September 14, 2023

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ASSESSING THE CRISIS IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch and Members of the Committee, in the face of ongoing existential threats, intimidation, and blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian Assembly of America commends you for convening this timely hearing. We also welcome the remarks made by the Chairman earlier this week on the floor of the United States Senate urging action to prevent genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The only roadway connecting Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh) to Armenia and thus to the rest of the world, known as the Lachin Corridor, has been blockaded by Azerbaijan since December 12, 2022, causing a man-made humanitarian crisis. As part of the cease-fire terms* that ended the war it started in Nagorno-Karabakh in the Fall of 2020, Azerbaijan agreed to “guarantee the security of persons, vehicles and cargo moving along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.” Today, Azerbaijan openly defies this agreement using genocide as a bargaining chip. Despite its signed commitment and a ruling by the International Court of Justice to open the Lachin Corridor, Azerbaijan is starving the Armenian people living in Nagorno-Karabakh, going so far as to deny even access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as the governments of Armenia and France, all of which have tried to deliver humanitarian supplies via the Lachin Corridor to the people of Artsakh. To further its genocide by starvation policy, Azerbaijan is disrupting agricultural production by targeting farmers harvesting their fields (see Assembly’s Fact Sheet at: www.aaainc.org). Azerbaijan has also disrupted the electricity and gas supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, further exacerbating the crisis. Moreover, Azerbaijan has even kidnapped an individual who the ICRC was attempting to bring through the corridor for medical treatment. It also unjustly detained and beat a university student traveling to Armenia from Artsakh to attend classes. All of this has one goal: to ethnically cleanse the last remnants of Armenian people from Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that historically was predominately and ethnically Armenian.

Today’s hearing, therefore, comes at a critical time. The Armenian people are now confronted with genocide and ethnic cleansing from their ancestral lands for the second time in little over a century. The Armenian American community sees recent events as a continuation of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. After all, it was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who fully supported Azerbaijan’s reckless war in the Fall of 2020 against Nagorno-Karabakh and who stated that “we do not allow terrorist leftovers of the sword in our country.” The term “leftover of the sword” is one used pejoratively by Turkish authorities throughout the past century to stigmatize the Armenians in Turkey who survived the 1915 genocide. The Armenian Assembly warned at the time of Erdoğan’s remarks that his rhetoric was “both a fresh admission of the Armenian Genocide and an early warning sign of immediate threats to Armenians, Greeks, Christians, Kurds, as well as other minorities in the region,” and called “on the United States government and its NATO allies, and all other concerned governments to counteract these threats and safeguard innocent lives.”

Soon after these warnings, under the cover of a global health pandemic and with America distracted in the closing days of the 2020 Presidential election, Azerbaijan brazenly launched a 44-day war of aggression in the Fall of 2020, killing thousands of Armenians, including innocent civilians. Since then, genocidal threats emanating from Turkey and Azerbaijan have continued, including Turkish parliamentarian Mustafa Destici directly threatening Armenia at a press conference in September of 2022, stating “I remind you once again that the Turkish nation has the power to erase Armenia from history and geography, and that they stand at the limit of our patience.” Not to be outdone, Azerbaijan's autocratic President Ilham Aliyev stated that “There is no Nagorno-Karabakh” and that “Western Azerbaijan (an expansionist term for the Republic of Armenia) is our historical land” while also making a point to remind the Armenian people that “The Iron Fist is in place; let no one forget about that.”

While sounding the alarm about the specter of a second Armenian Genocide, in the Assembly’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year, we also highlighted the concerns raised by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which implored President Joe Biden and Secretary Antony Blinken “to fully consider the implications of ignoring existing early warning systems and genocide prevention protocols by rewarding Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for his threats against Armenia,” as well as the “long-term catastrophic implications” for international peace and security beyond the region that will arise from “[r]ewarding a dictator who has publicly threatened genocide.”

In addition to the Lemkin Institute’s warning, Genocide Watch has declared a “genocide emergency,” and the International Association of Genocide Scholars has warned about “the risk of genocide.” Further, the University Network for Human Rights in collaboration with lawyers, scholars and students from Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, Wesleyan, and Yale, and also representatives of UCLA School of Law’s Promise Institute for Human Rights, submitted a warning about a looming genocide in a report to the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide titled: “Risk of Ethnic Cleansing and Possible Genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh – Results from Applying the Framework for Analysis of Atrocity Crimes.” Moreover, Mr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who served as the first-ever chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has rightly warned of a looming genocide by starvation in Nagorno-Karabakh, calling starvation “the invisible genocide weapon.” Indeed, Article 2(c) of the UN Genocide Convention makes clear that starvation is an act of genocide: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

In addition, promoting alternative routes to the Lachin corridor instead of holding Azerbaijan to its commitment to “guarantee the security of persons, vehicles and cargo moving along the Lachin Corridor in both directions,” only emboldens Azerbaijan. They should not be allowed to successfully use the threat of genocide to renegotiate agreements that will increase costs of delivering humanitarian aid and make it even easier for them to starve the Armenian population the next time they want to seek an advantage. The Assembly reiterates its call for USAID to deliver aid directly to Stepanakert.

Rather than promoting the opening of alternative routes that would originate in, and pass through, territory entirely controlled by Azerbaijian, making it extremely likely such routes will be used to smuggle weapons and fighters into Nagorno-Karabakh instead of humanitarian supplies, much as it disguised its agents as eco-activists in order to prepare the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, we urge the Administration to use the considerable tools at its disposal not only to end the humanitarian crisis, but also help stop a genocide. To start, the Administration can enforce Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, which Congress adopted in 1992 in a principled stand against Azerbaijani aggression. Section 907 states that U.S. funds “may not be provided to the Government of Azerbaijan until the President determines and so reports to the Congress, that the Government of Azerbaijan is taking demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.” The ongoing and blatant attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenian civilians both in Armenia and Artsakh are exactly the opposite of ceasing offensive uses of force.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on American soil, a national security waiver was added to Section 907 that has allowed the U.S. government to provide funding to the government of Azerbaijan in spite of the potential for abuses against Armenians. This waiver is valid so long as it “will not undermine or hamper ongoing efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement” to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict or “be used for offensive purposes against Armenia,” as is now being done. Once again, Azerbaijan has demonstrated it believes agreements it signs with America mean nothing.

It is time to revoke this waiver and enforce Section 907. If Azerbaijan’s recent actions are not enough reason for doing so, consider the fact that when it first exercised the waiver, Congress required a report from the State Department within 60 days “specifying in detail the following: (A) the nature and quantity of all training and assistance provided to the Government of Azerbaijan [pursuant to the waiver]; B) the status of the military balance between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the impact of United States assistance on that balance; and (C) the status of negotiations for a peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the impact of United States assistance on those negotiations.” Yet a 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office Report requested by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez found that the State Department did not “provide Congress with all required information – such as the impact of aid on the military balance between Azerbaijan and Armenia.” Again, this waiver, granted on the basis of incomplete information and whose conditions have been violated by Azerbaijan, must go.

In addition to Section 907, the principles of the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act can also be applied. Specifically, 22 USC 2378-1 states that “no assistance shall be furnished under this chapter or the Arms Export Control Act [22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq.] to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” It is abundantly clear that Azerbaijan is directly, and Turkey is indirectly, restricting the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid to the people of Artsakh. We, therefore, call on the Administration to cease any and all aid accordingly. With Turkey also receiving U.S. assistance and considering the partnership between the Erdogan and Aliyev regimes in advancing genocidal policies against Armenians, enforcement of Section 2378-1is critically important.

Atrocities committed by Azerbaijan against Armenians in recent years have been well documented by numerous credible sources. Columbia University’s David Phillips, as part of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and its “Project on Atrocities in Artsakh,” who testified last week before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, named specific individuals responsible for atrocities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Given the wealth of evidence that atrocities are being carried out and the individuals responsible are identifiable, the Biden Administration should invoke the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and sanction those identified for carrying out gross human rights violations, along with their business associates and family members.

If this is not enough, Azerbaijan’s targeting of Armenian cultural and religious heritage sites has been thoroughly documented by the Caucasus Heritage Watch and condemned by the European Parliament. Similarly, well documented is Azerbaijan’s failure to abide by the cease-fire terms of the 2020 war and return “internally displaced persons and refugees…under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” as well as “the exchange of prisoners of war, hostages and other detained persons, and dead bodies.” Meanwhile, inside Azerbaijan, the corruption and human rights abuses of the Aliyev regime have been widely reported in news stories about the “Azerbaijani laundromat” scheme and its $2.9 billion slush fund meant to whitewash its human rights record. The ground breaking Pandora Papers investigation into government corruption around the world further revealed breathtaking corruption in Azerbaijan. Any and all of these facts should spur action by the Biden Administration under the auspices of the Magnitsky Act.

In conclusion, history has shown that appeasing dictators only serves to embolden them. President Biden has repeatedly said in his State of the Union addresses that the United States must stand in defense of democracies in the face of autocrats who want nothing more than to see democracy fail. The U.S. has taken a strong stand in support of democracy in Ukraine and should do so for Artsakh and Armenia. Last month, at a United Nations Security Council discussion on Famine and Conflict-Induced Global Food Insecurity, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the importance of providing food for our families and children, and quoted President Biden: “In every country in the world…if parents cannot feed their children, nothing else matters.” To paraphrase another U.S. president, we say: President Biden, tear down this blockade. Having recognized the Armenian Genocide, it is incumbent that the Administration use all tools at its disposal to safeguard the Armenian people and not allow another genocide on its watch.

The Assembly’s position is clear: stand up for democracy and human rights and oppose genocide; end the blockade of Artsakh by taking action that starts with enforcing of Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, and if needed, apply the principles of the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act and use power of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to sanction those who are committing atrocities against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It is also clear that Russia has not fulfilled its obligations to maintain open transit along the Lachin Corridor, nor prevented Azerbaijani atrocities. In these circumstances, we are sure Americans would strongly support the United States providing Armenians with the means to defend themselves to prevent another Armenian Genocide.

Finally, we welcome the introduction of international mechanisms and legislation to hold human rights violators and corrupt leaders accountable, to safeguard and protect vulnerable populations, to assert America’s leadership for the betterment of humanity, and uphold the fundamental principles of democracy, the right to self-determination, and the universal human rights of the people of Artsakh.