Not everyone can find the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where military clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan have resumed, on the map. Yet the ripple effect of the crisis in the hinterlands of the Caucasus can be felt far and wide.
That kind of connectivity was hardly the case 25 years ago, when the conflict started. For the great powers of East and West, the 1989-1994 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan looked not like a geopolitical challenge but a humanitarian catastrophe: 30,000 people died and 1 million were displaced in the fight over a meager 4,400 sq. km (roughly twice the size of Tokyo).
The origins of the tragic conflict were far from extraordinary: post-colonial tribalism. Within the Soviet Union, the predominantly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region had been a province of Azerbaijan, and with the Soviet empire crumbling, the exclave developed a robust secessionist movement aspiring to join Armenia.
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