Nagorno Karabakh was a small Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, autonomous since 1921 and became an independent presidential republic after an internal referendum in 1991. Armenians have always perceived Karabakh as their place of origin, the place where it all began, the cradle of their culture, a bastion of the Christian religion in an area of total Muslim ownership, with its thousands of churches and fortified monasteries.
Today Nagorno Karabakh no longer exists.
After 9 months of forced isolation of the enclave by Azerbaijan resulting in a devastating humanitarian crisis, the people living in Karabakh had to flee their homes under Azerbaijani shelling and take refuge in Armenia on September 19, 2023. The region was emptied, churches razed to the ground, cemeteries destroyed, homes looted.
All trace of what was Nagorno Karabakh has been erased. On December 31, 2023, the nation officially disappeared from the international scene.
Its existence has even been erased from local history books. On Google maps of Nagorno Karabakh there is no longer any sign. We have witnessed the total erasure of a nation, its history, its people.
