Author: Emil Lazarian

After passing up on several opportunities to sign a peace deal, first in Brussels, then in Spain at a summit of European leaders on October 5, and later in Kyrgyzstan at the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Armenia and Azerbaijan's leadership may have finally agreed on a peace deal document to be signed “in the coming months,” according to Armenia's prime minister Nikol Pashinian.

The document is based on a May 2022 peace deal proposed by Azerbaijan, consisting of five principles which include recognizing each other's territorial integrity, the absence of territorial claims, abstaining form threats, demarcating the border, and opening transportation links. At the time, there was no mention of the final status of Karabakh nor of the ethnic Armenian population living in Karabakh. Following Azerbaijan's military offensive into the formerly disputed Nagorno–Karabakh region on September 19, 2023, the status for these last two points changed. On September 28, the government of Nagorno–Karabakh announced it will dissolve itself by 2024 and nearly all of the ethnic Armenians living in Karabakh have fled the region amid fears of living under the government of Azerbaijan. Several former and current officials of Nagorno–Karabakh were detained in the aftermath of the September 19 military operation.

The Nagorno–Karabakh area has been under the control of its ethnic Armenian population as a self-declared state since a war fought in the early 1990s, which ended with a ceasefire and Armenian military victory in 1994. In the aftermath of the first war, a new, internationally unrecognized, de facto Nagorno–Karabakh Republic was established. Seven adjacent regions were occupied by the Armenian forces. As a result of that war, “more than a million people had been forced from their homes: Azerbaijanis fled Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the adjacent territories, while Armenians left homes in Azerbaijan,” according to the International Crisis Group.

The tensions lingered over the following decades. In 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a second war that lasted for 44 days. That war changed the status of the region. Azerbaijan regained control over much of the previously occupied seven regions and captured one-third of Karabakh itself.

On November 10, 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia. Among several points of the agreement, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed that 1,960 Russian peacekeeping forces would remain in the parts of Karabakh “not recaptured by Azerbaijan and a narrow corridor connecting with Armenia across the Azerbaijani district of Lachin.”

Since the signed November 2020 agreement, mutual accusations of ceasefire violations continued unabated. So did mutual hostile rhetoric at the government and local levels, diminishing any prospects for peace.

As such, one question loomed: will there be another war? The most recent events on September 19, 2023, answered that question.

On October 30, 2023, Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan said, “three [out of five] main principles of peace and normalization of relations,” were agreed upon and that if both parties remained faithful to those principles, “the signing of the peace treaty becomes realistic,” reported OC Media.

But it is not just about the peace deal. In the words of Kommersant newspaper journalist Kirill Krivosheev, “If the Armenian presence in the region is no longer a political factor, what is there to argue about?” If anything, the deal would simply be a framework he notes. In addition, there are still a few items on the agenda, including “the fate of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh, and eight Azerbaijani enclaves in Armenia, Azerbaijan's plans to connect Nakhichevan, its exclave that borders Armenia, Turkey, and Iran, to the rest of Azerbaijan, and who would operate this route,” as well as, “whether displaced Karabakh Armenians will be allowed to enter Azerbaijan.”

“Resolving these issues will take years and will depend on the shift of power dynamics in the region. For now, signing a rudimentary peace treaty that deters Azerbaijan from further escalation would be a good result for Armenia. Baku knows this, and will therefore try to squeeze everything it can from the situation before signing any such document,” argues Krivosheev.

Resolving the transportation routes — specifically the one across Armenia to Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan — remains contentious. This specific route is known as the “Zangezur corridor,” which is what Baku calls the route to Nakhchivan — Azerbaijan’s remote enclave sandwiched between Armenia, Turkey, and Iran. The route — albeit not mentioned by its name — was part of a ceasefire agreement signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the 44-day war the two countries fought in 2020. The agreement read:

The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the security of transport connections between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in order to arrange unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions. The Border Guard Service of the Russian Federal Security Service shall be responsible for overseeing the transport connections. Subject to agreement between the Parties, the construction of new transport communications to link the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with the western regions of Azerbaijan will be ensured.

In a recent interview with the local media, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan described the route as “a strategic project”:

True, there is no word ‘Zangezur corridor’ in it because I included the term ‘Zangezur corridor’ in the geopolitical lexicon afterwards. However, it is explicitly stated there that there should be a transport connection between the western regions of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, and Armenia should provide it.

The corridor is also important for another regional player and Azerbaijan's ally: Turkey.

Now, Azerbaijan claims it is no longer interested in the corridor, not in its current form anyway. On October 25, in an interview with Reuters, Hikmet Hajiyev, a top aide to Aliyev said, “Azerbaijan had no plans to seize Zangezur.” Hajiyev added that the country was working with Iran instead.

Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani prime minister Nikol Pashinyan has unveiled a regional transport proposal — “Crossroads of Peace” —  that would connect Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Georgia through Armenia, describing it as an “important part of the peace agenda in the South Caucasus,” according to reporting by OC Media.

Both Baku and Yerevan have officially made peace pledges before but tensions loomed despite the promises. Whether a deal will be signed by the end of the year will show whether commitments to peace are as genuine as the leaders say they are.

https://globalvoices.org/2023/11/03/armenia-and-azerbaijan-vow-peace-for-now/

Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was in Armenia to discuss tensions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan took control of in September. She advocated launching a new round of negotiations.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to the southern Caucasus on Friday, beginning her trip in Armenia, laying a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide in World War I.

In a meeting with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, she discussed the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, which was ruled by ethnic Armenian forces until Azerbaijan took control of it in a lightning offensive in September.

The mediation efforts of European Council President Charles Michel "are a bridge that can show the fastest way to peace," Baerbock said.

"That is why it is so important that a new round of negotiations can take place as soon as possible," she added.

The trip comes a day after Baerbock spoke at a conference on EU expansion in Berlin in which she urged Ukraine to become a member of the 27-country alliance. She also discussed the southern Caucasus, saying that the EU must not allow Russia to "isolate" Georgia from the bloc.

On Saturday, she will meet with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in Baku.

Ahead of the trip to Armenia on Friday, Baerbock said Germany and the EU wanted to work alongside countries in the southern Caucasus to "build a region that overcomes the shadows of the past" and looks towards a better future for the region's population.

The foreign minister stressed that it was important that countries "take the path of mutual trust" in the name of peace.

She said the conflict had inflicted deep wounds on both sides which "can heal in the long term."

Baerbock said the EU was ready to make the region concrete offers on the path to peace, including a submarine communications cable through the Black Sea that would help "bring Armenia and Azerbaijan closer to each other and closer to us."

Half of the cost of construction of €45 million ($48 million) would be funded by the EU Global Gateway initiative, which aims to expand the bloc's global influence through infrastructure investment.

According to the German Foreign Ministry, Baerbock also plans to visit a reception center for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia.

Talks are also planned with members of the civilian EU Mission in Armenia (EUMA), which aims to monitor the security situation along the Armenian side of the border.

The Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh region broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s. Its independence was not recognized by any country, including Armenia.

After a war in 2020, a Russian-brokered cease-fire saw Azerbaijan retake areas surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh that had been held by ethnic Armenian forces.

In September of this year, Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh, and the vast majority of the territory's residents fled to Armenia. Yerevan has accused Baku of "ethnic cleansing," while Azerbaijan argues that ethnic Armenians left voluntarily.

sdi/sms (dpa, AFP)

https://www.dw.com/en/german-fm-calls-for-new-armenia-azerbaijan-peace-talks/a-67292792

• After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh's communities.

• Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

• Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

• During Azerbaijan's military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts…. The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

• So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 13 that in the coming weeks, Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has threatened Armenia with war multiple times.

Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are also playing their war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper Türkiye on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia's Syunik (Zangezur) province as "snakes", "gangs" and "terrorists". One headline reads: "The new nest of the snake is Zangezur". It claims that the Armenians displaced from Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) are receiving military training in "terror camps in Zangezur".

When the Turkish media uses such words, its intent is to prepare the public for an upcoming war against an "enemy".

On November 1, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a Red Flag Alert "due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks".

The US government also knows that the next step for Azerbaijan and Turkey is to attack the Republic of Armenia.

After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh's communities.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

Azeri soldiers, since their invasion began, have been uploading videos on social media showing themselves beheading and mutilating Armenians.

The Lemkin Institute of Genocide Prevention on September 23 noted:

"There are stories coming out of Artsakh of the beheading of children and the separation of older boys and men from women and children….. Azerbaijan has routinely treated Armenians with this level of barbarism, especially in the wars of 2016, 2020 and 2022. It is a country is run by people who do not hide their visceral hatred of Armenians."

Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

On February 19, 2004, for instance, during a three-month English language class that was part of the Partnership for Peace NATO-sponsored program in Budapest, Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army officer, broke into the dormitory room of Armenian army Lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan at night and axed him to death while he slept. Safarov hit Margaryan 16 times on his head and neck with the axe, almost decapitating him.

A court in Budapest convicted Safarov in 2006 of murdering Markaryan and attempting to murder another Armenian participant of the course, Hayk Makuchian, in the same fashion. Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006. However, when Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan in 2012, he received a hero's welcome in the capital of Baku.

According to anthropologist Sarah Kendzior:

"On August 31, 2012, Ramil Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was greeted as a hero. As an adoring crowd cheered, Safarov walked the streets of the capital draped in an Azerbaijani flag, carrying a bouquet of roses. He was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev, promoted to the rank of major and given a new apartment and money by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry."

In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Azerbaijan's actions amounted to the "approval" and "endorsement" of the "very serious ethnically-biased crime" that Safarov committed. The court concluded that "the acts of Azerbaijan in effect granted [Safarov] impunity for the crimes committed against his Armenian victims."

"In addition, the Court finds particularly disturbing the statements made by a number of Azerbaijani officials glorifying [Safarov,] his deeds and his pardon. It also deplores the fact that a large majority of those statements expressed particular support for the fact that [Safarov's] crimes had been directed against Armenian soldiers, congratulated him on his actions and called him a patriot, a role model and a hero."

During an Azeri raid against Artsakh on April 1-5, 2016, a Yazidi member of the Artsakh Defense Army, Kyaram Sloyan, was beheaded and mutilated by Azeri soldiers. Videos and pictures showing Azeri soldiers posing with Sloyan's severed head were posted on social media networks. The Sunday Times called them "shocking souvenir photos of uniformed Azerbaijani soldiers posing with the severed head".

Sloyan was reburied in his father's village in Armenia after the International Committee of the Red Cross retrieved his severed head and returned it to his family.

"When they brought the body, we didn't know that it's headless," Sloyan's grief-stricken father Kyalash told RFE/RL's Armenian service on April 11, 2016. "It was very painful to discover that. They brought the head yesterday."

The Azerbaijani officer who decapitated Sloyan reportedly became a national hero in Azerbaijan. President Aliyev awarded him a medal in May 2016.

The Office of the Human Rights Defender of the Artsakh Republic published an interim public report on the atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani Military Forces during the four- day war in April 2016.

The report noted that both civilians and servicemen were executed and mutilated by the Azeri Army. Some Artsakh soldiers were, "along with other forms of dismemberment, also subjected to beheading," Graphic images of the abuses were also published in the report.

During Azerbaijan's 2020 war against Artsakh, Azeri accounts once again posted videos on Telegram which showed Azeris beheading Armenian civilians, soldiers and prisoners of war. One was Yuri Asryan, a reclusive 82-year-old who had refused to leave his village on October 20, 2020 when the invading Azerbaijani forces approached.

During Azerbaijan's military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts.

The video also includes several other mutilated and beheaded Armenian men. The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

The words of Kamil Zeynallı, an Azeri athlete with 1.7 million Instagram followers, demonstrate the Azeri path to national "heroism". Zeynalli said in a WhatsApp call later posted on social media:

"Shed the blood of the Armenians. You'll return to our country like a man. You'll be free like a man. Our president [Aliyev] is behind those who behead Armenians.

"Whoever cuts off the heads of Armenians, our esteemed president is by their side."

Azerbaijan tries to spread propaganda in the West about allegedly being a "tolerant" and "multicultural" society. This propaganda is refuted by Azerbaijan's rewarding soldiers who behead Armenians, among many other war crimes they commit against Armenians.

There is no government other than Azerbaijan that so proudly rewards soldiers who behead and mutilate their captives, except perhaps for the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic State (ISIS).

The jihadists' use of beheadings is based on Islamic scriptures and Islamic history:

"So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds…, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah – never will He waste their deeds." – Quran 47:4, Sahih International translation

"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip." – Quran 8:12 : Sahih International translation

Beheadings have been commonly used by Muslims in their jihad (war in the service of Allah) against non-Muslims since the advent of Islam in the seventh century. (For more examples of Islam's use of beheadings and other forms of violence, see here.)

Azerbaijan's war against Armenians is jihadist as well as nationalist. During Azerbaijan's war against Armenians in 2020, Erdogan declared:

"We support Azerbaijan until victory… I tell my Azerbaijani brothers: May your ghazwa be blessed."

"Ghazwa" in Islam means a battle or raid against non-Muslims for the expansion of Muslim territory and/or conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. Erdogan thus openly announced that attacks against the Armenian territory constitute jihad. To fight against Armenians in Artsakh, Turkey was joined in Azerbaijan by mercenary jihadi terrorists from Syria, as well.

During the first Artsakh war (1991-94), which the Armenians won, Dr. Araks Pashayan, an expert on political Islam and Azerbaijan, noted that "mercenaries from Afghanistan, Iran, the United States, Russia and Turkey were included in Azerbaijani army, and particularly Turkey and Iran provided Baku with military instructors."

Mohammad Younas was among the thousands of Afghan fighters that Hezb-e Islami, a major Afghan Islamist party, sent to Azerbaijan in the 1990s to bolster Baku in its war against Armenians.

"If possible, I would again join the Muslims of Azerbaijan to defend them against non-Muslims," Younas told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. "My real motivation in going to Azerbaijan was participating in a jihad, but I also wanted to make some money," he said.

In the face of this barbarity, the world idly watches. Such complacency has allowed Azerbaijan to forcibly displace around 120,000 indigenous Armenians from their homeland of Artsakh. Armenians know what will happen if they try to live under the Azeri regime.

So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

It is high time that the West sanctioned the Azerbaijani government and held it accountable for treating Armenians in the most brutal ways. As long as Western governments continue their military and commercial cooperation with Azerbaijan and turn a blind eye to its mass atrocity crimes, they will remain complicit in Azerbaijan's crimes.

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, a research fellow for the Philos Project, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.