Azerbaijan's
Aggression Threatens the World
The
United States Needs to Stop It
By Paul Krekorian
Los Angeles City
Councilmember
Yet again, Azerbaijan’s military forces have launched a
deadly and unprovoked attack against its Armenian neighbors. Yet again, Azerbaijan’s recklessness puts
innocent civilian lives and fundamental United States interests at risk. And yet again, the Armenian people face a
genuine threat of the continuation of Turkish efforts to annihilate them.
Last night, Azeri tanks, helicopters and artillery attacked
the ethnically Armenian civilian population of Artsakh (formerly
Nagorno-Karabagh), including that country’s capital city, Stepanakert. This invasion follows the deadly attacks
Azerbaijan launched just two months ago against rural villages in Armenia. During a time when the UN has called for
ceasefire around the world due to the COVID pandemic, Azerbaijan instead is
renewing warfare, violating its ceasefire agreement with Armenia, and causing
death and destruction to the Armenian population that it so detests.
This reckless invasion is a direct threat not only to the
Armenian population of the region, but also to regional stability. Already, Turkish dictator Erdogan is
threatening Armenia and offering full support to the Azeri invasion. It is not hard to imagine that a full scale
war against a country that borders on Turkey, Russia and Iran presents a grave
danger to the world. Azerbaijan’s
actions create an immediate danger of escalation that would enflame a tinderbox
and severely damage US strategic interests in the region.
The corrupt Baku regime’s outrageous warmongering and racist
hatred of Armenians seems to know no limits.
This attack is just the latest in a consistent record of Azeri barbarity
directed at Armenians who just want to go about their lives in peace. The Azeris targeted Armenian civilians with
mass murder in the pogroms of 1988 and 1990.
They targeted Armenian civilians with indiscriminate shelling during
Artsakh’s war of independence. Twenty
years ago they destroyed a thousand year old Armenian cemetery at Julfa,
ignoring the pleas of UNESCO and desecrating tens of thousands of graves. They celebrated as a hero and rewarded the
Azeri soldier who beheaded an Armenian with an axe during a NATO “Partnership
for Peace” program in 2004. They
targeted Armenian civilian villages and committed shocking war crimes during
their 2016 invasion of Artsakh. And now
they are engaging in the same kinds of ruthless violence and abomination yet
again.
If that were not enough, the bellicose Azerbaijan government
recently threatened to launch a missile attack on a nuclear power plant,
releasing massive amounts of radiation only 20 miles from Yerevan. The spokesperson for the Azerbaijan Defense
Ministry today bragged about their capability of hitting the power plant, which
would, as he put it, “lead to a great disaster for Armenia.” This rhetoric is a continuation of
Azerbaijan’s repeated threats, including from its famously corrupt and
dictatorial president, to destroy and conquer all Armenian lands.
This outrageous and consistent pattern of aggression
completely shreds all international norms and notions of human decency. Worse, Azeri violence and threats carry with
them the echoes of generations of pan-Turkish commitment to erasing the
Armenian population and culture from the world.
The most dramatic manifestation of this lust for ethnic cleansing, of
course, was the Armenian Genocide in which Turks killed 1,500,000 Armenians
early in the Twentieth Century. But the
actions, statements and active preparations of Azerbaijan and its enabler
Turkey make clear that genocide is a genuine threat in our time as well.
The United States, France and Russia, as co-chairs of the
OSCE Minsk Group, have attempted for years to mediate a sustainable negotiated
peace, but those efforts have utterly failed.
Azerbaijan has consistently violated the ceasefire with scores of
attacks across the border, resulting in both civilian and military deaths in
both Armenia and Artsakh. The United
States nonetheless still refuses to state clearly that there is only one
perpetrator that continues to be responsible for the violence, bloodshed and
instability in the region, and that is Azerbaijan. Any statement of moral equivalence in the
face of continued massive violence, aggression and genocidal threats by the
government of Azerbaijan is entirely unacceptable. Our government has an
obligation to hold Baku accountable for Azerbaijan’s destruction of the peace
process and its ongoing crimes and threats.
Unless Azerbaijan immediately faces meaningful consequences
and international condemnation, there is little chance of achieving lasting
peace. The interests of the United
States will be harmed by instability in this vital region, and our reputation
in the international community will be irreparably damaged by our failure to
stand up and speak out on behalf of the victims of this inexcusable and
continuing record of Azeri aggression and violence. And if another slaughter of Armenians comes,
the nations who failed to stop it will have no excuse for their complicity.
I therefore call upon the United States government to
condemn Azerbaijan unequivocally for its latest violation of the ceasefire, and
to demand an immediate and permanent cessation of all Azeri hostile
action. I further call upon the Trump
Administration and the United States Congress to take immediate action to cease
all military support and cooperation with Azerbaijan, including suspending all
arms shipments to Azerbaijan. Finally, I
call upon the United States Department of State to utilize all diplomatic,
economic and political means to compel Azerbaijan to engage meaningfully in the
peace process, through the Minsk Group or otherwise, to achieve a sustainable,
lasting peace that ensures the sovereignty, territorial integrity and
independence of the Republic of Artsakh.