Why armenia could strike a blow

Strategic transport and energy routes, such as Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil, and the South Caucasus gas pipelines could get serious damages in the wake of the dam burst. This is not the first time that Armenia has made threats of destroying Azerbaijan civilian infrastructure. General Levon Mnatsanakanyan, who commanded the Armenian occupying forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, earlier threatened to paralyze Azerbaijan's economy by missile strikes.

He said such an attack was "part of their tactical plans" and they would "not hesitate for a second" to hit civilian infrastructure in Azerbaijan. Former Defense Minister of Armenia, Seyran Ohanyan said Armenia could strike Azerbaijani positions first as he referred to a so-called doctrine that allows Armenian armed forces to take definitive measures including both defensive and preemptive.

Russian ethnographer of Armenian descent Sergey Arutyunov stated in a interview that Armenian military authorities have already included the Mingachevir water reservoir in the targets they could hit in the territory of Azerbaijan.

One strike and central Azerbaijan will turn into a sea," Arutyunov said. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds for years over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia in the early s.

The war claimed the lives of 30, ethnic Azerbaijanis and displaced one million others from their homeland. In , the United Nations Security Council adopted four resolutions demanding the immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces from Azerbaijani lands and the return of internally displaced Azerbaijanis to their ancestral lands. All four legally binding documents go unfulfilled by Armenia to date. Their greatest moment came in when they won an unexpected Double under Nikita Simonyan, who had already won the Double as a player and coach at Spartak Moscow.

He was of Armenian heritage, and had essentially been exiled back to his homeland following disagreements with officials at Spartak. I had to change my personal style, because the players had a different mentality. We had two Ukrainians in the side, but they had lived in Yerevan from childhood, so they had adopted the spirit of the people.

Players from the south are more skilful, more technical, even if it is bad for the team as a collective. You have to stick them to each other. That process of sticking the players to each other, of creating a cohesive unit in which they can express their individual ability, probably began under Ian Porterfield.

The former Sunderland midfielder took charge in , and oversaw 10 games before his death from cancer the following year. Although only two of them were won, what is significant is that only nine goals were conceded.

The present coach, Vardan Minasyan, served as Porterfield's assistant, briefly taking over from him as caretaker. Our football is based on mutual trust between coaches and players. Everyone has the same approach, be it the coaches, the players, the Football Federation of Armenia or our team doctors.

We are a whole and healthy mechanism. Henrik Mkhitaryan would not be able to achieve anything alone. I am not myself without my team or my team-mates.

It is thanks to the men I play alongside that I can show what I am capable of. So I am deeply grateful to my colleagues for their belief in themselves and in me. Most of the , Armenians living in Azerbaijan were forcibly displaced or fled as a result while those who remained became the victims of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing known as Operation Ring.

This triggered a full-scale war that would end with Nagorno-Karabakh securing its de facto independence following a cease-fire mediated by Russia in Additionally, the provisions of the resolutions applied as much to Baku as to local Armenian self-defense forces, including its calls for all parties to respect international law, cease attacks on civilians, and ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to affected civilian populations.

Azerbaijan and Turkey tried to get a U. All U. In fact, the principle of self-determination was enshrined in international law to resolve the very predicament Nagorno-Karabakh finds itself in today—included in the U. Charter and backed by a corpus of customary international law including the Geneva Conventions that has repeatedly reaffirmed the right to self-determination as preceding territorial integrity in cases where fundamental rights have been violated.

Laying it to rest can pave the way for real reconciliation and reconstruction. Azerbaijan has used this narrative war to not only justify its territorial claims over Nagorno-Karabakh but Armenia itself. More than six months after the November cease-fire agreement, Azerbaijani troops encroached into the southern provinces of Armenia, where up to 1, soldiers remain entrenched.

Although status determination may seem a distant prospect in the current environment, abandoning hope for a comprehensive settlement would only ensure this bitter conflict drags on for years to come. Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations, with the latter enforcing a border blockade against Armenia in concert with Azerbaijan.

Normalizing territorial conquest and ethnic cleansing as a method of conflict resolution sets a dangerous precedent. Normalizing territorial conquest and ethnic cleansing as a method of conflict resolution sets a dangerous precedent, particularly in a volatile region where one of the leading actors, Turkey, has made a habit of the practice in Cyprus, northern Syria, and—increasingly—Iraq.

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