History of one war

Nagorno-Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan under the USSR and became an internationally recognized part of it. Armenia did not agree with this and organized the separatist movement of the Armenians living in Karabakh, which resulted in a full-scale war between the countries, as a result of which Armenia occupied the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. All Azerbaijanis were killed or expelled from the occupied territories. In Khojaly on 26 February 1992, Armenian nationalists brutally tortured and killed 613 people in one night. Thomas de Waal in his book "Black Garden" quotes former President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan:

“Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought they could joke with us, they thought that the Armenians were not able to raise their hand against the civilian population. We managed to break this stereotype. Here's what happened."

In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a truce. Armenia, openly supported by Russia, was triumphant over a Pyrrhic victory that brought nothing but complete energy, military and economic dependence on Russia. International law has a completely unambiguous opinion on the Karabakh conflict. Four UN Security Council resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884, adopted in 1993, state that all the occupying forces of Armenia must unconditionally leave the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan. The fifth resolution 62/243, adopted in 2008, also requires "the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all the occupied territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan." All these resolutions remained on paper. The United States, France and Russia are co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, which has a mandate to resolve the conflict. The last 30 years have passed in a state of "no peace, no war." Over the years, the Armenian side has become less and less accommodating, referring to the status quo, legends, poems and other works of oral folk art, according to which the occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan was just an act of restoring “historical justice”. The Azerbaijani side did not appeal to its poems and fables, and all these years unsuccessfully demanded the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions. And now, after endless negotiations that reached a dead end, Azerbaijan decided to fulfill the resolutions of the UN Security Council itself. On September 27, 2020, units of the Azerbaijani national army launched a counteroffensive. For three weeks of fighting, the Armenian armed forces suffered heavy defeats in all sectors of the front.

Armenia was fully convinced that Russia's support excluded Azerbaijan's attempt to use force against it. But Armenia’s hope to attract Russia in the conflict has failed. Then, in an attempt to provoke a retaliatory strike from Azerbaijan and simulate an attack on its territory, Armenia began shelling peaceful cities outside the conflict zone using ballistic missiles. One of such strikes on October 11, 2020 hit a residential area in Ganja, killing 9 people and injuring more than 40, including young children. Interspersed with attempts to assure the whole world that Armenia is fighting one on one for the entire Christian world with the enemies of civilization, the country's authorities continue to desperately search for the most frightening image of the enemy. In the first days of the war, all the Armenian media began to shout about the allegedly Turkish special forces participating in the war on the side of Azerbaijan.

Then, not having evidence, the Armenian authorities put forward a new theory - now there were already 400 militants from Syria, apparently capable of somehow solving military tasks that are beyond the power of Azerbaijan's 100 thousandth army with 300,000 reservists. The truth is that despite the almost 30-year status quo, the defeat of Azerbaijan in the first war and the occupation of its territory by the Armenian armed forces, Baku was never going to come to terms with the loss of territories. Azerbaijan created and trained its army, realizing that no one would lift a finger to restore its territorial integrity. Any war ends with peace and a negotiating table. This war will also end. Whatever its outcome, one thing is important for Azerbaijan - the multinational family of peoples living in this country did not accept the backstage verdict that was passed on to it. It is already hard to hope that common sense will prevail in Armenia. Especially after missile strikes on peaceful cities outside the conflict zone. It remains only to wait for the end of the operation to enforce peace on the Armenian side and its subsequent realization of the senselessness of bloodshed. After all, both for Azerbaijanis and for the entire civilized world, Karabakh is Azerbaijan!

Rushana Huseynova, Alakbar Mammadov

https://klassekampen.no/utgave/2020-10-27/den-andre-historien