Armenia orchestrated a terrorist attack in Khojavend. At the time of preparing this article, six fatalities were known: initially, a Hovo truck was blown up by a mine planted by Armenian terrorists, resulting in the death of two employees of the State Road Agency; subsequently, a KamAZ truck explosion claimed the lives of four Ministry of Internal Affairs employees. This is the official Yerevan response to the school bells ringing in Fizuli and Lachin, to Azerbaijan’s proposals to start working on a peace treaty, and to the opening of the Aghdam and Lachin roads.
We are already accustomed to this phrase – Armenian mine terrorism on the liberated Azerbaijani lands. Until now, it was about chaotic mining during the retreat of the Armenian occupation army from Azerbaijan and the refusal of official Yerevan to hand over the “working” minefield maps to Baku.
However, now Armenian mine terrorism is reaching a new, much more dangerous level. As the explosions in the Khojavend district showed, Armenian terrorists are switching to a new tactic: sabotage groups infiltrate the liberated Azerbaijani lands from occupation and install new mines. It is worth reminding that this is the same Khojavend district where the Yerevan command deployed saboteurs in November-December 2020 with orders to wage a “sabotage-terrorist war”.
Now the same tactic is being used almost three years after the end of the war, and explanations in the style of “some simply have not ‘finished fighting’ and have not accepted the trilateral agreement” no longer work. It will also be impossible to argue about “individual field commanders”, “revanchists”, and so on.
The infiltration of a sabotage group into the liberated Azerbaijani lands could only have been organized by the authorities of Armenia and their puppets in Khankendi, where the leadership has recently changed and the positions of “field commanders” have been strengthened. Moreover, there are questions for the command of the Russian peacekeeping forces: how did it happen that the saboteurs with mines quietly “slipped” through the line of peacekeeping posts?
Here, of course, a wave of excuses and unconvincing justifications should be expected. But this does not change the main point. The Armenian side is deliberately unfolding a campaign of terror on the lands liberated from occupation, where reconstruction work is underway and former forced migrants are already returning.
And the most disgusting thing is that the reports of the attacks in the Khojavend district caused a surge of exuberant joy in the Armenian blogosphere. Moreover, many authors spew out a stream of threats and promise to deal with all Azerbaijanis in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation. Finally, synchronously with the mine explosions, another act of “radioterrorism” was committed – this time interference was created for the AZAL Tbilisi-Baku flight. And terrorism has been considered since the late sixties as a “surrogate of war” and a way to “respond”, or rather, excuse me, to mess with the enemy, with whom there is no chance of coping on the battlefield. There is hardly a need to remind how deep the traditions of political terrorism are in Armenia.
And Azerbaijan, we dare to assure, will not tolerate a “gray zone” and a hornet’s nest of terrorists on its territory. Our country will not allow former forced migrants returning to their homes on previously occupied, and now liberated lands, working investors there, including foreigners, to live under the constant threat of Armenian terror.
Baku will not allow radioterrorism against civil aviation to continue in our sky. Official Baku has many options for response. But not the least of them is conducting an anti-terrorist operation in Karabakh. Yes, this is an extreme measure. But if political measures do not work, our country will have no choice. Our country now has both legal grounds and military-power tools for a complete cleansing of Karabakh. And terror against civilians is the “red line” that we will not allow anyone to cross.
