Nearly half of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population has fled to Armenia, with many thousands more still scrambling to evacuate, a week after the breakaway region surrendered following a lightning Azerbaijani offensive.

More than 50,000 people – including 17,000 children – had fled by Wednesday morning, after Azerbaijan lifted a 10-month blockade on the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia, according to Armenian government officials.

Azerbaijan said last week it had regained full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan’s borders but has for decades operated autonomously with a de facto government of its own. It said Karabakh Armenians could remain in the region if they accepted Azerbaijani citizenship, but many preferred to leave their homes rather than submit to rule by Baku.

Many residents harbor no hope that they will return to their ancestral homeland. “They changed our flag, our government surrendered. That’s all. No Armenian will be left here within maybe two weeks,” a Karabakh resident told CNN.

How did we get here?
Azerbaijan won a decisive military victory in the region last week, forcing the Karabakh armed forces to surrender in less than 24 hours and seemingly bringing to an end a conflict that had lasted more than a century.

After Azerbaijan launched missile and drone strikes on Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19, many in the regional capital of Stepanakert spent the night in makeshift bomb shelters, in what marked the start of a third war fought for control of the region in as many decades.

Under the Soviet Union, of which Azerbaijan and Armenia are both former members, Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous region within the republic of Azerbaijan in 1923.

Karabakh officials passed a resolution in 1988 declaring its intention to join the republic of Armenia, causing fighting to break out as the Soviet Union began to crumble, in what became the First Karabakh War. About 30,000 people were killed over six years of violence, which ended in 1994 when the Armenian side gained control of the region.

After years of sporadic clashes, the Second Karabakh War began in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by its historic ally Turkey, reclaimed a third of the territory of Karabakh in just 44 days, before both sides agreed to lay down their weapons in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

But the third war was to last just a day. The Karabakh presidency said its army had been outnumbered “several times over” by Azerbaijani forces and had no choice but to surrender and agree to “the dissolution and complete disarmament of its armed forces.” A second ceasefire – also brokered by Russia – came into effect at 1 p.m. on September 20.

The swiftness of Karabakh’s surrender was a measure of its military inferiority. Armed with Turkish drones, Azerbaijan won a crushing victory in 2020, attacking not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also Armenia itself. Unlike in 2020, Armenia’s armed forces did not attempt to defend the region during the most recent offensive – in part out of fear of further Azerbaijani aggression.

“They have such an advantage that they could easily cut Armenia in two,” Olesya Vartanyan, Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the South Caucasus, told CNN. “Just through a very short military operation. Probably a day or two for it to happen.”

Karabakh’s despair was Baku’s triumph. In a speech to the nation Wednesday evening, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev announced his forces had “punished the enemy properly” and that Baku had restored its sovereignty “with an iron fist.”