Azerbaijan among top 10 militarized countries

20 February 2020 15:45 (UTC+04:00)

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Azerbaijan is the 10th most militarized country in the world, according to the Global Militarisation Index (GMI) 2019 of Bonn International Center for Conversation (BICC)’s official website.

Along with Israel, Singapore, Armenia, Cyprus, South Korea, Russia, Greece, Jordan and Belarus, the biggest country of the South Caucasus provided the military with markedly large amounts of resources in relation to other areas of society, according to the GMI ranking.

As the authors of the latest index noted, the unresolved secessionist conflict between Armenia (position 3) and Azerbaijan (position 10) over the Nagorno-Karabakh region continues to keep militarization in the South Caucasus at a very high level.

The regional focus of the GMI 2019 was on Europe (Eastern Europe / NATO and EU countries), the Middle East and Asia.

Every year, BICC’s GMI presents the relative weight and importance of a country's military apparatus in relation to its society as a whole and covers 154 states and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2018).

It should be noted that Baku has the strongest army in the South Caucasus, according to Global Fire Power ranking 2020. The country ranked 64th among 138 countries considered for the annual Global Fire Power review this year.

The skills and combat readiness of the Azerbaijani army are growing year by year, as the country’s Armed Forces regularly conduct military exercises. The Azerbaijani army is supplied with modern weapons and technical equipment for maintaining a high level of combat capability.

The army building process is of particular importance for Azerbaijan, as 20 percent of the country's territory is under Armenian occupation and the country is in a state of war with Armenia.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94