At the turn of 2021-2022, one year after the end of the Karabakh war, when Azerbaijan and Armenia, through the mediation of Russia, agreed on a route for opening communications through the Zangezur corridor and agreed to start the process of border delimitation, it was time to move on to the next important stage of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement - the implementation of paragraph 7 of the first trilateral Statement: "Internally displaced persons and refugees are returning to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the control of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees".
The Armenian population of Karabakh, which had fled to Armenia during the Azerbaijani Patriotic War, returned to the territory limited by the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers at the end of last year. Local residents and their descendants are returning to the regions liberated by the force of Azerbaijani weapons and will continue to return as the land is cleared and the social and transport infrastructure destroyed during the years of occupation is built. However, a week ago,the question still remained: how exactly will the return of the Azerbaijani community of Karabakh to Khankendi, Agdere, Khojaly, Khojavend, Askeran and adjacent villages take place?
For 13 months after the war, we've heard only from Yerevan and from the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers only irreconcilable revanchist statements that the Azerbaijanis would never live in Khankendi, that the supporters of the occupation of Karabakh would still regain their strength and again seize the lands of Azerbaijan, which is 7 of the first trilateral Statement should be interpreted discriminatory on the basis of ethnicity: Armenians return to Karabakh, but Azerbaijanis do not. The zone of the Russian peacekeeping contingent was supplied with soldiers and weapons, it was decided to arm all Karabakh Armenians with one goal - not to allow the separatist project of Armenian nationalists to be destroyed, the main threat to which is not war, but peaceful life. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is a thing of the past forever, but its instigators have been trying to revive it for a year.
For the organizers and performers of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict from the "war party" Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, there really is nothing more terrible than the peaceful, stable neighborly life of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Karabakh, as it was 35-40 years ago. They would rather agree to the defeat of the Armenian occupation forces in Karabakh after November 9, 2020, to the death of 20 thousand sons of the Armenian people in Khankendi, Agdere and Khojavend, than to the retreat of the interethnic enmity they imposed on ordinary people. Because the defeat and death of Armenians in battles with the Azerbaijani army fits into their ideology of "eternal confrontation", and fits perfectly, providing the foundation for the continuation of the ultra-nationalist Nzhdeh-Balayan doctrine about the impossibility of civilized coexistence of Armenians with the Turkic peoples. And the return of Azerbaijanis to Karabakh will eliminate this ideology.
This is what the leaders of the revanchist movement in Armenia and the diaspora are afraid of - not that the Azerbaijanis returning to Karabakh will begin to conflict with the Armenians (these leaders would very much like this, the revanchists in general need regular sacrifices among the Armenian population of Karabakh to strengthen their anti-Azerbaijani positions), but what Armenians will see in returning Azerbaijanis as normal, cultured, mentally healthy people, inclined towards a calm, stable life for themselves and their children. Until last Friday, there were no visible movements in the Armenian establishment that would indicate an intention to support the return of Karabakh Azerbaijanis, although in other areas the current regime of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan distanced itself as much as possible from the conflict legacy of the "war party" and opposed itself to the Kocharian clan and Sargsyan. For this reason, there were fears that official Yerevan still supports the separatist project of its political enemies.
However, the situation was changed by Nikol Pashinyan's live broadcast on January 24, 2021, where he not only agreed to talk about the most difficult issues for Armenia and the diaspora, but also gave the most difficult answers for revanchists and nationalists. One of the most important among them was precisely the answer about the return of Azerbaijanis to Karabakh. In contrast to the entire body of statements by the separatists and their sponsors that the legs of an Azerbaijani will never be in Khankendi, the head of the Republic of Armenia stressed that “the issue of the rights of Azerbaijanis living in Karabakh has not been disputed and will not be disputed; the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region has never been considered purely Armenian unit ". Developing his thought, Nikol Pashinyan also drew attention to the fact that his predecessors had tried unsuccessfully to promote the idea of a mono-national Karabakh, but this led to the April 2016 battles and the removal of the issue of the status of the region from the negotiating agenda.
“Karabakh could not be completely Armenian. If we mean the demographic composition of the population, then it’s not at all. From the content of the negotiations it was obvious that the Armenian and Azerbaijani population lived in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. It is obvious that power in Karabakh cannot be completely Armenian, "he explained, causing the expected storm of protests in the revanchist-nationalist circles of Armenia and the diaspora, and at the same time creating a new reality in the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement. Nikol Pashinyan announced that official Yerevan will not hinder the return of the Karabakh Azerbaijanis home, moreover, their rights "will not be challenged".
Of course, it is worth noting that the Armenian authorities have nothing to do with the internal processes in Azerbaijan de jure, and the return of internally displaced persons to their homeland in Karabakh refers exclusively to the internal issues of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, it is fundamentally important that the Armenian leadership refuses to support the mono-national separatist project in Karabakh, which means that its founders from the "war party" will now sharply reduce the ability to supply Khankendi with weapons and anti-Azerbaijani propaganda. The fact that the legitimately elected head of the Armenian state declares respect for the rights of the Karabakh Azerbaijanis is the first step towards the formation of a new Armenian policy of peaceful coexistence with neighbors. At least one can hope for this against the background of all the latest agreements and agreements between Yerevan and Baku.
As Anton Bredikhin, scientific director of the Center for Ethnic and International Studies of the Russian Federation, noted in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, after such a change in Yerevan's position, the question of returning refugees and internally displaced persons to all lands from which they had to flee at the beginning of the Karabakh war arises. "They should return both to Karabakh and to other regions of Azerbaijan, and to Armenia. This is an interconnected process. We remember very well that there were a lot of refugees from the territory of Armenia, who had to leave their homes and leave for the territory of Azerbaijan and Russia. . Full peace will be achieved only when it is possible to restore the historical justice destroyed at the turn of the 80s and 90s", he said.
"Azerbaijanis will now return to Karabakh, as well as Kurds and representatives of other nationalities who lived in the region before the outbreak of hostilities. Until now, only the line of Armenia was active, from where Armenian refugees returned to Karabakh along the Lachin corridor, now they will become more visible active lines of Baku and Moscow, which will help people return to their homeland not to ruins, but to restored houses. Baku that Azerbaijani construction companies will work in Khankendi and other cities of the region", Anton Bredikhin said.
At the same time, a struggle against the closure of the separatist project proposed by Nikol Pashinyan is already unfolding in Armenia. "The conflict between Pashinyan’s government and the "authorities" in Khankendi is growing due to his statements. The issue of the return of refugees and internally displaced persons is one of the important components of this conflict. Most likely, we will not see any real actions from Yerevan here. In any case, Baku will deal with the return of the Karabakh Azerbaijanis, supporting them, providing funding for the restoration of houses, building everything they need, giving them jobs.In my opinion, Yerevan won't help here with any positive initiatives, despite the fact that Nikol Pashinyan is already ready to use the billions of euros promised by the European Union - this money is unlikely to reach Karabakh”, predicts the scientific director of the Center for Ethnic and International Studies of the Russian Federation.
Let us add that Armenia must certainly bear material responsibility for all the damage inflicted on Azerbaijan during the years of its occupation - for the destroyed cities and villages, destroyed and desecrated monuments of culture and history, for plundered and polluted natural resources - therefore, Yerevan will still pay for the atrocities of the "war party". At the same time, at the current stage of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, it is important to stop the support of these atrocities by the Armenian authorities, and Nikol Pashinyan's announced closure of the separatist project in Karabakh (the "status" of which, according to him, was removed from the negotiating agenda back in 2016) is a sign of Armenia's transition to be constructive on key political issues.
As before, the main thing is that concrete actions follow Pashinyan's words, and Yerevan really begins to support the return of the Karabakh Azerbaijanis home and not challenge their right to live in Karabakh. After the successes achieved on other issues, this topic becomes the main one on the way to a stable peace in the South Caucasus.
