Karabakh: Bad and Good News
It has been over 60 days since the Armenia-Azerbaijan war ended on November 10, with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement. With a few exceptions, the ceasefire has held, which is by itself a major achievement, considering how devastating the 44-day-war was, with military casualties of over 6,000 on both sides. Also, during this time, many ethnic Armenians have returned to Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan has started implementing measures to demine and rebuild the liberated areas to enable hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis to return to their villages, towns and cities after nearly 30 years of forcible displacement.
Nevertheless, some hotheads in Armenia still harbor feelings of revanchism, hoping to restore the pre-war status quo, which would require the reinvasion of the city of Shusha, Hadrut and other liberated areas, not to mention an even more devastating and costly war for Armenia. They have even started spreading rumors on Armenian social media that with snow melting in spring, Armenia will start a new war against Azerbaijan. Considering that over 90 percent of Armenia’s military capacity has been decimated during the war, these hotheads hope that Russia, which has 2000 peacekeepers in the region, will come to their aid in a new war.
Hence the military provocations that have been happening since the end of the war. On December 28, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov sent a letter to the U.N. Secretary General, informing him about how conscript soldiers from Armenia were deployed “into areas deeper inside territory of Azerbaijan to organize terrorist activities against the military personnel of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan and civilians engaging in post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction activities in the areas concerned. Five military servicemen of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan and one civilian personnel member of an Azerbaijani mobile telecommunication company were killed, and two more servicemen were wounded, as a result of a series of terrorist attacks conducted by the sabotage group in the liberated areas of the Khojavand district.”
The letter also says that 62 members of this Armenian group were detained.
The legal question is, are they soldiers according to the rules of war, or are they terrorists?
If they were deployed into Azerbaijani territory after the November 10 ceasefire was signed by the leaders of the three countries, Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan, they are considered and are being treated legally as terrorists.
Precedent for this is right here in the United States. During WWII, several German military men, spies and saboteurs, were captured after they landed on Long Island. They were tried, convicted and all but two executed — secretly.
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Now, some good news.
On January 11, the Prime Minister of Armenia, the President of Azerbaijan met in Moscow as guests of Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.
As a result of this very first post-war meeting, a new statement was signed, establishing a trilateral committee to meet and to report on unblocking transportation links between and via Armenia and Azerbaijan, connecting these countries to the third countries.
In Azerbaijan’s case, it allows it to build a railroad and highway lines between Azerbaijan and its exclave territory — Nakhchivan — across Armenian territory that will allow the two parts of Azerbaijan to be joined by rail and roads, as well as facilitate the transportation from mainland Azerbaijan to Turkey. Since the early 1990s, the two parts of Azerbaijan have been unconnected, due to Armenian blockade, and all supplies to Nakhchivan had to be shipped through Iran and Turkey for three decades.
Also, Azerbaijan will allow Armenia to be connected by rail and roads to its allies — Iran and Russia — via its territory. Currently, Armenia is connected to Iran only via a highway and to Russia via Georgia, a route which usually gets closed during winter months or when Georgia-Russia relations experience difficulties. Armenia stands to benefit from these new routes via Azerbaijan tremendously, especially considering its dire economic situation. Also, the unblocking of transportation routes and creation of new ones will hopefully lead to the normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, which in its turn will make it easier to resolve other pending issues.
It also removes what the Armenian lobby used to convince the U.S. Congress in 1992 as an excuse to withhold any U.S. government aid to Azerbaijan, by sponsoring the infamous Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act for newly independent post-Soviet countries. The Section 907 singled out Azerbaijan out of all 15 post-Soviet countries, prohibiting any aid to Azerbaijan, when it needed this aid the most, during its most difficult early years of independence. In fact, by punishing Azerbaijan — victim of Armenian aggression, occupation and brutal ethnic cleansing — and rewarding Armenia, the Congress passed one of its most unfair legislations in history.
The main excuse used for substantiating Section 907 was that Azerbaijan imposed transportation blockade over Armenia. What the pro-Armenian Senators and Congresspeople neglected to mention was that the two countries were at war that resulted in the occupation of around 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. However, blinded by Armenian campaign donations and votes, this “little” fact was not relevant for U.S. lawmakers. Although, the Section 907 has been waived every year since 2002, because of Azerbaijan’s important help to U.S. in its fight against international terrorism, this disgraceful bill has not been completely repealed. Now, with the new status quo in Karabakh, and the imminent opening of all transportation links, the main argument for Section 907 will disappear as well.
Any casual observation of the January 11 agreement concludes that Armenia can benefit immensely if it lives up to the peace deal. Simple reason, due to its occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories, Armenia has been bypassed by billions of dollars worth of natural gas and oil pipelines from Azerbaijan to the West, through the Republic of Georgia and Turkey, countries that have been paid millions of dollars in transit fees, some of which could have gone to Armenia.
By the way, at the end of 2020 natural gas from Azerbaijan reached Italy and Eastern Europe through a new, $45-billion gas pipeline that also bypassed Armenia.
So to break this deadlock, Armenia needs to understand that the war is over and it’s time to make peace…and possibly some money.
