Azerbaijan Escalates Genocide
The authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan, led by the “Democratic Dictator” Ilham Aliyev, began indiscriminate shelling of the Republic of Artsakh.
The latest wave of aggression began Tuesday and has resulted in the destruction of civilian residences in the capital city Stepanakert, with several children seriously wounded so far.
Azerbaijan began its genocidal operation in December with the blockade of Artsakh’s only reliable road, the Lachin Corridor, which has resulted in the deprivation of food, fuel, and medicine over the course of nine months.
Aliyev’s decision to escalate the war from starvation to shelling, could be attributed to the West’s increasing interest in protect the indigenous Christian Armenians from being eradicated from their ancestral homeland.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing last week to scrutinize the Department of State’s failure to hold Aliyev accountable for his actions.
Unfortunately, it may be a case of too little, too late. The United States and Israel have been prolific suppliers of sophisticated military equipment to Azerbaijan for years.
The aim has ostensibly been to have a staging ground in Azerbaijan to conduct operations against Iran. Critics of this policy equate it to America’s supplying of weapons to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to curtail Soviet Russia.
Short-sighted policy makers often make decisions most American are not informed about, particularly in foreign affairs, which more often than not, results in devastation for future generations to clean up.
With the Mujahideen, America was dragged into a 20-year war because Washington D.C. acted without a care to the consequences. With Azerbaijan, America’s post Cold War support of the oil-rich dictatorial Aliyev family in Azerbaijan has led to the deaths of thousands of Christian Armenians.
Azerbaijan’s Head of Foreign Policy makes claim parroted by many western journalists and policy-makers.
Azerbaijan is presenting its attack on Artsakh as an “anti-terrorist operation,” similar to Russia’s justifications for Ukraine.
Azerbaijan wants the world to believe this conflict is an internal matter, and many in the West who are apathetic towards the region, or benefit from Azerbaijan’s extensive history of bribery, would have the world believe that Artsakh belongs to Azerbaijan - full stop.
This view is in error for two reasons:
Artsakh has been an Armenian enclave since biblical times, whereas Azeris, as a distinct bloodline, only came into existence after extensive intermingling between the Persian and Turkic peoples. Azerbaijan only exists, because the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey) assisted the Azeris living around Baku - the capital of Azerbaijan - to oust Russian leaders and massacre the indigenous Armenian population. The international community accepted Azerbaijan as a distinct entity, and can just as easily reject Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, owing to its reliance on post 1900 decision-making.
Even if Azerbaijan were to have a claim to Armenian lands, the world already acknowledged in cases like Syria, that the leader of a country is not entitled to stamp out dissent or protests by violent military force. The United Nations, and other international bodies, were formed for the preservation of human rights, as well as the acknowledgement that if an autocratic leader harms one’s own citizens, the humanitarian crisis has the knock-on effect to spill out into other countries, which is why sovereignty alone is no justification for committing war crimes and genocide against one’s own citizens. The Ottoman Empire demonstrated this case in 1915 by causing the deaths and forced deportations of 1.5 million Armenians from within its territory. Over a hundred years later, we are still feeling the effects of the first Armenian Genocide.
The time for equivocation and placating a rabid tyrant, like Aliyev, must come to an end in order to avert a disaster.
The United States must finally rectify a past mistake and legally recognize the Republic of Artsakh as a sovereign, independent nation with a right to all land that has ancestrally been part of the Karabakh region.
A multi-national peacekeeping contingent must be deployed to the Caucasus to prevent Azerbaijan and its allies from harassing and shooting border populations located in Armenia and Artsakh.
Azerbaijan must be sanctioned and cut off from international partnerships and engagements until such a time as Azerbaijan ceases all operations against Artsakh, respects Artsakh’s right to live and govern on their ancestral land, and relinquishes all land claims to Artsakh, Armenia, or any other portion of territory in any country other than the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Failure to act against Azerbaijan will not only result in a genocide, but other nations will take advantage of the world’s complacent apathy by invading other nations as well.
Already, Turkey is eyeing Greek territory, as well as expanding its illegal occupation of Cyprus. And China is increasingly rattling its sabers against Taiwan.
If the world fails to protect Artsakh, China and Turkey may very well decide that the world’s support of Ukraine is merely an extension of the West’s historical anti-Russian bias, and not the will to protect human rights.
