The Economist: The fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh reflects decades of conflict

By The Economist.

Published Oct. 30, 2020 at 3:21 am

A man stands among the debris of a destroyed house hit by a rocket strike during the ongoing military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in a residential area of the city of Ganja, Azerbaijan, on Oct. 21, 2020.

Photo by AFP

In a courtyard of half a dozen identical apartment blocks in Sumgait, a charmless industrial town near Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, a group of teenage boys are congregating around Elshan, who is recording a YouTube video. Adopting a “radio voice”, he proclaims the names of villages “liberated” by Azerbaijan’s “glorious army” around Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan that is at the heart of a long and deadly conflict on the edge of Europe.