Azerbaijan continues its efforts to fight terrorism
05 Oct 2020
Today, Azerbaijan continues to actively contribute to global efforts in the international fight against terrorism.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the
United States, Azerbaijan became one of the active members of the international
coalition against terrorism. In response to international calls in this
direction, the Republic of Azerbaijan has opened its airspace and airports to
members of the international anti-terrorist coalition fighting Al Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan's joint activities with the anti-terrorist
coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past period are a clear example in
the fight against international terrorism. Today, our country considers
international cooperation as one of the most important components in the fight
against terrorism.
Along with bilateral, trilateral and multilateral
agreements signed with other countries, Azerbaijan actively participates in
regional and international cooperation mechanisms in the fight against
terrorism. In this regard, the UN Counter-Terrorism Office, the OSCE Department
for Transnational Threats, the Council of Europe's Counter-Terrorism Expert
Group (CODEXTER), as well as GUAM, the European Union, the CIS, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization and others should be mentioned. .
Azerbaijan regularly reviews its internal legislation in
the field of combating terrorism in order to bring it into line with existing
international obligations and makes the necessary additions and changes. At
present, our country has joined all 12 existing international conventions on
combating terrorism. The country's legislation has been harmonized with these
international conventions.
Currently, one of the main problems in the fight against
terrorism is the continuing occupation of the country's territories by Armenia.
Due to the fact that the occupied territories are beyond national and
international control, it creates favorable conditions for criminal groups to
freely carry out their illegal activities. There is a risk that the proceeds of
crime in those areas will be used to finance terrorist activities in various
parts of the world.
Azerbaijan has been a country of terror since the 1980s.
From this point of view, the problem of terrorism is not a new concept for our
republic.
There is ample evidence of terrorist activity committed
in our territory with the direct initiative, organization and participation of
Armenia, which caused the loss of thousands of lives. Since the late 1980s,
Armenia, which has claimed its territory in Azerbaijan and used force against
the territorial integrity of our country, has repeatedly committed terrorist
acts. Unfortunately, the initiators and participants of these terrorist acts
are still at large and have not yet been brought to justice.
Historically, in the absence of sufficient political and
military power, Armenian terrorism has been used as an effective tool to seize
resources and territories in order to create a single living space for
Armenians scattered around the world since its inception. The first Armenian
political institutions, Armenikan (1885), Hnchak (1887) and the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun / EIFD (1890), were a necessary means
of combating the enemies of terrorism and a unifying force in the
transformation of the Armenian ethnos from the ethnic-religious denomination of
the Armenian Gregorian Church into a monoethnic nation recognized and used as a
tool.
He was remembered for demonstrating genuine hatred and
discord to everyone, including himself and other ethnic groups, who faced great
support from the Armenian community for Armenian terrorism. A clear example of
this was the brutal massacre of Azerbaijanis in 1905 and March 1918. In 1918,
while celebrating the most beloved national holiday of Azerbaijanis - Novruz,
thousands of armed terrorists of the EIFD raided the cities and villages of
Azerbaijan and massacred the civilian population with unprecedented brutality.
In those days, 20,000 Azerbaijani civilians were killed, 167 villages were
destroyed, 35 of them were completely destroyed.
The ethnic genocide of Armenian terrorists in the second
half of the 1980s was marked by terrorist attacks in Azerbaijan, mainly with
the explosions of passenger buses and subway trains.
After regaining its independence in 1991, the Republic of
Armenia justified terrorism at the state level in advancing its territorial
claims against Azerbaijan and made extensive use of terrorist means in the
occupation and annexation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, as well
as seven surrounding regions.
