Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenians seek guarantees from Azerbaijan before giving up weapons

An advisor to their leader said on Thursday that ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh require security guarantees before laying up their weapons, a day after Azerbaijan announced it had retaken control of the separatist enclave.

After a lightning-fast Azerbaijani onslaught pushed the rebels to agree to disarm on Wednesday, Armenian officials in Karabakh accused Azerbaijan of breaking a ceasefire agreement.

The claim that Baku’s forces violated the ceasefire was deemed “completely false” by the defence ministry. It was unclear who was firing when two sources in Karabakh’s capital city told Reuters they had heard a lot of gunfire on Thursday morning.

Despite a deal reached 24 hours earlier, which Azerbaijan claimed had restored its sovereignty, the gunfire and the contradicting accounts emphasised the possibility of additional violence.

“We have an agreement on the cessation of military action but we await a final agreement – talks are going on,” David Babayan, an adviser to Nagorno-Karabakh’s breakaway ethnic Armenian leader Samvel Shahramanyan, told Reuters. “We need to talk through a lot of many questions and issues.”

“There has not been a final agreement yet.”

When asked about giving up weapons, Babayan said his people could not be left to die, so would security guarantees first.

“A whole host of questions still need to be resolved,” he said.

On Thursday, representatives of the Republic of Artsakh, as the Karabakh Armenians refer to themselves, and Azerbaijan met in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh.

No definitive agreement has been reached, according to a Telegram statement from the Artsakh government.

Although Karabakh is acknowledged by the international community to be a part of Azerbaijan, it has enjoyed de facto independence since separating from Azerbaijan in a conflict in the 1990s as the Soviet Union fell.

President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has long dreamed of regaining control, and on Tuesday, he launched a fast military assault that swiftly blasted through Armenian defences in the Karabakh region.

He claimed that Azerbaijan had won with a “iron fist” in a speech to the country on Wednesday night.

“After the surrender of the criminal junta, this source of tension, this den of poison, has already been consigned to history,” Aliyev said, focusing his anger on Karabakh’s leadership.

He said the region’s ethnic Armenians would enjoy full educational, cultural and religious rights. All ethnic groups and faiths would be united as “one fist – for Azerbaijan, for dignity, for the Motherland”.

For the separatist Karabakh leadership and Armenia, which supported its relatives in the enclave to preserve their autonomy and fought two wars with Azerbaijan in a 30-year period, defeat is a tough pill to swallow.

In a speech to commemorate his nation’s independence day, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan admitted that his people were experiencing “untold physical and psychological suffering”.

However, he asserted that for his nation to survive, there must be peace: “an environment free from conflicts, inter-state, inter-ethnic conflicts.”

The restraint of Armenia in not attempting to obstruct Baku’s offensive, according to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, will eliminate a barrier to peace between the two Caucasus neighbours. An Aliyev aide claimed Baku has sent Yerevan a fresh draught peace agreement.

Many Armenians who looked to Moscow as an ally and protector were furious that Moscow, which has peacekeepers in the area, did nothing to thwart the Azerbaijani attack.

Thousands of people gathered in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, on Wednesday to protest the lack of protection for Karabakh by their government.

Many called for Pashinyan’s resignation because he presided over Azerbaijan’s victory in a six-week battle in 2020, which helped to set the stage for this week’s fall of Karabakh, but he later won reelection.

Many ethnic Armenians in Karabakh have left their houses in the last three days; some have gathered at the airport in the capital city, while others have sought refuge with Russian forces.

Residents of Stepanakert, also known as Khankendi in Azerbaijan, said there was no electricity, shops were bare, and people were lighting fires in courtyards to try to cook whatever food they could find. Authorities said they would hand out free food.

“There are a lot of displaced people from the villages, they were just moved to the city and had nowhere to spend the night,” said Gayane Sargsyan, who runs a wellness business in the city.

(With agency inputs)