Just five days after Yuri Kim, the acting deputy secretary of state, told a Senate committee that the United States would not tolerate military action against Christian community of Nagorno-Karabakh, AzerbaijanThe dictator ordered his army to attack. This is how one of the oldest Christian communities in the world ended, when Azerbaijani forces forced the region’s 120,000 men, women and children to flee.
Certainly, dictators from Beijing to Baku are interpreting President Joe Biden’s weakness and confusion as a green light for aggression. Diplomacy has no credibility when the red lines are ephemeral. Although the State Department believes in the power of dialogue, viewing conflicts solely through the lens of honest disagreement often leads to failure. Ideology matters. There is ample evidence that racism influences Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s attitude towards Armenians. Now it seems so does greed.
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Here the case of Gubad Ibadoghlu, an Azerbaijani academic, is informative. Arrested on Aliyev’s orders last summer, Ibadoghlu languishing in prison, was denied the basic medical care needed to treat both his diabetes and his heart problems. Ibadoghlu was not a gadfly opponent; rather, he was a careful scholar whose writings suggest why Aliyev is desperate to silence him.
Ibadoghlu heads the Economic Research Center, a think tank he established to study macroeconomic policy and good governance. Ibadoghlu’s reports document how Aliyev seized prime agricultural land in Nagorno-Karabakh for his personal benefit. While Aliyev complains about mines for propaganda purposes, it is cynical. He forced the U.S.-funded fund HALO Confidence to cease its own demining operations and instead demands that donors channel all demining money through it. He then ordered his own deminers to clear only the land his interests exploited, leaving ordinary Azerbaijanis without help.
Its goal is monopoly. Ibadoghlu documents how the Azerbaijani government does not allow other farmers to work in Karabakh. As he reveals: “All the companies that lease land in Karabakh belong either to the president’s family… or to high-ranking officials. » Aliyev’s propaganda that he liberated Karabakh for ordinary Azerbaijanis is simply false.
Personal enrichment also guides construction. As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did in Turkey, Aliyev’s profits are doubling, first by pumping billions of dollars into his own construction companies, then by forcing those seeking to win Azerbaijani contracts to pay exorbitant rents. Aliyev and his propagandists may repeat: “Karabakh is Azerbaijan” like a mantra, but Azerbaijan has never yet fully controlled the region. This historical reality is the reason why the Azerbaijani leader is having so much trouble keeping the Azerbaijanis alive in Karabakh.
While Azerbaijan and its proxies sponsor lavish trips to show off reconstruction to gullible Westerners, the reconstruction Azerbaijan is showing, contracts awarded to Turkish and Azerbaijani companies with close ties to the ruling regimes of both countries, represent corruption as they build empty shells to launder money.
Corruption takes many forms. Many dictators are not satisfied with $100 million or a billion dollars, but want more. They could approach Nagorno-Karabakh in terms of sovereignty, but the devil is in the details. The desire for profit influenced the decision to go to war and drive the oldest Christian populations on the planet from their lands. This only makes Washington’s silence even more shameful.
One day the Armenians will return and the Turks and Azerbaijanis will recover the money stolen by their leaders. In the meantime, the shame rests on those who facilitate such projects, not only in Ankara and Baku, but also in the Washington, Londonand Jerusalem.
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Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to Washington Examiner Beltway Confidential Blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
