Between Paris and Moscow: Karabakh separatists in search of salvation
Analysis by Sergei Bogdan

ANALYTICS  04 September 2023 - 15:15

On September 1 Garabagh separatists leader Arayik Harutyunyan resigned. On his Facebook, he lamented that due to the defeat of 2020 and its consequences, the separatist leadership lost his supporters. Like, if no one supports, I am stepping down.

Indeed, at a rally in Khankendi on Monday, he got hit by people who called the main separatist to account. In fact, reality again and again shows the futility of Garabagh separatism. Neither Yerevan, nor Western countries, nor Russia are going to fight with Azerbaijan to save this expansionist project of Armenian nationalists, which is disintegrating before our eyes.

However, this does not stop the revanchists from taking dangerous actions, during which they prevent the opening of transport communications between Garabagh and the rest of the territory of Azerbaijan and persistently seek to create a pretext for "humanitarian intervention". Skirmishes in the border areas of Azerbaijan and Armenia on September 1 were another confirmation of this.

Separatism as a refuge for scoundrels

As even observers favorable to the separatists admit, at the moment, Azerbaijan is successfully carrying out "political destabilization" of the structures of the Garabagh separatists, and their leader Arayik Harutyunyan "himself has become an irritant for the local population".

Behind the oaths of love for the people, etc., contradictory moments have long been hidden there. The well-known columnist, Naira Hayruman, noted that Harutyunyan, from the very moment of his “promotion to the leadership” in Khankendi, was perceived as a representative of the former leadership of the separatists and “the embodiment of the oligarchic fusion of power and business, without hiding his involvement in large, even by Armenian standards, business, while at the same time, there were many cases when, under the guise of government programs, when he was "prime minister", projects of a dubious nature were carried out.

In other words, Harutyunyan's departure is a serious shift in the hierarchy of separatist leaders, and not only in connection with his revanchist sentiments, but also in connection with his key role among the separatists. It was yet another setback for the revanchist forces after Ruben Vardanyan, a Russian billionaire, who rushed to Garabagh to rescue a separatist project, was forced to resign as separatist "minister of state" earlier this year.

However, the surrender of the revanchists is still far away. On August 7, the "parliament" of the Garabagh separatists elected Dashnak David Ishkhanyan as its chairman. This active participant in the Armenian territorial expansion of the 1990s demands "to continue the struggle at any cost for the sake of preserving and strengthening statehood". According to him, “while the people of Artsakh and Artsakh say “no” to all those proposals that strike at the strategic goal they have adopted, we can state the following: nothing is over”.

Ishkhanyan flatly refuses to restore communications between Garabagh and the rest of Azerbaijan through the opening of the Aghdam road. He now repeats Harutyunyan's rhetoric in a more radical version, assuring that the "authorities" of the separatists will never allow the use of any other roads than the route between Khankendi and Armenia, passing through Lachin. In other words, no means of communication with the rest of Azerbaijan, everything - only through Armenia!

This position sounded even more bellicose after the other day, the assistant to the Azerbaijani president, Hikmat Hajiyev, in an interview with the BBC, stressed that the Lachin road would open within a day after the opening of the road through Aghdam, and the residents of Garabagh would enjoy the same rights as all other citizens of Azerbaijan. And a couple of weeks before that, it turned out that Azerbaijanis and Garabagh Armenians had already agreed to open the Aghdam and Lachin roads. But the agreement was thwarted by representatives of the separatists, who, first demanded the simultaneous opening of both roads, and then a ban on the import of goods of Azerbaijani origin through Aghdam! It is hard to imagine a more absurd demand.

Commenting on Thursday the shipment of food from Baku for the population of the Garabagh region, Ishkhanyan generally said that he considers this “step of the Azerbaijanis unacceptable”! One can object, but the same character announced this week that he is ready to meet with representatives of the Azerbaijani government both in a third country and in Azerbaijan, but in the presence of a third party. He complained, however, that so far, no practical steps have been taken for this.

But how sincere are these words? After all, the separatists themselves do not deny that in July-early August, they disrupted the agreements with Baku on a meeting in Yevlakh between representatives of the Azerbaijani government and representatives of the population of the Garabagh region. To do this, they used as an excuse, among other things, the detention by the Azerbaijani security forces of Vagif Khachatryan, who is accused of killing Azerbaijanis in 1991.

All this militancy and intransigence of Ishkhanyan - Harutyunyan's possible successor - begins to look like a farce, if one takes into account one nuance. Making revanchist statements, Ishkhanyan supplements them with calls to strengthen the "army" of the separatists. However, these detachments do not represent a serious military force (there were plenty of clashes to assess their abilities, although one can simply compare the structure of forces and equipment).

In the event of a war, they can only hide in the mountains so as not to be destroyed by the Azerbaijani military. In other words, this "army" and boasting about its presence do not reinforce Ishkhanyan's tirades, but only provoke Azerbaijan. Baku has repeatedly made it clear that a meaningful dialogue with the representatives of Garabagh will begin only after the dissolution of this "army". Consequently, Ishkhanyan's rhetoric about the "army" is only aimed at disrupting a constructive dialogue.

Garabagh as a pedestal for the Dashnak campaign against Yerevan

But the point here is not only and not so much in the ideological dogmatism of the Dashnak Ishkhanyan, which does not allow him to reconsider the results of the Armenian territorial expansion and the separatism generated by it in the Azerbaijan territory.

Ishkhanyan and the Dashnaks have another, more cynical immediate goal: namely, to take advantage of separatist structures and nationalist hysteria (they say that Armenians in Garabagh are being starved) in order to once again take power... in Yerevan. And the Garabagh separatist project is the best suited to guarantee the “drown” of Pashinyan and his team, undermining the process of normalizing international relations in the region.

Judge for yourself, Ishkhanyan, having barely found himself in the "speaker's post", demanded to develop ties with Armenia, especially harshly criticizing the lack of inter-parliamentary relations with Armenia. After all, indeed, the “inter-parliamentary commission on cooperation” had not met for almost two years, and in vain numerous letters were sent from Khankendi to Yerevan to convene a meeting. At the beginning of the year, opposition deputies asked Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan to hold at least an online meeting. Simonyan, Pashinyan's party ally, did not seem to refuse, but he never held a meeting.

The logic of Simonyan's actions is clear - the negotiation process with Baku is incompatible with such steps. The logic of the actions of the Dashnaks is also understandable - through such steps, Pashinyan's negotiating efforts can be torpedoed, which will lead to his departure from power and open the way to power for the Dashnaks. Their hatred for the Armenian prime minister has long been known: back in the summer of 2021, they organized an attack on Pashinyan’s motorcade in Paris, after which the Armenian authorities stopped letting foreign Dashnaks into Armenia.

Like Putin...

But for now, it's all in vain. No wonder, when retiring, the main Garabagh separatist Arayik Harutyunyan stated that he made this decision “taking into account my interaction with all internal and external players and the general public in recent weeks”. In other words, taking into account the loss in all areas, among which special attention was paid to the external.

But back in December, Harutyunyan managed to go to France, where he gave a high-profile interview to France 24. Its meaning is “foreign countries will help us”. Having gone for broke, he publicly offered the West a deal - reformatting the current regime of the Russian presence in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan into something completely different, taking into account the interests of the West (primarily France). Namely: "the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers expires in 2025, and there is a need to supplement it with international guarantees, given the fact that the realization of the right to self-determination and independence is the only effective guarantee of the security of the people of Nagorno-Garabagh."

With France and the West, however, nothing happened - in the same Paris, Harutyunyan was not accepted. Then again there was a series of defeats in connection with attempts to use the EU police-civil mission, Macron personally, to play with Scholz's ambiguous words about “self-determination”, etc. The other day, the Western allies of the separatists tried again to put pressure on Baku - and again in vain. The Belgian foreign minister, who arrived in Baku, did not even get a reception from President Aliyev, and the personal representative of the OSCE Chairman, who “inspected” the entrance to the Lachin corridor, was not allowed into Baku at all.

The current government of Azerbaijan is not going to give up the sovereignty and independence of the Azerbaijani people in favor of Western visitors.

Against the backdrop of this gaping failure in the western direction, in early July, Harutyunyan, as a gesture of desperation, sent a letter of help to Russian President Putin. However, they say that it was the opposition in the camp of the separatists that forced Harutyunyan "to apply directly to the leadership of Russia to resolve both humanitarian and political issues".

Speaking about this, Metakse Hakobyan, a “deputy” from the opposition Ardarutyun faction in the separatist “parliament”, stated that “the Armenian authorities not only refused, but are taking all possible and impossible steps to finally transfer Garabagh to Azerbaijan. And in this case, there is no other way out but to apply directly to the Russian authorities”.

Hakobyan does not hide the fact that the hopes of the separatists are connected with external intervention and hints that Putin can (and is even inclined!) to stop the reintegration of the Garabagh residents, who are under the rule of the separatists, into Azerbaijan. But, they say, for the Russian president “it is very difficult, because both interested parties put an identical negotiating process on the negotiating table, that is, both sides clearly see Garabagh as part of Azerbaijan.

Therefore, he has difficulties, but he also has obligations to maintain both security and humanitarian issues here.” Needless to say, this absurd desire to wishful thinking only illustrates the desperate situation that the Armenian nationalists who seized the land of Azerbaijan find themselves in at the present time.

...or Macron!

However, they themselves believe that they have the next plan of miraculous salvation - through the organization of "humanitarian intervention". In this regard, uttering loud words about “genocide”, “the road of life” and lamenting that, they say, the inhabitants of Garabagh are starving, Armenian nationalists cynically play on human feelings and devalue the most important concepts.

And in parallel with these terrible accusations, significant events took place the other day. On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani Red Crescent Society sent trucks with 40 tons of food cargo along the Aghdam road to Garabagh. By evening, the Armenian nationalists did not allow these vehicles to enter the territory still controlled by the militants.

The separatists desperately need a catastrophe. Their media do not hide this, stating: "Artsakh demands to restore contact with Armenia and not be distracted by humanitarian problems". This thesis is supported by amazing statements allegedly made by some Garabagh people. Like, one woman said: “My child does not need food assistance, for which you will have to pay for the safety of your relatives... Take your trucks back... I demand that they immediately open the corridor and forever, and allow us to determine our own next steps.”

And another resident demanded: “We must not allow the corridor to be opened only for the passage of the column. It is necessary that the convoy be allowed through only on the condition that unimpeded passage from Artsakh to Armenia and back will be opened once and for all.”

Without accepting the food sent from Baku (not even by the government of the country, but by the Red Crescent Society!), the separatists clearly hope that they will be able to create an unbearable situation in the region, achieve the passage of a convoy with goods from Armenia and open the Lachin corridor - for which the emphasis is on the "exclusively humanitarian nature" of goods from Armenia.

In order to “push through” a long-stuck convoy from Armenia itself, the Armenian diaspora of France organized this week another, already “French” convoy, accompanied by the mayors of Paris, Strasbourg and some other persons. In order for the uncontrolled flow of ammunition, equipment and manpower for the separatist formations to flow along the Lachin road again, it is necessary to create pressure on Baku. And what will help this better than the systematically heated international indignation in connection with the "humanitarian situation" in Garabagh?

In connection with the fantastic plans to provoke a "humanitarian intervention", the Armenian media hyped a recent interview with French President Macron. In it, he really focused on three crises - in Ukraine, Armenia (actually in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan) and Niger - apparently linking them between. “We have always said that we are in favor of self-determination,” Macron said, which, in translation into human language, means he has always been for the Garabagh separatists, who expelled hundreds of thousands from the region, killed tens of thousands, and called it all “self-determination”.

And already this week it became known that the French government is going to submit a certain resolution on the "Lachin corridor" to the UN Security Council. Armenian nationalists began to promote the version that, they say, “based on the logic of Macron, the resolution may contain a proposal to sanction the UN Security Council for “humanitarian intervention”.

But this interpretation is, to put it mildly, far-fetched. After all, even in an interview with Le Point, Macron refused to talk about the “genocide” against Armenians, revanchist circles are simply misleading their supporters. And it's hard to believe that the French will promote a certain resolution in the UN Security Council now, although last month they did not take the slightest steps for this during a special meeting of this body?

Let us summarize. A balanced analysis of the situation shows that the attempts of the revanchist forces to involve the West or Russia in the efforts to revive separatism in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan are based on an obvious bluff. Having staked on the refusal to compromise even in an absolutely hopeless situation, they, in fact, assure their supporters that the material reality is unimportant, and to save it, it is enough to deny it, in particular, to refuse negotiations even when pressed to the wall. And, of course, you need to believe that the West will save you.

To say that all this is absurd and illogical is an understatement. The whole history of Armenia is dotted with examples of how such an approach led the Armenians to defeat and decline over and over again. And not only the Armenians - in the history of the region, entire nations - from the Assyrians to the Iraqi Kurds, found themselves in a catastrophic situation as a result of their decision to put everything to help from afar and ignore the compromise solutions offered by the more powerful side.

Caliber.Az