Overwhelmed By Azerbaijan’s Superiority On Nagorno-Karabakh Battlefield, Armenia Takes Peace Deal

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva, who is also the country’s first vice president, conducted a triumphant visit to Fuzuli and Jabrayil regions. An assistant stated on Twitter, “Everything razed to ground. Magnitude of Armenia’s vandalism is beyond any imagination. President Ilham Aliyev emphasized that all-out reconstruction work will be conducted.” Some Armenians who were departing lost territory such as Kalbajar burned their homes, possessions and forests to deny the spoils of war to Azerbaijan and more pointedly, to the returning Azeri refugees, driven from some of those homes 28 years ago.

The President of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, said Armenia was “betrayed” by its soldiers, who were largely reservists, in a speech cited by Open Caucasus media. He said that the agreement was made to ward off having all of Nagorno-Karabakh fall, and Azerbaijan take total control.

The International Crisis Group said in a statement it was a “bitter pill to swallow” for Armenia. 

“Yerevan had little choice but to agree to terms under which it gave up everything it had gained from the war that followed Nagorno-Karabakh’s declaration of its desire to separate from Azerbaijan back in the late 1980s. That war ended with a ceasefire in 1994 and left Nagorno-Karabakh de facto independent, if heavily reliant on Armenia, with a self-proclaimed government based in Stepanakert. When fighting stopped, Armenian forces also held seven Azerbaijani regions adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh.  A deal that Armenians view as capitulation will not be a reliable foundation for more sustained peace,” the group said.

The anger boiled over as angry protests erupted in Yerevan immediately after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced the peace deal on Facebook and explained that Stepanakert would have fallen without a ceasefire agreement. Hundreds of protestors stormed government buildings and the speaker of Armenia’s parliament, Ararat Mirzoyan was dragged from his car and beaten, resulting in surgery. Days later 3,000 people marched on the streets, chanting “Nikol the traitor” and “Nikol, resign!”

Over the weekend, Armenian authorities said they uncovered an assassination plot against Pashinyan. Opposition politicians, along with the former director of the National Security Service, were detained. Politically Pashinyan faced an uprising when four MPs, including a top aide to the deputy prime minister, abandoned the governing coalition. Their motivation was apparently a Facebook post by Pashinyan telling the returning soldiers, “I am waiting for you in Yerevan. For the ultimate solution to the problems of the whiners (implying his parliamentary critics).”