Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

[argin]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Why does the Ministry of Finance of NKR resides in Armenia?

I feel better if I send a check to the address.

i know i was also wondering the same thing!

[Mher]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

i know i was also wondering the same thing!

It could be for international transaction purposes. It makes doing business a lot easier when you're not from a place that doesn't exist.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

18.04.2016

Զոհաբերելով սեփական կյանքը՝ հայ զինվորները փրկեցին մեր տարածաշրջանն ահռելի մեծ պայթյունից

Հրանտ Մելիք-Շահնազարյան

Ապրիլի առաջին օրերին հայ զինվորները հանդես եկան որպես մեծագույն հումանիստներ: Զոհաբերելով սեփական կյանքը՝ նրանք փրկեցին մեր տարածաշրջանն ահռելի մեծ պայթյունից: Սա սխրանք է, որը պետք է գնահատենք առաջին հերթին մենք՝ հայերս: Գնահատենք, հետո նաև պահանջենք ամբողջ աշխարհից ընդունել այս զոհողությունը, հարգել մեր վճռականությունն ու նվիրվածությունը համամարդկային արժեքներին:

Հայ զինվորը կրկին ապացուցեց, որ հենց մեր պետությունն է տարածաշրջանային անվտանգության հիմնական երաշխավորը։ Նա փաստեց, որ մենք անփոխարինելի գործոն ենք այս աշխարհամասում և շատ կարևոր է, որպեսզի հասարակությունը ետ չմնա դրանից և տեր կանգնի այդ իրավիճակին:

Նյութի աղբյուր՝ https://www.facebook.com/HrantBek/po...08870828027695

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

http://hetq.am/arm/news/67354/arajnagtsi-zinvornery%E2%80%A4-mas-4-lusankarner.html/

[Wingman]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

there was talk about SU-30SM

Hey armnuke,

Talks about Su-30SM is much similar that Armenia had purchased ten Su-27's from Slovakia in 2005.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh: Trying to Separate Fact from Fiction
April 8, 2016,
by Joshua Kucera

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/78216

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan visits a wounded soldier at the Central Hospital of the Ministry of Defense on April 4. (Photo: Armenian Presidential Press Service)
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visits a wounded soldier at the Central Military Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Defense on April 5. (Photo: Azerbaijani Presidential Press Service)
With military personnel and video cameras in tow, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan visit military hospitals to meet with soldiers wounded in the fighting along the border of Nagorno-Karabakh. (Photos: Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidential Press Services)

When the deadliest fighting in decades broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh in early April, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and the rest of the world struggled to figure out what was going on. Did Azerbaijan, as it claimed, really seize villages and strategic heights? Were there really hundreds of casualties on each side? How did the fighting start?

In any conflict, the fog of war makes it difficult to sort out truth from propaganda. But the situation in Karabakh is especially murky because so few independent observers are able to monitor the shaky ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

A monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) includes only six observers, including Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, who has headed the mission since 1996. Further, the monitors are not based in the region and must announce their visits to the line of contact separating Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in advance. OSCE monitors have not been able to visit the scene of the most recent fighting because of security reasons, Kasprzyk said.

“Monitoring visits to any areas affected by clashes on the [line of contact] are not possible at this very moment, though we are trying to organize these … to take place as soon as the situation allows,” Kasprzyk said at a Tuesday meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council. “The sides are responsible for creating the necessary security conditions. … My office, with my mandate and the resources it has, can only play a limited role in conflict prevention and assist when there is a need for it.”

By contrast, the OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine, covering a smaller territory than Karabakh, totals close to 700 monitors. A European Union mission monitoring the ceasefire in Georgia around the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia includes about 200 monitors.

The blame lies not with the OSCE itself but with the parties to the conflict, who have a veto over changes to the monitoring regime, most analysts contend. “Russia has an interest in at least the veneer of acquiescence” with an international monitoring regime, said one military officer with peacekeeping experience in the Caucasus, who asked not to be named, explaining the more robust missions in Georgia and Ukraine. In Karabakh, “neither side wants it.”

“For all intents and purposes, there is no monitoring,” said Sabine Freizer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies the Caucasus. “With such little monitoring,” she added, “it’s surprising there haven’t been more violations.”

Effective monitoring is made even more difficult by the rough terrain, remoteness, and particular topography of the line of contact, with trenches dug in and the two sides separated in some places by only 200 meters. “It’s not easy to drive down the middle of that,” the military officer said. “This is really a ceasefire that’s completely unmonitored by anybody.”

The OSCE monitoring in Karabakh was relatively successful while the conflict remained relatively frozen, with a static line of contact and only sporadic small arms fire. “Until about three to five years ago, the ceasefire had been self-enforcing,” said Richard Kauzlarich, a former US ambassador to Azerbaijan and currently an adjunct professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. “When the exchanges began to graduate to sniper fire, efforts by special forces to cross the line of contact, and the use of heavy weaponry, it was clear that a more robust independent monitoring would be necessary.”

There have been proposals to bolster the monitoring mission, including a greater number of monitors and setting up electronic sensors that could track ceasefire violations. That approach has been supported by the US State Department and Armenia. At a meeting of OSCE member state ambassadors to Yerevan on April 4, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan repeated his call for an increased OSCE presence, including “the introduction of [a] ceasefire violations investigation mechanism, and a more robust monitoring mandate.”

But Azerbaijan opposes it on the grounds that it would solidify what it deems an occupation of its territory by Armenian forces. “With some 14 percent of its territory occupied, Baku has no interest in keeping the situation frozen along current dividing lines. In Yerevan and Stepanakert, there is much more support for reinforced monitoring to increase local security,” Freizer said.

Given the lack of political will for more official monitoring, Freizer suggested that informal civilian monitoring, bolstered by social media, could fill some of the gap. “Especially in this region, where information tends to be the monopoly of the state, independent monitoring and reporting is extremely rare – but also essential,” she said.

Editor's note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet's Bug Pit blog.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan: Civilians Hit Hard by Karabakh Combat
April 6, 2016
, by Vusala Alibayli and Famil Mahmudbeyli

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/78156

SEE ALSO:
Video: Villagers Flee Frontline Shelling
A tenuous ceasefire may still be holding in Nagorno-Karabakh, but civilians living in the conflict zone remain traumatized, with many being forced to relive painful decades-old memories of loss and displacement.

On the Azerbaijani side of the frontline, many women and children were evacuated from villages within artillery range. The male heads of households tended to remain behind to keep an eye on property.

There are no official estimates for the number of Azerbaijanis displaced by the April 2-5 fighting. Frontline villages visited by EurasiaNet.org – including Qapanly, Qaradağlı, Qaragaci, Sarijali, and Marqushevan – remained partly empty after a ceasefire was declared on April 5.

“Every time [shelling broke out], we moved our relatives to other regions, as far away as possible, depending on the situation,” said 57-year-old Novruz Aliyev, a farmer from Qaradağlı, a village located about 500 meters from an Azerbaijani army post.

Some residents said they did not flee simply because they had no other place to go. A taxi driver from the village of Sarijali in the Tartar region, an area mostly under Armenian control, said that many locals were reluctant to remain in their homes out of fear of artillery shelling. Some choose to live in their cars, parking them far outside of the village.

Sarijali is located about four to five kilometers from Armenian army positions. Early in the morning of April 5, shortly after Armenian shells damaged a few houses there, the Asadov family stuffed some belongings into a car and traveled 60 kilometers to the regional hub of Ganja, a city of about 320,000.

The experience stirred up painful memories for 61-year-old Zemfira Asadova, who was forced to leave Sarijali once before, in 1992, amid heavy fighting. She and her family returned home after a month.

“We’re used to hearing these sounds,” Asadova said, referring to the recent shelling. “But, honestly, these were the most horrifying clashes in the last 22 years.”

The April fighting marked the most intense combat since the hot phase of the Karabakh conflict, which lasted from 1988-1994. Efforts to reach a political settlement have proven fruitless since the implementation of a ceasefire agreement in 1994.

The day-to-day strains on civilians are continuing to mount, even though the guns have fallen silent.

“Seventeen people in two living rooms! Can you imagine?” said Aliyev, the Qaradağlı farmer. He was describing the living conditions at a relative’s house where his wife and four children took shelter, situated in Barda, a small town about 52 kilometers north of Qaradağlı.

Recovering from the economic damage done will take months, if not years, he added. “While villages are being shelled, how can we continue our work, or how about our animals?” Aliyev asked. “For instance, all my chickens died during the clashes this morning [April 5]. I spent time, money on them. And I lost them in one day.”

To keep an eye on his property, he himself settled in Sarijali, about four to five kilometers away from Qaradağlı, with an IDP family from Kelbajar, an Azerbaijani town that has been under Armenian control since 1993. In recent days, he has traveled back and forth between Barda, Sarijali and Qaradağlı about three to four times a day, bringing fresh meat and milk to his family’s hosts. “We do not want to bother the lives of our host families, too,” he explained. “It’s not always easy to settle in a relative’s house.”

Ilqar Musayev, deputy chair the regional Emergency Situations Commission, said so far local officials had not received requests for resettlement assistance. “If there had been even one [request], we would have solved this problem,” he said. He noted that those who fled the fighting tended to move in with relatives located a safe distance from the frontline. “Although there was not any demand, we were ready – we had places, tents for resettlement.”

The government has pledged to cover the cost of all reconstruction. It is still calculating the extent of the damage.

With the April 5 ceasefire still holding, some villagers began to return home. Some felt relieved after the tensions of the past few days. But the sight of widespread destruction offered little comfort to others.

“Let this nightmare end – whether war or peace, it is enough,” said Zemfira Asadova.

Editor's note: Visalia Alibayli is a freelance journalist based in Azerbaijan. Famil Mahmudbeyli is a freelance photographer based in Azerbaijan.

=======

NB: It is a shame, that at least from a deterrence point of view, Bardav and Mir Bashir were not shelled by a couple of MLRS salvos, to compensate for the shelling of Martakert and Martuni.
Effectively, no matter their panic, their population did not suffer mostly....

[ASALA2116]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Well said

Ibna

[arakeretzig]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan: Civilians Hit Hard by Karabakh Combat
April 6, 2016
, by Vusala Alibayli and Famil Mahmudbeyli

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/78156

NB: It is a shame, that at least from a deterrence point of view, Bardav and Mir Bashir were not shelled by a couple of MLRS salvos, to compensate for the shelling of Martakert and Martuni.
Effectively, no matter their panic, their population did not suffer mostly....

Because our side doesn't target civilians. After all this time and countless massacres against us we still don't give them an eye to an eye, which is the only thing Muslims understand.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

18.04.2016 09:10
Հակառակորդի կողմից արձակված կրակոցներից հրազենային վիրավորում են ստացել ՊԲ զինծառայողներ

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Ապրիլի 17-ի լույս 18-ի գիշերը ղարաբաղա-ադրբեջանական հակամարտ զորքերի շփման գծում օպերատիվ իրադրությունը մնացել է նույնը: Առաջնային գծի ողջ երկայնքով հակառակորդը տարբեր տրամաչափի հրաձգային զինատեսակներից կրակի դադարեցման բանավոր պայմանավորվածությունը խախտել է ավելի քան 50 անգամ: Հյուսիսարևելյան (Մարտակերտ) ուղղությամբ կիրառել է նաև 82 մմ-ոց ականանետ (3 արկ):

Կրակի դադարեցման բանավոր պայմանավորվածության խախտման արդյունքում արձանագրվել է երկու միջադեպ: Հյուսիսային ուղղությամբ տեղակայված մարտական դիրքերում հակառակորդի կողմից արձակված կրակոցներից հրազենային վիրավորում են ստացել ՊԲ զինծառայողներ, 1991թ. ծնված Էրիկ Բորիսի Մաթևոսյանը և 1996թ. ծնված Ազատ Տիգրանի Բարսամյանը:

Բացի կրակային միջոցների կիրառումից ադրբեջանական կողմը 01:00-ի սահմաններում արևելյան (Ակնա) ուղղությամբ ձեռնարկել է շուրջ 20 հոգուց բաղկացած դիվերսիոն-հետախուզական խմբի ներթափանցման փորձ, որը ղարաբաղյան ուժերի կողմից ժամանակին հայտնաբերվել և հետ է շպրտվել: ՊԲ առաջապահ ստորաբաժանումները հակամարտ զորքերի շփման գծի ողջ երկայնքով շարունակում են վստահորեն իրականացնել իրենց առջև դրված մարտական խնդիրը և վերահսկել օպերատիվ իրավիճակը: