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Comment by jdrc | Hacker News Reader

Armenia lost 0.17% of its population in that war, mostly young conscripts. And tbh it was a war that could be stopped rather easily by threatening to sanction AZB. Instead there was more talk about how effective drones are at killing armenians. And the alignments in the region are all over the place. Georgia is invaded, AZB is tied to turkey but also to russia, iran is in russia's axis. Probably one of the worse positions on the map right now.

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If we take international law as a basis for our arguments, then Armenia has illegally occupied territories that de jure belong to Azerbaijan [1], brutally massacred civilians [2], destroyed and looted cities [3][4], and left more than 700,000+ people homeless [5].

Armenia is the aggressor here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_Securit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_massacre

[3] https://www.meydan.tv/en/article/ghost-town-of-aghdam/

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/azerbaijan/comments/jumrv3/on_the_l...

[5] https://reliefweb.int/report/armenia/armeniaazerbaijan-myths...

Please stop spreading propaganda. The khojali massacre has not been confirmed anywhere but azerbajani sources.

In the meanwhile please refer to bombing of stepanakert with cluster munitions and precision bombing of maternity wards, hospitals and churches.

I'm sorry in advance for perpetuating the flamewar.

Disclaimer: Turkish here. I do not deny the Armenian Genocide, or think it was right for Azerbaijan to reclaim Karabakh with this way.

You are falling to the same fallacy as the Turkish government:

* Claiming Khojali massacre is a lie, disregarding the documented facts. Do not bring yourself down to the same level as genocide deniers; they will beat you with experience.

* The "they did that too" argument; as if any horrible act legitimizes the other one.

So, it makes a much better discussion if we all agree on documented facts and try to move forward from there (if there is any solution to move forward to). The "Armenian Genocide didn't happen" versus "Khojali Massacre didn't happen" discussion seems childish at this point, and it is not going to help either side in the long run.

You don't get to call facts propaganda when they don't match your warped version of reality.

You haven't presented a single shred of evidence disproving my claims - because you can't.

Khojaly massacre is recognized by various governments and international organizations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...

To further add detail, the un resolution is focused sqarely on kelbajar region, which in any negotiation logic (madrid, kazan, etc) was slated to return to Azerbajan once the status of Karabakh was determined

Wrong.

822:

> Calls for the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of all occupying forces from the Kelbajar district and other recently occupied areas

853:

> calls on the withdrawal of the occupying forces from the district of Agdam and other recently occupied areas of the Republic of Azerbaijan

874:

> Reaffirms sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Azerbaijani Republic

> calls for the preservation of the ceasefire, cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of forces from recently occupied districts of the Republic of Azerbaijan

884:

> calls for the "withdrawal of occupying forces" from the Zangelan district and the city of Goradiz

Armenia invaded the said land for some time. You may be unaware but West (NATO) has been on Azerbaijan's side on the disputed land, at least officially on paper.

> You may be unaware but West (NATO) has been on Azerbaijan's side on the disputed land, at least officially on paper.

In Germany, that may have been motivated by corruption - there has been a huge scandal involving a bunch of Conservative politicians [1].

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aserbaidschan-Aff%C3%A4re

The point is that the land that was fought over was part of Azerbaijan that Armenia took in a war after the fall of the Soviet Union. You can say that the border should have been something else, but that's the same argument to made for Crimea. I don't think the rest of NATO took Azerbaijani's side because of corruption, you are just cherry picking an incident in Germany and ignoring the fact that the occupation was not supported.

It's very sad and I agree that the second war was also terrible, unjustified and the whole thing would best be solved by negotiations.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Azerbaijan expelled or downright massacred the Armenian population living in Baku in the 1988 and 1990 pogroms. Nagorno-Karabakh population also used to be a large majority of Armenians until the government promoted relocation of Azeri people in the region, causing the Armenian population to be heavily discriminated.

> Azerbaijan expelled the Armenian population from Baku in the 90s pogroms

Armenians started assaulting and expelling Azerbaijanis back in 1987 (Kapan/Kafan). This happened before Sumgait/Baku pogroms.

True. Though the number was at least an order of magnitude smaller than Sumgait/Baku.

This mini-thread accidentally explains why the West don't, won't, and can't care about Azerbaijan/Armenia violence: it's fucking incomprehensible. Tribes killing each other for generations, for complicated reasons that no one without a relevant PhD will understand. It seems intractable, so we throw up our hands and focus elsewhere, somewhere with a simpler narrative.

Everyone gets uptight about the word "uncivilized," but this kind of generational tribal conflict _is_ a failure of civilization. I don't know what causes civilization (it sure ain't skin tone), but without clear villain/victim narratives, and heroes to root for (brave Ukrainians fighting for their own liberation), no one will care. And that's tragic, too, but it's not a commentary on the underlying tragedy of human suffering and death, that people in every nation hurt the same.

You defer to the tv ratings and PR campaigns to define ‘civilization’.

Modern definition - if you're driven by emotions, over principles and self reflection.

And yes - Armenians are failing to be in any way rational about the long standing conflict.

That is not actually correct.

The land in question consists of two parts. The former Nagorno-Karabach Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and a region which is de jure part of Azerbaijan, which was captured in a war that resulted from Azerbaijan's invasion of the NKAO.

The NKAO is not a de jure part of Azerbaijan, as can be seen from the Soviet secession law of 1991, which is the law which permitted Azerbaijan's secession from the Soviet Union. The law itself can be found in English translation on http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1991-2/shevarnadze-resigns/shev... , but basically, autonomous oblasts vote separately from Soviet Republics, and do not automatically secede with their republics unless they hold a separate vote to do so.

When Azerbaijan seceded from the Soviet Union no such vote was held in Nagorno-Karabach. In my view the correct legal interpretation is thus that they remained part of Soviet Union until it was dissolved, at which point they became an independent state.

This is very important, because Azerbaijan has been shooting people in the NKAO for no reason whatsoever, and I assume that's it's purely a matter of killing Armenians, so it can't be part of Azerbaijan: this makes the legal situation very convenient-- countries like Spain, which does not want to accept a separate Catalonia, or Basque country would not make themselves into hypocrites, or set a precedent against themselves, by recognizing the NKAO, or Artsakh as it now calls itself.

To be brutally honest, I don't think the West has given it much thought. It's one of those places that maybe 2% of Americans could find on a map, and even fewer could spell correctly. Turkey obviously has a strong opinion, but they're sort of the odd duck in NATO.

2% is an extremely generous estimate.

There's an enormous difference between what a US voter can find on a map / wants to invade (almost nowhere, absolutely nowhere) and where the State Department can find on a map / wants to invade (absolutely anywhere, almost anywhere).

There are a lot of regions in the world with disputed land and unless there are truly horrible acute humanitarian reasons to intervene, an invasion and a new never reduces the overall suffering. There are better ways to solve problems.

A long story but to cut it short, the UN recommendations for the final solution of NK status is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Principles which proscribe a solution not much different from the current status. this war could have been avoided if both parties had been willing.

That is a good post. Likewise the situation in Ukraine could have been avoided. Compromise was needed. Both parties weren’t willing. Now both are suffering.

What kind of compromise could Ukraine have made? Installing a Russian puppet regime amounts to giving up in a different way.

It has become pretty obvious that there wasn't any realistic "compromise" (other than complete submission) that Ukraine could offer. Putin wants Ukraine and is determined to get it by any means. The suffering is 100% on his head.

Stop with this "both sides" bullshit. Putin decided to invade, and short of completely surrendering in advance, there was absolutely nothing Ukraine could do. All the plans were drafted, the propaganda filmed and the orders shipped way before the "talks" even started, all of it were just for show to form a propaganda context and fool people like you. There's only one side's decision that made the war happen, and that side is Russia.

> Likewise the situation in Ukraine could have been avoided.

Sorry, but no. The demands and even the Minsk agreements were completely incompatible with Ukrainian sovereignty. It would have been easier to demand Ukraine recognize LDNR and Crimea, than to implement Misk 2 in its form.

I can easily lay blame on Germany for being so nindmumbigly stupid with forcing Minsk 2 on Ukraine. You've seen how well Russia played Merkel, when Ukranian president snapped a pencil.

And finally - there was no goal of letting Ukraine make its own decisions on Russian side. This war was inevitable, since western powers refused to provide proper defensive capabilities to Ukraine - specially AA.

Today, war is really bad policy because it kills the young! Demographics are bad enough in our aging world, sending the youth to go die only makes it worse. Maybe in the past, war might be a population stunting tool, but today it just makes your population distribution worse.

Exactly. The youth should rise up and demand the old fuckers like me go off to die in these pointless wars. The world would be a better place.

There's been UN resolutions against Armenia, but that didn't result in anything.

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