“Any foreigner crossing the border of the Republic of Armenia must deal with Armenian border guards.”
Just a few months ago, this was the kind of statement made by Armenian officials and pro-government politicians. It was a response to Aliyev’s declaration that Azerbaijanis entering the so-called “Zangezur corridor,” as he put it, should not have to see the faces of Armenian border guards. Yet this week, the Prime Minister announced that in many countries, border guards don’t check the passports of those entering their country—machines do.
But that only works in those “many countries” where all citizens have biometric passports and where the data from those documents are included in a shared database. In the case of Armenia and Azerbaijan, both conditions are absent. On top of that, there’s not a word about Armenian citizens who may enter Nakhichevan or mainland Azerbaijan through that “corridor” or elsewhere also being “checked by machines.”
What happened to the principle of reciprocity? And if this ultra-modern method of “machine checks” is so applicable in our region, why not start with our friendly neighbor, Georgia?
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In reality, all this is, to put it plainly, a sham designed to bamboozle the public. Aliyev has demanded that no Armenian official approach his citizens in the “corridor,” and Pashinyan, as always, obeys. He will never admit that his behavior is dictated solely by the demands of the neighboring country’s leader.
That’s how it was with military spending cuts, dissolving the Minsk Group, changing the Constitution, and many other cases. The pattern is always the same: first, loud declarations about Armenia’s “principled, uncompromising” stance, then convenient “explanations” once that stance quietly turns into concessions.
Now Civil Contract members claim that hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis will not “return” to Armenia. But once they do agree to that return, the next “explanation” will likely be this: in France live thousands of Germans, in Germany live thousands of French—despite those two countries having fought wars against each other several times. Who can say that’s false? It isn’t false, but it is nonsense—when applied to today’s Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.
The mandate is “steel” only inside the country, when it comes to settling scores with opponents. In foreign policy, that mandate turns to jelly.
Aram Abrahamyan
