Rebuilding Karabakh: Azerbaijan’s bold revival of Aghdara Caliber.Az review

Over the past five years, Azerbaijan has prioritised state funding for the revival of the Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur economic regions. In these areas, villages are being rebuilt, new housing is being constructed, and essential utilities and enterprises are being developed. A key focus in the territories liberated from occupation has also been the expansion of “green” energy.

On January 13, President Ilham Aliyev visited several settlements in the Aghdara district, where he met with residents of four restored villages and inspected ongoing reconstruction projects. The president also took part in the inauguration of industrial facilities and a small hydroelectric power plant, and laid the foundation for a Special Operations Centre.

During the implementation of the “First State Program for the Great Return to the Territories of Azerbaijan Liberated from Occupation,” the Karabakh region has seen massive-scale construction projects. Cities and villages are being restored, alongside roads, energy, and utility infrastructure. Housing and social facilities are being built, and industrial clusters, commercial, and service facilities are being commissioned.

The funding for these initiatives is equally impressive: over the past five years, the amount allocated for reconstruction in the liberated territories has reached 21.5 billion manats  ($12.64 billion), and in the coming years, total budget allocations for these projects are expected to reach around 30 billion manats ($17.64 billion).

All of this work remains under the direct supervision of the head of state, who regularly visits the territories liberated from occupation and takes part in laying foundations as well as inaugurating infrastructure, industrial, residential, and other facilities. This week, President Ilham Aliyev visited several settlements in the Aghdara district, where he reviewed ongoing reconstruction efforts and met with residents of four villages that have recently been resettled in the restored communities.

“I have visited all these villages — Chapar, Heyvali, Childiran, and Ashaghi Oratagh. The houses have been beautifully repaired and restored. Over the past two years, we have conducted monitoring in all settlements and villages of the liberated Aghdara district. In the first phase, we identified the villages to be restored, and former internally displaced persons have already returned to nine villages in the district,” the president said during his meeting with local residents. “Azerbaijan has restored its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Azerbaijanis have returned to their ancestral lands and will live here with pride, happily, and comfortably.”

Notably, in the four villages mentioned, extensive renovation and new housing construction took place between 2024 and 2025. Roads were paved, energy and other utility infrastructure restored, artesian wells drilled, and schools, medical centres, and other social facilities built.

Aliyev highlighted that, over the two years since the 2023 anti-terrorist operation, life has been fully revived in these regions — Aghdara, Khojaly, Khankendi, and Khojavend. In fact, displaced residents began returning to other previously occupied territories five years ago.

Today, approximately 73,000 people live in the Karabakh region, including returning displaced families as well as citizens working on construction projects or pursuing education in the liberated territories. All essential services and infrastructure have been established: electricity, water, and gas are available, roads have been constructed, and employment opportunities opened.

“Today, we marked the opening of the hydroelectric power plant with a capacity of nearly 15 megawatts in the village of Gozlukorpu. This region is now fully supplied with electricity, and the energy produced here is also transmitted to other regions of Azerbaijan. Roads are being built and expanded from here to Tartar and up to Kalbajar.

Today, I also familiarized myself with the operations of the ‘Damirli’ Ore Processing Complex, where nearly 1,000 jobs are being created. There will be no problem with employment. Both the state and the private sector are creating conditions. At the same time, taking advantage of this beautiful and refreshing nature, it is essential to engage in agriculture, animal husbandry, beekeeping, and fruit growing so that you can live here comfortably and prosperously,” said Aliyev.

He also highlighted the district’s rich, fertile, and picturesque natural environment, which offers strong prospects for the development of a tourism cluster, as well as its vast potential for agriculture — including crop cultivation, livestock breeding, beekeeping, fruit growing, and other agricultural activities.

In particular, with the participation of the president, the Gozlukorpu Hydroelectric Power Plant was officially commissioned in the village of Gozlukorpu in the Aghdara district. Constructed on the region’s largest waterway, the Tartar River, the facility has an installed capacity of 14.7 MW.

The plant’s main water intake structure is located at an elevation of 955 meters above sea level, from where a 13-kilometre derivation pipeline has been laid. The state-of-the-art hydroelectric equipment enables continuous operation at a minimum of 25 per cent capacity during low-water periods and at full capacity during periods of high water flow.

The station has been connected to Azerbaijan’s unified power grid via a newly built open switchgear facility and integrated into the national digital energy management system through a fibre-optic communication line. According to projections, the Gozlukorpu Hydroelectric Power Plant will generate an average of 43 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, allowing savings of approximately 9.5 million cubic meters of natural gas and preventing the release of about 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

Over the past five years, nearly 40 small diversion and run-of-river hydroelectric power plants have been reconstructed or built from the ground up in the Karabakh region, with a combined installed capacity of 307 MW. The greatest potential for such projects lies in the mountainous areas along the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus, as well as in rivers and runoff from mountain reservoirs and lakes, which together provide an annual water inflow of approximately 2.56 billion cubic meters.

These locations are well suited for the construction of small diversion and run-of-river hydropower plants, whose development requires relatively modest investment. In particular, under the plan to establish a “green energy zone” in Karabakh and the East Zangezur region, the construction of 72 small hydropower plants with a total capacity of 467 MW is planned by 2030.

During his visit to the Aghdara district, Aliyev reviewed the operations of the “Damirli” Ore Processing Complex, located in the village of Janyatag. Minister of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov and Reza Vaziri, President and Chief Executive Officer of Azerbaijan International Mining Company Limited, informed the president that this is the first mining project launched in Azerbaijan’s liberated territories.

Covering an area of 929 hectares, the complex includes a copper flotation plant, a wet tailings storage facility, an electrical substation, and other auxiliary infrastructure. A total of 15.3 million manats ($9 billion) in private investment has been directed toward its reconstruction, incorporating Turkish and German technologies.

The flotation plant has a processing capacity of 5.6 million tons of ore extracted from the Damirli mine, with the final product — 85,000 tons of copper concentrate — scheduled for export to China during the 2025–2030 period. At the initial stage, the complex provides permanent employment for 980 people, the majority of whom are residents of local communities. Over time, the workforce is expected to expand to 1,250 employees.

On the same day, the Azerbaijani president took part in the reopening of the Tartar Electromechanical Plant following its reconstruction, where various types of defence-related products will be manufactured. Defence objectives will also be served by the Special Operations Center, the foundation of which was laid on January 13 with the participation of the president.

“Today, the new Master Plan for the city of Aghdara will be presented to me. We will rebuild the city of Aghdara as well, just as we have already revitalized nine villages. We will construct the city too. This place will become a beautiful industrial and tourism center,” said Ilham Aliyev.

Presenting the Master Plan for the city of Aghdara, Anar Guliyev, Chairman of the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture, noted that the city’s residential area will be expanded from 444 to 522 hectares. According to projections, Aghdara’s population over the 20-year planning horizon is expected to reach 14,000 residents.

The conceptual framework of the Master Plan includes a city centre, individual residential plots, low-density housing areas, multifunctional and public-business zones. The plan also envisions the creation of a terraced park, a riverside boulevard, as well as agrotourism, industrial, and logistics zones. The total length of roads and streets in the district’s administrative centre will amount to 46.8 kilometres.

The total residential floor area of Aghdara will reach 420,000 square meters. The plan also envisions the construction of an 80-bed hospital, five schools with a combined capacity of 2,520 students, five kindergartens accommodating 840 children, and a vocational training school.