There may be no regime more loathsome and deserving of U.S./European condemnation and punitive sanctions than that of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his crew of criminals and monsters.
His family has secretly amassed major “stakes in the country’s … banks, construction companies, [and] gold mines” and snapped up over $140 million in luxury residences abroad.
By 2021, Aliyev’s crime syndicate had covertly accumulated British property worth $700 million.
The jihadis included one-time ISIS commander/war criminal Sayf Balud and miscellaneous murderers, rapists and kidnappers. Reportedly, Pakistan also sent terrorists.
During the war, Azeri zealots chanted, “Jihad, jihad, jihad.” In Baku? No, in Washington, D.C.
That’s consistent with America’s scandalous and long-running downplaying of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s state sponsorship of terrorism.
Defense Minister Safar Abiyev (RFE/RL, Aug. 4, 2004): “[In] 25 years there will be no state of Armenia. … [Armenians] have no right to live in this region.”
Baku Mayor Hajibala Abutalybov to a Bavarian delegation (2006): ”Our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You, Nazis, already eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and ’40s, right?”
Nurlan Ibrahimov, a Baku soccer team’s public relations director (Facebook, October 2020): We must kill all Armenians – children, women and the elderly.”
Using sledgehammers and dump trucks, Azerbaijani troops destroyed (YouTube: New Tears of Araxes) a huge ninth-century Armenian Christian cemetery in Nakhichevan. Stalin had cruelly assigned the latter Armenian territory (and Artsakh/N-K) to Azerbaijan in the 1920s.
Over time, Azerbaijanis murdered or expelled every Armenian in Nakhichevan. Baku plans the same for Artsakh/N-K.
U.S. lawmakers, the EU Parliament and others have decried the cemetery’s destruction and the ongoing eradication and vandalism of many Armenian churches/monuments, to no avail. The State Department’s reaction has been negligible.
Yet consider the uproar by American officials, media and conservative Evangelicals whenever Jewish cemeteries or synagogues are vandalized, attacked or destroyed.
: Often graphic and disturbing:
For about 30 years, Artsakh/N-K, with Yerevan’s help, outfought a better-armed, wealthier and far more populous Azerbaijan. Artsakh became self-governing, democratic and largely safe from Baku’s savagery.
Only Turkey’s and Israel’s military participation, and Moscow’s deliberate passivity, turned the tide against Armenians in 2020. It’s apparently Tel Aviv’s first martial campaign against a nearly all-Christian country.
Azerbaijan now aims to ethnically cleanse Artsakh and has seized chunks of Armenia.
Meanwhile, Washington and Europe needlessly kowtow to Baku, wildly embellishing its energy exporting value.
I’ve shown elsewhere that the Caucasus’ swing country is Armenia. Whichever direction it goes, so goes the Caucasus.
Russia’s stranglehold over Armenia and Artsakh remains. But the West’s rejection of sanctions against the obvious aggressor, Azerbaijan, unmasks the duplicity behind its sponsorship of talks between Yerevan and Baku.
Moreover, Washington’s flouting of Section 907’s restrictions on aid to Azerbaijan brings further dishonor upon America.
If Armenians are wise, they won’t agree to anything with Baku unless Yerevan gets rock-solid Western security guarantees, high-tech weapons and a long-term, armed international peace-keeping force in Artsakh.
Otherwise, given Azerbaijan’s blood-soaked, deceitful record, its signature on a “peace” agreement is worthless.
David Boyajian’s main focus is the Caucasus. His work is archived at https://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/David_Boyajian
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.