Armenians set fire to their homes: Azerbaijan conquers the first territories

Saturday 21 November 2020

Protests in Armenia, applause in the hostile neighboring state: the administrative district of Agdam in Nagorno-Karabakh is now part of Azerbaijan again. As Azerbaijani troops take possession of the area, Armenian settlers flee.

After the ceasefire in the Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan conquered the Agdam region recaptured by Armenia. Baku’s Defense Ministry announced Friday that the army had reached Agdam. It is the first of the three areas under Armenian control that Yerevan must deliver to Baku under the ceasefire agreement. While the people of Baku rejoiced, the Yerevan government tried to contain the violent protests against the deal by appointing a new defense minister.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev welcomed the entry of his troops in a televised speech: “Congratulations to all citizens of Agdam. You are no longer refugees, you will return to your ancestral land,” he said. In Baku, people celebrated in the streets and waved the Azerbaijani flag.

Meanwhile, the Armenian inhabitants of Agdam hastily collected the fruit from their trees and packed their belongings to escape the area. Numerous residents have set fire to their homes to leave nothing for the “enemy”. Aliyev smiled at the people on the run in his televised speech: “You are making fun of yourself in front of the whole world,” he said.

The head of the government of Armenia replaces the Minister of Defense

By the beginning of December, Azerbaijan is also expected to have control of the Kalbajar and Lachin areas. In response to protests against the agreement in Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has appointed his adviser Vagharschak Harutunyan as the new defense minister. Current minister Dawid Tonoyan said he hoped his “resignation” would help ease tensions in the country. Pashinyan has come under massive pressure from the ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan. The deal caused great indignation in the country. During numerous demonstrations, Pashinyan was insulted as a “traitor”. However, he himself refuses to resign.

Last week, after six weeks of heavy fighting, the warring neighboring states of Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on a ceasefire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Caucasus region. The agreement provides that both sides in the conflict can retain the areas they currently have control over – for Armenia this means severe territorial losses.

The ceasefire agreement must be controlled by some 2,000 Russian soldiers who are supposed to protect the line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani territory. Turkey has announced that it will establish a joint observatory with Russia and will also send soldiers. The Kremlin stressed that the deployment of Turkish soldiers was not expected to implement the agreement.

Nagorno-Karabakh had unilaterally declared its independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was followed by a war with 30,000 dead in the 1990s. The self-proclaimed republic is not yet recognized internationally and is considered part of Azerbaijan under international law. Most of it is inhabited by Armenians. The fighting had reignited at the end of September. More than 2,300 Armenian soldiers were killed in the conflict, the Armenian Ministry of Health reported Saturday. Azerbaijan has not yet commented on the number of soldiers killed on its side. A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of a total of over 4,000 deaths.