Marukyan’s bewilderingly sanctimonious remonstration to Klaar “Cherry-picking” mentality at display

A gruesomely graphic video allegedly showing Armenian soldiers being subjected to an extrajudicial execution by Azerbaijani servicemen is not just questionable in its authenticity, but also a very clear example of how the peace negotiations between the two countries are susceptible to triggers that are hard to predict or counteract.

The footage went viral in the unregulated world of social media just before the October 2 meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers in Geneva, rendering its timing both “unfortunate” and rather “suspicious”.

Naturally, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General’s Office launched a comprehensive investigation to determine the veracity of the video. Although the last word on whether it was genuine is yet to be determined, it is abundantly clear that the allegation is being used as a brickbat against Azerbaijan, with Yerevan calling it “irrefutable evidence of another war crime by Baku".

Furthermore, an attempt has been made to extricate this from a series of similar videos pointing to the exercising of illegal Armenian warfare practices, both during the Second Karabakh War and subsequently.

This is clearly visible from the way the Armenian Ambassador-at-Large Edmon Marukyan reacted to EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Toivo Klaar’s recent tweets on the subject. As for Yerevan, the validity of the footage is already beyond doubt, it expects that its own "cherry-picking" method of examining a wide range of reports will be mimicked by the international community at large.

The deep hypocrisy of the entire diatribe is that, although there is a considerable body of strong evidence regarding Armenian war crimes enacted during the Second Karabakh War, in relation to which Yerevan shrunk from undertaking a proper internal investigation, Manukyan, as a purportedly human-rights conscious man, has never deigned to utter a single word on his country’s doleful record of warfare practices.

In 2020, the Armenian Armed Forces targeted the civilian cities of Ganga and Barda, which were not military targets. Those steps construed a flagrant violation of international law, as the justifying principle of warfare necessity was not followed. Civilians were not used as a shield there, for those cities were far away from the conflict zone, rendering the idea of aiming at them nonsensical.

It should not be overlooked that decisions of this kind could only have been taken by the higher echelons of Armenia’s political-military leadership, with the likely probability that the Defence Minister, if not the Prime Minister, was a key decision-maker and ill-informed strategist.

If it is justice and an urge for the punishment for war crimes that Armenia seeks, it would not have gone amiss had Yerevan engaged in a healthy dose of self-deprecation and dissolute naval-gazing to look at its own doings, thereby assessing their conformity with exalted humane principles.

However, it is not self-deprecation, but a desire to snatch at a chance to besmirch the reputation of the opposite side, with the hope that this will derail the fragile peace process, upon which Armenia’s leadership is set. This construes a fundamental weakness of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s position. Armenia is unwilling to sign a peace treaty, as its prospective content will enshrine too many critical points with which its population and hierarchy have not yet come to terms.

There is a constant cacophony perpetuated by Yerevan that Azerbaijan incorrigibly refuses to release Prisoners of War (PoWs) and arbitrarily conducts extra-judicial executions. This claim is erroneous on two grounds.

First of all, the notion of a PoW is strict. Its use in relation to saboteurs, for instance, fails to satisfy legal requirements. Baku has consistently claimed that all the Armenian PoWs have already been returned. On October 5, Azerbaijan released 17 Armenian detainees, as a sign of goodwill. Again, it is a matter of critical import to reiterate here that they were not PoWs, and their repatriation was an act guided by humanitarian principles, not those of imperative legal necessity.

As to the point on arbitrary extra-judicial executions, these all derive from the Armenian side’s unilateral verdict, allegedly based on “the study of terrain, comparison with similar videos, as well as the complex combination of weather conditions”.  Such an evaluation, to put it mildly, cannot be taken on face value.

The release of this disturbing and unverified footage has had a poisonous impact on the current phase of the Azerbaijani-Armenian peace process. Baku does not seem to be rattled. In all probability, it will keep following the peace agenda trajectory. Armenia will likely cease to be vociferous after some time.

But it is also true that, so long as a conclusive deal putting a definitive end to all the conflicting points between the sides remains unsigned on the table, unsullied by ink, mendacious allegations of this kind will continue to forcefully make their way to public attention, obscuring the salient points of the discourse that form the basis of the ongoing negotiations.