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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

The point is that the land that was fought over was part of Azerbaijan that Armenia took in a war after the fall of the Soviet Union. You can say that the border should have been something else, but that's the same argument to made for Crimea. I don't think the rest of NATO took Azerbaijani's side because of corruption, you are just cherry picking an incident in Germany and ignoring the fact that the occupation was not supported.

It's very sad and I agree that the second war was also terrible, unjustified and the whole thing would best be solved by negotiations.

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It's a bit more complicated than that. Azerbaijan expelled or downright massacred the Armenian population living in Baku in the 1988 and 1990 pogroms. Nagorno-Karabakh population also used to be a large majority of Armenians until the government promoted relocation of Azeri people in the region, causing the Armenian population to be heavily discriminated.

> Azerbaijan expelled the Armenian population from Baku in the 90s pogroms

Armenians started assaulting and expelling Azerbaijanis back in 1987 (Kapan/Kafan). This happened before Sumgait/Baku pogroms.

True. Though the number was at least an order of magnitude smaller than Sumgait/Baku.

This mini-thread accidentally explains why the West don't, won't, and can't care about Azerbaijan/Armenia violence: it's fucking incomprehensible. Tribes killing each other for generations, for complicated reasons that no one without a relevant PhD will understand. It seems intractable, so we throw up our hands and focus elsewhere, somewhere with a simpler narrative.

Everyone gets uptight about the word "uncivilized," but this kind of generational tribal conflict _is_ a failure of civilization. I don't know what causes civilization (it sure ain't skin tone), but without clear villain/victim narratives, and heroes to root for (brave Ukrainians fighting for their own liberation), no one will care. And that's tragic, too, but it's not a commentary on the underlying tragedy of human suffering and death, that people in every nation hurt the same.

You defer to the tv ratings and PR campaigns to define ‘civilization’.

Modern definition - if you're driven by emotions, over principles and self reflection.

And yes - Armenians are failing to be in any way rational about the long standing conflict.

That is not actually correct.

The land in question consists of two parts. The former Nagorno-Karabach Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and a region which is de jure part of Azerbaijan, which was captured in a war that resulted from Azerbaijan's invasion of the NKAO.

The NKAO is not a de jure part of Azerbaijan, as can be seen from the Soviet secession law of 1991, which is the law which permitted Azerbaijan's secession from the Soviet Union. The law itself can be found in English translation on http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1991-2/shevarnadze-resigns/shev... , but basically, autonomous oblasts vote separately from Soviet Republics, and do not automatically secede with their republics unless they hold a separate vote to do so.

When Azerbaijan seceded from the Soviet Union no such vote was held in Nagorno-Karabach. In my view the correct legal interpretation is thus that they remained part of Soviet Union until it was dissolved, at which point they became an independent state.

This is very important, because Azerbaijan has been shooting people in the NKAO for no reason whatsoever, and I assume that's it's purely a matter of killing Armenians, so it can't be part of Azerbaijan: this makes the legal situation very convenient-- countries like Spain, which does not want to accept a separate Catalonia, or Basque country would not make themselves into hypocrites, or set a precedent against themselves, by recognizing the NKAO, or Artsakh as it now calls itself.

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