Roads, airports, telecommunications: Karabakh gears up for Great Return Review by Caliber.Az

For the third year now, Azerbaijan is carrying out a major reconstruction of transport, energy, utilities, and telecommunications infrastructure as part of a programme to recover areas liberated from occupation. This year, the scale of recovery works in the Karabakh region is expected to increase, taking into account the plans for the early return of former internally displaced persons to their places of origin. Achievements and new plans to revive the infrastructure of this region were discussed the day before, during a meeting of the Working Group on Transport, Communications and High Technologies of the Interdepartmental Center, operating under the Coordination Headquarters, created for the centralised solution of issues in the Azerbaijani territories liberated from the Armenian occupation.

The key area of the investment strategy of the Azerbaijani government in 2021-2022 was the revival of the Karabakh and East Zangazur economic regions: a huge work on the construction of roads, bridges, tunnels, power lines, and substations, was carried out in a relatively short period of time, water and sewage and other utility systems were restored, and a mobile phone, internet, radio, and TV broadcasting network and railway lines were developed. These infrastructure projects have been carried out in parallel with demining: to date, the efforts of the Azerbaijani Mine Action Agency (ANAMA) and others have cleared mines and unexploded ordnance on about 69,000 hectares. ANAMA's plan for 2023 is to clear an additional 820.1 hectares of liberated land, and a total of 280,000 hectares of land will be cleared by 2026.

To assess the scope of work in the liberated territories, it is sufficient to cite only the road construction segment. The construction of roads, bridges, tunnels, and other road infrastructure, totaling over two thousand kilometres, is taking place on about two dozen sites in difficult mountainous terrain. In particular, 33 tunnels nearly 50 kilometres long and 84 bridges with a length of more than 12 kilometres are being built in the region. Over half of the motorways and engineering structures have already been built, while a dozen other areas are also being actively developed.

"At the moment, 18 road construction projects with a total length of around 2,200 kilometres are being implemented in full swing. One of the most large-scale projects are such roads Barda-Aghdam, Talysh-Tapgaragoyunlu-Dashalty, Ahmadbayli-Fuzuli-Shusha, as well as Fuzuli-Hadrut, Shukurbayli-Jabrayil-Hadrut," presidential special representatives in the liberated territories of the Karabakh Economic Region Emin Huseynov, said during a meeting of the Interagency Centre's working group at Fuzuli International Airport on March 6. - Significant progress has also been made on the Ahmadbayli-Shusha and Horadiz-Aghbend highway and railway: the work on the highway is 73 per cent complete, while the work on the 'steel' highway is 33 per cent complete."

In particular, work on the construction of 123.6 kilometres of the Goradiz-Jabrayil-Zangilan-Aghbend road (Zangazur corridor) is three-quarters complete: concreting of all three tunnels of the future corridor with a total length of 12 kilometres has also been completed. At present, concrete pillars, drainage, and other works are being installed in these tunnels.

It is noteworthy that the transport vector of Karabakh's revival was not limited only to the construction of roads, in October 2021 and 2022 the airports in Fuzuli and Zangilan were put into operation, and tentatively by the end of 2024, another airport will be built in the Lachin district. It should be recalled that all new airports are equipped with modern air navigation systems, automated systems of aviation and meteorological observations, and radar systems of leading international manufacturers, this equipment and long runways make it possible to accept long-range wide-body aircraft from international airlines. All of the above enables flights to comply with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and International Air Transport Association (IATA) safety standards. The existence of several international-level airports in Karabakh will enable convenient and rapid transport communication with the rest of the world, ensuring mass reception of foreign tourists - the future basis for the development of the recreational potential of Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur. Finally, the difficult politico-military situation in the region should not be overlooked and the availability of airfields capable of receiving heavy military transport aircraft will never be superfluous here.

"Today, construction of the runway and terminal continues at the Lachin airport site: in particular, drilling and excavation work within the construction of the runway, taxiway, apron, terminal and auxiliary buildings on the territory of the future international air harbour is 37 per cent complete," Deputy Minister of Digital Development and Transport Rahman Hummatov said during a meeting of the Interagency Centre working group.

He noted that today works are carried out for the creation of telecommunication infrastructure. Thus, 6 TV and radio broadcasting stations are operating in the territories liberated from the occupation and their number is planned to be 15. A total of 11 TV channels and 7 radio stations have already been broadcasted due to existing re-broadcasting stations. In turn, in the coming days, the expertise of the project of 130-metre TV tower in Shusha will be completed and after the approval of the project, the construction works will soon begin. At the same time in the Karabakh region, 203 mobile stations are installed, and hundreds of subscribers are connected to broadband internet, including 86 households in Aghali village. In general, Shusha and other recovered settlements are provided with telephone communications and high-speed Internet using modern GPON technology.

It is noteworthy that road construction projects and the formation of IT infrastructure in many of the revitalized settlements of the Karabakh region are implemented according to a single concept. In particular, such a principle is laid down in the restoration of the town of Aghdam: the design of the works to be carried out here is already being completed and the relevant tenders are to be announced in the near future. The road and telecommunication projects in Fuzuli and other settlements will be carried out on the same principle.

As soon as the road projects are completed and the power, utilities, network, and other infrastructure are in place, the former internally displaced persons will be able to return to their homes as quickly and comfortably as possible. Return to the liberated territories has been defined as one of the five national priorities of Azerbaijan until 2030, and the main road map in this area is "I State Program for the Great Return to the Liberated Territories," approved by President Ilham Aliyev in November last year.

It should be noted that since the summer of last year, Azerbaijan launched the resettlement of its citizens in the "smart" village of Aghali in the Zangilan region, where were built houses, office buildings, created agricultural farms with the use of high technology and systems of "green" energy. And by the end of March of this year, it is planned to complete the restoration and reconstruction works of the first phase in the village of Talysh of Tartar district: the works on the road infrastructure and laying communication lines are being completed there, and upon completion of these works, the ex-IDPs will be able to return there.