The ruins of the city of Agdam, a few km from
the ceasefire line (Foto Marco Fieber, Flickr)
Recent clashes on the separation line between Armenia and
Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh have left some 20 victims and fears for a new
open conflict in Europe. Local associations sign a call for peace.Simone Zoppellaro | Yerevan 14 August 2014
Le rovine di Agdam, a pochi km dalla linea del cessate il fuoco (Foto Marco Fieber, Flickr)
In a cruel August, when tragic news come one after the
other on a daily basis, from Iraq to the Ukraine, from Syria to the Gaza Strip,
few have paid attention to Nagorno Karabakh. Yet, what has taken place in
recent weeks has been an unprecedented escalation, threatening to plunge
Armenia and Azerbaijan into a new war and seriously endangering the precarious
ceasefire signed in May 1994.
Since the end of July, clashes in what is the most
militarized area of Europe have occurred with increasing frequency, causing at
least 20 victims, many of them very young. Given the absence of external
observers, counting the casualties is quite difficult and figures provided by
the two governments do not match. Propaganda had a prominent role in the events
of the last few days.
Clashes on the front line have increased steadily in
recent months, including in areas traditionally not affected by the conflict,
such as the border between Armenia and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan,
wedged between Armenia, Turkey and Iran. In addition to the sniper shots, which
cause annually dozens of victims, in the last week raids occurred across the
line. Apparently, these came mainly – but not exclusively – from the
Azerbaijani side. This would explain the high number of casualties within their
ranks: 13, according to the Baku government sources reported by the press (the
Armenians say almost the double).
The case of Karen Petrosyan
Adding fuel to the fire – and contemporary with the
military escalation at the beginning of the month – is the story of Karen
Petrosyan. The man, a thirty-one year-old Armenian villager of Chinari, in the
region of Tavush, on August 7 crossed the border and “under unknown
circumstances” (thus the Armenian officials) reached Ağbulaq, in Azerbaijan. A
person from the same village as Petrosyan said he went lost fetching wood, another
that he was drunk, while for Baku he was just a saboteur and a spy.
Yet, an interview conducted by Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty with Farida Tagiyeva, the first person Petrosyan encountered after
crossing the border, tips the balance in favour of the Armenian interpretation.
According to Tagiyeva and other people of the village, the man, who had
approached her asking for tea, was unarmed and in civilian clothes. As a proof,
an amateur video depicts a bewildered Petrosyan answering questions in Russian
made by the inhabitants of Ağbulaq.
In what has been also a propaganda escalation, the same
Petrosyan appears later in a video posted online dressed in military uniform,
while he confesses to a senior military officer to be an agent. A large range
of weapons are shown to prove the assumption. The next morning, Karen Petrosyan
was declared dead by the Baku Ministry of Defence, officially “due to an acute
heart and lung failure.” The Armenian authorities, who are convinced that the
man was tortured and killed instead, asked an autopsy of the body of Petrosyan
by an independent panel of international experts.
No less alarming was the bellicose rhetoric displayed by
the authorities in Baku. The Twitter profile of the Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev has been filled on August 7 by a remarkable series of threats,
accusations and boasts of military superiority directed against the “Armenian
barbarians and vandals”. On the following day, there was a statement by the
Defence Minister Hafiz Heydarov, who said he was ready, if necessary, to
destroy the Armenian capital Yerevan with its missiles.
A wave of arrests
It is no coincidence that together with the military
escalation and rhetoric, there has been an unprecedented wave of repression in
Azerbaijan. An essential factor in the dynamics of the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict is the use that the dictator Aliyev and the Armenian oligarchs make of
it, to justify the unlimited economic and political power they have in their own
countries.
Thus, on August 5, the sociologist Arif Yunus was
arrested on charges of cooperating with the Armenians. Just a few days before
also his wife, the human rights activist Leyla Yunus, had been sent to prison,
while another activist, Rasul Jafarov, was arrested on August 2. This led to
the remarkable number of 97 political prisoners locked in Azerbaijani prisons,
according to a list published on August 8 by 12 NGOs and a team of lawyers, on
the basis of the work done by Leyla Yunus and Jafarov. A list that would
already require a further extension, given the subsequent arrest of Intigam
Aliyev.
Drawing a clear connection between these arrests and the
military escalation of the same days is a statement by the advisor of the
President Aliyev, Ali Hasanov, who, commenting on the arrest of Leyla Yunus,
spoke about the existence in Azerbaijan of a group of people – including the
same activist – linked to a so called “Armenian lobby”.
The crisis between the two countries seems at the moment
to have subsided, after a series of meetings held on August 9 and 10 in Sochi
between President Aliyev, his Armenian counterpart Sargsyan, and Vladimir
Putin. Not without some disturbing details, such as the sambo tournament (a
Russian martial art) attended in the evening by Putin, playing the role of a
“peacemaker”, and his guests, the two presidents.
Starting from those days, there was a return to relative
calm on the border, to that state of abnormal normality that distinguished for
twenty years the Nagorno Karabakh: a ceasefire continuously violated by both
sides without, however, plunging the situation into an open war.
Among the few positive notes of these days is a call for
peace in Karabakh signed, during the hottest days of the conflict, by various
representatives of the Armenian and Azerbaijani civil society, as well as by
some international experts. Just a dim light against a sea of darkness?
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