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Armenia's plans to "rebuild" Syria raises bar for cynicism

19 April 2022 [15:58] - TODAY.AZ

By Azernews


By Ayya Lmahamad

Armenia razed to the ground, looted, and burned down houses, public buildings, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, industrial enterprises, and even cemeteries during its nearly 30-year occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

The magnitude of the tragedy left behind by the Armenian occupants is staggering. Armenia's destruction of Azerbaijan's formerly occupied territories, as President Ilham Aliyev stated in one of his speeches last year, exceeds Baku's worst fears.

Over the years of occupation, Armenia has destroyed all the living and infrastructure conditions on these territories. Thus, they left no buildings in normal conditions in Azerbaijan's Aghdam. And not only there. The territories are completely torn down.

Over 500 Azerbaijani cemeteries in Armenia have been destroyed, including Aghadada, Ashagi Shorja, Gullubulagh, and Saral. The tomb of Azerbaijan's great poet Ashig Alasgar, whose tombstone was erected in his native village in the ancient Goycha district, was also destructed.

Armenia has also demolished thousands of Azerbaijani cultural heritage sites. In this regard, the monitoring conducted shows that 95 percent of 706 state-registered historical and cultural monuments in the liberated territories have been eliminated.

Moreover, Armenians damaged Azerbaijan’s nature, biodiversity and the whole ecosystem, deliberately setting fire to 100 hectares of land. Azerbaijan’s natural monuments destroyed by Armenia in the previously occupied territories cannot be restored. Out of 230,000 hectares of forest that existed in East Zangazur and Karabakh before the occupation, 54,000 hectares, that is 25 percent, had been destroyed. Mass deforestation has led to desertification and destruction of forest ecosystems, flora and fauna species.

Foreign delegations regularly visit Karabakh and witness with their own eyes the horrific crimes Armenians committed against Azerbaijan.

Taking all of this into account, the pinnacle of cynicism was reached the other day when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in a congratulatory letter sent to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the occasion of Syria's national holiday, expressed Armenia's readiness to contribute to the resolution of humanitarian issues in Syria and to participate in the reconstruction process. The country that razed to the ground the area equal to the territory of Lebanon now claims it is going to rebuild something.

History shows that Armenia can only destroy and devastate. Throughout the years of occupation, they have purposefully destroyed everything on these lands, including houses, cultural monuments, cemeteries, infrastructure, and so on. Even after Azerbaijan's victory in the second Karabakh war in 2020, Armenians were burning houses and trees as they left the territory they had previously occupied, but the fires sometimes spread even further, destroying entire ecosystems. They were purposefully destroying the forests. They have used phosphorus shells in particular for this purpose, which destroy all life and soil.

At the same time, it is worth questioning how Armenia is going to rebuild Syria, where the infrastructure, according to various estimates, is destroyed by 40-70 percent, if Armenia’s economy is reaching new depths of stagnation every day.

To summarize, rather than making impossible promises, Armenia should better think about fulfilling the commitments made after signing a trilateral statement with Baku and Moscow, particularly the opening of communications, and focus on signing a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/regions/218861.html

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