By Joachim Hagopian / Global Research
In the early morning hours of April 1-2 Azerbaijan
launched a major military offensive into the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh
(NK) that’s been controlled and defended by NK Armenian forces since the
Russian brokered truce ended a bloody three year war in 1994. While Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev was flying back to Baku after meeting 24 hours earlier
with John Kerry in Washington who claimed “an ultimate resolution” had been
reached, Azerbaijan was already once again at war with the NK Armenians.
The surprise element combined with the full scale major
military operation spearheading a three pronged attack on Nagorno-Karabakh
contact line from the southern, southeastern and northeastern directions
resulted in the Aziri army seizing at least five Armenian villages and several
strategic elevated heights inside the disputed territory with heavy loss of
life reported on both sides including Armenian civilians whose home were
shelled by Aziri artillery mortars and rockets. Though a ceasefire three days
into the heavy fighting was brokered by Russia, repeated ceasefire breaches and
continued combat operations have been observed.
Evidence that you’ll never see in Western MSM coverage is
now surfacing from Armenian press documenting not only is the Azeri military
still daily violating Tuesday’s ceasefire but far more significant and alarming
is that the Azeris have been attacking villages inside the Republic of Armenia,
not just in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. On Friday April 8 the press secretary
of the Armenian Republic Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan disclosed
that Azeri forces have been shelling civilian settlements with 120mm mortar
fire in the villages of Karmir, Ttujur and Baghanisin within the Armenian
provinces of Tavush and Gegharkunet. Fortunately there has been no reported
casualties as yet. But when the first victims do get reported, the consequences
for Azerbaijan could become far reaching.
By committing an act of war killing Armenian civilians on
a second warfront by shelling civilian targets within the Republic of Armenia,
the Azeri government is showing that its unilateral aggression remains unfazed,
attacking an allied nation holding a mutual defense pact with Russia that
stipulates if Armenia is attacked, Russia is compelled to come to Armenia’s aid
and defense. Azerbaijan’s artillery shelling may force Russia to shift from
acting as prime mediator in the Azeri-Armenian conflict to being drawn into the
escalating war against Azerbaijan. The implications of such an expanding war
are so serious it could destabilize not just the immediate region but trigger a
rippling effect globally. This potentially grave development of course feeds
right into the sinister hegemonic plan that the neocons behind US Empire have
been fiendishly hoping and working towards for some time, to tie up Russia
directly involving Putin in fighting yet another war on his doorstep that could
quickly unravel to ignite World War III.
Obviously prior to firing artillery shells into
residential villages inside Armenia, the Baku government was fully aware of the
risks involved in committing such acts of war against the Russian bear’s
defense ally Armenia. Because the precedent of launching artillery volleys into
Armenian villages have occurred largely unnoticed and unaccountable before as
three civilians were killed last September from Azeri shelling, Baku appears
willing to take the calculated risk that Moscow will again not respond. Upping
the aggression ante also suggests that Azerbaijan has full support not only
from its closest, war-zealot Turk ally but also at least US-NATO’s tacit
approval as well. And if this is the case, it confirms the US Empire continues
to recklessly throw all caution to the wind, constantly baiting and provoking
an all-out West versus East military showdown heading in only one direction –
world war.
With a population close to 10 million possessing land
that holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves, the Azerbaijani government
has been busily buying up the deadliest weapons its oil-rich money can afford
from Russia ($4 billion), Israel ($1.6 billion) and the US among others just to
seek revenge against Armenians living in Nogorno-Karabakh, the de facto
autonomous enclave the Azeris maintain was stolen from them in the war they
lost in the 1990’s. So from 2004 to 2014 Azerbaijan has increased its military
spending twenty-fold. In contrast, the NK target that the Azeris are wanting so
badly to vanquish and destroy by brute military force is a population of little
more than 150,000 that receives no big arms deals from any major power. Instead
they are totally dependent on the economically strained Republic of Armenia for
its sole military support and supplies
The unbroken will of this small Armenian population to
defend its ancestral homeland that it’s inhabited far longer than Azeris ever
became a Turkish offshoot as a nation or ethnicity is the same reason why
20,000 Armenian soldiers outfought and defeated 64,000 Azeris. And the
Azerbaijani military actively recruited mercenary foreign nationals from
Turkey’s Grey Wolves, Chechen militants and al Qaeda terrorists back in the
1991-1994 war. In recent years ongoing skirmishes at the contact line along the
NK as well as Armenian borders with Afghanistan have increased with last August
and September flurried gunfire exchange an example of the growing intensity of
border flare-ups.
Spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic David Babayan
stated several days ago that evidence is emerging that strongly points to
Azerbaijan once again being joined by the unsavory likes of Turkish Grey Wolves
and even Islamic State terrorists fresh from the Raqqa, Syria battlefields.
Firsthand accounts from witnesses in the overrun NK village of Talish claim
that Armenian families and soldiers are being beheaded and brutally executed
with ears cut off that confirm the pattern of barbaric foreign mercenaries
fighting alongside the Azeri army. Babayan also added that townspeople from
surrounding Azerbaijani villages have recently fled for their lives while
terrorists looting their homes have even been reported to murder and rape local
Azeri citizens. Other accounts based on military sources also reveal that an
Aziri ISIS brigade has rushed from Syria to fight another war in
Nagorno-Karabakh. Finally the Iranian ARAN agency has published that ISIS has
had a special training ground reserved for Azeri Islamic State recruits located
on the Iraqi-Syrian border that is now fighting against Armenians in
Nagorno-Karabakh. With the media blackout in Western nations, you will never
hear that ISIS terrorists are now fighting and committing atrocities against
civilians in the Armenian enclave.
Already calls for Hague war crime tribunals are sounding
as officials in the Republic of Armenia are beginning the lengthy process to
gather eyewitness testimonials and accounts documenting war crimes that the
Azeri military has committed against civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Vice
President of the National Assembly of the Armenian Republic Eduard Sharmazanov
was actually speaking to the Armenian Diaspora:
We must use all the platforms to show the civilized world
that Azerbaijan, that takes military actions against civilians, must be
punished for violating the norms of international law and of the Geneva
Conventions.
Ever since the 1994 truce, the Azeris have been plotting
revenge for losing the Nogorno-Karabakh War. Their agenda has always been as
soon as they gain a military advantage with all its bought advanced weaponry,
they will invade and retake the small enclave by force. Impatient over “the
frozen conflict” after twenty years of OSCE Minsk Group’s utter failure to
resolve the conflict, recently spurred on by fellow Turk Erdogan’s “fight to
the end” rhetoric and backroom pressure along with US Empire’s tacit approval
meeting with Kerry 24 hours ahead of the latest incursion, combined with
continued record low oil prices that created domestic unrest and public protest
in Baku in recent months, a week ago Azeri President Ilham Aliyev chose to
rally his nation behind the Azeri “wag the dog” flag launching the biggest
military offensive into Nagono-Karabakh since the war ended 22 years ago.
While the deranged Erdogan was in Washington last week,
he met with high powered lobbyists Mercury LLC he has hired to push the
absurdist propaganda that Armenians are the biggest threat to everyone’s
national security since their military alliance with Russia is rapidly
building. As the Armenian genocide remembrance day April 24thapproaches,
Erdogan as Aliyev’s “big brother” is on the warpath to finish the job not
completed a century ago and it’s no accident that a day after he railed on
about the threat Armenians pose to the world, little brother launched his
military campaign against the NK Armenians. The Russians are fully aware of
Erdogan’s antagonism as vice speaker of Russia’s State Duma recognized the
Turkish president as “a third force” behind the NG violence.
Yet another behind the scenes culprit to unrest and
violence in this world is Israel. It’s just been learned that Azerbaijan has
given Israel full use of its airfields near the Iran border. Israel’s
sophisticated advances in unmanned drone technology changing modern warfare and
the Jewish State’s increasingly close relationship in recent years give both
Iran and Armenia pause for concern. That on top of recent sales of Israeli
drones as part of a 2012 $1.6 billion arms deal package procured by the
Azerbaijani military have been widely deployed in recent days for both enemy
surveillance and kill purposes in Artsakh (the Armenian name for
Nagorno-Karabakh). One UAV was shot down the other day spying over the Artsakh
capital city of Stepanakert while OSCE officials were meeting below with NG
leaders. Another Israeli-made kamikaze drone hit and demolished a bus killing
seven Karabakh volunteer soldiers inside. Alleged accusations have been made
that the drones are being remotely piloted by Israelis. As an aside from that
Minsk Group meeting, the Russian co-chair announced that representatives from
Artsakh will finally earn a place at the negotiation peace talk table.
On numerous occasions the Azeri dictator Aliyev who
inherited the job from his father in 1993 has sworn to “wipe Armenia off the
face of the earth.” Holocaust scholar
Yair Auron commenting on Israel’s sale of such high powered weapons to
Azerbaijan stated:
The sale of weapons to a government committing genocide
is like the sale of weapons to Nazi Germany during World War II.
As a parallel process example of how the Baku aggression
has been ramping up in recent years, the Azeri army upped both the ammo charges
and killing radius of its Howitzers from 60-82mm in December 2014 to 120mm as
of March 2015, the same shelling that’s now ravaging homes in Armenia as well.
Meanwhile, while Baku keeps buying bigger, more lethal
weapons from Russia, Israel and America, on Saturday Prime Minister Medvedev
reasserted it will continue selling arms to Azerbaijan (and Armenia) in its
unsubtle attempt to lure Baku away from the West’s undue influence. Russia
supplies 85% of Azerbaijan’s weapons. Last year the cozy relations US Empire
was nurturing with Azerbaijan suddenly went sour when criticism over Baku’s
human rights was levied, which resulted in Baku cancelling its prelim dance to
EU membership.
According to the latest International Democracy Index
rating, Azerbaijan scored amongst the highest in the world for authoritarianism
with a score of 6.68 out of a possible 7 being worst, cited for multiple major
human rights violations chief amongst them intolerance toward dissent and
freedom of press, undemocratic electoral process (score of 7) along with
rampant corruption. The recent Panama papers exposing off shore fortunes
indicate how the Aliyev family have made their secret billions sidestepping the
law. Of course the US government’s hardly in a position to criticize as it’s
certainly no beacon for democracy anymore. In contrast, despite not being
formally recognized by the international community, the European Free Alliance
(EFA) cited Nagorno-Karabakh as having demonstrated one of the highest
democratic evaluations amongst post-Soviet nations.
The Soviet Union never recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as a
separate sovereign entity from the Azeri state it originally gifted Baku three
quarters of a century ago. But for that matter, neither has Artsakh’s biggest
supporter and ally the Republic of Armenia. A Russian peacekeeping force could
be introduced but a peaceful outcome that all parties can live with
satisfactorily seems unlikely. It appears all positions are intractable while
Russia takes the lead in working on an amicable resolution that includes Iran
much to the chagrin of US Empire and Israel. The South Caucasus as the ancient
East-West Silk Road passageway is presently coveted by the most powerful global
forces on earth, all vying for strategic chessboard turf that’s ground zero for
civilization crossroads.
Armenia on the other hand is a landlocked, economically
depressed, geographically tiny nation without oil, flanked on each side by its
enemies’ closed borders which has further led to Armenia’s isolation. Even a
loan of $200 million from Russia was necessary just for procurement of a first
installment of arms shipments that can’t compete with Baku’s near $5 billion a
year military budget alone that’s near twice as much as Armenia’s total
national budget. In comparison with the newer advanced killer power weaponry
that big oil money buys, Armenia is stuck with last century weapons used in the
1990’s Nagorno-Karabakh war. Though Moscow has pledged arms parity, they remain
undelivered. The truth is Armenia is at the mercy of Russia for its very
survival. Oil money, advanced arms and big business rule the world, whether
it’s the Western or Eastern worlds.
The dire circumstance that Armenians in both Artsakh
Republic and the Armenian Republic presently face in this latest round of war
with Azerbaijan, Turkey and US Empire appears rather bleak. Though it may
capture appeal in its underdog role in the modern day version of David versus Goliath
amongst nations, and already has the Armenian Diaspora in cities like Los
Angeles and around the world mobilizing support for its cause, it has powerful
enemies that would be happy to see both Armenia and Russia go down in flames.
The planet is in peril, and Nagorno-Karabakh might be the archduke of the
latest world war.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US
Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military
experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and
focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues.
After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and
worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and
adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on
his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at
http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Joachim Hagopian, Global Research, 2016
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