Azerbaijan obtains back its Kalbajar region today, November 15, 2020 under the trilateral agreement signed by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on November 10.
The agreement also envisages the de-occupation of Azerbaijan’s Aghdam and Lachin regions by December 1 as well as the return of Azerbaijani IDPs to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven adjacent regions under the control of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Kalbajar was among seven Azerbaijani regions that got occupied by the Armenian armed forces during the Karabakh war. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. In 1992, the Armenian armed forces occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Launching a large-scale military operation on March 27 in 1993, the Armenian armed forces finally occupied Kalbajar on April 2. As a result, 511 people were killed in Kalbajar, which has a territory of 1,936 square meters. Some 321 people were captured and went missing.
Fifty-five soldiers were killed during the fights, while 132 settlements were captured by the Armenian armed forces.
Armenian occupiers destroyed more than 500 industrial, construction, catering and retail facilities, 97 schools and 76 health facilities. Kalbajar region’s 53,340 residents became IDPs.
After Kalbajar’s occupation, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 822 demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the region and other occupied areas of Azerbaijan. Along with this resolution, Armenia failed to fulfil all other three UN Security resolutions (853, 874 and 884) on the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.