Author: Alex Nanijanian

The Karabakh region in the South Caucasus has seen endless bloodshed and perpetual conflict ever since the USSR forcibly incorporated Armenia and Azerbaijan into the Union. Akin to how modern-day Russia keeps various ethnic groups at each other’s throats, the Soviet Union also practiced a similar method in the South Caucasus.

Transferring an ethnic majority Armenian region to the Azerbaijani SSR, Josef Stalin hoped to keep the two ethnic groups, which never truly got along throughout the medieval period, in a state of endless conflict. Indeed, several decades and two brutal wars later, the Karabakh region inside Azerbaijan continues to witness unimaginable horrors, which have unfolded directly under the nose of the international community.

Azerbaijan has regained most of the region following the Second Karabakh War, and the resulting Russia-brokered Trilateral Agreement remains tenuous. However, wanting to increase their control over  the remaining 120,000 Karabakh Armenians, Azerbaijan has enacted a several months long blockade of the region. Unless the siege is lifted, a manufactured famine and genocide could result.

The Lachin Blockade

The current blockade against the 120,000 Armenians started on December 12th, 2022, under the guise of protest action by Azerbaijani’ eco-activists.’ The Azerbaijani military has also taken part in the siege, periodically cutting gas to the Armenians in Karabakh during the winter in the hope that these measures would force them to flee.

Reports have surfaced of malnutrition, miscarriages, and lack of medical equipment for urgent assistance for residents of the region. Karabakh Armenians are forced to travel to Armenia for urgent aid, and with the Lachin corridor blocked, they fear going through the Azerbaijani army-controlled Aghdam road over fear of harassment and abduction.

Russian peacekeepers have been lukewarm toward the ceasefire violations and have rarely moved to stem any violence. With the Kremlin allegedly using Azerbaijan’s rich gas industry as a conduit to bypass Western sanctions, Moscow has little incentive to directly support its CSTO ally.

Repeated Calls to Allow Aid to Flow Through

Various international humanitarian organizations, from Amnesty International, Crisis Group, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have called on Azerbaijan to lift the blockade and allow urgent food and medical supplies into the region. Nevertheless, Baku has continuously refused these pleas.

The ICRC has been blocked from sending a long convoy of aid into Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’s ruling government has refused to allow aid to go through the Lachin corridor. The Lachin corridor is the designated road that both Baku and Yerevan signed as part of the Trilateral Agreement and capitulation facilitated by Moscow.

Ilham Aliyev and his MPs have stated they will not allow aid through Lachin, which they allege has been used for “weapons smuggling” and have demanded that only the Aghdam road, controlled by the Azerbaijani army, is used as the designated crossing point from now on. The Aghdam Road has no international monitors, and Armenian citizens have been unlawfully detained and abducted there under the guise of “terrorism.”

Global Reaction

The European Union and the United States have called for the blockade lifted and aid allowed through the Lachin corridor. Nevertheless, the EU and the United States have a sense of guilt and self-reflective policies; both have placated autocratic regimes such as Azerbaijan for several decades.

Previously, EU representatives have come under scrutiny for their ties to Azerbaijan and their oil policies with the South Caucasus nation, similar to how they formerly conducted business with Russia. The EU traded one oil tyrant in Vladimir Putin with another in Ilham Aliyev, and these policies have only fanned further aggression.

The Russian Federation has been lukewarm toward the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. With a geopolitical quagmire in Ukraine and prioritizing an increasingly disastrous war, Moscow is forced to look out for itself rather than support its allies. The 2022 clashes, amid which Armenia openly called on CSTO for help that never came, exemplified the hollow nature of the Russia-created defensive alliance.

Vladimir Putin, known to react harshly to what he perceives as ‘color revolutions,’ whether it’s Georgia, Ukraine, or Armenia, has held a grudge against Yerevan. Wanting Armenia to acknowledge it could not survive without Russian assistance, Moscow was perceived as the biggest winner of the Second Karabakh War as the Kremlin gained a significant foothold in the South Caucasus that it hadn’t had since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mirroring the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon

Azerbaijan’s tactics against Armenia in the ongoing blockade mirror the late Ottoman Empire’s inhumane siege against Mount Lebanon during World War One. During the Great Famine, Djemal Pasha, one of the triumvirates that ruled the empire, blockaded medical and food supplies that the population of Mount Lebanon urgently needed.

As governor of Syria, and at war against the Entente, Djemal Pasha used the excuse of the French naval blockade along the Eastern Mediterranean to enable the famine. Most of Mount Lebanon’s lifeline came through the Bekaa Valley of Ottoman Syria, which Djemal oversaw.

Nevertheless, over half of the population of Mount Lebanon, the majority of which were Christians, were starved to death by the end of the First World War. The famine came out of spite from the ruling Ottoman elite as the Christians of Mount Lebanon, primarily Maronites, fought for self-determination akin to the Armenians of Karabakh that created their own breakaway state of Artsakh.

The Young Turks aimed to keep Mount Lebanon under submission and break their semi-autonomous status under French protection with the famine. Aliyev, mirroring Djemal Pasha and, to a greater extent, Slobodan Milosevic, aims to put the Karabakh Armenians under complete submission with this blockade, even if it means starving them to prove a point.

Armenia has attempted to appease Azerbaijan, with the current PM, Nikol Pashinyan recognizing Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory. Despite being the most open Armenian leader to dialogue and the peace process, Aliyev still refuses to give the Armenians of the region significant autonomy and has openly stated he never plans on opening a discussion on it.

Continuation of the Cycle of Violence

The former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has warned of a potential genocide if efforts aren’t mended to end the crisis. The counterproductive actions by Baku could ignite another war, which Armenia has warned could happen if the international community doesn’t apply pressure to end the blockade. Despite decades of fighting, violence, war crimes, and refugee crises, a siege that could lead to an artificial famine and genocide will only heighten the cycle of violence.

Aliyev wants to force complete submission and loyalty on Karabakh Armenians as subjects and not citizens with limited autonomy or equal rights, enacting the same manufactured famine Djemal Pasha passed in Mount Lebanon. The world now faces its darkest hour in a hundred years—to do the right thing and call bluff on autocratic oil tyrants, or watch another Armenian genocide unfold before their eyes.

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/echoes-of-mount-lebanon-famine-in-blockade-of-lachin-corridor/

Los Angeles City Council members will have a dedication ceremony Thursday to name a Westside intersection “Republic of Artsakh Square,” in an effort to raise awareness of the Azerbaijan blockade of Artsakh and its impacts.

Council President Paul Krekorian will be joined at the ceremony by Councilwoman Traci Park, whose Eleventh District includes the newly designated Artsakh Square, and Robert Avetisyan, permanent representative of the Republic of Artsakh to the United States.

In May, the council agreed to designate the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Granville Avenue as Artsakh Square in honor of the embattled region that has great meaning for L.A.’s vast Armenian community. According to Krekorian’s office, the dedication ceremony was on hold as city officials waited for street signs to be completed by the Department of Transportation.

The intersection is also the location of the Los Angeles consulate of Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan’s dictator has explicitly threatened genocide and called for the expulsion of all Armenians from territories he claims, once again threatening the annihilation of the Armenian people in their ancient homeland,” Krekorian said in a statement when the council approved the renaming of the intersection.

The intersection is also the location of the Los Angeles consulate of Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan’s dictator has explicitly threatened genocide and called for the expulsion of all Armenians from territories he claims, once again threatening the annihilation of the Armenian people in their ancient homeland,” Krekorian said in a statement when the council approved the renaming of the intersection.

The Republic of Artsakh, formerly known as the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, seceded from the Soviet Union and formed a democratic state. It is surrounded by the territory of Azerbaijan and only has access to Armenia and the outside world through the Lachin Corridor, which is now being cut off by the armed forces of Azerbaijan.

The territory of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. It is called Artsakh by Armenians.

Azerbaijan’s Consulate General in Los Angeles has accused Armenia of committing atrocities on its land.

“In the early 1990s, Armenia invaded and ethnically cleansed 20% of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory with impunity. Over 1 million Azerbaijanis were forcibly displaced from their lands (800,000 from occupied districts of Azerbaijan and 250,000 from Armenia),” former Consul General Nasimi Aghayev said last year.

“In 2020, Azerbaijan liberated its territories from Armenia’s illegal and United Nations-condemned occupation. During the war, Armenia bombed our major cities, using even the widely banned cluster munitions (as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also confirmed), as a result of which 101 Azerbaijani civilians, including 12 infants and children, were killed, 423 civilians were wounded and 80,000 displaced.”

https://mynewsla.com/government/2023/08/31/l-a-city-to-dedicate-westside-intersection-as-republic-of-artsakh-square/

“For months, the Baku regime, backed by the Ankara regime, has been imposing a blockade on the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh that raises the possibility of genocide. The Stepanakert-Goris road, which should have been open for humanitarian aid, emergency services and peacekeepers after the last Karabakh war in which the Turkish Armed Forces were involved, has been under siege and closed since December 12, 2022.

For months, the United Nations, European Union and the Council of Europe have called on Azerbaijan to end the blockade of 120,000 people living in Karabakh, but the Baku regime has ignored, rejected or denied the blockade. Yet everyone knows that no basic necessities can enter Karabakh and no Karabakh resident can leave the region, even to meet the urgent health needs.  

In the face of the deepening crisis and confirming the concerns of the international community, Baku dictator Ilham Aliyev continues to publicly and repeatedly threaten Karabakh residents. So much so that the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, published an important report characterizing Aliyev’s actions in Karabakh as conducive to genocide. 

We, the undersigned from Turkey, see that the international community is not sensitive enough to the developments and we are watching the situation with concern. Preventing genocides does not mean waiting for them to happen and then intervening. It means taking active steps to prevent such a danger now!

We call on all states, international organizations, especially the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international public opinion to take an active stand.

Just as the Berlin blockade was broken in 1948-49, we call for breaking the blockade of Karabakh through airlift and thus putting an end to this human tragedy.”

Abdullah Demirbaş, Abdülhakim Daş, Adnan Cangüder, Adnan Çelik, Ahmet Aykaç, Ahmet Konuk, Akın Atauz, Akın Birdal, Alev Er, Alex Köşkeryan, Ali Gökkaya, Ari Günter, Aslı Erdoğan, Attila Tuygan, Ayşe Hür, Ayşe Yıldırım, Ayşegül Devecioğlu, Baskın Oran, Bayram Kaya, Celâl Başlangıç, Cengiz Aktar, Cengiz Arın, Denis Dreisbusch, Doğan Özgüden, Emrah Cilasun, Erdal Doğan, Erdoğan Kahyaoğlu, Eren Keskin, Ergun Babahan, Erol Ercan, Eser Budak, Esra Mungan, Fatime Akalın, Fikret Başkaya, Garo Kaprielyan, Gençay Gürsoy, Güngör Şenkal, Gürhan Ertür, Hacer Ansal, Hasan Burgucuoğlu, Hatice Yıldız, Hıdır Çelik, Hovsep Hayreni, Hüseyin Habip Taşkın, İbrahim Seven, İnan Gedik, İnci Tuğsavul, İra Tzourou, Kemal Bilget, Kemal Hür, Kemal Yalçın, Kenan Yenice, Mahmut Konuk, Mehmet Ali Balta, Nafiz Özbek, Necati Abay, Nedim Kibar, Nesim Ovadya İzrail, Nesrin Nas, Nevzat Onaran, Nurcan Baysal, Nurten Kırmızıgül, Okan Küçükersan, Osman Okkan, Oya Baydar, Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, Ömer Madra, Racho Donef, Ragıp Duran, Ragıp Zarakolu, Ramazan Gezgin, Recep Maraşlı, Sait Çetinoğlu, Sait Oral, Selahattin Koçak, Selay Ertem, Selma Koçiva, Serdar Koçman, Sibel Yiğittekin, Şaban İba, Şakir Bilgin, Şamil Altan, Şanar Yurdatapan, Şükriye Ercan, Taner Akçam, Ülkü Çevik, Viktorya Çiprut, Yalçın Ergündoğan, Yasemin Gedik, Yaşar Küçükaslan, Yavuz Aydın, Yavuz Baydar, Yetvart Danzikyan, Yıldız Aydın, Yusuf Köse, Zarife Atik, Ziya Özder.