In addition to the main message, it also says that “as a result of the illegal blocking of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan since December 12, 2022, 120,000 residents of Artsakh have been cut off from the rest of the world” and a lot of other nonsense.
With the adopted resolution, the city officials authorized the mayor of the French capital to call on other administrative-territorial units of France and foreign cities-members of the International Union of Francophone Cities to join the initiative, begin collecting aid and then deliver food to the Armenian residents of Karabakh through a “humanitarian corridor”.
For a start, the members of the Paris City Council clearly went too far with the “120,000” residents of Karabakh. Obviously, they simply raised their hands and voted, believing the “I swear on my mother’s life” from the Armenian diaspora, who had slipped them the piece of paper. By the way, this is exactly how the French parliament once voted for the resolution about the “genocide of Armenians” without checking the facts and taking the figure “1.5 million” at face value. If they had been given a paper with “5 million dead in 1915” and “2 million Karabakh citizens” written on it, they would have voted for it too. It says so on the paper!
But what matters here is not the figures, but the situation itself. Apparently, the croissants in the outdoor cafes of Paris are so delicious and the cappuccinos so fragrant that they completely overshadow any connection between the city councilmen and the existing realities in a faraway region, realities that are not on paper or in dreams, but, as they say, “on the ground”. They still think that part of the territory of Azerbaijan is the same open house. Fly to Yerevan, get in the car and go, like Pécresse, to “free Artsakh”. So now, when they vote for the paper offered by the Armenian diaspora, they have no idea what the situation on the ground looks like in reality, and who and how will implement what they have voted for.
Okay, so, let’s say you collected several tons of food, diapers, watercolors, and balloons for the residents of a faraway region. So, you send all this cargo by a transport plane to Yerevan, and from there, by several trucks to the border. So, the trucks arrive at the border. And then?
And then an Azerbaijani border guard and an Azerbaijani customs official suddenly emerge in front of these trucks: bonjour, monsieur, what are you transporting, where are you coming from and where are you going? The answer “humanitarian cargo” will not be accepted: “The Azerbaijani government has not declared a humanitarian disaster in its territory and has not asked the world for help. So, good sirs, what are you carrying in these trucks?”
And what they are carrying in those trucks is commercial cargo. Whether it will be sold or given away for free in Khankendi does not concern us. For Azerbaijan, which is not experiencing any disasters of humanitarian nature in its territory, the cargo is purely commercial. Therefore, all customs duties should be paid in full.
But not here. If you would be so kind, gentlemen, make a U-turn, go back to Yerevan, and from there back to Paris (or to any other city with which the Heydar Aliyev Airport has a connection), and from there you can send the cargo to Baku, where it will go through customs clearance and be delivered to the recipient by vehicles of Azerbaijani transport companies.
By the way, dear Paris city legislators, we consider it our duty to warn you: should the customs officers come across the word “Nagorno-Karabakh” or “Stepanakert” in the shipping documents and the field “country” does not say “Azerbaijan”, then the cargo will go to the warehouse, where it will remain until the paperwork is sorted. Of course, the cargo will be kept in the warehouse according to the established storage tariffs.
Dear French colleagues, the checkpoint in Lachin is not the Russian-Ukrainian border, unilaterally breached in August 2014 by officers of the Russian security forces in the uniform of the Ministry of Emergency Situations accompanying a so-called “humanitarian convoy”. The contents of that “humanitarian convoy” soon surfaced in the hostilities in Donbass, and the border in that area has since been full of holes and impossible for Kyiv to control. Lachin is not the same kind of uncontrolled “hole” through which you can move anything and anyone you want. Those days are gone. If you have any doubts, you can ask your Iranian friends. They will tell you all about it with a longing in their voice.
The time has come for all commercial cargoes for Karabakh Armenians to be imported through Baku. Or through Fizuli Airport. At any rate, all formalities must be observed in a way that both senders and recipients understand that Karabakh is Azerbaijan!
