BY ELNUR EMINOGLU, AZERI DAILY AUTHOR
This unusual question after the long-awaited hope for peace after the two bloody Karabakh wars from the early morning is on the lips of the residents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, caught unawares by the new military report from Lachin, Zangezur, Kalbajar. The cherished peace turned out to be just a short pause. The lips of politicians and diplomats fell silent, after which the machine guns began to speak again.
Armenia, like on the eve of the short-term July 2020 war on the contact line in Tovuz, tried to occupy strategic heights in the direction of the Lachin district, a narrow corridor in mountainous terrain connecting Armenia with the upper part of Karabakh. However, as in July 2020, the attack of the Armenian units was drowned out, and the Azerbaijani Army, forced to launch a counteroffensive, threw back the positions of the Armenian troops.
A collision in this section of the non-delimitated border has been brewing for a long time. In the foreground of the post-conflict picture, another Grigoryan, Mher and Shahin Mustafayev, were holding tense negotiations at the round table, divided by the ponderous Overchuk. In the background, near Western Zangezur, near Lachin, there were permanent clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani military personnel, who tried to take more advantageous combat positions. Frequent skirmishes ended with the intervention of formidable Russian peacekeepers, who each time withdrew Armenian troops to their starting positions. Grigoryan and Mustafayev hardly moved with a pencil along the maps of mountain Zangezur. There, where Armenian soldiers, after a humiliating defeat, tried to intercept new positions of the Azerbaijani Army. For a year, Azerbaijan has long and desperately tried to convince Armenia of the need for an early delimitation of the borders. But the Armenian government, pursuing the goal of easy tactical success, tried to go out to the square to the supporters, albeit with lightweight, but joyful news from the front about the victory over 'the enemy who, after Karabakh, cherished the dream of returning historical Zangezur as well.' Pashinyan and his team needed to achieve at least momentary military success at any cost. But each time the wind of a ghostly revolutionary hope ran into a block of a well-armed and well-trained Azerbaijani Army.
Armenian units left the Azerbaijani heights with a drooping head sprinkled with ashes, and the 'square democracy' responsible for new defeats faced accusations of betrayal and accusations of incompetence in the Armenian Parliament that had become habitual.
Pashinyan again found himself drawn into the abyss of an internal political crisis. And to the main accusation within the country of surrender and national defeat, the main Armenian hostage -- the prime minister wanted to respond with a little military success. An imitation of doomed resistance. By and large, over the past year, Pashinyan himself turned into the main revanchist force, who tried to leave in the shadows the last year's historical failure at the expense of an ephemeral minimal military-adventurous success.
Baku has repeatedly warned Pashinyan, urged him in every possible way to return to the negotiating table in the name of building a new system of relations and regional security. Baku offered Pashinyan to start building the future world from scratch, leave in history two centuries of ethnic strife, reconcile with Turkey, support the 3+3 format put forward by Aliyev and Erdogan and adopted by the Kremlin. Pashinyan responded to Aliyev's constructivism with new boycotts and military provocations.
The Armenian PM has become the main hostage of the most complicated, chaotic and insoluble internal political situation. And Pashinyan tried to break the deadlock not with the help of diplomatic success and a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, showing his people a new path of development, but with an illusory confrontation with Baku. And a new confrontation, even an illusory one, promised a new war. It seemed to Pashinyan that Azerbaijan would not resort to new decisive measures and would avoid an open confrontation. To a greater extent, proceeding from the factor of the presence of Russian peacekeeping troops. As before, as in the period of the second Karabakh war, blackmailing Azerbaijan by involving a third force, be it Russia or NATO. But Pashinyan was wrong this time too. Azerbaijan has demonstrated that it is ready to deal the last blow to Armenia. Final. Despite blackmail and threats. After which Yerevan will have no other alternative but to return to the negotiating table to the ponderous Overchuk with a pencil in his hands. Having lost forever the desire to touch the damned gun...