Zangilan §

Southern edge and corridor politics

Zangilan is the south-western Azerbaijani district along the Aras River, bordering Iran and lying near the route logic that now feeds the Zangezur corridor debate. Armenian forces captured it in October 1993, producing the flight of its Azerbaijani population and completing the Armenian-controlled belt along the southern edge of the conflict zone.

During the First Karabakh War, Zangilan's fall was part of the sequence that turned battlefield advantage into a long-term occupation map: Agdam in July, Fuzuli and Jabrayil in August, Qubadli in late August, Zangilan in October. The result was a belt of depopulated Azerbaijani districts surrounding the former NKAO. International diplomacy treated these districts as occupied Azerbaijani territory to be returned in any settlement, even when proposals deferred the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. editorial

In 2020 Azerbaijani forces retook Zangilan during the southern advance of the Second Karabakh War. Its recovery gave Baku control of a key segment of the Aras frontier and strengthened the subsequent demand for routes from mainland Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan through or around Syunik. Azerbaijan's post-war investment in roads and airports in the recovered southern districts is therefore not only reconstruction. It is also preparation for a new regional transport map. (sourced opinion: Broers)

Zangilan is now central to the Great Return programme, with model villages and infrastructure presented as evidence that displaced Azerbaijanis can return after decades. The unresolved issue is whether return for one displaced population will coexist with rights and security for displaced Armenians from nearby Karabakh, or whether the post-2020 order will remain a one-sided restoration. contested