Author: Emil Lazarian

This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement. 

Ever since the second Karabakh war in 2020, one question keeps getting repeated: will there be another war, considering the on-going tensions and the lack of progress in signing the final, peace agreement. Most recently, on March 26, Azerbaijani forces, as per an announcement by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense crossed the line of contact, under the control of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russian Ministry of Defense said the move was a breach and violation of the agreement signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan on November 9, 2020. It urged Azerbaijan to comply with the agreement, which placed areas of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast that Azerbaijan had not taken control of at the time of the ceasefire under the control of a Russian peacekeeping force.

Earlier that month, on March 5, three Nagorno-Karabakh police officers and two Azerbaijani soldiers were killed as a result of clashes. On March 16, two civilians died in a landmine explosion in Aghdam, a region that was formerly under the control of Armenia but which came under Azerbaijan’s control following the second Karabakh war. On March 22, the Armenian Defense Ministry said a soldier was killed on the border with Nakhchivan, just south of Yerevan. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense was quick to deny any involvement in the death of the soldier. It did however hold Armenia accountable for wounding one of its own soldiers on March 20.

The mutual accusations of ceasefire violations are all too common. The hostile narrative by leaders throws any prospects of further constructive dialogue out of the window. What is different this time, however, is not just the hostile rhetoric from Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and other government officials who echo Aliyev’s remarks, but an attempt to “create a pretext for military action by portraying the ‘other’ as unwilling to negotiate,” wrote Azerbaijani writer, activist, Samad Shikhi. President Ilham Aliyev said during Novruz celebrations that “if Armenians wish to live comfortably, they must recognize Azerbaijan’s borers and sign a peace deal according to our conditions.”

Following Aliyev’s remarks, several Azerbaijani officials posted similar statements online, stating that Armenia must “reciprocate Azerbaijan’s peace proposals” to be allowed to live in its internationally recognised borders. Some, resorted to using “Hayastan,” the Armenian name for Armenia in an apparent attempt to insult Armenia. “Hayasız” means “shameless” in Azerbaijani.

The mutual accusations go beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia’s presence on the ground via its peace keepers has been a point of contestation as well. Since March 5, they stand officially accused by official Baku of “escorting Armenian convoys and arms to the region,” reported OC Media, a claim official Yerevan denied. The road in question was used to connect four villages cut off from the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh following the closure of the Lachin Corridor.

The most recent advancement on March 26, with no casualties, concerns the official allegation that Baku claims the move was part of an “urgent measure” to prevent the supply of arms and Armenian troops through what it describes as an alternative unpaved road to the Lachin Corridor.

The 2020 ceasefire agreement stipulated that a new section of the Lachin Corridor be constructed to bypass the entrance to Shusha, though a final agreed route has not been made public. There have been unconfirmed media reports that an alternative route was being used to bring in supplies from Armenia, though no evidence of arms transfers has emerged.

Following the second Karabakh war, Azerbaijan made several military advances, breaching the line of contact with Nagorno-Karabakh.

In December 2020, in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, two villages in the Hadrut region of Nagorno-Karabakh, stipulated to be under the control of the Russian peacekeeping force, were captured by Azerbaijani troops, who took dozens of soldiers captive.

Russian peacekeepers remained silent at the time.

In March 2022, Azerbaijani troops advanced in the direction of the village of Parukh (Farukh), forcing villagers to evacuate and positioning themselves in the mountains surrounding the village. Despite the peacekeeping mission deploying troops and armored vehicles to the area, residents have not been allowed to return due to security concerns.

These and other incidents in Nagorno-Karabakh have led officials in Yerevan and Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azerbaijani) to question the effectiveness of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. There have also been growing calls for an international peacekeeping mission or UN mandate for the Russian mission.

Following deadly March 5 clashes, Baku officially repeated earlier demands that Russia set up checkpoints on the Lachin Corridor. Both Yerevan and Stepanakert reject the demand, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated checkpoints were not envisaged according to the November 9 agreement signed in 2020 during his visit to Baku in late February.

Lachin Corridor is supposedly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers who have been deployed in the territory since November 2020, following the Russia-brokered agreement signed between Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. They are also in charge of providing security for entry and exit points of the corridor. In a broader context, however, the role of some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers remains vague. The lack of clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and activities in the 2020 agreement is now becoming an issue. The blockade is a testament to that.

There have been continuous international calls for de-escalation with the on-going blockade of Lachin Corridor. Most recently, on March 22, the White House called on both parties to de-escalate. “We do not want to see any violence, and we want to see all sides take appropriate steps to deescalate the tension and to stop the violence,” said John Kirby, the White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications. Meanwhile, Catherine Colonna, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, said she would travel to Yerevan and Baku in early April, in an attempt to “restore free movement along the Lachin corridor and improve the supply of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

In February, the European Union deployed a two-year monitoring mission, consisting of 100 unarmed monitors, to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, on March 23, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan tweeted:

The tweet was seen by some as a public attempt by the prime minister to avoid a new war.

Pashinyan’s tweet was made days before Azerbaijan’s advancement on March 26. Since then, there have been no further measures or steps to stall escalations, leaving the prospects for the peace deal looming just as the possibility for yet another war.

Azerbaijani officials have used Greek Independence Day celebrations in Baku as an opportunity to propagate against Armenians.

According to APA , Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Khalaf Khalafov said this during his speech at the event dedicated to the National Day of Greece in Baku, that Armenia “cannot draw conclusions from the realities.”

“Unfortunately, the ruling regime in Armenia today does not realise the essence and historical significance of the peace process, lives with revanchist feelings, and cannot draw conclusions from the realities,” the deputy foreign minister said.

“They are still not giving up their disruptive activities, such as creating tension, causing provocation, inciting separatism among Armenians living in Karabakh, illegally transporting weapons and ammunitions to these areas, and strengthening illegal military units that should be removed from these areas,” he continued.

The Deputy Minister also attempted to propagate that the Greek churches in Mehmana were destroyed by Armenians, a baseless claim that Greek City Times has confirmed to be false by a resident of the village.

In essence they show disrespect to Greeks by putting aside diplomatic etiquette and attacking a country which is very close to Greece. In the meantime, the Azeris feel that Greece will not punish them, even if Greeks feel insulted (as the Independence Day celebration was spoilt), they care very little.

Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly has reiterated the call for Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin corridor, the only lifeline to the historically and demographically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Speaking at the House of Commons on Monday, the Minister said “we continue to call on the Azerbaijani authorities to reopen the Lachin corridor.”

“We need to prevent the worsening of the humanitarian crisis. Canada supports the 2020 ceasefire agreement, including the return of the Armenian prisoners of war. It is important that the cease fire, which is supported by the EU monitoring group, be respected,” Minister Joly said.

Joly’s comments come as Russia on Saturday, the same day as Greek Independence Day, accused Azerbaijan of violating the Moscow-brokered ceasefire that ended the 2020 war with Armenia, by letting its troops cross over the demarcation line.

“On March 25… a unit of the armed forces of Azerbaijan crossed a line of contact in the district of Shusha, in violation” of the agreement of November 9, 2020, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

It said Russian peacekeepers “are taking measures aimed at preventing escalation… and mutual provocations.”

Earlier on Saturday, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said it has taken control of some auxiliary roads in its Armenian-majority breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh over which it had engaged in two invasions of.

The ministry said “necessary control measures were implemented by the units of the Azerbaijan Army in order to prevent the use of the dirt roads north of Lachin” for arms supplies from Armenia.

The sole road linking Karabakh to Armenia, the Lachin corridor, has been for months under Azerbaijani blockade, which Yerevan says has led to a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

Last week, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned against a “very high risk of escalation” in Karabakh.

Armenia has also accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect ethnic Armenians living in the restive region.

The Armenian authorities have been warning for a long time that a humanitarian catastrophe is brewing in Nagorno-Karabakh. To restore unhindered movement along the Lachin corridor in Armenia, effective steps are expected from Russia, whose peacekeeping troops are stationed there.

Azerbaijan is still ignoring both the appeals of various countries and international organizations, as well as the decision of the Hague Court, which has obliged Azerbaijan to ensure unhindered movement along the corridor.

https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/03/30/azeri-official-propagates-armenia/

Ifirst met Shushan in February 2021. The mother of five was living in Landjazat village, near Armenia’s barbed-wire border with Turkey. The house, which belonged to some of Shushan’s acquaintances who worked in Russia, had become her family’s temporary home after they were forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh as the Second Karabakh War raged.

On the morning of 27 September 2020, Shushan and her family woke to the sound of explosions. In the days that followed, at least 3,700 Armenian and Karabakh soldiers, and nearly 200 civilians were killed in an offensive by Azerbaijani troops to take back territory in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Fighting ceased on 10 November 2020, when an agreement was signed by Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. As a consequence, Nagorno-Karabakh lost 70% of the territory that its de-facto administration had controlled since 1994, displacing nearly 70,000 Armenians.

This is the second mass displacement in the territory in a little over two decades. Disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it has seen years of war. By 1994, Armenian forces had taken full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, and full or partial control of seven other Azerbaijani regions bordering the territory. Though all of these areas were still internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, more than half a million Azerbaijani civilians were forcibly displaced from their homes.

I got in touch with Shushan after I started researching the story of her village. Before the 2020 war, Charektar village had 48 families or roughly 270 residents. Charektar de jure lies in the Shahumyan province of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, but de facto it is in Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar district. I became interested in Charektar’s story because it had practically been burned to the ground even though no fighting took place there during the 2020 war.

As Armenia’s prime minister Pashinyan announced the Moscow-brokered ceasefire on 10 November and people stormed parliament in protest, Charektar’s residents were told their village was part of the territories to be transferred to Azerbaijan. Many people had already fled the region for Armenia and news of the impending transfer reportedly caused those who remained in Charektar and the neighbouring villages to set fire to their homes, which was widely covered by many Western media outlets.

But then, a few days later, the residents of Charektar were told their village would remain under Armenian control, just a few hundred metres away from military checkpoints and the newly-drawn border with Azerbaijan. The lack of reliable information and clear messaging from the authorities meant that Charektar’s residents had tragically set fire to their own village.

When I met Shushan, I expected her to be grieving the loss of her home. But it quickly became clear that was not all and she was grieving a double loss. Shushan had lost her husband in a car accident six months before the autumn 2020 conflict.

Shushan had met her late husband in the mid-2000s in Dadivank, a village in the foothills of a mediaeval monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh.. They fell in love, quickly decided to get married and when Shushan’s parents opposed the relationship, they eloped. Eventually, the couple moved to Charektar, where they slowly built a house with their own hands. Their new home had a panoramic view of the valley, a yard where Shushan would drink coffee with her neighbours , and an ivy-covered gazebo where the couple would relax after work.

Shushan’s eyes lit up as she told me about the life she had shared with her husband, one that was profoundly tied to their house and the village. It was then that I realised her story wasn’t about war but love. To her, the war was tragic most of all because it took away the place where memories of her husband resided – the house they had built together and shared.

That’s how my film, The Dream of Karabakh, materialised. I followed Shushan over the course of three months, as she tried to adapt to her new life as a refugee in Armenia. Four of her children were living with her, while the eldest remained in Stepanakert, capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, studying to become a doctor.

 Umer Jamshaid  Published March 20, 2023 | 09:42 PM