Author: Chmshkian Vicken

Then there’s the region’s role in the global energy trade: The pipelines connecting Azerbaijan with Turkey are crucial for the European Union’s oil and natural gas supply — and pass close to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Christian-majority Armenia and Muslim-majority Azerbaijan have had frictions for centuries, but religion does not play a major role in the modern-day conflict. A lot of the blame rests with Joseph Stalin. The former Soviet leader placed the majority-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Artsakh to Armenians) into Azerbaijan after the Caucasus was conquered by the Red Army in the early 1920s. Neither side was pleased, though for decades it didn’t matter much.

But when the USSR began to collapse in the late 1980s, powerful nationalist forces on both sides turned Nagorno-Karabakh into a powder keg. The enclave’s ethnic Armenians declared independence in 1991. War erupted between Azerbaijan, which insisted on the inviolability of its borders, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, who received support from Armenia itself. By 1994, the Armenians had succeeded in driving the Azerbaijani army from the enclave and large surrounding swathes of land. Hundreds of thousands of people had to flee.

These days, the United Nations still recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan’s territory; no country considers the enclave an independent country — not even Armenia, which also hasn’t formally annexed it but supports the region financially and militarily. Since then, the two countries have hunkered down on either side of a line of control marked by landmines and snipers.

Armenia’s 2018 “velvet revolution,” which toppled its longtime leader Serzh Sargsyan, briefly raised hopes that long-stalled peace negotiations could resume. But Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the opposition politician who rose to power after the mass protests, largely ended up sticking by his predecessor’s rhetoric.

An election organized this spring by the self-declared Armenian government in Karabakh was viewed as a provocation in Azerbaijan and drew international criticism. And in July this year, tensions started surging after a series of clashes killed more than a dozen people, with the catalyst still remaining unclear. The fighting prompted thousands of Azerbaijanis to demonstrate for war with Armenia; at the same time, Turkey ratcheted up its rhetoric in support of Baku.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged “an immediate cessation of hostilities,” a call echoed by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations.

Turkey sided firmly with Azerbaijan, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan describing Armenia as “the biggest threat to peace” in the region. Russia took a more cautious approach: In a phone call with Armenia’s Pashinyan, President Vladimir Putin said it was important to “halt military actions,” according to the Kremlin’s account of the conversation.

Iran — an ally of Armenia — offered to mediate, saying Tehran was “ready to use all its capacities to help talks to start between the two sides.”

For more than a quarter-century, an international peace initiative, known as the Minsk Process, has tried and failed to bring a resolution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh after the cease-fire in the region in 1994.

Chaired by France, Russia and the United States, under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Minsk Group has sought to prevent military clashes and to implement a peace settlement.

But years of diplomatic meetings and various missions to the region, as well as to the capitals of Armenia and Azerbaijan, have come to naught.

There were brief flickers of hope after Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met formally for the first time in March 2019, and later in February 2020 for a public debate at the Munich Security Conference. For years, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders had refused to even appear in the same room. But the coronavirus pandemic interrupted diplomatic efforts earlier this year.

On Sunday, the Minsk Group co-chairs issued a statement decrying the latest violence.

It’s too early to say how long the fighting will continue or whether it could escalate into a full-blown war. Both the 2016 clashes and the skirmishes in July lasted only a few days.

The picture would change significantly if a major power were to enter the conflict — yet even Turkey has so far limited its involvement to rhetoric. Armenia has claimed Ankara has redeployed fighters from northern Syria to Azerbaijan, but Baku issued a swift denial.

A historic Armenian church in San Francisco was halfway destroyed by a fire that police suspect was set ablaze by arsonists.

The St. Gregory The Illuminator Armenian Apostolic Church at 51 Commonwealth Ave. in the Laurel Heights neighborhood caught on fire early Thursday morning.

Firefighters responded to the blaze just after 4 a.m., according to NBC Bay Area, and were able to extinguish the fire.

But there was extensive damage in the building adjacent to the main church, with two floors of four floors gutted.

“The building housed Vasbouragan Hall, as well as offices for St. Gregory Armenian Church and various organizations,” the church board of trustees said in a statement to ABC7.

St. Gregory has been the primary place of worship for many Armenians in the Bay Area dating back to its first service in November 1957. The church also has long ties to Fresno: In more recent years, the Holy Trinity Armenia Apostolic Church in Fresno would partner with St. Gregory for events, including young adult spiritual trips.

Armenian community leaders told ABC7 the fire was set in three separate locations in the building: Sunday School classrooms, the church office and in the Hamazkayin Library.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin tweeted out calling the suspected arson an “outrage.”