Two years on: Dark lustre of Ganja and Barda attacks
By Orkhan Amashov
The Armenian government and society, in their preoccupation with accusing Azerbaijan of various wrongful acts on the basis of dubious videos floating freely in the unregulated world of social media, seem to have conveniently airbrushed the most significant page of the Second Karabakh War from the diary of international humanitarian law, namely the unlawful indiscriminate rocket and missile attacks against the civilian cities of Ganja and Barda in 2020.
ICC - a distant possibility
It is facile to think of justice conceived globally being served on a whim. The conditions and procedures for a particular case to be adjudicated on by the International Criminal Court (ICC) or an ad hoc tribunal are replete with complexities. Given that neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia are party to the Rome Statute, the foundational treaty of the ICC, any recourse after it is established that a given national court is unable to prosecute suspected criminals (regarding the case opened in Azerbaijan), or unwilling to do so, (regarding a possible, but a highly unlikely case that could be opened in Armenia), will require a convoluted approach which, at the present time, can only be envisaged on a theoretical basis.
Today’s discourse is more about international condemnation, or lacking thereof, of Yerevan’s warfare practice in terms of attacks on Ganja, carried out on 4, 5, 8, 11, and 17 October 2020, and on Barda that took place on 27 and 28 October 2020. There are reasonable grounds to believe that, on the basis of the overwhelming evidence available, these assaults constituted serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the counts of directing attacks on civilians, the unlawful wanton destruction of property, directing attacks on humanitarian workers, and on several other grounds.
International Humanitarian Law specifies the norms pertaining to the conduct of warfare, cumulatively forming the law of armed conflicts, with the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 forming its earlier codified foundation, and the later developed Geneva Laws, named after the four eponymously-named Conventions adopted in 1949, thereafter complemented with three additional protocols enshrining, inter alia, the precepts aimed at the protection of civilians and other non-combatants.
Facts
Out of the five Ganja missile attacks, only the second, carried out on 8 October, did not result in human casualties, with all others leading to human deaths, life-changing injuries, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, with the overall death toll reaching 32. The deadliest of these attacks was the fourth, which saw the use of SCUD missiles, leading to the death of 15 civilians.
Barda was shelled two days consecutively, with the use of prohibited cluster munitions, aimed at the densely populated part of the city. The use of SMERCH missiles led to an overall death toll of 27 and 85 injuries.
Application of relevant law
Neither Ganja nor Barda were legitimate targets for assaults, as they were solely populated by civilians, containing no infrastructure amounting to a military object. Yerevan, at first, retorted that it was Azerbaijan that manufactured the destruction so as to discredit Armenia. Then, the argument was propounded that they were aiming at Ganja International Airport yet, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other independent observers noted at the time, no evidence of any military target was found in the area.
Both cities were located far away from the conflict zone itself, rendering the idea of military necessity even more impossible. International Humanitarian Law acknowledges that destruction of life may be deemed permissible if it is incidentally unavoidable, yet it forbids the killing of innocent inhabitants for purposes of revenge or the satisfaction of a lust to kill. In the same vein, the destruction of property could be lawful if imperatively demanded by the unfortunate necessities of war.
Although the Armenian government has never accepted responsibility for attacks, either during the war or subsequently, its rhetoric preceding the 2020 campaign was replete with belligerent remarks pointing towards readiness to destroy critical infrastructure, justifying this as “the art of warfare”. After the first attack on Ganja, the so-called head of the illegal entity based in Khankendi, Arayik Harutunyan, claimed that the city had military targets, and later his so-called spokesperson Vahram Poghosyan went on a venomous rant stating that “a few more days…. and an archaeologist will not be able to find the place of Ganja”.
It is manifestly clear that the intent of aiming at civilian settlements, without reasonable military justification, was present. In those cases, regarded as “grey”, due to the difficulty of establishing a military justification, the International Criminal Court has adopted a “clearly excessive” standard regarding the determination of a criminal violation. Since the attacks on Barda and Ganja could not have been motivated by military considerations, there is, in principle, no need to look into proportionality, which is a useful test employed, when a military necessity exists, yet it is important to establish if military gains were proportionate to the measures applied and collateral human deaths and injuries caused.
Individuals are criminally responsible for the war crimes they commit. In light of the Ganja and Barda missile attacks, there are reasonable grounds to believe that such orders must have been taken by the highest echelons of Armenia’s political leadership, with the Prime Minister being a likely decision-maker as a Commander-in-Chief.
Two years on, as we are looking over our shoulders to the tragic events of the recent past, the scenes of devastation and human suffering continue to pervade our memories, being incessantly relived. Their dark lustre will never fade. It is not revenge or an uncontrollable urge for reprisal, but a desire for justice that Azerbaijan legitimately seeks.
Armenia, on the other side, has resorted to the policy of two strains namely, denial and self-victimisation. This is Yerevan’s way of spinning its way out of admitting to its wrongful acts. Armenia has not even feigned to launch an investigation into the malicious attacks on civilians, resorting to archaic and falsified rhetoric, relying on stereotypes and prejudice in the hope that international pressure will never reach the threshold of inexorable compulsion.
Self-deprecation cannot be expected of Yerevan. A healthy dose of self-reflection amounting to a sober look at one’s misdeeds is also light years away from the mentality of contemporary Armenia.
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