, Aliyev united the country around the trauma of losing the 1990s war, and built his personal legitimacy around the battle to retake Karabakh. His military triumph has bolstered his popularity and leaves few Azerbaijanis concerned about a crackdown on activists that, in its latest iteration, saw six people jailed for supporting peace.
Armenians watching anxiously for signs of what Aliyev might do next have previously been alarmed when he referred to southern Armenia as “western Azerbaijan” and set up a society dedicated to the rights of Azerbaijanis whose origins can be traced back to that region.
Aliyev has been “misinterpreted” on that point, according to Hajiyev, his aide. The leader allegedly only referred to the right of Azerbaijanis to visit their birthplace as tourists, he said.
But fears about a potential invasion of southern Armenia run deep, especially since Baku has previously demanded a corridor connecting to its exclave on the other side of Armenia, the so-called “Zangezur corridor”.
Local analysts say Baku has dropped that demand after taking back Karabakh. “Azerbaijan is retreating from its maximalist position,” said Rusif Huseynov, chair of the Baku-based Topchubashov Center think-tank. “It is signalling that it does not need the corridor.”
Saviyya Aslanova, 85, was born in southern Armenia and said she would be keen to visit, but did not want another war. “I can live with Armenians,” Aslanova said. “But how can those people who lost relatives, how can they live with them in peace?”
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