Last Thursday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden met separately with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian while the South Caucasus adversaries attended a 50-nation nuclear summit in Washington boycotted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. But no sooner did Kerry pronounce ‘an ultimate resolution’to the ongoing Azeri-Armenian dispute over the autonomous Nagorno-Karabakh (NG) enclave, while Aliyev was flying home the next day his Azerbaijani military was launching a major overnight offensive into the contested region marking the bloodiest fighting since Russia’s brokered truce that ended a three-year war back in 1994.
The US Empire has consistently refused to recognize the democratic rightsof the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, the vast majority 95% being Armenian who voted overwhelmingly to declare its independence from Azerbaijan in 1991 during the waning months of the Soviet Empire while both Azerbaijan and Armenia were still outer Soviet states. This fateful decision resulted in a bloody conflict where up to 30,000 Azeris and 6,000 Armenians lost their lives in the ensuing war fiercely fought over the region’s self-declared autonomy. Azeri residents in Nagorno-Karabakh fled to outlying Azerbaijan districts that geographically surround the disputed region with estimated totals of nearly three-quarters of a million displaced Azeris and up to a half million displaced Armenians. By war’s end, the Armenian military prevailed, protecting the sovereignty of their people who had been living on that same turf of land for centuries. The autonomous enclave vigorously defended by Armenian troops during the war has since the 1994 treaty been a de facto governed independent region despite its non-contiguous location separate from the Republic of Armenia while enveloped by angry Azeri citizens vowing revenge insisting that Armenians have stolen near one fifth of their country.
Azerbaijan’s latest violent escalation was gleefully egged on by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu:
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on April 11, 2016.
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