Author: Emil Lazarian

With its Russian torture chambers and slaughter of civilians, the war in Ukraine is horrifying enough. But what if another country is taking advantage of the distraction to commit its own crimes against humanity?

Meet Azerbaijan.

You probably haven’t heard of Azerbaijan’s brutality toward an ethnic Armenian enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh, but it deserves scrutiny. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, whom I got to know years ago when he sought accountability for the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, now describes what is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh in a similar fashion.

“There is an ongoing genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he wrote in a recent report.

We tend to think of genocide as the slaughter of an ethnic group. But the legal definition in the 1948 Genocide Convention is broader and doesn’t require mass killing, so long as there are certain “acts committed with intent to destroy” a particular ethnic, racial or religious group.

That is what Azerbaijan is doing, Moreno Ocampo argued, by blockading Nagorno-Karabakh so that people die or flee, thus destroying an ancient community.

“Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon,” he wrote. “Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

“It is critically important to label this as genocide,” Moreno Ocampo told me, and also crucial that the United States and other world powers — including Britain, which has been too quiet — step up pressure on Azerbaijan.

The concept of genocide was developed in part as a reaction to the Ottoman Empire’s mass killing of Armenians in 1915 and 1916, so Azerbaijan’s starvation of Armenians today suggests that history risks coming full circle. The group Genocide Watch has declared a “genocide emergency,” the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention recently issued an “active genocide alert,” and the International Association of Genocide Scholars warned of “the risk of genocide” and called for Azerbaijan to be held accountable for crimes against humanity.

The current crisis began late last year, when Azerbaijanis began blockading the only road into Nagorno-Karabakh, the Lachin corridor to Armenia, on which the territory depends for food and medicine.

The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to remove the blockade. Instead, the Azerbaijani government established a checkpoint on the road and began blocking even humanitarian aid carried by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“People are fainting in the bread queues,” the BBC quoted a local journalist as saying from Nagorno-Karabakh. The report added that the Halo Trust, a nonprofit that works to clear minefields, has had to suspend operations “because its staff are too exhausted to work after queuing for bread all night and returning home empty-handed.”

A third of deaths in Nagorno-Karabakh are attributed by the local authorities to malnutrition, the BBC said. I have no way of verifying these reports, but every indication is that the situation is dire — and getting worse by the day.

Yet I fear that the West is fatigued and looking inward, for it has likewise paid little attention to other global crises other than Ukraine, from horrendous atrocities in Ethiopia to Sudan’s warlords’ slaughtering of civilians. For dictators, tragically, this isn’t a bad time to commit war crimes.

The backdrop is that authoritarian Azerbaijan has a mostly Muslim population speaking a Turkic language, while Nagorno-Karabakh has a mostly Christian population that speaks Armenian. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence; a war ended with a stalemate in which the enclave operated autonomously but with close links to neighboring Armenia. In 2020, Azerbaijan fought a brief war in which it reclaimed most of the enclave, and it now wants to recover the rest — and, I suspect, to push out much of the ethnic Armenian population.

The world, including Armenia’s prime minister, acknowledges that sovereignty of Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan feels it has a right to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh politically and economically with the rest of the country. Though this is not integration but starvation, and the one point even countries as far apart as the United States and Russia agree on is that Azerbaijan should reopen the Lachin corridor and end the suffering.

One possible compromise to end the looming catastrophe is outlined by Benyamin Poghosyan of the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia: Azerbaijan would open the Lachin road and Nagorno-Karabakh would simultaneously open one or more roads into Azerbaijan (which Azerbaijan seeks). The U.S. State Department hinted at this approach in a statement denouncing the blockade. As part of that compromise, Azerbaijan would guarantee the freedom of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

This would be unsatisfying, for it rewards Azerbaijan for starving civilians, and no one could much trust promises from Azerbaijan. But the sad job of diplomats is to devise flawed, much-hated agreements that are better than any alternative outcome, and in this case a defective deal is preferable to the mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of Armenians, again.

Four Armenian servicemen were killed and three Azerbaijani soldiers wounded on Friday, the two countries said, as they accused each other of engaging in a new round of clashes.

Tensions between Baku and Yerevan have escalated sharply in recent months, as both sides accuse the other of cross-border attacks.

Armenia and Azerbaijan said Friday they had sustained casualties in fighting along their common border, northwest of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry said two of its servicemen had been killed and another wounded in shelling near the town of Sotk. Azerbaijan said that Armenia had struck positions in the Kalbajar region using drones, wounding two Azerbaijani servicemen. It said it was taking “retaliatory measures.”

Reuters was unable to verify the reports.

Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, has been a source of conflict between the two Caucasus neighbors since the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and between ethnic Armenians and Turkic Azeris for well over a century.

Despite sporadic discussions on a peace deal to agree on borders, settle differences over the enclave and unfreeze relations, tensions remain high and skirmishes along the shared border are a regular occurrence.

Reuters

https://www.voanews.com/a/armenian-soldiers-killed-in-azerbaijani-shelling-defense-ministry/7250431.html

BRUSSELS 

European Council President Charles Michel’s office said on Friday that the EU had proposed a plan to “gradually reopen” the Lachin road linking the Karabakh region to Armenia, as well as the Aghdam-Khankendi road. 

Michel’s team and the EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, “have been in frequent contact with Baku, Yerevan, and representatives of Karabakh Armenians to work out a solution for unblocking access” between Karabakh and Armenia, Michel’s spokesperson, Ecaterina Casinge, said in a statement.

“Michel has proposed a step-by-step approach which would reflect a sequencing in the full-fledged operation of the Lachin corridor and the opening of the Agdam route,” Casinge further said.

According to the EU’s position, “the Lachin corridor must be unblocked” in line with the decision of the Hague-based International Court of Justice, she stressed.

The EU diplomats also noted that the use of the alternative Aghdam-Khankendi road, suggested earlier by Azerbaijan, “to provide supplies can also be part of a concrete and sustainable solution to the provision of urgent and daily basic needs.”

The EU side has also argued for addressing “legacies of the conflict to facilitate a long-term sustainable resolution” beyond the current situation, Casinge explained.

Despite ongoing talks over a long-term peace agreement, tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia rose in recent months over the Lachin road, the only land route giving Armenia access to the Karabakh region.

In April, Azerbaijan established a border checkpoint to prevent the illegal transport of military arms and equipment to the region.

According to Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, the “wide-range abuse of the Lachin road by Armenia over past three years necessitated Azerbaijan’s legitimate and legal action of establishing a border check-point.”

Armenia accused Azerbaijan of causing a “humanitarian crisis” in the region that Baku denied, proposing the use of the Aghdam-Khankendi road for shipments to the region.

Michel, who presides over meetings of EU leaders and represents the bloc in international affairs, has made significant diplomatic efforts for reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan following their conflict in 2020.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

AFP , Friday 1 Sep 2023

Armenia said that two of its servicemen were killed and one wounded on Friday after Azerbaijan fired at its positions near the town of Sotk, close to the border.

Tensions between Baku and Yerevan have escalated sharply in recent months, as both sides accuse the other of violating agreements and cross-border gunfire.

“As a result of firing by the Azerbaijani army in the direction of Armenian positions located in the Sotk area, there are two dead and one wounded on the Armenian side,” Armenia’s defence ministry said.

The incident marks another setback to the tenuous peace process between the two ex-Soviet republics, which have for decades been locked in a bitter dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yerevan and Baku have fought two wars for control over the region, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but largely populated by ethnic Armenians.

The two sides have been unable to reach a lasting peace settlement despite mediation efforts by the European Union, United States and Russia.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of building up troops along the two countries’ volatile borders in August, while Armenia accused Azerbaijan’s military of opening fire on European Union observers.

Separatist authorities in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh said in June that four Armenian soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani fire in Nagorno-Karabakh.