FRANCE TV INVESTIGATION: How Azerbaijan is leading a repopulation campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh

Actual News Magazine

A year after the offensive in this disputed enclave, Les Révélateurs retraces the Azerbaijani maneuvers to erase the Armenian presence and repopulate this enclave deserted since 2023.

Flags of the Republic of Artsakh (Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh) trampled, thrown and replaced by Azerbaijani soldiers. The symbolism is strong, it aims to affirm that the enclave has now passed into the hands of the victors.

The image is not isolated. A year after Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh, this separatist territory disputed for 35 years with Armenia, Les Révélateurs conducted the investigation. Thanks to satellite images and social networks, they retraced several months of maneuvers aimed at two simultaneous objectives: erasing the Armenian presence and repopulating the enclave deserted for several months.

In the days following Azerbaijan’s land incursion on September 19, 2023, images of overturned road signs, torn down by the armed forces entering the enclave, appeared on social media. The names of villages, previously written in Armenian and Russian, were replaced by their translations into Azerbaijani. Over the months, passing visitors proudly pose in front of these new signs, sometimes going so far as to trample on their old version in Armenian.

But Azerbaijan is going to push its erasure strategy even further. In early October, the country reissued a map of Nagorno-Karabakh, adding a street named after Enver Pasha, considered one of the main perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. This episode is mentioned in the public hearing report opposing the two countries on October 12, 2023 before the International Court of Justice.

This new map of the territory, already in preparation in 2022, could be consulted on the collaborative mapping platform OpenStreetMap (OSM). For several years, users have been meticulously working to replace the names of streets, roads, borders, in the region, in Azeri.

For example, we found a user who seems to have taken a keen interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, with over 8,500 edits to his name since 2016. The extent of his additions or deletions of “false borders” (fake border) or “false places” (fake place) is observed on his profile and says a lot about this toponymic issue.

The erasure of the Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh is also manifested by symbolic destruction, notably in Stepanakert, the main city in the region, renamed Khankendi by the Azeris.

Just days after the city was captured by Azerbaijani forces, the telecommunications cross that dominated the city was broken in two and left abandoned as a symbol.

In December 2023, the football stadium also underwent a metamorphosis. The colors of Artsakh disappeared from the stands and were replaced by blue. A slogan written in giant letters: “Karabakh is Azerbaijani” now appears in the stands. Visible from the sky, it reminds everyone of the region’s new status. Videos show President Aliyev, who came in person to inaugurate the brand new stadium, celebrating the country’s glory with fanfare, flags and patriotic songs.

About a hundred meters from the stadium, on the old Victory Square, in the heart of the city, there is no trace of the Armenian past left. The Artsakh Bank has become the “Qarabağ Hotel”. It is an economic symbol that is falling. The National Assembly of Artsakh has been razed. A political emblem of the region for the last thirty years, several videos confirm its demolition. The neighboring building, which housed the Union of Freedom Fighters of Artsakh, suffered the same fate.

According to information obtained via Google Maps, and confirmed by videos from the Azerbaijani News Agency, a luxury hotel and a congress center are to be built there. Once again, Aliyev visited the site, this time to symbolically lay the first stone of the building.

In parallel with this reconstruction policy, priority is given to the repopulation of the deserted enclave. To this end, the president has launched a seduction operation aimed at young Azeri students. In a 50-minute video on May 28 claims that “Students and their teachers will be the first to settle in Khankendi.” In total, 1,200 students are expected at the start of the 2024 school year.

THE carefully orchestrated project is officially launched in November 2023 by decree, two months after the army’s lightning offensive. The money (10 million manats, or about 5.3 million euros) will be released in February and the rectors and deans appointed in May.

On the university’s Instagram account, the offer is tempting: free tuition, scholarship, accommodation and a free computer. The campaign attracts students, who come from all over Azerbaijan and do not hesitate to share their enthusiasm on social networks.

In less than a year, this brand new university (located in the renovated former premises of the University of Artsakh) claims to be ready to receive its first students, with a lot of messages and promotional clips, despite the ballet of excavators and workers in front of its premises observed a few days before its opening. On social networks, students took their first steps at the university at the beginning of September.

Another major part of repopulation is the “State Program for the Great Return to the Liberated Territories “, signed by the President on November 16, 2022. This ambitious program makes the return of populations to the reclaimed lands one of Azerbaijan’s five national priorities by 2030. The aim is to orchestrate the reconstruction and development of territories recaptured after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. The program first provides for the return of families who lived in these regions during the Soviet era. By 2026, 34,500 families are supposed to be “resettled” to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Some of them have already returned to the territories recaptured in 2023, such as the family of Sariya Jafarova, highlighted in a report by the country’s official news agency. Originally from Khojaly, she is a journalist, but also the president of the Public Union for the Promotion of Armenian Violence. Her writings on Nagorno-Karabakh denounce the atrocities committed by Armenians.

 

Aliyev’s plan also calls for the construction of tens of thousands of homes. In Aghdam, a city reclaimed in 2020, real estate ads are flourishing on social media. These offers are intended to attract new residents, rather than families who previously lived there.

The authorities aim to attract 100,000 inhabitants to Aghdam, which would make it the largest city in Karabakh and the sixth largest city in Azerbaijan. In these cities of the deserted enclave, Azerbaijan wants to build modern towns and villages based on the concepts of “smart city” and “smart village”. A new showcase that hides the traces of a conflictual and territorial past where only a handful of inhabitants of Armenian origin have decided to stay.