Every now and then, the West is reminded of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom it knows nothing (as Neville Chamberlain once said). Nagorno-Karabakh is such a place, a tiny enclave that has caused strife between neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia even before they gained independence from the Soviet Union.
While recognized as part of Azerbaijan by the international community, the ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region fought an independence war to a standstill in 1994. It is now essentially an independent republic supported by Armenia, and while the fragile truce that has held from 1994 on has been regularly breached, the latest bout of fighting is the most serious escalation of violence to date.
Recent political developments have made the opportunity to calm hostilities more difficult than in the past. In the absence of any democratic legitimacy in either country, those in power have turned Nagorno-Karabakh into the centerpiece of incompatible and entirely uncompromising nationalist narratives.
