Faced with claims of ethnic cleansing – and images of thousands of terrified Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh – Azerbaijan is promising to offer Armenians who stay in the recaptured enclave equal and protected status in Azeri society.
But there are serious doubts that the authoritarian regime of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Baku will honour this vow.
The situation is bleak in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous, ethnic Armenian region inside the borders of Azerbaijan with a population of up to 120,000, which has been a flashpoint since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijan faces charges of genocidal intent. “I have no doubt that what is happening now can be classified as ethnic cleansing of Armenians – one step before physical genocide,” said Dr Joanna Beata Michlic, of the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University College London.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in August said there was “reasonable basis to believe that genocide is being committed against Armenians”.
The Azerbaijani ambassador to London, Elin Suleymanov, on Tuesday fired back at the country’s critics alongside Farid Shafiyev, head of the Azeri government’s AIR Center think-tank.
Of Dr Michlic’s claims, Suleymanov said that “…if your institution is called a genocide research institution… that’s part of your job description to claim that… So, we have to be very careful.”
Shafiyev said that Moreno Ocampo was “accused of getting bribes from the Libyan mafia” – a reference to the row over the former ICC prosecutor’s lucrative advisory work for a Libyan businessman who had close ties to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
Soldiers in Azerbaijan commemorate those killed in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War on its third anniversary in Baku on Wednesday (Photo: Resul Rehimov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Suleymanov added that Moreno Ocampo had been “hired” to make the claims, and that they amounted to “fear mongering” and were part of internal Armenian political machinations.
One academic working with NGOs in the region, who did not wish to be named, told i: “Azerbaijan adopts a strategy of plausible deniability. Whenever they’re charged with ethnic cleansing, there’s always an excuse. Whether the blockades are needed for security reasons or something else.”
Leaving aside the contentious label “ethnic cleansing”, Brussels has also castigated Baku for recent events in the Armenian-populated enclave. The EU said it “condemns the military operation by Azerbaijan against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and deplores the casualties and loss of life caused by this escalation”.
An air of defensiveness – or evasiveness – pervades Azerbaijan’s responses to criticism. It seems that a country is either with them or against them. Thus France, a critic of Azerbaijan’s tactics against Armenia, is singled out by Shafiyev among European states as “a country with a large Armenian diaspora”.
Apropos, he told i he does not believe there was an Armenian holocaust – the commonly used term for the annihilation of over a million Christian Armenians from 1915 to 1916 by the Ottoman Empire, which prompted Armenians to flee around the world.
Muslim Azerbaijan has the upper hand over its neighbour, Christian Armenia, after decades of tit-for-tat violence and cycles of conflict that have seen both sides commit atrocities.
When the first Nagorno Karabakh war ended in 1994, Armenia had the upper hand. But when the second conflict finished in 2020, Azerbaijan was in the driving seat, having made huge gains in disputed areas – gains that were cemented by the imposition of a Russian peace deal, seemingly designed to burnish Moscow’s diplomatic standing rather than establish a peace acceptable to Armenia.
OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had worked for nearly three decades to end the conflict, was cast out at Moscow’s behest and with it, the possibility of a referendum for Armenians in the Nagorno Karabakh enclave.
Shafiyev says the West should not dismiss Baku’s concerns given that it has its own vexed territorial disputes – from Ulster and Ireland to Quebec and Canada.
Laurence Broers, a Eurasia expert at London’s Chatham House, says in defence of Azerbaijan that “not many countries would willingly have an armed separatist group in territory that is recognised internationally as their own.”
In the weeks leading up to the 19 September attack on the ethnic Armenian enclave, Atlantic Council researchers identified more than seventy Armenian and Azerbaijani Telegram accounts publishing hate speech and inciting violence against the opposing side.
But Broers is concerned about the way Azerbaijan has gone about re-taking Karabakh, flouting the 2020 accord by installing checkpoints on the Lachin corridor – which connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia proper – and with its smash-and-grab assault on Armenian-held areas in the past week.
But the truth is, a dictator will never knowingly pass over an opportunity for a historic land grab.
With Armenia’s former protector, Russia, distracted by the Ukraine war – and even irritated by Armenia’s refusal to back the invasion, Azerbaijan strongman Ilham Aliyev, already buoyed by his success in regaining territory in the 2020 war, first attempted to starve Armenians into submission.
He began blocking the Lachin Corridor in December. Aliyev, in the long and rambling speech of someone who inherited the presidency rather than earned it in free and fair elections, said that “present-day Armenia is our land” and added: “When I repeatedly said this before, they tried to object and allege that I have territorial claims. I am saying this as a historical fact. If someone can substantiate a different theory, let them come forward.”
On 19 September, he sent in the army to end any armed Armenia resistance. The fighting is all but over.
So far, more than 28,000 of the 100,000 to 120,000 Armenians of Karabakh, have crossed the border into Armenia, a country of about 2.8 million.
Broers predicts that as many as 80,000 Armenians may eventually flee the enclave and that 10,000 or so may remain. He notes that the retention of a small population of Armenians would conveniently enable Baku to refute claims that it had ethnically cleansed the enclave.
Ambassador Suleymanov insisted Armenians were welcome to stay in Azerbaijan’s “multiethnic society”, adding, “we’re trying to break the cycle of history. We want to make sure it’s understandable that people can live next to each other.”
Broers thinks, however, a huge Armenian exodus would “emphasise the limits to Azerbaijan’s heavily-marketed brand of multiculturalism”.
Asked what Azerbaijan had done to guarantee the rights and safety of Armenians who stay in Karabakh, Shafiyev said this was being discussed with Armenians in the enclave on Monday.
But Azerbaijani authorities have had plenty of time to come up with convincing pledges to the ethnic Armenian population, given the government’s long-standing plan to assume control over the bitterly contested enclave.
Talk of discussions now sound like a sop to concerned international observers rather than a genuine attempt to integrate frightened Armenians into Azeri society.
“The issue of security guarantees for Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh is key and clearly, given the reported exodus of Armenians from the region, one that has not been sufficiently developed,” says Professor Tracey German, of the King’s College London Defence Studies Department and the Royal United Services Institute.
She even dismisses Baku’s claims that the dispute over the enclave centres on territorial rights.
“[Armenian premier Nikol] Pashinian made it clear in April 2022, that the key issue for Armenia was not NK’s status, but security and rights guarantees for those living there – Azerbaijan had rejected demands for security guarantees, viewing it as interference in its ‘internal affairs’,” she said.
“The absence of trust between Armenia and Azerbaijan mean that there will be little faith in statements about ‘talks’. Azerbaijan clearly feels it is in a stronger position and has little incentive to develop mutually agreeable security guarantees.”
It doesn’t augur well for Armenians who choose to stay that there are reports the Azerbaijani government has begun arresting anti-war activists in the country following its offensive to take over the enclave.
Among those detained was Azerbaijani diplomat Emin Shaig Ibrahimov. He was arrested on September 20 and placed in administrative custody for a month for “spreading prohibited information”, according to his lawyer Agil Layic.
Last night it was reported that Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker and philanthropist, who headed Karabakh’s separatist government between November 2022 and February 2023, had been arrested by Azerbaijani authorities as he tried to escape into Armenia.
Germany has added its voice to US calls for Azerbaijan to allow international observers into Karabakh.
Some Armenians will say concerns re not unfounded given the region’s history. According to a 2022 State Department report, evidence was found of Armenian graves being desecrated by Azerbaijani soldiers, as well as “severe and grave human rights violations” against Armenian ethnic minorities, including “extrajudicial killings, torture and other ill-treatment and arbitrary detention…”
Ambassador Suleymanov told i on Tuesday that “ordinary Armenians” had nothing to fear. He noted his president had said that he didn’t “hold ordinary Armenians of Karabakh responsible for all the bad things that happened to us”. But Suleymanov said some Armenians in the enclave had committed war crimes.
Even as Azerbaijan realises its long-held desire to take control of Nagorno Karabakh, the prospects for further confrontation in the region are emerging.
On Monday, Azerbaijani President Aliyev met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Naxçivan, an Azerbaijani exclave sandwiched in between Armenia and Turkey.
Aliyev is reported to have revived the idea of creating a land corridor between Azerbaijan proper and Turkey, something that’s probably only possible through the seizure of more Armenian territory.
Shafiyev said on Tuesday that Armenia was obliged to allow Azerbaijan “unimpeded passage” to Naxçivan, under the terms of the agreement that ended the 2020 conflict.
But critics will note that Azerbaijan has chosen to ignore the 2020 peace agreement whenever it has suited them.
Broers thinks that a direct invasion of undisputed Armenia territory would represent a major escalation that Baku might not baulk at. “But then again, many of us liberals grew up in a time when the liberal world order seemed to be on the rise. We live in a very different time now,” he says.
In the new age of dictators, large and small, not many things are off the table.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Armenians will have to fund houses, jobs – new lives – in a land they don’t call home.
