14 years of Karabagh independence

09/09/2005 Armen BAGHDASARYAN

As it was expected, the meeting of Kocharyan and Aliev in kazan had
no results. Actually they noted once more, that the parties were not
ready yet to take actions and make agreements. The authorities of
Armenia and Azerbaijan currently have more important problems: Aleiv
must try to falsify the forthcoming parliamentary ellections results
without any stir, and Kocharyan has to take care of the constitution
reforms referendum process in order not to let it happen something
wrong.

In this kind of conditions Karabakh is set out of the process, though
both in Armenia and in Karabakh the authorities justify their strong
actions and making “an orgonized country” by power pressing, democratic
freedoms violations with the presence of Karabakh conflict and “neither
war nor freedom” situation.

Together with this time Karabakh, which is set out of the negotiations
process, builds a country day-by-day. Tomorrow it is the 14-th
anniversary of Karabakh independence. Of course, there will be
congratulations only by Armenia. Of course, Azerbaijan will condemn the
anniversary actions, and the internatrional institutions will pretend,
that they don’t consider Karabakh independence serious. But this is not
so important. The most important thing is whether Karabakh has already
formed an independent country, and if yes, so what kind of state is
being built in Karabakh. This is very important in connection with two
factors: first of all the assessments of the international institutions
are important (for making the future status of Karabakh clear), and
Karabakh can be prevented from external political aggression only in
case of formed state institutions. Is Karabakh formed as an independent
state? No doubt. It is formed as much as a country, which is actually
in war situation, where nearly all the old and young people are
connected with the army, which economically depends on a country, where
the democratic instituions are not formed yet, can.

Generally we shouldn’t speak about negative things during holiday
occasions. And this in case when the objective nessesity makes
Karabakh, because of its self-protection instinc, press on the negative
appearances or leave them for Armenia. So we will speak only about the
positive things. By the way, saying positive we don’t mean the
statistics information about the constructions in Karabakh, the
increase of investments there and so on.

Probably the main conquest of Karabakh in these 14 years was that
Karabakh got free from the “army-state”status, and at least they
realized, that the only goal of the nation is not the army service.
They also realized, that they can’t make their country with the army
rules, and democracy is as important attribute for the country making
as the army. And the fact, that all the ellections in Karabakh were
more legitimate than in Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is a very
important fact, because the karabakhian authorities could resist their
tempotation and didn’t try to compare democracy with “political
bureaus” tying to justify themselves by connecting this with the war
situation. Even more, Arkadi Ghukasyan announced, that he will not be
nominated for the ellections of Karabakh president in 2007. As we know,
neither Robert Kocharyan, nor Ilham Aliev have made this kind of
announcements.

Of course the independence of Karabakh can’t be considered serious,
even calling it the 11-th region of Armenia, but we should admit, that
this is not so fair. Anyway, there are not many recognized countries in
the world, which gained independence in this kind of way of difficult
struggle. So now we can only just congratulate Karabakh on its 14-th
anniversary.