We see a real overabundance of explosive material, and institutions are racking their brains to find mechanisms and models for containing dangerous challenges.
As for the reasons that led to this situation, they are many. Few would deny that one of them is overkill with democracy of the civilized West.
If we approach the specifics of the situation intelligently, there is not much real democracy in the world. There is an abundance of its surrogates, which Western institutions produce in unlimited quantities for the “wrong” countries.
The leaders of production are still the United States and the advanced countries of the Old World, where the Yankees since the end of World War II have moved an immeasurable number of new institutions and research centers.
Near the end of the twentieth century, a real democratic extravaganza unfolded there. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the West’s hands were untied. Exporting democracy en masse to the East, or more precisely, to the post-Soviet space, where new beacons of nascent liberalism appeared, became a matter of urgent importance.
Strange as it may seem, one of the first to receive the honorary label of a democratically developed republic on the ruins of the Soviet Union was Armenia, which overnight was hailed from the West, Yeltsin’s Russia, and other states under the patronage of the United States and its allies.
Azerbaijan was unanimously abandoned, and it was left alone with a country feral with caveman nationalism, into which seasoned terrorists and militants from Western and Middle Eastern countries began to flock. Just take the thug Monte Melkonian alone.
He was purposely released from a French prison, where he was imprisoned for his gangsterism. After a bank raid, he and his accomplices went to jail and served time. As soon as the plan of “democratization” of the post-Soviet space began to unfold, and the Karabakh problem with the waste idea of “miatsum” became its trigger, irreversible processes began.
The traces led to the West and to Moscow’s liberal labyrinths, where the greasy faces of the new post-Gorbachev Russia were clustered. Since then, much water has flown in the Kura, but the ubiquitous Western pole does not change its strategy of overfeeding others with democratic rations. The debut of the ill-fated program did its evil work in the Caucasus, where Armenia was assigned the role of a trigger for destabilization through ethnic conflict, aggression, ethnic cleansing and occupation.
Armenians on democratic tanks attacked Azerbaijani populated areas, shot with democratic guns civilians of the country groundlessly accused of pro-Islamic sentiments, misleading public opinion.
After thirty years, Azerbaijan’s victory in the protracted dispute put a long-awaited end to the collective venture of foreign liberal circles. But they are still working on the resuscitation of the stalled plan to “liberate post-Soviet territories from authoritarianism”.
Baku found the strength to rebuff uninvited mentors from democratic circles, showing them the door. And it is rational, because democratization of societies of sovereign countries is a purely internal affair of nations. But the mentors persistently impose themselves, they do not relent, continuing their unnecessary vigils at various levels, including official ones.
At the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo, the participants found time to discuss the situation in and around Karabakh. The focus was on “the consequences of the forced displacement of Armenians from Karabakh,” to which the foreign ministers devoted a statement. In it, they expressed “grave concern about the humanitarian consequences of the displacement of Armenians from Karabakh following Azerbaijan’s military operation”.
Somehow, in the previous years, the bitter odyssey of a million Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs never became a matter of concern for Western leaders. Neither the Council of Europe, nor the G7, nor the PACE or the European Parliament bothered to speak out on the terrible topic, leaving the vast mass of the homeless alone with their massive humanitarian troubles. Azerbaijan has overcome horrible problems and shortcomings on its own. But today, the compassion of Western elites in the light of the finale of the Karabakh problem is tugging at their heartstrings. Is it a coincidence?!
It is a well-known fact that the West, with its strong selectionist tradition and slippery values, is tolerant to the pain and demands of Muslim and Turkic peoples. When it comes to Christian nations, it is immediately there, and no effort is spared to intervene to favor its protégés. Even if they are not guilty, as in the case of the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute.
Their double standards are still in place. However, for the sake of history, they could at least move away from their pernicious habits and traditional hypocrisy.
The final act of the Karabakh tragedy took place in full view of the entire international community, and everyone had the opportunity to see that no one chased Azerbaijani Armenians out of Karabakh. It was the final move of the rotten separatist Khankendi regime, in full coordination with Irevan. According to their plan, 35,000 people were driven like a herd with an iron staff in order to raise a global howl and accuse Baku of ethnic cleansing.
By the way, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when 300,000 Azerbaijanis were forcibly exiled from Armenia, the West kept mum. There was no assessment and protest from there, although the tragedies of Azerbaijanis were also happening in full view of the international community.
So why did the G7 ministers continued to harp on the “forced displacement of Armenians from Karabakh” when there was no violence or threats? Many people stayed to be re-integrated into Azerbaijani society. Does this mean nothing?!
Or, one wonders, where did the participants of the Tokyo meeting get the information about the allegedly severe humanitarian consequences of the displacement of the Armenians?! Why call things by false names and fool the public, assuring uninformed people that “Azerbaijan conducted a military operation”?! Are limited anti-terrorism actions equivalent to military operations? Do the ministers not realize that in the 23 hours and 10 minutes of September 20, the Azerbaijani military did not eliminate any civilians and no civilian objects were damaged?
They know that, but they are being shamefully hypocritical, because they keep silent about thousands and thousands of acts of vandalism of Armenia against the civilian population of Azerbaijan, cultural and historical heritage of Azerbaijanis in Armenia and Karabakh, where an Armenian community lived.
Lastly, the G7 ministers called on Azerbaijan to “comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law”. What is the point of sentimentality, when the sensitivity, cordiality and sympathy of the strong are still selective?! After all, the scale of political, socio-economic and humanitarian problems that struck Azerbaijan thirty years ago is absolutely incomparable with the current troubles of Armenia and the 35,000 Karabakh Armenians under its patronage? Who and what are the macro hysteria of the international forces intended for?
If the developed countries and their ruling elites are really determined to apply efforts to establish a stable and lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, they should take a balanced approach without showing bias. Which, by the way, has always been in place to this day. If it were not so, Armenia would not be persistently portrayed as a victim of years of hostility and confrontation.
If the principle of non-use of force, respect for sovereignty, inviolability of borders and territorial integrity is so important, why did Baku’s long-standing appeals to the UN, CoE, EU, OSCE Minsk Group fail to elicit any response? And, in general, what was the reason for the Western community’s indifference to Azerbaijan’s pain? After all, Armenia was the first to use force, and it was also the first to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of its neighbor.
There have been no answers to these far from rhetorical questions to this day, which is not surprising. The main thing is that Azerbaijan has sorted it all out on its own and has given reasonable response to the aggressor and its advocates, along with international institutions. But it seems that the whole problem is again in the overkill of democracy, which works not only miracles, but also horrors. But this happens to those who punch above their weight and to those who follow them. Azerbaijan, thank God, is not one of those.
Tofig Abbasov
Translated from Minval.az
