As if it was not Armenians who were complicit in several wars in the Caucasus, who committed genocide in Khojaly and ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijani-populated territories, who doomed the region to profound instability for the past thirty-odd years.
Armenia, which keeps betting on relations based on enmity and animosity, continues to arm itself today, pretending that it is preparing for peace. In reality, it is nurturing revanchist goals. Does all this go unnoticed by those who shed tears for the poor persecuted people, who organize passion plays with artistic weeping and lamentations?
Of course, it does not, but they stage their performances to find excuses for escalation and new wars in the Caucasus region, which has grown tired of turbulence over the past three decades. It seems that peace is not in the plans not so much of the Armenians, but of those who use Irevan as a tool for destabilization.
Just imagine, the West has bothered to set up a high-profile group called the “Friends of Armenia Network” to harmonize the troubled country’s relations with the European Union, with the expectation of formalizing Irevan’s full membership in the EU. The organization includes former prime ministers, MPs and diplomats, and finally, former Danish Prime Minister and former NATO Secretary General Andres Fogh Rasmussen. Under his leadership, a report has been prepared that maps out the nuances and details of the situation in and around Armenia.
However, the authors of this paper do not seem to want to consider the peculiarities of Irevan’s current activity in the context of its intensive militarization. Does France, Greece and the United States, India and other torch-bearers of Armenian democracy not know that Armenia has made a U-turn against Azerbaijan’s peace initiatives to shut itself off from the peace?!
The authors of the report are convinced that the time has come for bold steps to provide effective support to Armenia. If there are concerns for its security, it must be threatened. By whom? Why, of course, by Azerbaijan, the country that has immersed itself in the reconstruction of Karabakh, devastated by Armenian barbarism, the country that insists on a peace treaty.
Still, the report calls for close attention because it reflects all the hypocritical semantics of Western diplomacy, which has been latently fueling Armenian official, state-level thuggery since the early 1990s. The West has always stimulated the Hay tribe to eternal antagonism with the Turkic world.
The report stresses that “the EU has in the past been reluctant to extend security cooperation to Armenia because of the EU’s desire to maintain its mediation role. <…> There is nothing, however, to indicate that Baku is truly interested in a negotiated settlement.” What is there to say? Just one thing: not only was the West never a mediator in the Karabakh settlement, but it played a destructive role in the region, hindering negotiations and the search for compromise in every possible way.
Throughout the years of peace negotiations, the backstage warmongers used smoke and mirrors to throw off the sights of Azerbaijani diplomacy and lead it down false paths. Not only did President Aliyev not fall for the schemers’ tricks, but also was able to outwit them. Hence the losers’ accumulated anger and exasperation.
The West was consistently overfeeding the participants of the conflict with its clumsy presence, and while this pleased the Armenians, Baku only drew conclusions and continued to build paradigms that worked for its righteous cause. In the course of the second Karabakh war, these paradigms became a puzzle for the pesky “mediators”.
After winning the victory, Azerbaijan shoved them out the door, shaming the lackluster co-chair mediators from the disgraced OSCE Minsk Group. President Aliyev’s rebuke and accusations against the diplomatic tourists were a collective response to the entire team of Western politicians who had been capitalizing on the tragedy of the Azerbaijani people for years. Official Baku paid back to all those who used instruments of intrigue and provocation instead of diplomatic tools.
If the EU intends to reorient its involvement in the region in the spirit of strengthening Armenia’s resistance and steering things towards a new war, it should get the hell out of the region. Its any involvement in the processes speaks in favor of Brussels prostrating itself before Washington to escalate the situation so that the region hangs over the abyss. But Baku will not allow this to happen.
The report suggests that Armenia finds itself in a highly unstable security environment because of Azerbaijan’s aggressiveness, as the latter is allegedly preparing an attack on its neighbor. All this while Baku insists on existential peace, inviting Irevan to negotiations.
It is becoming obvious that it is his behind-the-scenes masterminds, who do not want peace in the Caucasus, that prevent Prime Minister Pashinyan from focusing on the peace process. And isn’t that why they insist on the need to reform and modernize the Armenian Armed Forces? Exactly.
Talking about how Irevan needs modern Western weaponry, they lure it into their nets in order to turn the territory of Armenia into a Western foothold. The goal is to exert pressure on Russia and Iran, which have long been a bone in the throat of the loudmouths who cry about the victory of democracy in the Hay abode.
The West aims to increase military aid from EU member states to Armenia in order to stoke a new flame of war and further spread its wings for a more powerful military-technical presence in the strategic isthmus. As a pretext, they cite insinuations such as threats from Azerbaijan, as well as the “fact of occupation” of a small part of Armenia by Baku, which according to their calculations poses a “direct security threat” to that country.
The guns of fake propaganda are not silent either, quite the opposite, they are firing their salvos, saturating the infomedia with fakes. This is not without reason. The upcoming visit of Nikol Pashinyan to Brussels in April is aimed at finally convincing Irevan of the necessity to engage it in the escalation in order to raise the degree of tension. No wonder that the so-called conference, scheduled to be attended by the President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will also be attended by high-ranking NATO officials.
Why this quick restart if NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg only recently traveled to the Caucasus, where he met with the leaders of the three countries? Was there something else to say?
Rather, something was left unsaid, and all that must be said will be said face to face in the European capital: in the eyes of the West, Armenia is a concession zone. Its fate will be decided by the West. But will they succeed? That is the question.
Tofig Abbasov
Translated from Minval.az
