Environmental Terror of Armenia against Azerbaijan and its Consequences Mətn

For more than a month, the Armenian armed forces continued its attacks on the civilian population of Azerbaijan. Deliberately targeting the civilians and civilian infrastructures is a gross violation of international humanitarian law and constitutes war crimes. The military and political leadership of Armenia does not refrain from committing state backed terror against civilian population. The use of prohibited weapons by the perpetrator enlarged the area of damage.

As a last resort, Armenia committed acts of environmental terror in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, seeking the solution in burning the forests and used it for the military aims, totally ignoring the serious damage to the environment, biodiversity, forests, underground and terrestrial natural resources. 

The protected natural areas, including the national parks were subjected to missile shelling by the Armenian armed forces that caused widespread fires. It used phosphorus weapons in the vicinities of Shusha city, as a result of which valuable trees burned down in the forest. Thus, the top layer of soil, which has been forming for thousands of years, was completely burnt down.

Within the period of occupation, natural resources in the occupied areas of Azerbaijan have been plundered, 163 mineral resources deposits, including gold, mercury, copper, lead, zinc, coal and others, also forest  cover, rare trees have been subjected to illegal exploitation by Armenia.

The destruction of a unique ecosystem with a total area of more than 8,000 hectares, consisting of valuable and perennial dense forests of oak, juniper, beech, hornbeam, pine, ash, and walnut, became a hardest blow to endemic biodiversity. Hence, this means serious violations of the international treaties in relation to the protection of the environment, including the UN Convention on the Prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques, to which Armenia is also a party. According to experts’ opinion, forest fires caused by white phosphorus bombs cannot be extinguished and putting out such fires naturally is not also possible, and so, such fires last long.

This is an environmental terrorism and the international community must not be indifferent to it.