Should a Climate-Destroying Dictatorship Host a Climate-Saving Conference?

Civilized nations should boycott this year’s UN Climate Conference, and sanction its genocidal, ecocidal host regime.

Lucine Kasbarian

The petro-dictatorship of Azerbaijan has been awarded hosting honors of this year’s United Nations Climate Conference, November 11-22, also known as COP29. This is the third year in a row that a petrostate has been authorized to oversee the meeting, after Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.  Only this time, a most dangerous, pompous regime is at the helm. Azerbaijan ranks 154 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Country Corruption Index. It also ranks 151st out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index.

As delegates who are not boycotting this event prepare to attend talks in Baku, the international community has a precious opportunity to shine a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s unsuitability as COP29 host and ecological role model. Instead, the world should shun it as a pariah state that is in open violation of legally binding international court orders and impose sanctions upon it.

COP29 is another “item” in Baku’s propaganda basket to whitewash/Greenwash its image. Other international events the corrupt Aliyev regime has used to bolster its image include Songwashing (inviting celebrity performers), Sportswashing (the Soccer EuroCup), Carwashing (Formula1 racing), Clotheswashing (Fashion Week) and, of course, Brainwashing (propaganda).

Corporate media, lobbyists and complicit actors on the global stage may do their level best to downplay or even misinform the public about the governmental depravities of Baku. Nevertheless, this totalitarian state’s gross violations of international law come through loud and clear. 

Azerbaijan’s warmongering, land-grabbing in the South Caucasus, and utter disregard for treaties and agreements; its abysmal human rights record; its demolition of Armenian cultural heritage to eliminate the ancient Armenian presence on the ground; its destructive actions against the very natural environment it misappropriates, including its doubling down on fossil fuel and gas production flouting pledges to the contrary; its brutal repressions of free speech, assembly and peace activism, torture of dissenters, political prisoners and unlawfully detained civilians; its ruling nepotism and kleptocracy which relies on caviar diplomacy lobbying strategies, money laundering machinations and implementation of institutionalized anti-Armenian hatred to fuel its political engine — all disqualify it from basking in the international exposure that hosting COP29 can provide.

Time and again, media reports show us that endorsing free speech or environmentalism is not a sincere objective of the Aliyev regime. Any Azeri citizen who freely exercises his/her rights as a journalist or dares to protest the lack of free expression, the exploitation of natural resources that results in industrial waste poisoning lakes, thickly polluting the air, or threatening the landscape may be harassed, beaten, arrested or worse. Apparently, the only thing the citizens of Azerbaijan are allowed to express is hatred of Armenians.

This autumn marks the one-year anniversary of the Azeri-led obliteration of the ancient, continuous Armenian presence on the indigenous Armenian territory of Artsakh (aka Nagorno Karabakh), one of the fifteen provinces of medieval Armenia. 

Artsakh, which has never before been under the control of an independent Azerbaijani state, was in 2023 forcibly emptied of its native inhabitants on the world’s watch. In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Stalin placed the historically Armenian territory of Artsakh (called an autonomous oblast), under the administrative control of Soviet Azerbaijan to sweeten his relationship with Turkish dictator Ataturk and divide and conquer the peoples of the Union. (The Soviets also gave Armenian Nakhichevan away to Azerbaijan.) 

During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Artsakh people, by referendum, unanimously elected to rejoin Armenia proper. Azerbaijan responded with brutal pogroms of Armenians living in Baku, Sumgait, Kirovabad and Maragha. A bloody war ensued and in 1994, the independent Armenian republic of Artsakh was established and governed itself peacefully for nearly 30 years.  During that period, Azerbaijan bulked up on sophisticated weaponry from Turkey, Russia, and Israel. Azerbaijan also imported mercenary jihadists from Turkey, Syria and Pakistan before launching an invasion of Artsakh in 2020. For 44 days, Armenians virtually fought alone and endured many ISIS style beheadings, rapes, mutilations, savage beatings and torture porn before Russia brokered a ceasefire which saw the bulk of Artsakh go under Azeri occupation. 

Per a November 9, 2020 tri-lateral ceasefire agreement, Russian peacekeepers were installed along the borders of what remained of Armenian Artsakh. However, these troops did nothing to prevent Azerbaijan from flouting the legally-binding agreements. Imposing a blind eye, Russia permitted Azerbaijan to amass ruffians on the only transport route connecting Artsakh to Armenia and impose a nine-month starvation siege.

Armenian pleas to the US,  the West, the United Nations and international courts yielded no action. Surrounded by the Azeri military, with dwindling food supplies, no access to medicines nor medical treatment, fuel or electricity, the Armenians were faced with two choices: death or displacement. An Azeri bombardment and forced expulsion of the entire Armenian population followed on September 20, 2023, cruelly coinciding with Armenian Independence Day.

Azerbaijan flouted international law through this illegal blockade, starvation siege, invasion, occupation and depopulation of Artsakh, imprisoning of civilians and wanton and widespread destruction of Christian Armenian heritage sites. Baku ignored the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) February 2023 legally binding order “to ‘take all steps at its disposal’ to allow free movement of traffic along the only road between Armenia and the ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh.” Azerbaijan also ignored the ICJ’s November 2023 ruling which instructed the Azeri combatants to “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Artsakhian Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries and artefacts.”

Ironically, Azerbaijan’s dictator allocated US $1M to the UN Human Settlements Program, just a day before a UN mission visited the Artsakh region in October 2023. With palms sufficiently greased, that bogus mission went on to report “no irregularities,” in spite of the entire territory being depopulated as a result of Azerbaijan’s military invasion. To date, there have been no global sanctions or consequences for Azerbaijan’s crimes against humanity. Quite the contrary: one year following the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, the instigators find themselves hosting the UN Climate Conference.

Why does Azerbajian seemingly succeed in getting away with all this? First, they have deep pockets with which to administer payola, which seems to satisfy many global lawmakers. Secondly, their desire to carve a pan-Turkist corridor stretching eastward and uninterrupted from Turkey all the way to Mongolia is a long-desired Turkic unification movement which the West seems to encourage, the better to benefit from the exploitation and transport of natural resources. The only obstacle physically (and spiritually) standing in the way is Armenia and Artsakh.

As one of the globe’s top environmental and fossil fuel polluters, and as recently as 2020, during its invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan employed the outlawed, deadly, environmentally hazardous White Phosphorus as a chemical weapon upon the native Armenian population and their highly forested environment. This is not to say that ethnic Azeris are immune from the wrath of the Aliyev regime. The height of irony is that in their fatal siege, the Azeri government-sponsored blockaders posed as environmental protesters, while genuine protesters of lethal pollution and climate destruction in Azerbaijan are persecuted and silenced, particularly journalists and activists in advance of COP29.  Azerbaijan’s authentic environmental activists, conscientious dissenters, peace activists and independent journalists are harassed, arrested on trumped up charges, tortured and assassinated. That heavy hand of authoritarianism has only tightened its grip ahead of COP29. 

While more than 100 countries participating in COP28 desired the phasing-out of fossil fuels, Azerbaijan has doubled down on and increased its production, effectively disparaging the entire purpose of such a gathering. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2022 signed an agreement to double purchases of Azerbaijani gas by 2027. Instead of condemning Azeri aggression in the South Caucasus, Von der Leyen famously said that she considered Azerbaijan a reliable, trustworthy partner in the EU’s bid to wean itself off Russian natural gas in the wake of the NATO-provoked Ukraine war with Russia. As the Financial Times and others have reported, Azerbaijan risks becoming a conduit for the disguised export of fuel from Russia, simply to help Europe give the outward impression that it’s boycotting Russian gas.  

Much like the propaganda stunt-prone Erdogan, warmonger Aliyev aspires to repackage himself as a peacemaker and global player through the added exposure that his proposed COP Truce “day of peace” during COP29 will provide. Paul Polman, a former chief of Unilever and now a climate activist and peace campaigner, said: “The idea of a ‘COP truce’ is a deeply cynical PR stunt by Azerbaijan designed to distract the world’s attention away from its ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh last year. There are more than 300 political prisoners languishing in Azeri prisons and even more detainees who are captured civilians.” Meanwhile, Aliyev has often announced that he intends to invade Armenia proper as soon as the COP29 show is over.

Aliyev has made no secret of coveting sovereign Armenia itself, claiming that ancient Armenia is squatting on a fictitious “Western Azerbaijan.” That’s quite a statement coming from the leader of a country that has just turned 106 years old. As journalist Lindsey Snell stated, “We need to take Azerbaijan’s seemingly ridiculous propaganda seriously. Because in the hands of an aggressive, rogue state, even the most outlandish claims can become pretexts for very real and very dangerous actions.”