Agdam §

Ruined city and return symbol

Agdam was a major Azerbaijani town east of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian forces captured it on 23 July 1993 during the expansion of the First Karabakh War beyond the former NKAO, displacing its population and contributing to the wider Azerbaijani internally displaced population. The capture helped trigger UN Security Council Resolution 853, which demanded the withdrawal of occupying forces from Agdam and other recently occupied areas.

For Azerbaijanis, Agdam became the clearest visual symbol of occupation: a depopulated, mined and ruined city close to the line of contact. Photographs of the empty mosque and destroyed urban fabric circulated for years as evidence that the war had not only displaced people but also erased a city. Human Rights Watch's 1994 report situates Agdam inside the broader 1993 offensives that displaced hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis HRW.

For Armenians, Agdam was often described through the language of military necessity. The town had been used to shell Armenian-held areas, and Armenian commanders treated its capture as removing a threat to Stepanakert and eastern Karabakh. That explanation addresses the military logic but not the decades-long civilian consequence. editorial

Under the 2020 trilateral statement, Agdam was returned to Azerbaijan without a new battle. It is now one of the flagship sites of the Great Return reconstruction programme, promoted by Baku as evidence that post-war Azerbaijan will rebuild the territories and resettle displaced citizens. The question that remains is not whether Agdam was Azerbaijani territory under international law. It was. The harder question is whether reconstruction can acknowledge Azerbaijani dispossession without turning it into a licence to erase Armenian losses elsewhere. editorial