“When we observe the recent trends: the drop in oil prices, the acquisition of significant military equipment for the execution of the promises given to the Azerbaijani, it becomes clear that they had to be used at some moment,” said economist Artak Manukyan in an interview with Aravot.am, in response to our question why Azerbaijan launched war now, given the country’s economy, to put it mildly, not very good condition and the drop in international oil prices. Manukyan noted that the promises given by Azerbaijani government were not fulfilled in terms of the economy, in particular, despite the fact that Azerbaijan spent enough foreign currency in reserves to ensure the stability of AZN, this objective is not fulfilled by decreasing the purchasing power of the population and increasing the poverty, which tend to develop into the just anger of the population.
Such anger would be mitigated if Azerbaijanis had seen that their “suffering” produced a result and Azerbaijan has compensated the failures in the economic sphere with the achievements in the war, otherwise a question would be raised why we buy so such military equipment instead of spending it for enhancing the prosperity. Plus, the hazy prospects of oil prices which as the economist mentioned do not pretend to pass the limit of 50 dollars in 2016, “Thus, every subsequent year, Azerbaijan will lose its competitive advantages – the military superiority necessary for the war thru the revenues incurred from oil dollars. These internal motivation were added by the protectionism of a number of external forces which in this case affected the decision to start a military adventure.”
Recall that still in October, last year, Aravot.am had referred to the aggressive conduct of Azerbaijan when shelling the border residences of Armenia and NKR military units deployed kilometers far away from the combat positions, resulting in the killing of civilians and soldiers. The economist was noticed still last year that Azerbaijan will experience heavy socio-economic situation 2 years later, social unrest may begin there, even revolt, and at that time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will not be able to dispose his people against the Armenian people and divert their attention from social grievances by the factor of war.
Hence, the state of war is beneficial to Azerbaijan now. Whether Azerbaijan is capable to continue was for a long time under such bad economic situation, in response to our question, the economist replied, “These are military reserves accumulated previously, secondly, it cannot afford an attack of such magnitude unless, of course, its big brother supports it. Russia supported Azerbaijan when selling a total of about 4 billion dollars weapons. Incidentally, Russian media reported that Russia has provided a certain amount of military equipment to Azerbaijan also without an advance payment, being sure that it will pay later which did not happen because of the dropping in oil prices. According to Russian media reports, a Russian official visited Baku for getting the money back for this supply. It should be noted that the supply of about 200 million dollar to Armenia was implemented by a credit line rather than by such privileged terms.”
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Eventually, according to Manukyan, if Azerbaijan was not supported, it is unable to continue the war as there are no other additional resources: oil dollars, inflow of investments, and every subsequent day, the possibility of “revolt” in Azerbaijan in increasing because the sufferings caused as a result of military investments become unproductive.
Nelly BABAYAN
