Easier to prevent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict than to calm

By Aynur Gasimova - Trend:

Everyone in the world today faces news about the horrors in different parts of the globe. The world map has hot spots where people are killed every day.

The literally burning Middle East, affected by the "Arab Spring" has recently experienced revolution and civil war and is a flash point of major news again in Gaza. This bloody confrontation has been observed for almost a month. It has resulted in more than 1,350 Palestinians and 56 Israelis killed so far. Nothing indicates the bloodshed will stop soon. Nor do hostilities stop in neighboring Syria and Libya and none of it inspires faith in the rapid stabilization of the situation in the region.

A real civil war is being waged in the post-Soviet region too. The deep crisis in Ukraine, which has claimed hundreds of human lives, including Malaysian Airlines passenger plane shaken down in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing 298 people, has continued more than six months.
Even though the UN Security Council passed a resolution that called for bringing to justice those responsible for the plane crash and to cease hostilities in the crash area for the international experts to easily reach the crash site, the hostilities still continue.
The world powers must pay attention not only to the current civil wars amid but simmering conflicts each of which can start again.

Azerbaijan is such a country, where 20 percent of its territory is under Armenian occupation. If one views the chronicle from the contact line of the Armenian-Azerbaijani troops, the current status quo may soon be changed, and another heated conflict reignited in the region, which at this point can still be prevented. Murders of civilians on the frontline, Armenia's constant ceasefire violations, provocations, and attempts to discredit Azerbaijan continue. The Armenia side's attempt to present peaceful Azerbaijanis detained in Kalbajar region as "saboteurs" can be cited as an example.

Armenian media reported that during the operation held on July 11 in the Shaplar village of the occupied Kalbajar region, one Azerbaijani citizen was killed and two other were taken hostage. They also reported the launching of criminal cases against the detained Azerbaijanis.
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry dismissed the Armenian media reports on any affiliation of the mentioned persons to the country's armed forces. The ministry stated that the occupied lands are the territories of sovereign Azerbaijan and a ban cannot be imposed on free movement of Azerbaijanis in these territories.
These individuals did not violate the state border because the lands controlled by the illegal "fictitious" regime, are Azerbaijani territories recognized by the UN, the ministry said.
Instead of trying to draw the attention of the international community to the processes on the contact line of the armies, Armenia would better be engaged in addressing its internal problems.

The poor economic condition in Armenia, serious demographic problems, mass emigration from the country, continuous discord in the leadership are the problems that Armenia should address instead of attempting to divert the attention of the international community to the unacceptable status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

As distinct from Armenia, modern-day Azerbaijan is a country with a prosperous economy, a country which nobody wants to leave and where every citizens feel safe. Instead of pursuing a destructive policy, Armenia long ago should have returned Azerbaijan's occupied territories and made efforts to get out of its fragile economic crisis. Refusing to do so meets the interests of a handful of Armenian oligarchs, not those of the people.

Unfortunately, Armenia continues to pursue its unconstructive policy and show its interest in maintaining the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and thus ignores the resolutions of the UN Security Council and international law.

The international institutions need to realize that it would be as easy to prevent conflict than it is try to resolve the escalation of an already arisen confrontation. They should take into account that it is necessary to take measures to maintain peace in the region, while Azerbaijan's patience is not exhausted.

The regions with 'frozen conflicts' and the international institutions should take into account that if a regional conflict is not resolved in a timely fashion, it can turn into a global-scale conflict that will claim many lives and undermine the stability in the region for a long time.

Aynur Gasimova is Trend English News Service Head
Claude Salhani -a political analyst and senior editor with Trend Agency contributed to this article.