Nagorno Karabagh

Formerly the prized possession of both Azeris and of Armenians, the cultural hilltop city of Shushi (or Shusha in Azeri) now lies as a living ruin destroyed in the bloody five year war for ethnic supremacy in the mountainous territory of Nagorno Karabagh.  Not restored after the war, the capital was moved to the nearby city of Stepanakert, which now looks modern and without signs of war.  An ethnic Armenian enclave ceded to Azerbaijan by Stalin in the 1930s, an ethnic civil war erupted in Karabagh under Soviet times and after the breakup of the Soviet union, Armenian troops entered to fight for their blood brothers, for their way of life, for Christianity, and for God Himself.  The Armenians eventually won in 1994 and Karabagh is operated as a special autonomous region of Armenia today.  The ethnic Azeris were expelled from Karabagh, and the ethnic balkanization that has wreacked the Caucasus is now more or less complete.  The Caucausus is probably more ethnically homogeneous and "cleansed" region by region, than at anytime in its long and bloody history.  In theory there are pending negotiations over a political settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan with a return of Azeri refugees to Karabagh, but if you spend any time in the Caucasus talking with your average Joe on the street, you'd realize how ludicrously removed from reality is that eventuality.  The acrimony that Azeris harbour against Armenians is probably the most severe I've seen anywhere in the world, dwarfing Arab-Israeli tensions.

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