The festive season has been a time of festivities, however, for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (called Artsakh in Armenian), every day that passes is a struggle for survival.
For nearly a month, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade along the only road connecting the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia, cutting off the region’s only lifeline with the outside world.
As a result, more than 120,000 Armenians now face critical shortages of food, medical materials and fuel. Patients in intensive care may simply not be transported to Armenia for life-saving treatment, which has already resulted in one death. And in the first week of the blockade, Azerbaijan cut off combustible materials, leaving the region without its main source of heating at the beginning of winter.
The blockade began on December 12, 2022, when an organization of self-proclaimed ‘eco-activists’ held a protest along the Lachin Corridor, claiming that the Artsakh government was ‘illegally’ mining gold and copper-molybdenum and using the road to transport those minerals. to Armenia
But Azerbaijan’s far-fetched attempt to make it difficult to understand its culpability for imposing the blockade is not fooling anyone. Not only would this protest have the singular honor of being the first in Azerbaijan’s fashionable history that its kleptocratic authoritarian regime has not tried to brutally repress: the particular ties that many of the so-called militants have with the ruling regime, the presence of non-public foot soldiers in the crowd, and the blatantly nationalist cries of the protesters belie their supposed aims.
Azerbaijan’s purpose is clear: to assert its dominance over the region by suffocating and starving other Armenians on the brink of extinction. For Armenians in Artsakh, this is nothing new.
Azerbaijan’s army workers’ corps stands guard at a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor, the only Armenian-populated land link with Armenia in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, as Azerbaijani environmental activists protest what they claim is illegal mining, Dec. 27, 2022.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan has been ruthless in its attempts to subjugate the Armenian enclave. the escalation of violence against Armenia throughout the country. A war that followed allowed Artsakh to secure its autonomy and a ceasefire agreement that lasted until September 2020, when Azerbaijan abandoned decades of multilateral international relations and introduced a war of territorial conquest.
After a barbaric crusade in which Azerbaijan systematically committed war crimes and human rights violations, adding illegal transfers of homes, schools, churches and hospitals, the execution of civilian captives and the ethnic cleansing of more than 70 percent of the territory of Artsakh, the war ended with a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia. But even since the end of active hostilities, Baku’s terror crusade is a truth for the Armenian people.
More than 40,000 Armenians have been forcibly displaced and are returning home, while more than a hundred Armenian prisoners of war remain illegally detained in Azerbaijan, where they have been subjected to torture and mental abuse. Armenian cultural heritage sites in the spaces conquered through Azerbaijan have been systematically desecrated and destroyed. And last September, Azerbaijan introduced a raid on the sovereign territory of Armenia, committing horrific war crimes, adding the maiming of Armenian women infantry and the execution of several unarmed Armenian prisoners of war.
Azerbaijan has not only not been held guilty of such relentless acts of aggression, but has been constantly rewarded through the foreign network despite its conduct.
In fact, the U. S. The US and EU see Azerbaijan as a spouse in diversifying Europe’s energy source, a way to free the continent from its dependence on Russian power after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
To gain Baku’s support, the Western powers presented generous incentives. Earlier this year, Brussels pledged to invest more than €2 billion in Azerbaijan’s energy sector and, amid its deadlock, recently facilitated a new regional energy deal with Baku.
The United States, for its part, has allocated piles of millions of dollars in security assistance to Azerbaijan. In the 1990s, Congress passed Article 907 of the Law on Support for FREEDOM, which explicitly prohibited the provision of assistance to Azerbaijan for its aggression against Armenia. and Artsakh and its blockade of the region the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. But in an attempt to get help for U. S. military operations, he was able to get help from the U. S. military. With the U. S. Department of Transportation in Afghanistan (and later, Iraq), an amendment was introduced allowing the president to waive Section 907 restrictions when deemed in the interest of U. S. national security.
In the years leading up to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan was allocated more than $120 million in direct military assistance. aid to Baku, despite the blatant war crimes and human rights violations perpetrated in its attack on Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
In the West’s calculation, Armenian lives have a fair value to pay for Azerbaijan’s energy.
But while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would possibly have served as a boost for this renewed investment in Azerbaijan, it is also what makes Azerbaijan Western to Azerbaijan even more unacceptable.
If the purpose of U. S. policy in the region is to counter Russia’s ability to pay for its expansionist war against Ukraine, it is hard to see how Azerbaijan’s emboldening in the midst of its expansionist assault on Armenia can achieve this.
Protesters wave an Armenian flag as they attend a rally in Stepanakert, capital of Azerbaijan’s self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh region, on Dec. 25, 2022.
While the EU and the US have While the US is determined to provide Azerbaijan with a “reliable” power partner, Baku’s moves tell another story. Even with the incentives and impunity granted through the West, Azerbaijan continues to expand its power cooperation with Russia. Earlier this year, Moscow increased its stake in Azerbaijan’s major fuel fields to 20%, making it one of the major players (after British Petroleum) in Azerbaijan’s flagship mission to “diversify” Europe’s energy source. And earlier this month, Russia’s Gazprom pledged to source Azerbaijan with one billion cubic meters of herbal fuel to meet domestic demand.
This has cast doubt not only on Azerbaijan’s ability to meet Europe’s needs, but also on its commitment to excluding Moscow from Europe’s energy supply chain. authoritarian regime authorizing and allowing another.
While the United States would arguably view the continued provision of military assistance to Azerbaijan as a small value to pay to ensure its readiness to contain Russia, the resolve to embolden and enrich a belligerent authoritarian regime amid its brazen attack on one of the region’s only territories also could not be more at odds with Washington’s supposed commitment to democracy and democracy. human rights.
For Biden’s leadership to be consistent in its reaction to combating authoritarian expansionism, it will have to act to ensure that emergency humanitarian aid is provided to the besieged population of Artsakh, and impose curtain costs on Azerbaijan to deter its relentless aggression. This comes with the implementation of restrictions on the provision of military assistance to Azerbaijan and the imposition of targeted sanctions on Azerbaijani officials implicated in the commission of war crimes. against Armenia through coercion, intimidation and the use of force are unacceptable.
When President Biden identified the Armenian genocide in 2021, he pledged to “renew our shared interest in preventing long-term atrocities from happening anywhere in the world. “It has a chance to deliver on that promise, or the threat that “never back again” will become little more than an empty slogan.
The prices of inaction may not be higher. Failure to hold Azerbaijan accountable would not only give the green light to this genocide of attrition opposed to the Armenians of Artsakh, but would demonstrate the limits of Washington’s ability to its despotic allies and signal its willingness to abandon communities at risk to the whims of regional autocrats when geopolitically expedient.