Arastun Orujlu: Traitors have settled in the leadership of the Azerbaijani army

Baku/09.27.21/Turan: A year has passed since the beginning of the war with Armenia over Karabakh, which began on September 27, 2020. The 44-day war ended with a hard-won victory for Azerbaijan. And although Azerbaijan liberated most of its occupied territories during the Second Karabakh War, having lost about 3,000 of its sons, part of Karabakh is still under the control of the separatists.

What lessons should we learn after a year from the outcome of the 44-day war?

Political observer Arastun Orujlu answered these and other questions in the "Difficult Question" program.

The expert believes that this war was inevitable, as he predicted back in July during the Tovuz events (hostilities July 12, 2020 - July 16 near the village of Agdam in the Tovuz region of Azerbaijan on the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border).

“The result of this war was that the Azerbaijani people got rid of the humiliating stigma of the “defeated people”, although,  we were not allowed to gain a complete victory,” he said.

Orujlu is convinced that in fact, it was a hybrid warfare (hybrid warfare - a type of hostile action in which the attacker does not resort to a classic military invasion, but suppresses his opponent, using a combination of covert operations, sabotage, cyber warfare, as well as providing support to another the state or rebels operating on the territory of the enemy) against Azerbaijan, such a war began during the "April battles" on April 1-5, 2016.

According to him, the co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, and even a number of countries that are not members of the Minsk Group, through the years of fruitless peace process, prepared Azerbaijan for the recognition of the results of the First Karabakh war - 1992-1994.

“Within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, liberation from the occupation was impossible, since each of the co-chairs had their own geopolitical ambitions. At the same time, all three co-chairs were much more loyal to Armenia than to Azerbaijan,” the observer noted.

Orujlu also noted that Azerbaijan understood that war was inevitable for geopolitical reasons. “Therefore, Azerbaijan armed itself. From time to time he tried to change his arms supplier and was quite successful in doing so. Military cooperation was established with Israel, albeit limited with Turkey. But Armenia was also arming - Russia was arming it. And even then, the contours of preparation for the coming war began to appear,” Orujlu said.

According to the expert, when the formation of a new geopolitical structure of the world approached the decisive phase, Russia needed a war in Karabakh.

“And in April 2016, and in July 2020 and in September 2020, it was not Azerbaijan that started the war. In all three episodes, at the instigation of Russia, Armenia attacked. Because Moscow planned, with the help of the Armenians, to establish its control over the Ganja, Jabrail (Khudaferin road) and Lachin corridors. After that, Azerbaijan would actually be occupied by Russia, since the most important communications would be under its control.

And when hostilities began in Tovuz in July 2020, I realized that war was inevitable. Since China has already begun to lay communications for cargo transportation, and therefore, Russia had to hurry with access to the Middle East and the only route for this runs through the corridors listed above,” Orujlu said.

In his words, this plan could not be implemented in Tovuz, as it would have been an obvious aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan. However, Major General Polad Hashimov was killed during the clash. This was a direct insult to the Azerbaijani people and the country's leader, Ilham Aliyev, and was obviously a deliberate provocation of the special services.

After that, the Armenian Armed Forces tried to capture Terter and on September 27 the war began. Because it was planned that the Armenians would seize the Terter region, and then Russia, under the pretext of the need to separate the conflicting parties along the line of contact, which, by the way, rests against the Goranboy region, intended to bring in its “peacekeepers”. Thus, all communications would be under the control of Russia, and Azerbaijan would actually be dismembered into two parts.

“If these plans were realized, Azerbaijan would no longer be a state whose territory was occupied, but would become an occupied state,” Orujlu explained.

Commenting on the presence of large losses in the first days of the war, the expert said that this has objective and subjective reasons. According to him, the Armenians have organized three defenses in depth in the occupied territories. And as you know, the losses of the attacking side, as a rule, are many times greater than the losses of the defending side. In addition, the difficult terrain should also be taken into account. But these are all objective factors. But there was also a subjective factor that influenced the losses more than objective factors - this is betrayal.

“There were traitors in the leadership of the Azerbaijani army. And it is not at all accidental that our army suffered 40% of the losses in the first days of the war. After that, Ilham Aliyev, appearing at the General Staff on October 3, dismissed these traitors. Who are these traitors? Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov, Chief of the General Staff Nejmeddin Sadykov and Chief of the Operations Directorate Lieutenant General Ayaz Hasanov. Only after that the Azerbaijani army begin to successfully liberate its land from the invaders,” the observer is convinced. –0--