A HARBINGER OF "GREAT RETURN"

The ruins of houses, fences riddled with shell fragments, gardens with overgrown weed... The village of Jojug Merjanli is the only village of Jabrail region of Azerbaijan liberated from the Armenian occupation. The de-occupation of the village was possible 23 years ago as a result of the Operation Horadiz.

Jojug Merjanli is 35 kilometers away from the center of Jabrayil occupied by Armenia in 1993. Before the war, 400 families mainly engaged in viticulture, grain growing, cattle breeding and sericulture lived in this village.

The Armenian armed forces have virtually riddled left the village. In addition, the entire surrounding area continued to be under the control of Armenians up until 2016 and the constant shootings made the lives of civilian population impossible even after the liberation. For all these years, there was only one house, which has shown signs of life in Jojug Merjanli.

The Gaziyevs family is the only one who was able to return to the village after it was liberated. "I am not thinking of leaving this area, as it is my native land, my hearth. I live and will die here", said the head of family, Ogtay Gaziyev a year ago. Now, after the liberation of the nearby height of Leletepe in April 2016, other villagers were able to return to their homes.

According to the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs, already 190 families have applied to authorities for return to Jojug Merjanli. After the order of President Ilham Aliyev, dated January 24, 2017 on restoration of Jojug Merjanli, nothing can hold its inhabitants in IDP camps.

President ordered to vote ₼4 million for the restoration of the village from the President Reserve Fund. This money will be used for the construction of the first 50 houses, rural schools and the necessary infrastructure.

"Now we are able to start major reconstruction works for the return of civilians to their historical lands being under the full control of the armed forces of Azerbaijan", reads the preamble of the regulation.

It did not take long to start the implementation of the presidential decree. The National Demining Agency has already started operation in the village, and we will also see the start of construction works in the near future.

Incidentally, it is not the first time that Azerbaijan settles a residential area liberated from the Armenian occupation: even the residents of regions living away from the frontline can envy the improvements at Horadiz and the frontline villages of Fuzuli region. However, the decision on restoration of Jojug Merjanli is significant for a number of other reasons.

Firstly, this is the first liberated village, which will be used for the repatriation of local population for the last 23 years. The Azerbaijani society has interpreted this message as a harbinger of "a great return".

Secondly, the restoration of the village is the logical conclusion of successful military operations undertaken by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in 2016 and marks the irreversibility of the outcome of the April skirmish.

Thirdly, the recovery of Jojug Merjanli has a very important moral, psychological and political importance. In fact, Azerbaijan showed the enemy there was no alternative but de-occupation of the territories. At the same time, the event clearly demonstrates the outcomes of the April confrontation for both conflicting parties.

For Armenia, this four-day war has resulted in over three hundred dead soldiers and five hundred wounded, lost positions, fired generals and a dispel of the myth about "impenetrable line of defense". On the contrary, Azerbaijan has reclaimed thousands of acres of land and the strategically important height of Lele Tepe. It is also able to ensure the return of even a small part of the internally displaced persons to Jojug Merjanli, public safety of many other settlements previously subject to shelling from the Armenian positions. At the same time, Azerbaijan’s casualties were several times lower than that of Armenia.

Therefore, the flaunting of the Armenian leadership puts it in an even more awkward public position. According to military expert Uzeyir Jafarov, the presidential decree on the restoration of Jojug Merjanli "is a second big blow of Azerbaijan over Armenia in the recent days. In Nakhchivan, our army has demonstrated the enemy an unprecedented potential of a few other weapons, which has been never done before. I think the concerns of Armenians has grown five-fold after this event."

The expert believes that the presidential decree was also a confirmation of Mr. Aliyev’s statements made at the opening ceremony of a new military camp in Absheron region.

"Having prevented the provocation of the Armenian armed forces in April last year, our army dealt crushing blows to the enemy. Parts of Fizuli, Jabrail, Agdere regions were liberated from the occupation. The Azerbaijani flag is waving on these territories now. Thousands of hectares of land have been deoccupied. Today, our army has control over tens of thousands of hectares of land. In the near future, we will clean these lands and the internally displaced persons will return to their homes", said the Commander-in-Chief of Azerbaijan at the meeting with militarymen.

President stressed that Azerbaijan intends to continue to focus on army building and the improvement of living and service conditions of the military personnel. "Our army is one of the strongest armies. In recent years, a significant achievement was reached in terms of the development of logistics of our army. We ensured high level of logistics and equipment being able to perform any task ", said Ilham Aliyev.

Azerbaijan's positions are also strong in the diplomatic arena, as they conform to international law. As many as four UN Security Council resolutions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, similar decisions and resolutions of the OSCE, the European Parliament, PACE and other international organizations demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. "If someone forgot about it, we can recall. This is the essence of these resolutions. But Armenia ignores this, and the aggressing country is not subject to any pressure", said the president noting that Armenia enjoys substantial external patronage. "We are independent for 25 years. I want to repeat that we have achieved this without getting any help from anyone, not holding anyone's skirt, as some other countries. Today, we must frankly say that Armenia simply formally exist on the world map as an independent state", said Aliyev.

Today's Armenia reminds a stepmother and her daughters from a fairy tale Cinderella, who take notes on the number of favors from the highest personages in their address: "Write down, Mom. The Prince looked at me three times, smiled once and sighed once."

For example, as soon as the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolai Bordyuzha pronounced the abbreviation of “NKR", Yerevan fell into a deep euphoria. However, "it was a small consolation for Armenia for the fact that it has not received the post of Secretary General of the CSTO", the Russian observer Vadim Dubnov disappointed Armenians.

The following statement of the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov has even more inspired the Armenian authorities: "the conduct of any military operations and hostilities in Nagorno Karabakh is not an internal affair of Azerbaijan." Perhaps this wording looked a little clumsy for the head of the Russian diplomacy. However, it is clear that the Russian foreign minister was referring to the presence of international efforts to resolve the conflict. However, a statement from Moscow so inspired Serzh Sargsyan that he began “putting the carriage before the horse" – he claimed that a priority issue is to determine the status of Karabakh, and there was no question of "returning" lands back to Azerbaijan.

However, Yerevan intentionally diverts the public attention from another aspect of Lavrov's statement. "The requirement to liberate the occupied territories is still in effect", said Lavrov in fact recognizing Armenia as an occupant. By the way, this opinion belongs to Armenian experts.

No doubt that the Russian Foreign Minister knows very well who actually hinders the implementation of proposals put forward by him and entitled "The Lavrov Plan". Based on available information, it was a real plan allowing the shift of the settlement process forward. However, while the initial stage of the plan proposed de-occupation of five Azerbaijani regions, the Armenian side avoids meaningful negotiations on this matter diverting attention to accompanying measures such as a mechanism for investigating incidents, etc. This is what meant the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov urging Moscow to address the issue seriously. "If Russia considers this issue with the utmost seriousness, it will be possible to change the status quo and ensure stability in the region and the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories", said Mammadyarov.

It is likely that Mammadyarov has voiced Azerbaijan’s expectations at the meeting with Lavrov in Moscow too, where both ministers have "held a comprehensive exchange of views on the issues raised at the meetings of presidents in Vienna and St. Petersburg."

Later, the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister said that he could not "take the optimistic outcome of the negotiations in Moscow."

Meanwhile, Yerevan continues the futile attempts to involve the CSTO in the conflict, provoking incidents no longer on the line of contact in Karabakh and on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, according to the edition browser "Kommersant" Sergei Strokan, "the main conclusion for Yerevan, in their own way interprets the CSTO allied obligations, it can consist in the fact that the Armenian side the expectations were not just exaggerated, and further diverge from reality." This is aware and Sargsyan's regime, which thus continues to ignore the requirements of both international organizations, as well as the generally accepted humanitarian standards.

For more than a month, Armenia refuses to return the body of the murdered Azerbaijani soldier Chingiz Huseynov. Neither the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross, nor the appeals of the OSCE Minsk Group have been successful so far.

The appeals to release Azerbaijani hostages Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev, who have tried to visit the graves of their relatives in the occupied Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan several years ago, are also in vain yet.

By the way, Russia’s silent position on this issue raises many questions considering that Dilgam Askerov is actually a Russian citizen. The issue became relevant after the speech by Sergey Lavrov in defense of another Russian (and Israeli) citizen, blogger Alexander Lapshin. While Lapshin arrested in Belarus has confessed illegal crossing of the state border of Azerbaijan and apologized to President Ilham Aliyev for visiting the occupied lands, the Russian Foreign Minister spoke out against his extradition to the Azerbaijani Justice. "In respect of a person who has committed a similar action in relation to Russia and its illegally crossed the state border of the Russian Federation law enforcement authorities would take the same steps," commented the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Mammadyarov.

Roughly speaking, trying to deceive the world community using Lapshin’s case, Armenia did not notice a PACE report entitled "Persecution of members of the media and media freedom in the EU." The document indicates the impossibility of monitoring the state of the media in the territories of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova, which are under the control of separatist forces.

The PACE members have also approved one of the paragraphs of this report, in which Nagorno Karabakh is indicated as a region of Azerbaijan, which is under the control of Armenian separatists. These items have caused the protest of the Armenian delegation, however, all their proposals have been rejected. A member of the Ukrainian delegation Vladimir Aryev prepared the report. It was later determined that the members of the Armenian delegation tried to put pressure on the Ukrainian deputy.

"MPs from Armenia were trying to please me with a bottle of cognac so that I refuse inclusion of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan in the report. Then, they were rushing to pack some "thrash compromising data" that allegedly claimed that "Aryev’s grandmother was Azerbaijani", said Aryev.

Anyway, blackmailing and threatening of opponents is inherent to the Armenian authorities. And when the opponent is not too tough, they go provoking him in order to draw the attention of "elder brothers." However, in the case of Azerbaijan, this tactic can only have a situational effect, and the manifestation of which was the April confrontation last year. The skirmish provoked by Armenia was stopped but Azerbaijan's struggle for its native land continues...