Azerbaijan "Great Return" reconstruction & resettlement programme §

Origin

The "Great Return" (Azerbaijani: Böyük Qayıdış) is the umbrella name for the Azerbaijani-government programme to reconstruct and resettle the seven districts surrounding the former NKAO, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Lachin, Kelbajar, Zangilan, Qubadli and Jabrayil, and (after September 2023) the territory of former Nagorno-Karabakh itself.

The programme was announced by President Ilham Aliyev in May 2021, six months after the 44-day war. It is Azerbaijan's flagship post-war state project.

The seven districts had been controlled by Armenian forces from 1992–94 to 2020 ("the seven districts" or "the buffer zone"). Their pre-1988 population was ~ 700,000, almost entirely Azerbaijani, displaced in the First Karabakh War (1988–94). By the 1994 Bishkek Protocol cease-fire, these districts had been substantially depopulated by Armenian forces and remained nearly empty for 26 years. The signature ruined city, Agdam, was nicknamed "the Hiroshima of the Caucasus."

Mechanism

The programme operates through:

1. Reconstruction. New "smart villages" (Azerbaijani: ağıllı kənd) and "smart cities", Aghali (Zangilan, opened January 2022), Fuzuli City, Aghdam New Town, Zangilan City, the new airport at Fuzuli (opened October 2021), the new airport at Lachin (planned), and the new airport at Zangilan (opened October 2022). The Azerbaijani government has budgeted approximately $4–7 billion across 2021–2027 (figures vary by source and year).
2. Settlement. Returnees are former IDPs (registered with the Azerbaijani State Committee on Refugees and IDPs) and their descendants. By end-2024 official figures reported ~ 35,000–40,000 people had returned to permanent residence, with a stated target of ~ 140,000 by 2026 and ~ 350,000 long-term.
3. De-mining. ANAMA (the Azerbaijani national mine-action agency) and partners, including Turkish, U.K. and U.S. agencies, have cleared an estimated 130,000+ mines from the recovered territories; the programme is the largest active mine-clearance operation outside Ukraine (sourced opinion: ICG).
4. Cultural-policy framing. The reconstruction is explicitly framed as restoration of "occupied" Azerbaijani lands. Mosques are being rebuilt; "shadow" cemeteries (Armenian-period) are being cleared; new monuments commemorate the Khojaly massacre and the Second Karabakh War.

Effects

Documented effects include the rebuilding of substantial urban infrastructure where almost none existed in 2020. The Aghdam Juma Mosque (1870), one of the few Azerbaijani heritage sites that had survived the 1988–2020 period, has been restored. The new airports have integrated the territory into Azerbaijan's domestic transport network. Returnee communities, while small relative to the pre-1988 Azerbaijani population of these districts, are real and growing.

In the same period, Armenian heritage in the same territory has been systematically erased. Caucasus Heritage Watch has documented heritage destruction at ~40% of monitored Armenian sites in territory controlled by Azerbaijan since 2020. The programme is therefore simultaneously a constructive reconstruction project for the Azerbaijani population and a destructive cultural-erasure project for the Armenian heritage record editorial.

The programme has also provided demographic ballast for "Western Azerbaijan" rhetoric: a state that can credibly resettle displaced populations in former Nagorno-Karabakh within four years can plausibly threaten that the same operation could be conducted in Armenia proper editorial.

Reception and politics

The international response has been mixed. Western donors and development banks have provided substantial financing for de-mining (esp. U.S. Department of State, U.K. HALO Trust). UNESCO has not been granted access to verify cultural-heritage protection. The EP October 2023 resolution noted the simultaneity of Azerbaijani reconstruction and Armenian-heritage destruction.

The Armenian-state position frames the Great Return as a triumph of state propaganda over historical truth, that the territory was being "reconstructed" while ~ 100,000 Armenians were being driven from their homes a few kilometres away (sourced opinion: Pashinyan addresses to UN General Assembly 2021–23). The Azerbaijani-state position frames it as the legitimate return of indigenous IDPs to their lands, in fulfilment of UNSC 822 (1993) and the line of UN GA resolutions.

Both readings are partly true. The Azerbaijani IDPs being resettled were genuinely driven from these districts in 1992–94 by Armenian forces (a fact found by the ECHR in Chiragov v. Armenia, 2015). The Armenian Karabakhis being driven out in 2023 were genuinely indigenous to the same broader region. The defensible characterisation is that the Great Return is a legitimate post-war reconstruction for one population that is simultaneously implicated in the dispossession of another, and that responsible international engagement should explicitly condition support on parallel protections for Armenian heritage and a right of return for displaced Armenian Karabakhis editorial.