AS CONFLICT ESCALATES, DICTATOR ILHAM ALIYEV NEEDS TO BE STOPPED – HUFFINGTON POST
12:49 * 13.08.14
Below is an excerpt from an article by the Huffington Post:
While Syria burns, Gaza explodes and al Qaeda captures another Iraqi
town, another full-blown conflict threatens to further destabilize
the Middle East, this one between Armenia and Azerbaijan. For
months now, Ilham Aliyev, one of the worst dictators alive, has been
indiscriminately shelling the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, a formerly
Soviet Socialist Oblast located within Soviet Azeri territory populated
by ethnic Armenians.
The Aliyev clan has run Azerbaijan as if it were its own personal
bank account and backyard for the past twenty some years. Armenian
leadership over the same period has not been ideal either: corrupt
and megamoniacal, it has however avoided the type of morally bankrupt
hereditary dictatorship that the Aliyev clan has imposed on their
country. Needless to say the Aliyevs have become billionaires several
times over while their own people have seen only limited benefits
from its booming oil trade.
Worse than his perceived lack of intelligence, Aliyev continues to
lie to his people about the causes of the ongoing conflict between
Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia. He insists on painting the Armenians as
aggressors and the Azeris as historical inhabitants of Artsakh out to
innocently defend their lands; the exact opposite is the case. Since
Russia brokered a tentative peace agreement between the two nations
in 1994, Azerbajian has broken the ceasefire over 200 times. But in
the past week, Aliyev has intensified attacks on Armenian border towns.
Three days ago, Azeri shelling killed five Armenians; retaliatory
fire claimed 25 Azeris. Aliyev, who has falsely claimed that he has
triumphed over Armenia politically and economically and that he can
do so militarily as well continues to watch his own soldiers die in
numbers which exceed Armenian casualties. As if his own people they
were mere flies, expendable in some futile attempt to regain land
over which it has no legitimate claim.
While emigration from Armenia has been constant, the country has
also slowly rebuilt its economy and educational institutions with
help from its powerful Diaspora. Furthermore while Azerbaijan may
still be feeling the using of national humiliation at the 1994 loss
of territories, all evidence points to the fact that the Azeris will
not fight as hard as the Armenians who faced the first large scale
Genocide of the 20th century at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915.
And why should they? Baku is prosperous, and Azerbaijan a mid-sized
country on the shores of the historically scenic Caspian Sea. What
sane father or mother would send his or her sons to die over contested
lands far away in the mountainside near Armenia? The Armenian slogan
of never again, however, still holds for Armenians around the world.
Armenia was the most technologically advanced Soviet Republic along
with Russia and its army is currently considered one of the strongest
in the region — so there is little chance of Azerbaijan making
military inroads. In fact, the opposite is true — Armenia may claim
even more territory if forced into a full-scale conflict again. And
Baku’s gambit is a poor one at that: with an estimated 50 to 75
years of oil reserves left to exploit, it is doubtful that someone
as greedy and narcissistic as Aliyev will risk future billions in an
attempt to liberate a mountainous land inhabited by foreign people
and devoid of natural resources.
Azeris need to understand that Aliyev is not only a vicious dictator,
but that his current policies will ultimately lead to the demise of
this regime and country. The Armenians and Azeris have one mutual
advantage: unlike the Israelis and the Palestinians, for example,
who live in a patchwork of territories within each other’s respective
lands (i.e. there are Israeli Arabs within the borders of Israel:
Gaza and the West Bank as a pairing make little geographical sense),
Armenia and Azerbaijan today have one neat border: Armenians on one
side, Azeris on the other. Nakhitchevan, a small cone shaped patch of
land which the Azeris depopulated of its native Armenian population
is an exception: it lies to the Southwest of Armenian territory and
borders Iran and Turkey — but as a result of this last factor, it
it also has a lifeline. (By Armenia I mean Armenia and NKR united,
doing away with the political fiction that the two countries do not
de facto act as one united country).
Azerbaijan needs to cease its hostilities towards Armenia and lift its
unilateral blockade of the country (as does Turkey, but that is another
not wholly unrelated story). Armenian and Azeri civil societies need
to begin substantive cultural and educational exchanges. Aliyev and
his henchmen need to stop their propaganda campaign against Armenia
domestically and abroad: it fools few foreigners while it brainwashes
its own people.
Armenian News – Tert.am
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
