THERE is a wise saying - "a good neighbor is a fellow who smiles at you over the back fence, but doesn't climb over it."
However, throughout our long history, Azerbaijan has not enjoyed such consistently trustful neighbourhood relations with Armenia.
Motivated by antagonistic ideology of "Great Armenia", Armenia's revisionist and expansionist policy had exposed Azerbaijan to numerous losses of innocent people and countless landgrab attacks from the first years of 20th century till the Second Karabakh War, which is also called as 44-day Patriotic War by Azerbaijanis, concluded with the trilateral statement brokered by Russia between Azerbaijan and Armenia on November 10, 2020.
Notwithstanding that the aforementioned trilateral statement aims at cessation of fire and all military activities, Azerbaijan President, Ilham Aliyev, reads this document as a de-facto peace treaty in order to encourage mutual confidence and sustainable cooperation in the postwar period.
Saying that the trilateral statement denotes end of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Aliyev demonstrates decisive will in advancement of peaceful relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Most importantly, Aliyev's unambiguous interest and bold stance toward peace and cooperation right after the bloody war are underpinned practical goodwill efforts by Azerbaijan like extending extra 10 days in deadline which mentioned in the November 10 statement to allow Armenian population to leave liberated Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan; returning 69 PoWs and detainees to Armenia and providing all necessary conditions for retrieval of bodies of around 1,400 Armenian military servicemen; allowing Armenian citizens to use liberated parts of Gorus–Kafan highway which is under control of Azerbaijani Border Service and facilitating transportation of Russian natural gas to Armenia.
Obviously, any sustainable and cooperative relations between neighboring countries can't be achieved unilaterally. Yet, the situation on the opposite side of the story is different. As it is seen from the current domestic developments and diplomatic discourse in Armenia, the Armenian leadership not only appears unwilling to fulfill its obligations arising from international humanitarian law and the trilateral statement, but also doesn't present any simple evidence of initiative to prepare its people for neighborhood peace with Azerbaijan.
However, in the case for Armenia, it shouldn't be simply read as a syndrome of demoralized post-war country and/or post-traumatic behavioural disorder of a political leadership. There has been a long-established trouble relating to detrimental narratives and claims against Azerbaijan in Armenian political culture that requires to be healed by Armenia's own people, and simultaneously encouraged by international support.
Farid Shafiyev, Chairman of the Baku-based Center for Analysis of International Relations truly explains how narratives, or rather myths rooted in the Armenian political and intellectual elite do not allow Armenia and its society to abandon a parallel imagined world and start the development of good relations with Azerbaijan.
Worse still, socio-political engineering attempts by the Armenian elite based on these myths create some kind of vicious circle in interaction within its people. This kind of domestic culture preeminently puts the November 10 statement under serious risk.
In this regard, Shafiyev warned: "…But further tragic events might happen in the future if the approach of myth making will not stop. …Social networks are full of xenophobic attacks against Azerbaijanis, slogans of revenge are voiced in the streets, and the same politicians, such as Robert Kocharyan, who are responsible for the economic stagnation, demographic crisis, and military defeat continue to play a significant role in the country's political arena".
Another rigid and provoking link in this chain of belligerent manner is, undoubtedly, the Armenian diaspora, mainly based in the United States, Russia and various countries of Latin America and Western Europe, that tries to disrupt normalization process between Azerbaijan and Armenia by disseminating hatred and false allegations.
Even sometimes, in order to instigate their fellows to act demandingly and so, aggressively in and out of the country, what the Armenian diaspora carries out is beyond rational thinking capability of human being. For example, Armenian scholar Dr. Viken Yacoubian in one of his papers talks about a very unique case featuring rationality of opinion makers in the Armenian diaspora.
Yacoubian states that one study found that even in the face of a natural calamity (i.e., the Soviet Armenian earthquake of 1988), a group of Armenian youths in Los Angeles interpreted the event within the larger context of the injustices against and the persecution and oppression of the Armenian people.
And of course, military-political leadership in Armenia is extremely delighted to borrow these and other similar kind of myths to create more influence and develop its ideological mastery over average Armenian citizens who basically struggle for bread and butter.
Thus, Armenia shouldn't be allowed to exploit its postwar accountability by hiding behind pretexts of the postwar trauma and playing victim, and so to protract peace-building conditions of the Nov 10 statement.
Owing to the history, the Armenian leadership between 1988-2020 didn't do even a small effort for peaceful settlement of the conflict, while they were notoriously announcing themselves as the "winner" of the First Karabakh War by occupying 20 per cent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territories. Furthermore, attentive international community has not forgot the bellicose speech of Armenia's former defense minister in 2019 declaring "new war – new territories".
Against this backdrop, Azerbaijan President explicitly hints at the role of international institutions and NGOs in strengthening peace awareness of Armenia's leadership. Within the international conference held at ADA University, on April 13, 2021, Aliyev drew the attention of international community to the fact that currently in Armenia few representatives of civil society who speak for peace with Azerbaijan are becoming a subject of attacks including public attacks and sometimes physical attacks.
At the same time, Aliyev continues to speak out with a very clear and powerful message: "… we need to be able to deliver our messages to Armenian society. Our resources are very limited. The public space in Armenia is strongly controlled by the government. As I said any positive sign or word about Azerbaijan is considered to be a treason.
"Therefore, I think that international organizations, especially those who have experience in dealing with this kind of issues of post-conflict reconciliation or normalization, confidence-building measures, I think we should count a lot on the support from international NGOs. Azerbaijan is ready to work with them on this issue".
As of today, related leading international institutions based mainly in the countries where Armenian diaspora and lobby are densely populated in, have shown no tangible initiative contrary to the what are expected from them in this sensitive time. However, there is a very urgent and unpostponable issue that the international community can start from: to demand map of landmines planted by the military of Armenia in Azerbaijani territories.
The fact is, during almost three decades of occupation, Armenia deliberately laid mines in the territories of Azerbaijan which expose serious threat to the life, safety, and livelihoods of both military and civilians in the postwar period. According to official reports, more than 20 Azerbaijani civilians and service members have been killed and 85 heavily injured in mine explosions.
Despite that, Armenia blatantly violates its international obligations by refusing to share map of minefields. It would be considered as a glimmer of hope in developing mutual confidence and good neighborhood relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, if international community was able to acquire map of mine-contaminated areas.
Anyway, there are huge benefits waiting to be realised if concerned international institutions can act in a cordial but decisive manner.
The writer is First Secretary, Embassy of Azerbaijan, Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect his official position