ABSTRACT
This chapter explains Karabakh conflict's significance for Azerbaijan's state and society since independence. It is concerned with the conflict's impact on Azerbaijan, the realities behind the conflict, and the efforts to negotiate a solution. These issues are taken up with a focus on the Azerbaijani side of the problem. To understand the human toll of the Karabakh conflict, one only has to go to the Shehidler Khiyabani, on a hill overlooking the Baku bay, across the street from Parliament. On a political level, the war was arguably the major reason the Azerbaijani Popular Front (APF) government's democratic experiment failed in 1993. The international body that had been given the task of mediating the conflict by the United Nations was the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE). Armenia resisted the OSCEs insistence that negotiations follow the Lisbon principles, to the point of considering the Lisbon principles the main impediment to resolution of the conflict.
