The California
Courier Online, October 12, 2023
1- After the
Loss of Artsakh, Pashinyan
Should
Declare 2020 Agreement Null & Void
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Azerbaijan
arrests former Artsakh presidents, top leaders
3- Armenia
Artsakh Fund Donated Over $1 Billion
of Aid to Armenia
in Last 34 years
4- Israeli arms
helped Azerbaijan
defeat Artsakh,
to the
dismay of region’s Armenians
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1- After the
Loss of Artsakh, Pashinyan
Should
Declare 2020 Agreement Null & Void
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
On Nov. 10, 2020, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan,
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin
signed a ceasefire agreement in the Artsakh War.
Ceasefires usually signify that the warring sides stop the
fighting wherever they had reached until then. Oddly, in the case of the 2020
ceasefire agreement, Armenia
surrendered to Azerbaijan
large swaths of land where no Azeri soldier had set foot on, such as the Agdam,
Kalbajar and Lachin districts, but not the Corridor.
Therefore, the 2020 agreement was more of a capitulation
than a ceasefire for Armenia.
Here are the resulting problems:
1) Prime Minister Pashinyan had no reason to sign a
ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan
since the war was between Azerbaijan
and Artsakh, not Armenia.
Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan had
declared war against each other.
2) Pashinyan had no authorization to turn over to Azerbaijan territories that belonged to Artsakh,
not Armenia.
3) The 2020 agreement set deadlines for Armenia, but not for Azerbaijan, to carry out various
obligations, such as the evacuation of territories and exchange of prisoners of
war. Unwisely, the Armenian government handed over all the Azeri prisoners
right away, while Azerbaijan
released only a small number of Armenian prisoners. Three years later, dozens
of Armenian prisoners are still languishing in Baku jails. Pashinyan is not only making no
efforts to return these prisoners but does not even talk about them.
4) Under the 2020 agreement, the Lachin Corridor—the only
road that connected Artsakh to Armenia—was
forcefully and illegally taken over by Azerbaijan on Dec. 12, 2022, even
though Russian Peacekeepers were supposed to control it.
5) The 2020 agreement mandated that “all economic and
transport connections in the region shall be unblocked.” This means that both Armenia and Azerbaijan would be able to cross
each other’s territories. Pashinyan expressed his readiness to allow Azeris to
travel through Armenia from
the eastern part of Azerbaijan
to its exclave of Nakhichevan, but never mentioned that such access was to be
reciprocal. Contrary to the 2020 agreement, Azerbaijan
demanded not just a passage, but a ‘corridor’ which means that the road through
Armenia would belong to Azerbaijan.
Pres. Aliyev never once mentioned that he will in turn allow Armenians to cross
Azerbaijan’s
border. To make matters worse, Turkey
has been falsely demanding that Armenia
accept the ‘Zangezur Corridor’ before it would agree to open the Armenia-Turkey
border.
6) Pashinyan has repeatedly talked about his plan to sign a
peace treaty with Azerbaijan.
There is no need to sign such a peace treaty since Armenia
was not at war with Azerbaijan.
Peace treaties are signed between warring parties. Azerbaijan
was at war with Artsakh, not Armenia.
7) Contrary to the 2020 agreement, which mandated that
Russian Peacekeepers would remain in Artsakh until 2025, Azerbaijan violated that provision by invading
and occupying the remainder of Artsakh last month, forcing its 120,000
inhabitants to flee to Armenia.
8) Azerbaijan’s
occupation of Artsakh in September 2023 made the role of the Russian
Peacekeepers unnecessary, which means that the Russian soldiers would have to
leave what is now Azeri territory.
9) While there are good reasons to blame Russia for its inaction in protecting Artsakh
Armenians, there is an equally good reason to blame Pashinyan for conceding
that Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan.
It is clear that despite Russia’s
alliance with Armenia, given
its involvement in the Ukraine War, Pres. Putin has decided that Turkey (the only NATO member that has not
sanctioned Russia) and its
junior brother Azerbaijan
are much more important to Russia’s
national interests than Armenia
or Artsakh. Meanwhile, the West has not been of much help to Armenia either,
except for issuing supportive statements, but no action.
10) After the 2020 War, when Azerbaijan’s
army entered and occupied the eastern territory
of Armenia, Pashinyan not only makes
no effort to dislodge the enemy from Armenia’s
sovereign territory but does not even talk about Azerbaijan’s illegal presence
there.
11) Pashinyan’s long list of mistakes includes acknowledging
that the Soviet-era Azeri inhabited enclaves inside Armenia
are part of Azerbaijan.
There was no reason for Pashinyan to offer to Azerbaijan these enclaves,
especially since Aliyev had made no such demands.
12) Pashinyan unilaterally recognized Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity without any reciprocal recognition by Aliyev.
Given Pashinyan’s mishandling of the above 12 critical
issues, refusal to resign and turn over his seat to a competent leader, the
only option left for him is to declare that the 2020 agreement is null and void
since Azerbaijan has violated most of its provisions.
Pashinyan should refuse to sit at the negotiating table with
Aliyev until he releases all Armenian prisoners of war and withdraws his troops
from Armenia’s
territory. Aliyev should first honor his previous commitments before Armenians
can trust him to abide by future agreements.
Fortunately, the 2020 agreement can easily be discarded
because it was not ratified by the Parliaments of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia as an international treaty.
It was simply signed by Pashinyan without consulting anyone. The next leader of
Armenia,
on his first day in office, should nullify the 2020 agreement.
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2- Azerbaijan arrests former Artsakh
presidents, top leaders
Authorities in Azerbaijan arrested several former
leaders of Artsakh on Tuesday, October 3 after reclaiming control of the
Armenian-populated region in a lightning military operation last month, a top
Azerbaijani news agency said.
Arayik Harutyunyan, who led the region before stepping down
at the beginning of September, was also arrested and was being brought to the
Azerbaijani capital, the APA news agency said. Azeri authorities pressed
charges Harutyunyan days after his arrest include waging a war of aggression,
recruiting, training and financing mercenaries, terrorism and others, according
to the Azeri prosecution.
Arkadi Ghukasyan, who served as the president from 1997
until 2007, and Bako Sahakyan, who held the post from 2007 until 2020, also
were arrested Tuesday along with the speaker of the legislature, Davit
Ishkhanyan, APA said. Iskhanyan is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation Bureau, which is the party’s global leadership body.
A warrant remains outstanding for the most recent president
of Artsakh Samvel Shahramanyan.
On Saturday, September 30, former Artsakh Foreign Minister
and current presidential adviser David Babayan was arrested. Babayan will be
detained for four months while awaiting trial.
Former commander of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army
Lieutenant general Levon Mnatsakanyan was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities
at the Lachin Corridor, on September 29. Mnatsakanyan commanded the Defense
Army in 2015-2018.
On Thursday, September 28, Arshavir Gharamyan, former head
of the Artsakh’s Security Service, was arrested at the Lachin Corridor.
On Thursday, September 28 a string of criminal charges
against Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born businessman and former Artsakh State
Minister, one day after arresting him in the Lachin corridor.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Artsakh’s
leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani
checkpoint on the main road connecting Artsakh to Armenia as he fled the region along
with tens of thousands of its ordinary residents.
Azerbaijan’s
State Security Service said the prominent billionaire was charged with
“financing terrorism,” illegally entering Artsakh last year and supplying its
armed forces with military equipment. The Court has sentenced Ruben Vardayan to
four months of preventive detention, and he could face up to 14 years in prison
if convicted.
Azerbaijani authorities arrested former First Deputy
Commander of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army Major general Davit Manukyan. An
Azerbaijani court on September 27 remanded the major general into pre-trial
detention.
The wave of arrests comes as Azerbaijani authorities move
swiftly to establish their control over the region after a blitz offensive that
triggered an exodus of over 100,000 Armenian residents. Armenia has strongly
condemned the arrests.
While Azerbaijan
has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians, most of them have rushed
to flee the region, fearing reprisals after three decades of rule.
The Artsakh government then agreed to disband itself by the
end of the year, but Azerbaijani authorities are already in charge of the
region.
Edmon Marukyan, Ambassador-at-Large of Armenia, said in a
post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that the Artsakh officials had been
“kidnapped from Stepanakert and are illegally kept in Azerbaijani prisons,” and
asserted that “the testimony of any captured hostage or POW is considered
inadmissible evidence and cannot be used as a basis for any charges, because
the Azerbaijani special services obtain these testimonies in gross violation of
the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Marukyan further noted that “the hostages themselves do not
have the opportunity to have a defender of their choice, do not have the
opportunity to stand before an independent and impartial tribunal established
by law, do not have the opportunity to have a fair trial, and if they give any
testimony, they give it under the threat of torture and violation of the right
to life. All the evidence that is now allegedly obtained from these people is
obtained in gross violations of Articles 3, 5, 6, 13, 14 of the ECHR and Case
Law of the European Court of Human Rights.”
Marukyan noted that Azerbaijan was ranked by Freedom
House—which rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in
210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World
report—with a score of 9, as Not Free. “Therefore, all the propaganda of Azerbaijan regarding all the representatives of
the people of Nagorno Karabakh, captured by and illegally imprisoned in the
prisons of Azerbaijan,
cannot have any credibility. All prisoners of war and hostages, regardless of
their political and/or other role, elected or appointed, must be released
immediately,” said Marukyan.
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3- Armenia Artsakh Fund Donated Over
$1 Billion
of Aid to Armenia
in Last 34 years
GLENDALE—Armenia Artsakh Fund
(AAF), a charity based in Los Angeles, has
achieved the unprecedented milestone of shipping over one billion dollars of
humanitarian assistance to Armenia
and Artsakh in the last 34 years.
Currently, AAF is in the midst of making arrangements to
send emergency aid specifically directed to the over 100,000 refugees in Armenia
displaced from Artsakh.
In the first nine months of 2023 alone, AAF shipped to Armenia and Artsakh $34 million of medicines
($30 million to Armenia
and $4 million to Artsakh).
All AAF medical shipments are required to obtain in advance
the approval of Armenia’s
Ministry of Health, which selects the medicines it wants to receive, specifying
the quantity and the acceptable expiration dates, and issues the import
license.
Ever since 1989, along with its predecessor the United
Armenian Fund, AAF shipped to Armenia
and Artsakh over one billion dollars of humanitarian aid, mostly medicines, on
board 158 cargo planes and 2,566 sea containers.
“The Armenia Artsakh Fund is regularly offered free of
charge millions of dollars of life-saving medicines and medical supplies. All
AAF has to do is pay for the shipping expenses. We welcome your generous
donations to be able to continue delivering this valuable assistance to all
medical centers in Armenia,”
said AAF President Harut Sassounian.
For more information, call the AAF office: (818) 241-8900;
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4- Israeli arms
helped Azerbaijan
defeat Artsakh,
to the
dismay of region’s Armenians
By Isabel Debre
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)—Israel supplied powerful weapons to
Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought
Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) under its control, officials and experts say.
Just weeks before Azerbaijan launched its 24-hour assault on
Sept. 19, Azerbaijani military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern
Israeli airbase and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight
tracking data and Armenian diplomats, even as Western governments were urging
peace talks.
The flights rattled Armenian officials in Yerevan,
long wary of the strategic alliance between Israel
and Azerbaijan, and shined a
light on Israel’s national
interests in the restive region south of the Caucasus
Mountains.
“For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have
been firing at our people,” Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told
The Associated Press. In a flurry of diplomatic exchanges, Akopian said he
expressed alarm to Israeli politicians and lawmakers in recent weeks over
Israeli weapons shipments.
“I don’t see why Israel should not be in the
position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being
expelled from their homeland,” he told AP.
Azerbaijan’s
September blitz involved heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones — largely
supplied by Israel and Turkey,
according to experts.
Israel’s
foreign and defense ministries declined to comment on the use of Israeli
weapons in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenian concerns about its military
partnership with Azerbaijan.
In July, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Baku,
the Azerbaijan
capital, where he praised the countries’ military cooperation and joint “fight
against terrorism.”
Israel
has a big stake in Azerbaijan,
which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy Iran. It is also a lucrative
customer of sophisticated arms.
“There’s no doubt about our position in support of Azerbaijan’s defense,” said Arkady
Mil-man, Israel’s
former ambassador to Azerbaijan
and current senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in
Tel Aviv. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran.”
Although once resource-poor Israel
now has plenty of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast; Azerbaijan still supplies at least 40% of Israel’s oil
needs, keeping cars and trucks on its roads. Israel
turned to Baku’s offshore deposits in the late
1990s, creating an oil pipeline through the Turkish transport hub of Ceyhan
that isolated Iran, which at
the time capitalized on oil flowing through its pipelines from Kazakhstan to
world markets.
Azerbaijan
has long been suspicious of Iran,
its fellow Shiite Muslim neighbor on the Caspian Sea, and chafed at its support
for Armenia,
which is Christian. Iran has
accused Azerbaijan of
hosting a base for Israeli intelligence operations against it — a claim that Azerbaijan and Israel deny.
“It’s clear to us that Israel
has an interest in keeping a military presence in Azerbaijan,
using its territory to observe Iran,”
Armenian diplomat Tigran Balayan said.
Few have benefited more from the two countries’ close
relations than Israeli military contractors. Experts estimate Israel supplied
Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020 — giving
Azerbaijan an edge against Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defense
industry. “Israeli arms have played a very significant role in allowing the
Azerbaijani army to reach its objectives,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher
at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms
sales.
Israeli long-range missiles and exploding drones known as
loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, Wezeman
said, even at times striking deep within Armenia itself. Meanwhile, Israeli
Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles have protected Azerbaijan’s airspace in shooting
down missiles and drones, he added.
Just ahead of last month’s offensive, the Azerbaijani
defense ministry announced the army conducted a missile test of Barak-8. Its
developer, Israel Aerospace Industries, declined to comment on Azerbaijan’s
use of its air defense system and combat drones.
But Azerbaijan
has raved about the success of Israeli drones in slicing through the Armenian
defenses and tipping the balance in the bloody six-week war in 2020.
Its defense minister in 2016 called a combat drone
manufactured by Israel’s
Aeronautics Group “a nightmare for the Armenian army,” which backed the
region’s separatists during Azerbaijan’s
conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh that year.
President Ilham Aliyev in 2021 — a year of deadly
Azerbaijan-Armenian border clashes — was captured on camera smiling as he
stroked the small Israeli suicide drone “Harop” during an arms showcase.
Israel
has deployed similar suicide drones during deadly army raids against
Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.
“We’re glad for this cooperation, it was quite supportive and quite beneficial
for defense,” Azerbaijani’s ambassador to Israel,
Mukhtar Mammadov told the AP, speaking generally about Israel’s
support for the Azerbaijani military. “We’re not hiding it.”
At a crucial moment in early September — as diplomats
scrambled to avert an escalation — flight tracking data shows that Azerbaijani
cargo planes began to stream into Ovda, a military base in southern Israel with a 3,000-meter-long airstrip, known
as the only airport in Israel
that handles the export of explosives.
The AP identified at least six flights operated by Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines landing at Ovda
airport between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 from Baku,
according to aviation-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. Azerbaijan
launched its offensive two days later. During those six days, the Russian-made
Ilyushin Il-76 military transport lingered on Ovda’s tarmac for several hours
before departing for either Baku
or Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, just north of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In March, an investigation by the Haaretz newspaper said it
had counted 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights to Ovda airport from
2016-2020. Sudden surges of flights coincided with upticks of fighting in
Nagorno-Karabkh, it found.
“During the 2020 war, we saw flights every other day and
now, again, we see this intensity of flights leading up to the current
conflict,” said Akopian, the Armenian ambassador. “It is clear to us what’s
happening.”
Israel’s
defense ministry declined to comment on the flights. The Azerbaijani
ambassador, Mammadov, said he was aware of the reports but declined to comment.
The decision to support an autocratic government against an
ethnic and religious minority has fueled a debate in Israel about the country’s
permissive arms export policies. Of the top 10 arms manufactures globally, only
Israel and Russia lack
legal restrictions on weapons exports based on human rights concerns.
“If anyone can identify with (Nagorno-Karabakh) Armenians’
continuing fear of ethnic cleansing it is the Jewish people,” said Avidan
Freedman, founder of the Israeli advocacy group Yanshoof, which seeks to stop
Israeli arm sales to human rights violators. “We’re not interested in becoming
accomplices.”
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