“Yerevan and sponsors are forced to play an aggressive game” Four expert opinions on Caliber.Az

Armenia has again decided to test Azerbaijan’s patience radically: large-scale artillery and mortar attacks on the conditional border clearly imply maximum escalation. Three Azerbaijani servicemen were wounded, and following Azerbaijan's retaliatory strike as the Armenian Defence Ministry said, four were killed and one Armenian soldier was wounded. As the saying goes, what you ask for is what you get.

We wonder, why and who in Yerevan needs it. Or, maybe it is beneficial to the countries that support Yerevan and fan the anti-Azerbaijani campaign?

In a conversation with the Caliber.Az editorial office, MP Aydin Mirzazada of the parliamentary defense committee expressed confidence that Armenians still live in dreams of a “great Armenia” and still cannot accept the results of the 44-day war.

Aydin Mirzazada explained this phenomenon in the following way.

“On the one hand, the realities of the day are pushing Armenia to peaceful negotiations, and on the other hand, the chauvinist ideology has not yet disappeared from the consciousness of society, moreover, it pushes Armenians to new provocations. And not only on the border - the artificially inflated issue of the Lachin road, the provocation with the opening of the airport in Kapan, where Armenian planes will invade the airspace of Azerbaijan, as well as the current provocation are undertaken with the expectation that Azerbaijan will give up its sovereign rights to Karabakh.

However, we should not forget that now is by no means the 1990s of the XX century and that Azerbaijan today is a strong state that can teach a lesson to everyone who encroaches on its integrity. There is no doubt that by trying to attack Azerbaijan again, Armenia will suffer much more damage from a retaliatory strike than benefit from any damage it inflicted on our territory.

In light of recent events - the provocation of Paris Mayor Hidalgo on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the change in the top of the separatist junta, the arrival of an Azerbaijani convoy with food in Karabakh, it is possible that the current provocation is coordinated directly from abroad to force Baku to make some concessions in negotiations. Other provocations are also possible. I even believe that the attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Lebanon and another shelling of Azerbaijani positions are interconnected. But I am sure that no matter what provocations are committed against our country, Azerbaijan will always give a worthy response,” A. Mirzazada said.

Milli Majlis MP Nigar Arpadarai also expressed her opinion on the aggravation of the situation in the region. The parliamentarian believes that Armenia undertook a provocation on the conditional border in Kalbajar today, having several reasons for that.

“Pashinyan seems to have recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, but at the same time, the Armenian constitution still contains territorial claims against Azerbaijan. So, what has more legal force - the words of the prime minister or the text of the constitution? You don't have to be a lawyer to answer this question,” Arpadarai notes.

However, in her opinion, one should not forget that Armenia officially sends money from its budget to the budget of the Karabakh separatists to the tune of about $400 million a year.

“The documents indicate that these funds will go to the maintenance and salaries of the “civil servants”. Personally, I have no doubts that armed formations are meant by “civil servants”. This fact completely disavows Pashinyan's statement on the recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Anyone, who recognizes the territory of a neighbor does not finance the army of separatists and occupiers on foreign soil. Prime Minister Pashinyan and the Armenian Foreign Ministry continue an active international campaign aimed at lobbying attempts to give Karabakh some kind of subjectivity.

It is obvious that Pashinyan, realizing that the dream of Armenians about “miatsum” is already dead, decided to play a two-move game: to achieve at least some kind of international fixation on the rights of the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan. Moreover, in a year or two, or when circumstances allow, the issue of secession from Azerbaijan will be raised again. That is, territorial claims are not canceled, but masked.

And do not be mistaken: Prime Minister Pashinyan does not change or destroy the Armenian political system - it was created more than a century ago, and its basis is the creation of "Greater Armenia" at the expense of neighboring states. Pashinyan is not a visionary who can show the Armenian people a new path,” she says.

The parliamentarian states that the current Armenian prime minister is engaged in populism, he is only concerned about his political survival and servicing a foreign order (or orders), which requires him to talk about peace today, but at the same time continue actions that are nothing more than revanchism. “Tomorrow, just like before, he will shout “Karabakh is Armenia, period.” The same will be done by those who come after him and everything will be repeated until a fundamental breakdown of the Armenian political system occurs. This is the first thing we must not forget.

Second, we must remember that all these decades we have been dealing with the occupation and attempted annexation by Armenia of part of Azerbaijan, wrapped in separatism. Armenia was the paymaster and sponsor, and the “independence of Nagorno-Karabakh” was just marketing to the international community and tactics for negotiations. Like, we in Armenia agree to compromises with Azerbaijan, but the “government of Nagorno-Karabakh” does not agree. In general, according to the constitution of Armenia, "Nagorno-Karabakh" is a part of Armenia, and that is why, it has not recognized and will never recognize its independence.

Third, the international community, international organizations, and some governments, for example, France and Canada, are well aware of what is happening. They also know that Armenia destroyed the cities and villages of Azerbaijan and that all Azerbaijanis were expelled from there or killed. But they pretend not to know,” the parliamentarian says.

The current escalation, in her opinion, is an attempt to speed things up. Armenia's sponsors have been actively trying to assemble a coalition against Azerbaijan in recent months. For them, it is extremely important to create maximum tension in a short time, because the pro-Armenian coalition is unstable, and the Armenian issue very quickly fades into the background. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan is getting stronger, and Armenia is getting weaker.

“That's why Yerevan and all its sponsors are forced to play a short and aggressive game. Like a poker player who bluffs with a bad card,” concluded Nigar Arpadarai.

Ahmad Alili, director of the Caucasus Center for Political Analysis, and an expert on international governance commented on the situation with the shelling of the border section.

In his opinion, everything that is happening today in the region is still at the stage of development, including Armenian provocations on the border, and rearrangements within the separatist formation in Khankendi as well.

“We can only say with certainty that the negotiation process was paralyzed by Armenia. This happened when, with the support of European Council President Charles Michel, an agreement was practically reached on the use of the Aghdam-Khankendi as an alternative road, and Armenia then decided to torpedo this issue. Moreover, Yerevan submitted it for discussion by the UN Security Council. In addition, it turns out that if the Armenians change platforms so quickly and replace one negotiation process with another - and this other in the UN Security Council turns out to be a failure for the Armenians, then the peace process collapses completely.

Under such circumstances, Pashinyan says he sent new proposals on a peace treaty to Azerbaijan, apparently wanting to resume this process, but we are seeing the opposite - now Azerbaijan is ignoring these proposals of Pashinyan, believing that everything has already been discussed and done. Both sides have frozen in a kind of waiting position. However, Armenia believes that the best way to get everyone out of this state is to apply a cardio shock, which was the armed provocation of the Armenians. After this armed clash, as an echo of the incident, various international platforms are activated again - another factor of direct pressure on Azerbaijan.

In this way, Pashinyan and his team are trying to reanimate the negotiation process “in the Armenian way”, to let it go according to a scenario convenient for them. This is by no means a new technique for Armenia - it was also used during the time of Serzh Sargsyan, and in July 2020, it was also launched, but, as a rule, this led Armenians to a fiasco,” A. Alili said.

At the same time, according to the political expert, ex-diplomat Fikrat Sadixov, as the situation worsens, the stupid military-political ambitions of Armenia only increase.

“Today we see a new discord - a new rally is being prepared in Yerevan itself, the opposition is against the authorities, against Pashinyan, the leaders of the separatist junta are being swept away in Khankendi. That is why they all need to aggravate the situation and bring it to maximum tension so that there are victims and blood - after all, France and the United States must see this, there must be an appropriate reaction, new statements by leading states, their next double campaigns and standards. Therefore, one should not be surprised by what is happening.

Unlike Armenia, besides the fact that we are offering both food aid and normal living for ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, we are also demonstrating a firm and principled political line. Such provocations will not be able to change our attitude to what is happening. Our line is firm and principled, and it is aimed at favorable living, of course, first of all, for Azerbaijanis, but also for ethnic Armenians who live in Karabakh,” Fikrat Sadixov concluded.