Editorial on the Azerbaijani blitzkrieg: shame on Baku

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Not only Harry Hasler joked about “Subberbaijan”, the whole of Switzerland joked about the former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea. Therefore, our football team had to go there for the World Cup qualifying match. Victory over the “midgets from Azerbaijan,” as SonntagsBlick called them, was a must. The shock deepened when the Helvetia players lost the game in Baku with a score of 0:1. “NZZ” wrote about “sports-historical embarrassment”, “shame” and, unforgettably, about “debaku”.

This was in 1996. Since then, Azerbaijan’s oil state has grown significantly, thanks to changing global political circumstances and rising commodity prices. The “dwarfs” of the past have become a regional power that is pampered and courted by the West. The Swiss have also joined the licorice chorus. In 2011, then-Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey made a pilgrimage to visit dictator Ilham Aliyev, whose natural resources were coveted in Bern. Last year, Switzerland imported 175,000 tons of Azerbaijani crude oil, and the Aliyev clan runs an entire network of gas stations in the country through Socar.

Last week it became clear what happens when the red carpet is rolled out for territory-hungry autocrats: Aliyev learned from Putin’s attack on Ukraine that national borders can be moved by force. In the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a province with a majority Armenian population, the heavily armed Azerbaijani army cleared the air in 24 hours – it was Aliyev’s blitzkrieg. Armenia is an ancient culture that existed for a thousand years at the time of the birth of Christ. Under the rule of those in power, Christian Armenians suffered genocide, persecution and expulsion for centuries. Added to this is the fatal allied policy of its leadership: their partners are Russia and Iran, and Muslim Azerbaijan has cleverly established itself as an outpost of the United States, Europe and Israel.

The international protest – including from Switzerland – about the aggression of Azerbaijan, about the fact that on the eastern edge of Europe the world map can be rewritten with the help of weapons even in the 21st century, is surprisingly quiet: this is a real shame for Baku.

Source: Blick