A Christian community starves. Will those responsible trick Biden?
Michael Rubin
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Armenia became the world’s first Christian state around 300 AD when St. Gregory converted the king at the time to Christianity. A core province of the kingdom was Artsakh, now better known as Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region home to a millennia-old Armenian Christian community.
Almost 1,700 years after Gregory’s death, Artsakh’s Armenian community now faces extinction.
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With his own economy in trouble, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has turned to the usual toolkit of failing dictators, first fanning the flames of nationalism and racism, followed by military adventurism. In September 2020, this came to a head when Azerbaijan, with direct Turkish military support, attacked the self-governing but unrecognized Republic of Artsakh. Thousands died and Artsakh lost half its territory. Azerbaijan, which says Nagorno-Karabakh belongs solely to it despite the wishes of the territory’s population for self-determination, demands the remaining portion of Artsakh submits to its rule.
Nevertheless, Aliyev agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Russia that guaranteed safe, unimpeded transit between Armenia and Artsakh’s 120,000-person Armenian community through the so-called Lachin corridor.
In December 2022, Aliyev began a series of stunts to squeeze Artsakh into submission. “Environmental activists” blocked the road to protest Armenian mining effluent. This was hypocritical, given Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon pollution. The charges were nonsense. Heightening the irony was the fact that Azerbaijan lacks independent civil society; analysts later identified the protesters as known Azeri secret service officers.
Azerbaijan next constructed an illicit checkpoint and refused most traffic, even turning away the International Committee of the Red Cross. While Azerbaijan claims Armenia was smuggling weapons and landmines into Artsakh, neither the peacekeepers nor international observers confirm this. The noose now tightens. Azerbaijan has cut its gas pipelines and even internet. Artsakh cannot access food or medicine. Azerbaijani snipers shoot at farmers in Artsakh to prevent cultivation. Artsakh’s Christian community starves.
Aliyev wants the territory, but he wants it empty. While Azerbaijan says it is religiously tolerant, this is an exaggeration: It wants minorities, but only as museum exhibits. This is the case with the Jewish community, three-quarters of whom have fled since Azerbaijan’s independence. Aliyev trots out those who remain to recite his talking points. Armenia’s Jewish community, in contrast, is free and now growing.
In order to shift blame from looming starvation, the Azerbaijani government now says it will allow food shipments to Nagorno-Karabakh through Aghdam, an Azeri town with no links to Armenia proper.
If President Joe Biden’s team sees this as a productive compromise, it is foolish. To trust Azerbaijan to feed a population it deliberately starves is akin to trusting World War II-era Germans to feed the Warsaw ghetto.
Aliyev treats food and supplies as weapons of subjugation. Rather than negotiate diplomatically over Nagorno-Karabakh’s fate, Aliyev seeks to use deliberate starvation to compel acceptance of his demands. Christians know that if they compromise today, Aliyev will only repeat the process tomorrow, perhaps demanding the closure of Armenian churches, monasteries, or schools as in Turkey.
Also at issue is the sanctity of agreements. Aliyev signed an agreement to a free corridor between Armenia and Artsakh through Lachin. Should Biden let him revise that unilaterally, he kills rather than encourages diplomacy by demonstrating to that Aliyev’s signature is meaningless.
Nor is there any practical reason to accept Aliyev’s redirection of aid. Prior to Azerbaijan’s blockade, Artsakh was functional economically. The answer to its problems, therefore, is to end the embargo. If Aliyev then wants to open other trade routes into Artsakh and Armenia, even better. After all, the decades-long Azerbaijani and Turkish blockade of Armenia is an impediment to peace.
Rather than compromise with Aliyev’s new proposals, Biden should stand firm, deploying sanctions. He can stop military sales to Azerbaijan by imposing Section 907 sanctions. Nor is there any waiver to the Humanitarian Aid Corridors Act, which penalizes any country interfering with the provision of U.S. assistance. USAID convoys should be at Lachin now, ready to roll, American diplomats and congressional staff there to witness it.
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With the latest genocide finding, Biden might even support an international indictment for Aliyev. “Never Again” must mean something.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.