THE HIDDEN SIEGE OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Trapped by an Azerbaijani blockade, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians in the contested region are facing a humanitarian crisis.

January 20, 2023

Ryan Grim: And now we’re joined by Alison Tahmizian, who’s an Armenian-American activist and journalist who has previously worked in war zones in Syria and elsewhere, and is based in Armenia. 

Alison, thanks for being here.

Alison Tahmizian: Thank you for having me.

RG: You were telling me that you are almost caught inside the city. Can you tell us: How did this blockade kick-off and where were you when it started?

AT: So I was actually in the capital, Stepanakert, driving to Yerevan. Suddenly, there was a roadblock, or there was just a line of cars, when we were driving under the city of Shushi, which is occupied by Azerbaijan and Turkey. And we were kept back and I walked up to see what was going on. And there was a group of men wearing civilian clothing. But for the audience who have never been there, it’s a military zone. Today, the areas that have been seized in 2020 are military zones. No one moves there. I mean, Azerbaijan is a tightly controlled dictatorship run by a family, and nothing moves in those areas that have been seized without official permission. 

So behind these guys, you see special forces. Basically, they put civilians out in front, and now they have civilians posing — or not civilians, actually, a lot of them have been identified as Azeri military, they’re posing as activists. But this is in order to be able to do a blockade without any intervention because the peacekeeping force does not have the mandate to use force. If they use force against quote-unquote demonstrators, we all know what the headlines will be, especially that the peacekeeping force is Russian. 

So it’s very clever. So I was caught behind that roadblock. That was about three hours.

RG: And I saw — they’re claiming to be eco-activists or something.

AT: The idea that this country, which has sold itself to BP, and which is a tightly controlled autocracy, where you do not have any protests without official permission, the idea that they suddenly have an eco-activist movement is funny. They are a veneer so that once this story gets picked up, the headline says “eco-activists,” so that the Russian peacekeepers cannot remove them by force, because they do not have that mandate.

RG: And so, you have 120,000 or so people who are kind of cut off from the outside world. What is it like in there? I’ve seen posts on social media saying that insulin is running low, that food is now getting rationed, [and] that energy is touch and go. So what happens if a delivery of insulin tries to get into the city — the alleged eco-activists are kind of in the street and blocking it? How is this actually playing out on the ground?

AT: This blockade is on the road which connects Armenia to Artsakh. So basically, it was a corridor that was agreed [upon] when the ceasefire announcement was done in November of 2020. So this is a very vulnerable road, and it’s protected only by Russian peacekeepers. But there are points where you have the Azeri forces, sometimes you see the Turkish flag on the high ground, so it’s extremely vulnerable. And this is one of those points where the Azeris are on the high ground. And basically, they can send trucks of forces to be hovering right over the road on which Armenians pass and the Russian peacekeepers are tasked with guarding. 

For example, if they wanted to bring in insulin today, it will come through the Red Cross. The Red Cross is the only international organization, to my knowledge, that is working in Stepanakert, in Artsakh. 

But, I mean, that just shows how dire the situation is. I mean, I covered the sieges in Syria for years. I know what it means when the Red Cross has to get involved and be transporting POWs and medicine. I mean, this is dire. This is war.

RG: So what is the goal here? And how does this end? Is there some type of capitulation that Azerbaijan is hoping Armenia will make, at which point the eco-activists move away? Or is this just kind of the new status quo, that they’re just going to strangle the area? I am genuinely trying to figure out what the play is here.

AT: So I hope we can stop calling them eco-activists. I think “Azeri forces” is perfectly fine. 

Well, the goal here is to not only make life unviable in Artsakh, but the next step of the program is to take southern Armenia, an area that Azeri President Aliyev and Erdo?an of Turkey refer to as Zangezur. I mean, after the war in 2020, they claimed Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. They are calling it their historic lands. 

The big picture is Aliyev has openly said that Armenia is not worthy of being a colony. They do not want a sovereign Armenia. They have demanded the demilitarization of Armenia. So this doesn’t end here. Artsakh is always called the shield of Armenia, because it’s been shielding Armenia from what’s coming next, what they would like to implement next, which is to seize southern Armenia, which would grant a corridor between Turkey to Azerbaijan to Central Asia, and all of these republics that Turkey would like to have more influence over than, say, Russia, or any other regional power. 

And the reason why I would say Western governments are complicit — are not pushing back against this — is because this would also cut off Iran. This would cut Iran from Armenia and hence, to the Black Sea and their most secure connection to Russia and Europe. 

So there are a lot of parties — not to say everyone is interested in Armenians being ethnically cleansed from the area, but they’re not going to get in the way. That would also include Israel, which is very heavily involved in Azerbaijan’s military, you can say. They provided drones during the war. If they’re going to actually do a major attack on the Iranian nuclear program, it’s expected, I believe, according to a Reuters report from a decade ago, they would at least refuel in Azerbaijan.

RG: Well, Alison, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

AT: Thank you so much for covering it. 

https://theintercept.com/2023/01/20/deconstructed-armenia-azerbaijan-nagorno-karabakh/: INTERVIEW: THE INTERCEPT