Month: September 2023

Baku, September 24, AZERTAC

Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry have visited the Main Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Defense, the ministry told AZERTAC.

First, flowers were laid at the monument to National Leader Heydar Aliyev erected in the territory of the hospital. The memory of the Great Leader and martyrs, who sacrificed their lives for the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan was honored with observing a minute of silence.

The Defense Ministry’s leadership met with servicemen undergoing treatment in the hospital after being wounded during local anti-terror measures conducted in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, as well as enquired about their health and concerns.

The Minister of Defense was reported that the hospital’s medical personnel are working with high professionalism for the treatment of wounded servicemen.

The Minister visited servicemen being treated in the wards, enquired about their health and rehabilitation process, as well as wished them a speedy recovery and return to their places of service.

Minister Zakir Hasanov emphasized that the significant military successes achieved by Azerbaijani servicemen in a short period of time in all directions during anti-terror measures by showing heroism, courage and professionalism in difficult terrain conditions, were highly appreciated by President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev.

In the end, the Minister gave relevant instructions on more qualitative organization of the medical service provided to wounded servicemen.

13:21, 24 September 2023

A lightning military operation, lasting barely twenty-four hours, has put an end to the dream of an independent Nagorno Karabakh. This was announced by the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, after proclaiming the “reintegration” into the country of the entire region, inhabited until now by slightly more than 120,000 people, mainly ethnic Armenians. Since December 2022 the enclave had been completely encircled following the blockade by Azeri troops and activists of the Lachin corridor, the territory’s only connection to Armenia.

The security of the road had been taken over by Russia, which had erected interposition troops and aspired to mediation work. Absorbed in its energies by the war it was waging against Ukraine, Russia neglected to pay attention to this commitment, all the more so since the Kremlin had warned of Armenia’s pro-Western fickleness with the consequent cooling of relations with Moscow. 

For President Aliyev, this victory, which puts an end to thirty years of frozen conflict, represents an obvious strengthening of his international position. His main supporters also share part of this triumph: Erdogan’s Turkey, confronting Armenia since the genocide of 1915, which Ankara refuses to recognize as such, and Netanyahu’s Israel, which supplies arms to Azerbaijan, an equipment that has proved sufficient and decisive for the triumph of Baku. 

The last issue of this war is to determine the fate of the Armenian inhabitants of the failed republic of Artsakh, the name with which they had baptized the territory and whose capital they had established in Stepanakert. After being subjected to a nine-month siege, with a lack of food, water and medicine, many have gone into hiding, fearful of being put to the sword by the victorious troops. This was dramatically stated to Agence France Presse by Armine Hayrapetian, the spokeswoman for the government of the separatist republic of Artsakh, who warned of the “massacres” which, in her opinion, the Azeris would undertake as soon as they entered the capital. 

More likely, however, is that an agreement will be reached on the evacuation of the 120,000 Armenians, to be hosted by Yerevan. In addition to the human crisis that this entails, there will undoubtedly be a political crisis in Armenia itself. Its current government of Nikol Pashinyan has already been accused of passivity and of not having done enough to defend and help its beleaguered countrymen. This pressure will be accentuated by the arrival of these refugees, who will bring to the country not only bitterness over the tragedy of their exile and the hardships suffered, but also reproaches to the “Armenian motherland” for not having effectively defended her children. 

The two countries, Armenia and Azerbaijan, will further accentuate their animosity and differences. Both had gained independence from the Russian Empire in 1918, but both were again swallowed up by the USSR, which determined that Nagorno-Karabakh would remain an autonomous territory within the then Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. 

Like many other peoples forcibly subdued by the central power in Moscow, the two countries appeased their mutual enmity, but it flared up again as soon as the Soviet Union disintegrated. Three years of war, between 1991 and 1994, ended with the ethnic Armenian rebels conquering most of the territory, invading in the process other surrounding regions of Upper Karabakh, inside Azerbaijan, which were not in dispute. 

Baku never recognized the borders that emerged from that confrontation; it always claimed the territory arguing that the Azeri population living in Upper Karabakh had been expelled and massacred by the Armenians, and the tension resulted in periodic skirmishes that would again reach their climax in the 2020 war, when Armenia and Azerbaijan crossed mutual accusations of shelling civilian settlements.

The cease-fire agreement that halted hostilities, later punctuated by new clashes, was broken last December, when Azerbaijan closed the Lachin corridor and began the encirclement by hunger and thirst that has now concluded with the lightning military operation that is supposed to be definitive, although in this as in so many other stories in history nothing can ever be taken for granted forever and ever.

STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan :Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh began a mass exodus by car on Sunday towards Armenia after Azerbaijan defeated the breakaway region’s fighters in a conflict dating from the Soviet era.

The Nagorno-Karabakh leadership told Reuters the region’s 120,000 Armenians did not want to live as part of Azerbaijan for fear of persecution and ethnic cleansing.

Those with fuel had started to drive down the Lachin corridor towards the border with Armenia, according to a Reuters reporter in the Karabakh capital, known as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan.

Reuters pictures showed dozens of cars driving out of the capital at night towards the corridor’s mountainous curves.

The Armenians of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but previously beyond its control, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.

The Armenians are not accepting Azerbaijan’s promise to guarantee their rights as the region is integrated.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters.

“The fate of our poor people will go down in history as a disgrace and a shame for the Armenian people and for the whole civilised world,” Babayan said. “Those responsible for our fate will one day have to answer before God for their sins.”

The Armenian leaders of Karabakh said that all those made homeless by the Azerbaijani military operation and wanting to leave would be escorted to Armenia by Russian peacekeepers.

Reuters reporters near the village of Kornidzor on the Armenian border saw some heavily laden cars pass into Armenia. Armenia said 377 refugees had arrived by Sunday evening.

It was unclear when the bulk of the population might move to Armenia.

FEARS OF VIOLENCE

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has faced calls to resign for failing to save Karabakh. In an address to the nation, he said some aid had arrived but a mass exodus looked inevitable.

“If proper conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, the likelihood is rising that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will see exile from their homeland as the only way to save their lives and identity,” he said, according to an official transcript.

The situation could change the delicate balance of power in the South Caucasus region, a patchwork of ethnicities crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran vie for influence.

Last week’s Azerbaijani victory appears to end one of the decades-old “frozen conflicts” of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. President Ilham Aliyev said his “iron fist” had consigned the idea of an independent ethnic Armenian Karabakh to history and that the region would be turned into a “paradise”.

Armenia says more than 200 people were killed and 400 wounded in the Azerbaijani military operation.

FIRST KARABAKH WAR

Nagorno-Karabakh lies in an area that over centuries has come under the sway of Persians, Turks, Russians, Ottomans and Soviets. It was claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917. In Soviet times it was designated an autonomous region within Azerbaijan.

As the Soviet Union crumbled, the Armenians there threw off nominal Azeri control and captured neighbouring territory in what is now known as the First Karabakh War. From 1988-1994 about 30,000 people were killed and more than a million people, mostly Azeris, displaced.

In 2020, after decades of skirmishes, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, won a decisive 44-day Second Karabakh War, recapturing territory in and around Karabakh. That war ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal that Armenians accuse Moscow of failing to guarantee.

The Armenian authorities in the region said late on Saturday that about 150 tonnes of humanitarian cargo from Russia and another 65 tonnes of flour shipped by the International Committee of the Red Cross had arrived in the region.

With 2,000 peacekeepers in the region, Russia said that under the terms of the ceasefire six armoured vehicles, more than 800 small arms, anti-tank weapons and portable air defence systems, as well as 22,000 ammunition rounds, had been handed in by Saturday.

Space for 40,000 people from Karabakh had been prepared in Armenia. Azerbaijan, which is mainly Muslim, has said the Armenians, who are Christian, can leave if they want.

Pashinyan blamed Russia publicly on Sunday for failing to do enough for Armenia which he said would review its alliance with Moscow.

“Some of our partners are increasingly making efforts to expose our security vulnerabilities, putting at risk not only our external, but also internal, security and stability, while violating all norms of etiquette and correctness in diplomatic and interstate relations, including obligations assumed under treaties,” Pashinyan said in his Sunday address.

Russian officials say Pashinyan is to blame for his own mishandling of the crisis, and have repeatedly said that Armenia, which borders Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia, has few other friends in the region.

(Reporting by Reuters in Stepanakert, Azerbaijan; Felix Light near Kornidzor, Armenia, and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Peter Graff, David Holmes and Barbara Lewis)

Baku, May 2, AZERTAC

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, a group of employees of the State Security Service organized another climbing to the “Heydar Peak” located at an altitude of 3751 meters above sea level.

Despite the difficult terrain and severe climate, the participants reached the place on time, and paid tribute to the National Leader.

They raised the National Flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan, placed a poster with the name and emblem of the State Security Service, as well as a commemorative stone plaque made of a piece of rock taken from the natural deposits in the liberated territories and depicting the 100th anniversary of Great Leader Heydar Aliyev on the top.

Suren Surenyants, political scientist:

“As expected, the Washington round of Mirzoyan-Bayramov talks turned out to be ineffectual. I think that the negotiations in Washington were doomed to such an outcome for at least two reasons:

1) the Armenian-Azerbaijani institution of direct dialogue cannot work effectively, if only because there is a power imbalance between Yerevan and Baku, where Azerbaijan is trying to impose its entire agenda on Yerevan;

2) we may like or dislike Russia’s policy, but it is obvious that without the participation of Moscow it is impossible to achieve a resolution of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Russia is not only the main moderator in the South Caucasus, a key mediator in this conflict, but also, in fact, a party and participant in this conflict, which also follows from the logic of the November 9 [2020] tripartite statement on the cessation of hostilities in Karabakh.

Of course, it does not follow from what has been said that the Moscow round of talks will be crowned with success. In general, it is difficult to imagine the resolution of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations without consolidated international efforts in this direction. And those cannot be in the conditions of a global conflict between Russia and the West, international chaos.

This situation, of course, creates new risks for the security of Armenia, such as the expulsion of Armenians from Artsakh.”

Ruben Mehrabyan, political scientist:

“A statement of the persistence of differences on key issues means that Aliyev is still firmly resisting, hoping that the Kremlin, after the meeting in Washington, will arrange another “St. Petersburg”, as it was after Vienna in 2016, put pressure on Yerevan, help Baku in once again slipping out from under American pressure, after which he will give another go-ahead to lawlessness in the interests of Moscow and Baku.

And this means that Yerevan MUST prevent this.

And this means leaving Moscow alone with its beloved Baku, thereby contributing to the consolidation of pressure on Baku, bringing its positions closer to Washington and Brussels.

But we are told from Prague that “a visit to Moscow is planned” [during an official visit to the Czech Republic, Pashinyan himself announced this].

Why a visit to Moscow?

I want to warn you: your incomprehensibly beloved Moscow, where you are going to go, went over your agent Serzhik [former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan] and did not spare him. Don’t think that it will spare you.

In short, you should not crawl back into this hole. Theres nothing for us there.

Meanwhile, what is called the peace agenda is a stubborn struggle for peace against the enemies of the world, and above all, against the aspirations of Moscow, which is the main enemy of the world.”

Comments from Baku

Azerbaijani MP Rasim Musabekov explained the lack of a documented agreement after the talks in America with Russian pressure on Yerevan:

“At the talks in Washington, Armenia balked at its demands and frustrated the initialing of the agreement with Azerbaijan. The continuation of negotiations in Moscow was announced. From there, the encouragement followed. The repair of the main gas pipeline in the Stavropol Territory has been completed and gas supplies to Armenia interrupted on May 1 have been restored.”

The MP also expects “an encouraging gesture from the Kremlin in the form of the beginning of the passage of Armenian trucks with agricultural products through the Lars crossing, which was stopped during the ministerial meetings in Washington.”

The mountain gave birth to a mouse. This is how Azerbaijani political scientist Farhad Mammadov summed up the talks in Washington.

“Progress… finish line… exhausted Blinken… And that’s it?! And all from the inconsistency of the position of the Americans themselves! At one time, they did not point to the occupier, did not apply sanctions against Armenia, but, on the contrary, supported it financially and politically.

There are topics on which there is no common understanding. Then Baku will take more steps to finalize it before the next meeting. The diplomatic battle will continue in Russia, it will be interesting…

The Americans need Azerbaijan to give up the enclaves… as I understand it from Pashinyan’s statement made in Prague – that’s exactly what… to help Pashinyan retain power…

And the Karabakh Armenians will remain in limbo…” he added.

Former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Tofig Zulfugarov noted that the negotiations were difficult.

“At best, they could sign some text. Because, logically, after the meeting of foreign ministers in Washington, the heads of state should meet to sign the prepared document. After such a long meeting, a meeting of the leaders of the countries is expected. It is sensed that the United States intends to put a political end to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, because the Americans put on the negotiating table the question of a fundamental solution to the problems of the post-conflict period.”

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