16:11,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 16, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is traveling to Strasbourg to address the European Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Pashinyan will deliver a speech in the European Parliament on October 17.
A meeting with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is also scheduled. Pashinyan and Metsola will then make statements to the press.
Other meetings are also scheduled.
IN YEREVAN – Children are believed to be among those killed in the remote enclave of Azerbaijan that was the scene of a military offensive last month, as groups begin to collect evidence of possible war crimes.
Armenian organisations have started documenting the latest war crimes allegedly committed by Azerbaijan’s troops against former citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh.
On 20 September, a 30-year dream of independence for the autonomous mountain enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan, came to a spectacular and brutal end when officials in the capital of Stepanakert surrendered after a lightning attack by the regime.
On Sunday, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev raised his nation’s flag over the capital in a ceremony reaffirming its control of the disputed region.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, have since poured into Armenia, many among them claiming to have been victims of abuses by Azeri forces.
“Within just the first 24 hours we had documented 18 cases of civilian murder,” said Arman Tatoyan, a former Armenian human rights ombudsman and founder of the Arman Tatoyan Foundation, which works to gather evidence of war crimes committed against ethnic Armenians.
“There are instances of several members of a single family being killed – in one such case, two children who were just ten and eight years old,” he said.
Efforts to gather hard evidence of atrocities has been complicated by the speed at which Nagorno-Karabakh refugees, afraid of remaining close to the border with Azerbaijan, have scattered deeper into Armenia since first crossing last week.
With an Azeri blockade having suspended the flow of desperately needed supplies into the region for 10 months before the evacuation, the dire humanitarian situation has also meant state focus is presently on addressing immediate needs, such as food, shelter and medicine.
“The primary challenge is these people have extremely pressing humanitarian issues,” said Mr Tatoyan. “In many cases their greatest concern is simply finding family members from whom they’ve been separated.
Refugees from Azerbaijan’s controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh rest at a sports complex set up as a temporary shelter in the Armenian city of Artashat (Photo by Karen Minasyan/AFP) A displaced family from Nagorno-Karabakh sitting on a bed in a temporary shelter in Artashat, southeast of Yerevan, Armenia (Photo: Diego Herrera Carcedo/Getty Images)
“Interviews have been difficult because people are under immense stress. Of course the focus is on aid, but it’s also incredibly important to collect evidence because in a dynamic situation like this, information is very precious and once lost may never be found again.”
While formal documentation may face significant logistical challenges, allegations of atrocities are not hard to find among the newly arrived refugee population.
Alik Chilingaryan, 63, is staying at a temporary shelter in Goris, the first point of call for many refugees who’ve fled over the past week. Once able-bodied, he is now confined to a wheelchair after he claims Azeri soldiers targeted his village.
“We were under fire from drones, we were not prepared for anything like it. Four people died,” he said. “We were shot at by artillery. I was in my yard outside, and a rocket hit about 30 metres away from me. There was an explosion, and the wave threw me 15 metres with the debris piercing my legs.”
Artur Petrossian, 43, also claims his village was similarly a target of airstrikes, with missiles raining down on homes and even a school building. “I am now twice a refugee by Azerbaijan,” he said. “Once because of the 1990 pogrom in Baku [Azerbaijan’s capital], and now because of this latest attack.”
David Mashuryan, director at Goris Medical Clinic, said the hospital had admitted hundreds of cases of civilians injured by shrapnel over the past few days, a great many of which have required amputation.
“A lot of these people were in really very serious condition when they arrived,” he said. “After providing them with first aid, we often had to co-ordinate with the Ministry of Health to arrange their onward transport to medical facilities in [the Armenian capital of] Yerevan.”
After Azerbaijan’s attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s parliament voted yesterday to ratify the Rome Statute, the first step toward joining the International Criminal Court and opening the way for these alleged atrocities to be investigated and possibly prosecuted in the Hague at some point in future.
Armenia joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Saturday, adding to a growing list of countries where Russian President Vladimir Putin can't visit freely.
Armenian officials made it clear that their decision to join the ICC was not meant to be a jab at Russia, an ally to the country, claiming that Azerbaijan's aggression towards Armenia was the catalyst for its decision, the Associated Press reported.
Last month, Azerbaijan said it took full control over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an enclave that has been occupied by Armenian separatists for over 30 years. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that pro-Armenian forces surrendered after a two-day fight in the mountainous region. "Karabakh is Azerbaijan," he said in an address to his country at the time.
Armenia's parliament, meanwhile, voted to ratify the Rome Statute (60-22), which would in effect make it a member of the ICC, and on Saturday, Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan approved the decision.
However, Armenia told Moscow last month that Putin would not be arrested if he entered the country after Russia called Yerevan's decision an "unfriendly step," according to the AP.
Over 100 countries have joined the ICC, since its creation over 20 years ago. Armenia, along with the other countries that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute, are expected to arrest Putin upon entry after the Russian leader was charged with war crimes in Ukraine in March.
The ICC alleges that Putin is responsible for the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia during his invasion of the Eastern European country that began in February 2022. Moscow, however, has denied the ICC's allegations and called the warrant for the Russian leader's arrest "outrageous." Investigators in The Hague had gathered evidence against Putin over the past year, but an ICC prosecution remains a challenging task since the Kremlin does not recognize the court or its jurisdiction.
Other countries where Putin is not welcome includes every member of the European Union (EU), most African states, all Latin and South American states, besides Cuba and Nicaragua, and even Russian ally Tajikistan, according to the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Hungary, another ally to Russia, signed the Rome Statute and ratified it in 2001. However, Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said in March that there is no basis in his country's law for arresting Putin if he were to visit.
Newsweek has reached out to the Armenian parliament via email for comment.
While there is no internationally agreed-upon definition of the term ethnic cleansing, a United Nations commission has described it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
It would be difficult to argue that Azerbaijan is not now engaged in ethnic cleansing in the enclave Armenians call Artsakh and Azerbaijanis call Karabakh. After a nine-month-long Medieval-style siege of this small part of the Caucasus, the Azerbaijani military launched an attack. Once a tentative truce was achieved, roughly 100,000 people, almost the entire population of the region, gathered what they could carry and left. The world is now dealing with yet another refugee crisis as Armenia, a country with a population of less than three million, is dealing with an influx of traumatized ethnic Armenians.
The reasons for the tensions over Artsakh/Karabakh go back to the early 20th century, to the Ottoman and Russian empires, Josef Stalin, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and regional and global tensions that have persisted since that time. Ultimately, however, we need to look at the Armenian Genocide and the two countries that virtually surround the current Republic of Armenia.
World-renowned genocide expert Gregory Stanton has stated that genocide denial is “among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres.” The Ottoman Empire, the remains of which formed the foundation of modern-day Turkey, systematically killed 1.5 million Armenians under the cover of the First World War.
Today, educators typically present what happened to the Armenians as a case study to illustrate the meaning of the word genocide. In both Turkey and Azerbaijan, one would be criminally prosecuted for doing so. Taner Akçam, who is Turkish and is also considered the foremost authority on the Armenian Genocide, is therefore living in exile and has even had his life threatened. In the meantime, Azerbaijani and Turkish citizens are fed a revisionist history that demonizes Armenians and justifies crimes against humanity.
Before the current round of ethnic cleansing, the most recent armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan occurred over 44 days in 2020. Russia was the chief negotiator in a settlement between the two countries and agreed to keep peacekeepers in the region. Azerbaijan, however, has taken advantage of Russia's weakened status resulting from its invasion of Ukraine. Beginning in December 2022, they cut off the enclave of Artsakh/Karabakh from Armenia and the rest of the world. This siege stopped the flow of medical, fuel, and food supplies, thus weakening the population and resulting in the ethnic cleansing we now witness.
To their credit, the Armenian population living in the global diaspora has persistently lobbied the governments of the territories where they now find themselves in order to get them to recognize the vulnerability of the ethnic Armenians who remain in the Caucuses. As a result, countries like France and the United States have become more actively involved in the peace negotiation process and have worked to ensure that international aid is given to the newest refugees in the region.
For the time being, it will be necessary for UN peacekeepers to stabilize the region and prevent further aggression, as they have done successfully in Cyprus for the last 50 years.
For a long-term solution, we need to look at countries that are healing and moving forward peacefully after ethnic cleansing and genocide. Germany, Canada, and New Zealand, for example, have been transparent about the crimes they have committed, and all are now healthy democracies where the rights of minorities are protected.
Nothing will be more effective in bringing about long-lasting peace in the Caucasus than unearthing and teaching the truth about the Armenian Genocide. This therefore needs to be a central point of focus in all international interactions with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. The safety of millions of people depends on it.
Gerry Chidiac is a Prince George writer.
https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/opinion/opinion-ethnic-cleansing-latest-chapter-in-armenian-genocide-7662791
By Thaddeus Jones & Stefan J. Bos
Speaking at the conclusion of the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis renewed his concern about the grave humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh affecting displaced people in the South Caucasus region.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 100,000 refugees have fled to Armenia since 23 September. The UN agency is working to deliver life-saving assistance and supplies, especially before the colder weather takes hold.
The Pope also added a special appeal for the protection of the monasteries and places of worship in the region. He expressed his hopes that "they can be respected and protected as part of the local culture, expressions of faith and a sign of a fraternity that makes it possible to live together despite differences."
Pope Francis' appeal to Azerbaijan to protect houses of worship in Nagorno Karabakh comes as Russia has urged new peace talks. However, Armenian Christian refugees are reluctant to return to an area they called home for generations…
Tearful, exhausted, and with painful memories, some 120,000 Armenians have passed through the Armenian border town of Goris, an important seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
They fled Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving behind their historic Christian heritage embedded in the enclave, which was overrun by forces from Azerbaijan.
Christian aid workers share Pope Francis's concerns that ancient monasteries and churches may now be destroyed.
Joel Veldkamp, a spokesman for the rights group Christian Solidarity International, is shocked. "I saw a video of a news source that I trust of Azerbaijani troops firing on a 13th-century monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh. That is just the beginning," he said.
Yet, Hikmet Hajiyev, an advisor of the president of Azerbaijan, claims Armenians have nothing to fear. "Indeed, we do regret that the civilian population has decided, many of them, to leave. And, of course, in this case, we respect freedom of choice and freedom of movement," he stressed.
Don't tell that to Armenian journalist Siranush Sargsyan, who recalls the horrors of Azerbaijan's recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh. "My neighbor lost one of his sons. Another one, my history teacher died and his son was wounded," in attacks by Azerbaijan. "And this is only from my village. I met several mothers who lost two sons, three sons," she said while interrupting her words as she cried.
"And some of the [survivors] they don't know, there is no information. We lost so many people. We almost all know each other. And this is like my family story," the journalist added.
Sargsyan and others enjoyed relative freedom after the enclave separatists broke away from Azerbaijan following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
As Azerbaijan has recaptured the region, virtually the entire Armenian population has left.
Broadcaster Al Jazeera's reporter Osama Bin Javaid witnessed how the main city in Nagorno-Karabakh, Khankendi, had been all but abandoned. "Here in the town center, you will hear nothing if I go quiet. There is absolutely no one who is left here apart from a few elderly, disabled, and others," he said amid chairs and other belongings that appeared to have been left behind in a hurry.
"Some puppies have been following us around, possibly looking for food. It is hard to describe the feeling when you enter a town when you have looked at pictures of it where there was so much activity. But now it is a ghost town with no soul left," the reporter explained.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said over the weekend that he believed a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan was achievable if both sides showed goodwill.
He earlier proposed holding talks between the two nations in Moscow. But whatever the outcome of those discussions, the refugees here seem to have no appetite to return to Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijan's rule.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-10/pope-calls-attention-to-humanitarian-crisis-in-nagorno-karabakh.html
Pope Francis is drawing attention to another issue in the former Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which in mid-September was taken over by Azerbaijan. Now some 100,000 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who lived there have fled the area.
After praying the midday Angelus this October 15, Pope Francis noted:
My concern for the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh has not waned. In addition to the humanitarian situation of the displaced people – which is serious – I would also like to make a special appeal for the protection of the monasteries and places of worship in the region.
I hope that, starting with the Authorities and all the inhabitants, they can be respected and protected as part of the local culture, expressions of faith and a sign of a fraternity that makes it possible to live together despite differences.
The Caucasus Heritage Watch released a special report already months before the take-over noting the situation of these cultural sites: “with 6 confirmed destroyed, 7 confirmed damaged, and 17 threatened just since the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War began in September 2020.”
Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity, around 300 AD, before the Edict of Milan. According to tradition, the region was evangelized by the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus.
https://aleteia.org/2023/10/15/pope-urges-respect-of-armenian-monasteries-cultural-sites/
President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday he had achieved a decades-long "dream of Azerbaijani people" by taking control of Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenia separatists.
"We achieved what we wanted. We fulfilled the dream the Azerbaijani people have lived with for decades," Aliyev said in a speech in Karabakh's main city. "We took back our lands," he said, adding that the country had "waited 20 years". for the moment.
bur/gil
In September, while world leaders were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly deliberating about international cooperation, rule of law, human rights, and the peaceful resolution of disputes, half-way around the world in the mountains of South Caucasus, an Azerbaijani offensive was setting the stage for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from their ancestral land, Nagorno-Karabakh.
By the end of September, over 100,000 Armenians had absconded from Nagorno-Karabakh and found refuge in neighboring Armenia. By the time the first UN mission in 35 years of violent conflict arrived in Stepanakert, the capital of the enclave, as few as 50 Armenians were left in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN mission was silent about humanitarian conditions in outlying towns and villages.
In Armenia’s capital Yerevan, the shock of losing Nagorno-Karabakh brought angry protesters to Republic Square demanding to identify the culprits responsible for the debacle. Fingers pointed in the first place to Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for abandoning Nagorno-Karabakh. Next to blame were President Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the Russian peacekeeping forces for standing aside, even tacitly approving Azerbaijan’s offensive. Western institutions and governments, particularly the United States and the European Union, were on the blame list as well for failing to deter Azerbaijan’s aggression.
What happened, what did the culprits do or failed to do to deserve blame, and what can be done next?
The Facts
The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is mainly over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave with a majority Armenian population incorporated arbitrarily in Azerbaijan during the early Soviet years. Following the fall of the USSR in 1991, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992-1994 and 2020. Pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan, and mass displacement of over one million people in both countries continue to poison relations. On 2 September 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh seceded from Soviet Azerbaijan to preserve its population’s right to life, formed democratic governance institutions, and continued to self-govern until September 2023.
On 19 September, following a nine-month medieval siege of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan launched a massive offensive on the enclave, overwhelming its meager self-defense forces within 24 hours. The European Parliament called the attack “unjustified” and a “gross violation of human rights and international law”. Armenia was unprepared militarily and could not help the enclave. The fewer than 2,000 Russian peacekeepers stood aside as Azerbaijan’s forces bombarded civilian and military targets indiscriminately. Azerbaijan completely ignored toothless Western protestations to halt the offensive.
Since 12 December 2022, Azerbaijani forces had blocked the five-kilometer-long road through the Lachin Corridor, the only lifeline connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh for the supply of essential goods, thus imposing a siege on the enclave. Over the course of nine months, the siege resulted in severe shortages of food, medicine, electricity, and fuel. The Russian peacekeepers, deployed to ensure, among other tasks, the free movement of goods and people through the Lachin Corridor, were unable and unwilling to end the blockade. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued two interim decisions, in February and July 2023, ordering Azerbaijan to reopen the corridor. The international community, including the U.S., the E.U. and others repeatedly urged Azerbaijan to end the blockade. Yet, Azerbaijan ignored the ICJ decisions and international appeals.
The siege was a prelude to the 19 September all-out Azerbaijani assault against Nagorno-Karabakh. During the preceding weeks, Azerbaijan had received planeloads of military supplies from Turkey and Israel, repeating the pattern during the weeks preceding Azerbaijan’s 2020 war on Nagorno-Karabakh. Without help from Armenia and after a nine-month starvation siege, the self-defense forces of Nagorno-Karabakh were overwhelmed and capitulated within 24 hours.
In a charm offensive, Azerbaijan promised food and other humanitarian assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh, and allowed the ICRC to deliver a single convoy with 70 tons of essential supplies. Azerbaijan’s propaganda machine “flooded social media with pictures of [its] forces handing chocolates to the very same children it deprived of the most basic foodstuffs for months as they crossed into Armenia.” Most offensively, within days of seizing Stepanakert, Azerbaijan renamed one of the streets after Enver Pasha, the Ottoman architect of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
Facing defeat and humanitarian disaster, on 21 September, the Armenian authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh met with representatives of Azerbaijan in Yevlakh, just north of the enclave, to discuss their surrender. Azerbaijan demanded: (1) the complete disarmament and surrender of the Nagorno-Karabakh self-defense forces; (2) the surrender of the enclave’s leaders for “criminal” prosecution; and (3) the reintegration in Azerbaijan of the enclave’s population without any minority protections. The Russian-brokered talks ended with the dissolution of the enclave’s authorities.
The Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, fearing for their lives after a nine-month starvation siege and the international community’s impotence to end the siege, and fearful of reprisals and mass atrocities, prepared to take refuge in Armenia. With the pressure on civilians at its height, Azerbaijan opened the Lachin Corridor on September 24. Within a week, over 100,000 Armenians absconded, taking refuge in Armenia, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh was complete. More than two millennia Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh was no more, and the destruction of Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the enclave likely the next victim.
Notwithstanding the aggression and atrocities committed by one side, on September 27, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres incredibly “urged both sides to respect human rights.” On October 1 when the population had already fled Nagorno-Karabakh, a UN needs assessment mission visited Stepanakert. The mission did not have access to rural areas but noted that “between 50 and 1,000 ethnic Armenians remain” in the enclave. Among other flaws, the statement used biased language copied directly from Azerbaijan’s presidential website. Regrettably, the first UN mission to the region in 35 years of violent conflict was a shocking disappointment.
At a September 14 hearing at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim warned that the U.S. “will not countenance any action or effort … to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh… We have also made abundantly clear that the use of force is not acceptable. We give this committee our assurances that these principles will continue to guide our efforts in this region.” Five days later, Azerbaijan painfully exposed the naked truth that outcomes the West “calls ‘unacceptable’ cannot be stopped by words … alone.”
The international community’s failure to impose consequences on Azerbaijan for repeated breaches of international obligations, including repeated attacks against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and a nine-month blockade of Lachin Corridor and siege, encouraged Azerbaijan to launch the latest aggression, the ethnic cleansing, and the genocide of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. The world cannot pretend they did not see this coming.
Responsibility for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh
Azerbaijan’s Responsibility
Azerbaijan’s hereditary dictator-president Ilham Aliyev and his senior lieutenants bear criminal responsibility for the breaches of international law committed against Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Moreover, Azerbaijan breached the UN Charter’s Article 2 admonition against the threat or use of force in resolving disputes, particularly when negotiations are ongoing under separate Western and Russian mediations.
In August 2023, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno Ocampo concluded that the blockage of Lachin Corridor and the siege of Nagorno-Karabakh, then in its seventh month, “should be considered a Genocide under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention: ‘Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.’” He added, this was a Genocide by starvation. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide supported Ocampo’s conclusion, as did other scholars of Genocide.
While “ethnic cleansing” is not recognized as an independent crime under international law, the term has been acknowledged in judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and has been described as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” Such acts constitute crimes against humanity and could also fall within the meaning of Genocide.
Additionally, ethnic cleansing is referenced in the Responsibility to Protect principle adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, stating that countries “have the responsibility to protect their population from the commission of “genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.”
Moreover, “the fear/apprehension of the population – due to the coercive environment created by the months-long blockade and the recent armed attack – would meet the threshold for” the more severe crime against humanity.
On October 3, the Armenian Parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC. With this, “Armenia could file immediately a special ‘Article 12(3)’ declaration granting jurisdiction to the Court over the forcible deportation of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh onto Armenian territory.” Even though Azerbaijan has not ratified the Rome Statute, Article 12(3) could expose Aliyev and other Azerbaijani officials to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Armenian Responsibility
The Armenian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan bears the principal political responsibility for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. In September 2022, Pashinyan acknowledged the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and conceded that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan so long as the “rights and security” of the enclave’s Armenians could be guaranteed under Azerbaijani sovereignty. While the recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity is inevitable provided the border between the two countries is delineated, Pashinyan’s recognition that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan is a gratuitous concession offered without the consent of or consultation with the enclave’s authorities. Pashinyan’s giveaway, reaffirmed repeatedly throughout 2023, closed the door to international support for the continuing de facto independence and future de Jure recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence.
As a populist leader, Pashinyan was likely responding to the wishes of a segment of Armenia’s population fatigued by decades of war with Azerbaijan. These wishes corresponded with the U.S. and E.U. mediators’ preference for a quick solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
For the past year, Pashinyan was reorienting Armenia’s security umbrella from Russia to the West, naively hoping to earn the U.S. and E.U. mediators’ support in the ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan. Ultimately, Pashinyan had nothing to show for his reorientation and concessions beyond toothless expressions of concern, condemnations, and sympathies. The U.S. and E.U. mediators supported Azerbaijan’s stance regarding the conflict under the veneer of defending its territorial integrity. Pashinyan’s passive response served to whet Aliyev’s appetite and to turn his considerable military arsenal against Armenia, demanding parts of the country’s southern Zankezur or Syunik district, which Aliyev falsely calls “Western Azerbaijan”.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership as well has responsibility for the debacle. The U.S., France, and Russia, jointly within the context of the OSCE Minsk Group, advanced comprehensive proposals, among others the Madrid Principles in 2008, to prolong indefinitely the de facto independent statusof the enclave and eventually to submit its right to self-determination to a referendum. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities imprudently rejected the proposal because it required the return of territories around the enclave occupied temporarily in 1994 as a security buffer. Other opportunities were also squandered.
Following the 2020 defeat, creative compromises could have avoided the complete loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. Possibly, instead of full independence, some level of autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh could have guaranteed the rights and security of its inhabitants under the control of their elected authorities, ultimately accepting Azerbaijan’s de jure sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh but maintaining the enclave’s de facto self-determination.
In general, among the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, compromise is concomitant to weakness. accordingly, one party or another at different points rejected OSCE Minsk Group proposals. Thus, Azerbaijan’s disposition to accept any compromise was doubtful. Instead, Azerbaijan spent its petrodollar earnings to amass weapons purchased from Turkey, Israel, Russia, the U.S., and Europe, and trained for the day when it could solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by force, in its favor. Regardless, when the status quo of a violent conflict is unsustainable, advancing creative compromises could open unforeseen doors in visionary conflict resolution efforts.
Western Responsibility
In the past year, the U.S. and E.U. in coordination, and Russia separately, have been mediating peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. More than a dozen summits and foreign minister-level talks have convened. The Nagorno-Karabakh leadership has been excluded from these talks. The latest Armenian-Azerbaijani summit under E.U. mediation was scheduled for 5 October in Granada, Spain, but Aliyev cancelled his participation at the eleventh hour.
While optimists among the U.S. and E.U. mediators expected a peace agreement to be concluded between Armenia and Azerbaijan by the end of the year, Azerbaijan’s aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh and the ethnic cleansing of the enclave’s Armenians have obliterated any such rosy forecast.
Due to Azerbaijan’s increased role in supplying gas to Europe with the war in Ukraine, the E.U. and U.S. mediators wished a quick solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh status, urging the enclave’s reintegration within Azerbaijan with “guaranties for the rights and security” for its Armenian inhabitants. Yet, for the reintegration of Armenians Azerbaijan offered only citizenship rights under the country’s flawed constitution that could not guarantee rights for individual or minorities. Given decades of violent conflict and virulent Armenophobia in Azerbaijan, without robust guaranties, Armenians feared for their lives. Mediators were tone-deaf to this reality.
With the Nagorno-Karabakh status removed from the negotiation agenda, the mediators could focus on the border delineation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and communication linkages, including Azerbaijan’s demand, supported by Turkey, for a “corridor” under its control through the southern Armenian Syunik region between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave. Azerbaijan’s latter demand relies on the 9 November 2020 tripartite armistice agreement that Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan signed to end the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, paragraph 9 of which provides for “transport connections between the western regions of … Azerbaijan and [Nakhichevan] … [for] unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions.” Since the main objective of the tripartite agreement was to end all hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh (para. 1), Azerbaijan’s September 19 resumption of all-out war breached and nullified altogether the agreement. Consequently, Azerbaijan has no legal standing for its demand of a passage through Armenian territory. However, given the strategic significance of communication linkages in the South Caucasus, a mutually beneficial agreement may be possible to negotiate between the parties.
Regrettably, the U.S. and E.U. mediators opted to support Azerbaijan’s interpretation of international laws regarding territorial integrity and self-determination. The U.S., the E.U. and others took into account the evolution of international law for the recent cases of Kosovo, East Timor, and others, favoring remedial self-determination when the fundamental rights of segments of those countries were breached. Given the growing Western dependence on Azerbaijan’s goodwill to increase gas supplies to Europe, the U.S. and E.U. mediators violated their obligation to remain impartial in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and to respect their own precedents. They favored Azerbaijan’s interpretation of unconditional territorial integrity, in essence acting as the latter’s lawyers.
When by the end of September, the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh was on the road to Armenia, U.S. and European officials arrived in Armenia to express hollow concerns, grief, and sympathy, also donating paltry sums for humanitarian assistance. The U.S. and Europe, not to forget Russia, had empowered Aliyev by failing to impose consequences for Azerbaijan’s earlier breaches against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev was allowed to get away with “might makes right”, signaling that power counts more than international norms, and that if one wants peace, one must prepare for war.
Russian Responsibility
Since February 2022, Russia has been preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, and its bandwidth for geopolitical interests in the South Caucasus has narrowed considerably. Sensing this, Azerbaijan repeatedly tested the Armenian military defenses and Russia’s possible response to violations of the 2020 tripartite agreement. The blockade of the Lachin Corridor, and repeated Azerbaijani aggression against Armenian positions around Nagorno-Karabakh as well as along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border remained unchallenged. The developing Azerbaijan-Russia and Turkey-Russia transactional relations undoubtedly also influenced the permissive Russian conduct, which encouraged Azerbaijan to pursue the September 19 onslaught against Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia did not react even when in the first hours of the attack Azerbaijani shelling killed the deputy commander of its peacekeeping force.
Moreover, since Pashinyan’s 2018 election as prime minister following a “color revolution” in Armenia, President Putin has been distrustful of the journalist turned prime minister through a popular uprising. More recently, Pashinyan’s actions have been interpreted in Moscow as anti-Russian, including an unprecedented joint military exercise in Armenia with the participation of a small U.S. military contingent, Pashinyan’s spouse visiting Kyiv, and Armenia’s ratification of the ICC Statute, all during September.
Following Pashinyan’s giveaway of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status, President Putin declared that, if Armenia is prepared to give away Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, it is no longer for Russia to advocate for the enclave’s self-determination. Putin then urged Nagorno-Karabakh’s integration in Azerbaijan. Thus, Russia pivoted to supporting Azerbaijan in its quest to subjugate Nagorno-Karabakh, instead of maintaining its previously ambiguous position on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh that favored Russia’s continuing presence in the South Caucasus.
Beyond the impact on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia’s ire is likely to have catastrophic consequences for Armenia’s economy. Important pillars of Armenia’s economy, including 90% of the country’s power generation capacity, are controlled by Russian interests. Armenian agricultural exports to Russia are already facing restrictions. Some 40% of Armenia’s exports go to Russia. Also, a sizeable number of Armenians working in Russia sent in 2022 US$3.6 billion in personal remittances to their families in Armenia. Ultimately, Russia may try to “reinstate its influence over Armenia through a like-minded replacement for Pashinyan…. The aim would be to reverse Armenia’s orbit toward the West”.
What can be done now, urgently?
Urgent humanitarian needs in Armenia must be addressed first. The 100,000 refugees in Armenia need shelter, food, health care, schooling, and emotional support to preserve a modicum of dignity. They must be designated as “refugees” and the UNHCR invited to provide urgent assistance. The assistance provided by the Armenian government is insufficient. The international community has the responsibility to provide protection and care for these refugees.
Additionally, the refugees’ right to return to Nagorno-Karabakh must be preserved. However, Azerbaijan’s hollow rhetoric and bare minimum terms offered for the return of Armenians are insufficient. Concrete measures must be in place for Armenians to enjoy meaningful autonomy and minority rights under international monitoring and protection. Moreover, it is incumbent upon the international community to ensure that the homes these refugees abandoned, and their belongings are not destroyed, confiscated, looted, or otherwise damaged.
Some 300 Nagorno-Karabakh leaders are wanted by Azerbaijan for alleged war crimes committed during the enclave’s three wars. Already, some have been taken hostage, humiliated in front of cameras, and transferred to Baku prisons. Among those detained are: Ruben Vartanyan, philanthropist and former head of the enclave’s authority; Arayik Harutyunyan, Bako Saakyan, and Arkadi Ghukasyan, former presidents; David Babayan, former foreign minister; Lyova Mnatsakanyan, former defense minister; and Davit Ishkanyan, former parliament speaker. Other leaders’ whereabouts are not known.
These leaders must be freed immediately, at the very least as a confidence building measure. The international community, in particular the U.S. and the E.U. have the duty to pressure Azerbaijan to free them immediately. Additionally, Armenian POWs have been detained by Azerbaijan during the brief September fighting. Also, an unknown number of POWs remain in Azerbaijani custody since the 2020 war. Now that the war has ended, the POWs must be freed immediately in accordance with the Geneve Conventions. The “50 to 1,000” Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh – mostly elderly, sick, and injured, must be provided protection by the deployment of international eyes and ears, human rights monitors, and reporters, to the enclave. These monitors must be allowed to visit remote areas of the enclave where rumors of massacres and mass graves have emerged before any evidence is destroyed.
A robust monitoring mission, more numerous than the current EU mission, must be deployed urgently along the entire border of Armenia and Azerbaijan to prevent Azerbaijan from attacking southern Armenia in its quest to establish a corridor to Nakhichevan through sovereign Armenian territory. Consideration must be given to this mission having security enforcement powers. The alternative to monitors with enforcement powers is arming Armenia with defensive weapons to remedy the asymmetry of forces. Currently, Armenia cannot stand against the superior armed forces of Azerbaijan.
The U.S. and the E.U. have expressed regrets and disappointment for not doing more to restrain Azerbaijan. It is too late for such regrets for Nagorno-Karabakh, but not late for Armenia. However, time is of the essence. The U.S. and E.U. jointly must assist Armenia to delineate urgently its borders with Azerbaijan. Also, Armenia requires massive international economic assistance to recover from the latest debacle. Otherwise, Armenia risks to fall into internal turmoil.
More significantly, the U.S. and E.U. must stop all military assistance and sales to Azerbaijan. U.S. and E.U. sanctions could restrain Azerbaijan’s next likely aggression against southern Armenia. However, carbohydrate interests will likely preempt any such sanctions on Azerbaijan.
Beyond the urgent needs, to reach an end of conflict and sustainable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the current mediation effort must be reconsidered to provide symmetry against Azerbaijan’s military and geopolitical advantages. Moreover, mechanisms ought to be provided to address a legacy of conflict and abuses that have caused deep wounds both in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Hrair Balian has practiced conflict resolution for the past 35 years in the Middle East, Africa, Balkans, Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. He has served in leadership positions with the UN, OSCE and NGOs, including The Carter Center (Director, Conflict Resolution, 2008-2022).
Israel cannot justify weapons trade with Azerbaijan, which undermines democracies and enables military aggression and ethnic cleansing.
Israelis have not been the only people under fire this past month, however. Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev continues to celebrate his conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani advance and threat of genocide forced that mountainous region’s indigenous Armenian population to flee en masse into Armenia proper. For the first time since St. Gregory the Illuminator converted Armenia to Christianity in 301 AD, Nagorno-Karabakh will be devoid of a Christian community, except perhaps for a few whom the Azerbaijani government treats as living museum exhibits for visiting dignitaries on the stage-managed visits. The Aliyev regime, meanwhile, now openly talks about continuing its advance, perhaps even to the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
Aliyev’s decision to address disputes with Armenia by war rather than diplomacy rests largely on the qualitative edge Azerbaijan gained when Israeli companies agreed to sell him top-shelf military technology against which Armenia had no defense. Thousands of deaths over the past three years were, therefore, unnecessary.
Prior to the Israeli weapons sales, Minsk Group diplomats from the United States, France, and even Russia, alongside their Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, had already outlined a far more comprehensive and just agreement. Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators had largely agreed to an Armenian return of occupied Azerbaijani districts, swaps of unsustainable enclaves, and a right of return to Nagorno-Karabakh for Azeris who fled in the early 1990s. The agreement would have also enshrined the basic democratic freedoms that Nagorno-Karabakh enjoyed. Discussions had advanced to discuss timelines and identify potential external peacekeeping forces, perhaps from the Scandinavian countries. What changed Aliyev’s calculation was, in part, the advanced weapons systems Israel was willing to provide. Between 2016 and 2020, Israel accounted for almost 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s “major arms” imports.
Israel might justify its weapons trade with Azerbaijan in arms-for-energy calculations or Azerbaijan’s willingness to assist Israeli infiltration of Iran. Such excuses fall flat. The Abraham Accords meant that Israel had energy options beyond Azerbaijan. Journalists might criticize the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) human rights record and foreign policy, but its political rights and civil liberty scores are double those of Azerbaijan, according to the latest Freedom House rankings. Most importantly, the UAE does not incite genocide against its rivals, nor does it harbor irredentist ambitions as Aliyev does.
Nor is the threat Iran poses to Israel a reason to back an increasingly erratic dictator. Not only does Azerbaijan have its own reasons to counter Iran regardless of any Israeli incentives, but Israel also has other options in Iraqi Kurdistan, a region they have thoroughly penetrated. In hindsight, the weaponry Israel exported to Azerbaijan would have been better utilized to defend Israel’s own borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Nor should anyone in Washington accept Jerusalem’s arguments that their arms dealing with Azerbaijan was strategic only. Money matters. For years, Israeli officials downplayed American concerns about Israel’s technology trade with the Chinese Communist Party. When push came to shove, Israeli businesses hoped to profit off the trade. When the diplomatic dispute came to a head, Israel’s initial refusal and arrogant dismissal of American concerns escalated the crisis unnecessarily.
Just as the Biden administration rallies to prevent the escalation of attacks on Israel, it is also imperative the United States act to constrain Aliyev before he commits even more gross violations of human rights. Azerbaijani forces wearing arms patches celebrating the first Armenian Genocide raise concern about his ultimate intent. So does the arrest of both billionaire and former State Minister Reuben Vardanyan (a former colleague of Samantha Power at the Aurora Foundation) and Foreign Minister David Babayan. Every Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Turkey sees the parallels between their detention and the 1915 arrests of Armenian intellectuals that kicked off the first Armenian Genocide. When it comes to genocidal intent, the only difference between the Azerbaijani army and Hamas is the targets of their ambition.
Just as congressmen demand Washington reconsider its relationship with Qatar, a state that effectively serves as Hamas’ banker, so too do representatives and senators demand the Biden administration cut off military aid to Azerbaijan. Frankly, both steps are long overdue, but if the goal is to prevent further Azerbaijani aggression and to compel the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from dozens of square miles they occupy in Armenia proper, it is also necessary to sanction the Israeli enablers of Azerbaijani aggression and ethnic cleansing. While defending Israel in its existential struggle is right, such support should not mean sacrificing the world’s oldest Christian state. Standing up to racist aggression should not be an either-or prospect; we can do both.
This is why it is necessary to target Israeli individuals complicit in Azerbaijan’s genocide with Magnitsky Act sanctions.
In 2017, Israel’s Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd. reportedly demonstrated the use of a suicide drone against an Armenian position in order to win an Azerbaijani contract. Israel’s state attorney’s office summoned Amos Matan, the company’s chief executive officer; his deputy Meir Rizmovitch; development director Haim Hivashar; and marketing director David Goldin. In 2020, Matan stepped down against the backdrop of the criminal investigation and appointed Moshe Elazer, the naval systems director at Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, to be his replacement.
In 2019, the Israeli Defense Ministry reinstated the Aeronautics Defense Systems’ export license so that the company might resume arms sales to Azerbaijan. Subsequently, dozens of cargo flights departed Israel for Azerbaijan, allegedly loaded with arms. Such weapons transfers undermined multilateral diplomacy and convinced Aliyev he had a license to kill and made Israel complicit in Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic cleansing.
If Aeronautics Defense System’s peacetime attack on Armenian positions was a shot heard around the South Caucasus, perhaps designating past and current officers of the company under the Global Magnitsky Act could be a shot heard from Jerusalem to Ankara and Baku to Moscow. Israel has every right to act in defense of its own security, given the existential threat it faces from Iran and the terrorist challenges it faces from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Still, Israeli government officials and business people should have no right to undermine democracies or grease the wheels of ethnic cleansing. Being both a US ally and a terror victim themselves should not provide immunity for Israeli defense executives to profit from similar abuses.
Israelis are right that they are a sovereign country, not an American satrapy. They can make their own decisions. By the same logic, however, they should not expect U.S. support for the commercial decisions their defense executives make; quite the contrary. When Israel acts as egregiously as it has in the South Caucasus, those most involved in drone exports should expect consequences. If they do not wish to face those, then it is time they find a better client than Azerbaijan.
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.