Azerbaijan Attacks Armenia // FAI ONLINE

At least 135 Armenian soldiers are dead and over 7600 civilians displaced after a short but intense campaign by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces into Armenian territory last week. The latest round of hostilities began Tuesday when Azerbaijan launched a coordinated artillery and drone bombardment across its shared border with Armenia, killing dozens of Armenian soldiers, destroying civilian infrastructure, and terrorizing local residents. The bombardment was followed by a limited incursion by Azeri troops into Armenian-held territory in the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh, penetrating several kilometers deep towards the town of Jermuk and engaging Armenian forces. The fighting continued for more than 24 hours before the Azeri government accepted Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s offer for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Armenian troops had managed to recapture several military bases, although Azeri forces continued to hold about 10 square kilometers of Armenian territory. Over 75 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the incursion.

It is unclear what triggered the flare in hostilities, as Armenia claimed the Azeri attack was was unprovoked, while the Azeri government claimed it was responding to Armenian artillery fire, which has been sporadic around Nagorno-Karabakh in recent weeks. In any case, last week’s fighting was the worst since the Azerbaijani-Armenian War of September, 2020, when over 6,700 people died and tens of thousands were displaced by Azerbaijan’s military campaign to recapture the Nagorno-Karabakh region. That conflict produced evidence of widespread war crimes committed by Azeri forces against Armenian civilians, including forced displacement, theft and murder, a trend repeated in last weeks fighting when amateur videos shot by Azeri soldiers surfaced on Telegram showing the stripped and mutilated bodies of several female Armenian soldiers.

The Azeri offensive was roundly criticized across the West, with thousands of politicians and activists demanding a moratorium on economic and military assistance to Azerbaijan. Only two months ago, the European Union signed a deal with Azerbaijan’s autocratic president, Ilham Aliyev, to double natural gas imports over the next five years, in an attempt to diffuse the impact of EU sanctions on Russian energy during the Ukraine War. US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi travelled to Armenia on Saturday in an effort to “highlight the strong commitment of the United States to security, economic prosperity and democratic governance in Armenia and the Caucasus region.” She became the highest-ranking US office-holder to visit Armenia since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. However, it is unclear if any tangible consequences will be meted out to Azerbaijan by the US or EU as a result of last week’s aggression. Pelosi made no promises during her trip when asked about a US response to Azerbaijan, stating, “we’ll work together [with US President Joe Biden] on what the next steps may be.”

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region traces back to 1988, when the historically-Armenian territory belonged to the Azeri state in the Soviet Union. The territory’s local government voted overwhelmingly to secede from Azerbaijan and annex itself to Armenia, but the the effort was denied by the Soviet government in Moscow. Atrocities committed against the Armenian population by Azeris and the denial of self-determination led to the formation of a separatist movement and an insurgency which created the autonomous (but unrecognized) Republic of Artsakh, a name still used by Armenians in the disputed region to this day. The conflict eventually ballooned into all-out war between the two neighboring states after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, continuing for three years, until Armenia managed to capture Nagorno-Karabakh and some Azeri territory that would connect the disputed province with Armenia. Although diplomatic efforts were made in the intervening three decades to form a lasting treaty between the two nations, a peace agreement was elusive. This lead to the renewal of hostilities in September, 2020, when Azerbaijan recaptured all of its territory, and a portion of Nagorno-Karabakh. Then in May, 2021, Azeri forces occupied an additional 40 square kilometers of internationally-recognized Armenian territory, making last week’s incursion the third act of Azeri military aggression in less than two years.

*The disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Wikicommons).*

Fueling the recent conflict is the support which Aliyev’s government receives from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As a Turkic people group, the Azeris have a natural bond with the Turkish people, which was showcased during the 2020 war by the Turkish government and society describing the Azeris-in-arms as “brothers.” Erdogan provides economic and military support to the Azeri government, as well as diplomatic advocacy on the world stage. Armenia, on the other hand, receives its strongest regional support from Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Turkey’s role in enabling Azeri aggression against Armenia is all-the-more painful considering the Turkish campaign against Armenian populations during World War I. By early 1915, the government of the Ottoman sultan came to regard Christian Armenians as collaborators with their wartime adversaries in Persia and Russia, and a growing revolutionary movement known as the Young Turks joined the Ottoman government in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing, theft, rape and murder. Over one million Armenians across the Ottoman Empire and in other territories under Ottoman control were displaced in “death marches,” interned in concentration camps, and forcibly converted to Islam. By the time of Ottoman surrender to the Allies in October, 1918, an estimated one million Armenians had been exterminated due to exposure, starvation, disease, forced labor, and even execution by crucifixion in what is recognized today by dozens of nations as the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish government still refuses to recognize the events of 1915-18 as a genocide.

As incidents of war, strife, earthquakes and famines continue to mount across the Middle East, the Caucus, and beyond, we would ask the Maranatha global community to continue in prayer for unreached people groups across the region. We pray for the schemes of the enemy to be restrained, for divine wisdom to be granted to international leaders, and for each calamity and catastrophe to open “wide, effectual doors” for laborers of the Mideast harvest fields.

Maranatha.