Lost in the Multi-Crisis, Daily Brief October 24, 2023

It’s a tragic, decades-long conflict. There have been multiple mass atrocities against civilians, and the perpetrators are never brought to justice. There was a blockade that left people without enough food, medicine, and fuel for months. Then, an entire population, some 120,000 people, fled for their lives over a few days.

That this horrific mass exodus – which happened to ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just weeks ago – has received so little international media and diplomatic attention says everything you need to know about the state of the world right now. It’s not that the world doesn’t care; it’s that there’s too much to care about in too many places at once.

Urgent, conflict-related crises usually get top billing, like Israel/Palestine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, even major conflicts and humanitarian crises often don’t make the cut. Think about atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, for example, or in Myanmar, or in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. It’s not just Nagorno-Karabakh in danger of getting overlooked in the global multi-crisis.

Still, the individual stories of human suffering are no less important from one crisis to the next. My colleague Tanya Lokshina has written a compelling feature article about one.

Agnessa Avanesyan is a 22-year-old who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in fear with her family at the end of September, when Azerbaijan re-took control of the region. They’re now staying in southern Armenia with relatives, all crammed into a small rural house for now – homeless, destitute, and still disoriented after an arduous three-day journey.

Agnessa describes how she and her younger sister Amanda, who both lived in Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azeri), Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city, were frightened when Azerbaijani forces attacked, and the city lost electricity and phones stopped working. They spent the night in the basement shelter of a hospital, shuddering at the sounds of explosions, hungry and cold.

Early the next day, they set out for their family’s village some 24 kilometers away – by foot and hitching part of the way.

“We didn’t think we’d make it,” Agnessa says. “The shelling was so close…”

After Azerbaijani forces opened the “Lachin corridor” – the road linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia – the villagers started leaving. The head of the local de-facto administration warned that Azerbaijani soldiers would come at any moment, and no one wanted to risk staying.

Agnessa’s family did not have a car, so they split up, squishing into three different vehicles driven by neighbors. There was no room for the sisters’ own belongings.

The car was low on gas. Given Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, petrol was rare. They found some at a gas tank on the highway, but the scene was a free-for-all: people were storming the tank. An hour after Agnessa was there, the whole thing blew up, reportedly killing 220 people. Agnessa’s uncle was nearby and seriously injured.

The roads were clogged with people fleeing. One section that under normal circumstances takes less than 90 minutes to drive, took 42 hours.

“We were shivering all night from the cold because the car was moving half a meter per hour. An old man died in a truck close to us. He was too sick, too frail… Many cars broke down on the road…”

She had no idea where the cars with the rest of her family were.

“But the fear was the worst,” Agnessa said. “Seeing all those Azerbaijani soldiers on the road… All we were thinking of was to get away.”

How bad are things in the world right now? So bad, that there can be tens of thousands of Agnessas, and almost no one in the world has heard anything about their suffering. That 120,000 people can flee for their lives, and it’s not even among the “top stories” globally.