FROM MALI TO AZERBAIJAN: NO DOUBLE STANDARDS?
Journal of Turkish Weekly
April 10 2013
10 April 2013
JTW
If you tune in to any international news network nowadays, you
will notice that along with hot debates around the stand-off on
the Korean peninsula, the conflict in Mali makes up a bulk of
news updates. With one of the UN Security Council members and G8
powers behind its back and a coalition force of determined African
militaries on its sidelines, the Malian army is intent to restore
its territorial integrity. The conflict in Mali and how the situation
has been unfolding for the past three months is a perfect example of
international law at work ensured by wise actions of world powers.
However, this particular case is also a bitter example of how double
standards are practiced by the very same powers vis-a-vis other
countries. To understand the application of double standards, one
must first get a preview of the current conflict in Mali.
Mali, a West African country with a size of France and Germany
combined, stretches from its urbanized south to the dry Sub-Saharan
deserts in the north. Free from the French colonization by 1960, Mali
has gone through decades of tumultuous rule and was thought to have
finally become a democratic state with a legitimate government. In the
first quarter of 2012, as the relations gradually worsened between
the government in Bamako and its military, the latter overthrew the
former, instituting a coup d’etat. Although the military leadership
eventually receded thus effectively reinstating the executive rule
of the president, the impact of the political chaos remained enormous.
First of all, it facilitated the Tuareg minority in the north of the
country to establish its own separatist rule. Secondly, it opened the
door to the incoming Islamic radical fighters with trophies from Arab
Spring, and specifically from Libya, who crossed the uncontrolled
northern border and joined the armed minority to declare their
illegitimate separatist government in Azawad. As the violence in
northern Mali grew with civilians casualties chiefly underreported,
Bamako continued to fight the rebel forces. By the end of 2012 the
separatist forces controlled two-third of the country. Ever since
the imposition of illegal regime in northern Mali, the chaos erupted
as the government-ensured liberties disappeared and harsh forms of
Islamist laws were imposed on Malian citizens.
On December 20, the UN Security Council convened to take a decisive
step in keeping the international law in order. The powerful gathering
unanimously passed a resolution to take a firm action to end the
chaotic and tumultuous rule of separatists in northern Mali. At
the time of adoption, UN SC Resolution 2085 foresaw deployment of
an African multi-national force to Mali for a period of one year to
help cease the violence in the uncontrolled by Bamako northern part
of the country. At the same time, the resolution imposed regulations
requiring the international force to act only after all political
moves have been exhausted. The document also stipulated the urge
to hold democratic elections and stop the military from meddling in
government’s affairs. U.N. peacekeeping officials had stated that the
military operations could start in the fall of 2013 while the West
African bloc already made a commitment to send 3,300 troops for the
mission. The resolution also allowed the joint African force to use
“all necessary measures” to end the violence, a language implicitly
permitting use of force to end the separatist movement in Mali.
While the Malian Minister of Foreign Affairs Tieman Coulibaly welcomed
the UN SC resolution stating that his government appreciated the
commitment from “the international community to fight terrorism and
organized transnational crime”, the rebel forces came out with the
statement of their own – a day after the UN SC resolution passed,
the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and the Tuareg leaders of MNLA (Azawad
National Liberation Movement) issued a communique on ceasing the
hostilities and promising commitment to peace.
In an apparent effort to delay the deployment of international
force to Mali’s troubled north, the rebels regrouped and prepared
to fight a continuous war. The New Year started with an offensive
and occupation of Konna from the northern stronghold of separatist
forces. The capture of strategic town of Konna which is on the path
to Malian army’s large military base is what stimulated the Operation
Serval – a now resolution-backed and immediate French-led military
intervention to stop the advance of separatist forces to Bamako. As
an ongoing air campaign and ground operations of coalition of French
and Malian forces, assisted by UN-mandated Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) multinational force and logistical commitment
from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, UK,
the United States continue, the unraveling in Mali raises questions
about application of double standards. One of these peculiar cases
where double standards are applied can be observed in the Republic
of Azerbaijan, which found itself in a bitter ethnic and territorial
conflict with the neighboring Armenia in 1988. The conflict grew
into an undeclared war by 1992 and lasted through the signing of
ceasefire agreement in May of 1994, leaving Azerbaijan’s Karabakh
region which makes up 16% of sovereign Azerbaijani territory under
military occupation by Armenian forces, thus creating one of the
biggest refugee crises in the world.
Upon escalation of the conflict in Mali, several reasons were voiced
in international media for which Mali matters and which should justify
the international intervention. Examining these reasons and comparing
them to the situation within the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should
explain why the concern over application of double standards is so
loudly pronounced.
The first reason is location. Mali encompasses a vast landlocked
territory which has no considerable resources of its own and borders
other troublesome countries which also have an insurgency problem.
With its vast deserts and caves, the country, and especially its
Azawad region, previously under full control of the separatists,
may serve as a hub for growing terrorist networks in Africa, which
in turn, will certainly affect their operations in Europe or the
Middle East. Moreover, as an uncontrolled by a legitimate authority
territory, it will become a haven for drug and human trafficking that
will destabilize the European continent.
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, currently under military
occupation and with no country recognizing it as legitimate authority
resembles Mali’s Azawad region. Just like in Mali, the separatists
in Nagorno-Karabakh, aided by the Armenian government, and having
ethnically cleansed its Azerbaijani population, established a
military-controlled entity, chiefly uncontrolled and unmonitored by
any international body. In other words, international law and order
does not work there simply because the entity is not recognized as a
state. There have been numerous reports on the territory being used
for drug trafficking and terrorist training programs such as one
involving PKK. Even at the time of Soviet rule in Nagorno-Karabakh
and before the conflict escalated into a full-fledged war, Armenian
terrorist networks such as Vrezh had trained, supplied and conducted
activities in and around former NKAO, thus inflicting serious damage
to Azerbaijani transportation and infrastructure. Among its known
attacks are Tbilisi-Baku and Tbilisi-Agdam bus bombings on September
16, 1989 and August 10, 1990, respectively, as well as April 30 and
July 31, 1991 bombings of Moscow-Baku trains, resulting in multiple
deaths of innocent civilians.
Second reason is what the Western media dubbed “exporting Islamic
Jihad”. The countries making up the coalition on the ground in Mali
today have raised concerns about the apparent possibility of Islamic
radicals in an ungoverned entity, exporting radical ideology and
extreme interpretation of their beliefs to the foreign nationals of
Islamic faith in Western countries. With a sizeable Muslim minority
in France, this causes a great deal of discomfort since as a country
with close proximity and established links to Africa, France is prone
to terrorist attacks more than ever. Case in point, shooting of seven
people by an Islamic radical in Toulouse in March of 2012.
Similar concern is caused by the fact that the occupied territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh is ungoverned and off the radar of international
institutions, thus allowing a free ride for any terrorist and criminal
activity with a high potential for its export beyond the territory
it emerges from. That includes but is not limited to activities of
terrorist organization PKK which reportedly has had access to and
stationed its operatives in Armenian-controlled Karabakh region of
Azerbaijan. Furthermore, Armenian terrorists who have blasted airport
offices, bombed trains and shot diplomats have also found safe haven
in Karabakh. Their movement in and out of separatist entity is not
only uncontrolled but is allowed and encouraged by the Armenian
authorities. Just like in case of radical Islamists in Awazad, the
Armenian separatists are in position to train, supply and export the
militant activity as well as Armenian irredentist ideology from these
territories to Turkey, Georgia or any other country in the region.
Third reason for intervention in Mali was the worldwide recognition of
Mali’s cultural heritage and danger the ongoing conflict caused to it.
The city of Timbuktu alone has been known to the world as the religious
educational center which hosted thousands of Islamic documents and
books, beautiful tombs and mosques, making it a UNESCO World Heritage
Site. Unwelcomed by the radical Islamic separatists, the valuable
collections of medieval Islamic books were acknowledged by Azawad
separatists as idolatrous and unfitting to their version of Islam
and were subsequently burned. That action by itself has erased a
substantial portion of cultural heritage of Mali.
Similarly the city of Shusha, an Azerbaijani citadel and the heart of
Azerbaijani cultural heritage with its beautiful historical sites,
mosques, landmarks, birthplace of renowned musicians, artists
and poets, faced the same fate. Many sites all over the occupied
territories are missing libraries, museums, architectural heritage
that was prevalent throughout the existence of Azerbaijani people in
Karabakh and qualifying to make up the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Almost all signs of Azerbaijani Turkic heritage born in Karabakh
have been erased by Armenian junta, transforming it into a visibly
mono-ethnic entity as if no Azerbaijani ever lived there. Only the
saddened mosques of Yukhari and Ashagi Govhar Agha remaining in ruins
tower over Karabakh’s mountains. Another city, Agdam, once thriving for
its cultural diversity and foundations – a home to tens of thousands
of Azerbaijanis – is now reduced to a ruble. No signs of architecture,
no voice of Mugam heard hundreds of miles away, no azans starting
mornings now color this city. It is a recognized ghost town, a sign of
psychological damage inflicted to Azerbaijani people by Armenian army.
Fourth reason is the humanitarian crisis. According to UN Refugee
Agency, more than 350 thousand people have fled the violence in Mali
since the beginning of internal warfare in January 2012. Refugees
escaping the guns of radicals settled in neighboring Mauritania,
Algeria, Burkina Faso and Niger. Although Africa, ratcheted up with
humanitarian crises from the times immemorial, has had far bigger
cases of refugee disasters, such as ones in Darfur and Rwanda, the
Malian case qualifies for immediate attention as well.
Surpassing Mali, the Republic of Azerbaijan has lived with a far
heavier burden. Since the beginning of conflict in 1988, approximately
250 thousand Azerbaijani refugees were deported from Armenia, while
during the escalation of the conflict into a full-fledged war in
1992-1994, about 600 thousand Azerbaijani civilians were forced
out from their homes in Karabakh by advancing Armenian military,
thus turning them into internally displaced persons (IDPs) in their
own country. Since the ceasefire, the refugee population has grown
substantially, with total refugee population going over one million
people. With the conflict unresolved and Armenian refusing to allow the
return of civilians to their places of residence, Azerbaijan has become
the country with the highest refugee population per capita on earth.
While it is commendable that France, with support from other Western
nations, had undertaken a committed journey through Sub-Saharan
Africa to ensure the rule of international law, it is appalling
to see a complete disregard for the same laws in South Caucasus,
although the reasons for international military intervention voiced
for Mali are quite prevalent in the case of Azerbaijan as well,
even in an exacerbated form. France has co-chaired the OSCE Minsk
group since 1997, yet its government has never voiced its firm
stance on implementing four resolutions of UN Security Council on
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. On contrary, on the eve of the trilateral
meeting of presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russian in Kazan
in 2011, the former President Sarkozy sent a panegyric letter to
President Sargsyan explicitly declaring in it Armenia the “sister of
France” – a sign of reassurance that France can care less about UN SC
resolutions, demanding withdrawal of Armenian forces and the disregard
of the fate of Azerbaijani refugees. When the French-led Operation
Serval kicked off in January this year, the newly elected President
Hollande stated that Mali “is facing a terrorist aggression in the
north” and that “the terrorists must know that France will always
be there whenever the rights of a country that strives for freedom
and democracy are threatened, not just when its core interests are
at stake.” Fact check. Since the beginning of Armenian “Miatsum”,
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan has been infested by incoming
Armenian terrorists who staged attacks against civilian targets and
escalated the conflict into a war. Among them is an internationally
recognized Armenian terrorist Monte Melkonian, who has fingerprints
in Khojaly Massacre and other mass killings in Kelbajar and Khojavend
districts. So, where was and is exactly France then? Why isn’t leading
a coalition for restoration of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,
a country far more important for France where it owns quite a few
lucrative contracts. Inaction in regards to ongoing aggression against
Azerbaijani sovereignty by France and other leading Security Council
members is what keeps the Armenian leadership self-confident and its
puppet regime in Khankendi in its saddle. The lack of commitment
of the French government to friendship with Azerbaijan is so low
that the disrespect to Azerbaijanis is shown at many possible
levels. For instance, in February 2013, two Azerbaijani nationals
Mirvari Fataliyeva and Vusal Huseynov were unscrupulously beaten by
a group Armenian youths in the center of the French Parliament in
presence of French parliamentarians. The root cause of the problem
is the will of the French politicians to succumb to appetites of
the half-million strong Armenian diaspora rather than to anything in
alignment to French national interests.
These realities are unfortunately present today. In 1993, within a few
short weeks, the regional center of Kelbajar and 151 villages with
population over 83,900 people was ethnically cleansed by Armenian
forces, therefore triggering the beginning of the large-scale
mass expulsion of Azerbaijani IDPs and creating the most worrisome
humanitarian crisis in South Caucasus. The occupation of Kelbajar
had a detrimental effect of the psyche of the Azerbaijani people,
not least because of brutality imposed on the escaping civilians and
appropriation of a large land mass by Armenian military, but, more
importantly, by the utter disregard of the international community to
this injustice in the following months and to this day. On April 30th,
1993, twenty eight days after the occupation, UN Security Council
passed the Resolution 822, demanding the cessation of hostilities
and withdrawal of occupying forces from the district of Kelbajar and
reaffirming the principle of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
However, the resolution was left to dust on the shelves in UN
Headquarters and twenty years later, we are yet to see the firm resolve
of the UN Security Council in implementing the UN SC Resolution 822,
and three other that followed in a span of six months in the wake
of occupation of six more districts of Azerbaijan. The riddance of
faux double standards and unswerving restoration of commitment to
international laws and norms awaits the government in Paris. There
is room for hope.
By Yusif Babanly, the co-founder and board member of the US Azeris
Network (USAN)
10 April 2013 Journal of Turkish Weekly
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/148916/from-mali-to-azerbaijan-no-double-standards.html