Karabakh is Azerbaijan: President Ilham Aliyev’s Diplomatic-Military Efforts to Liberate Karabakh

Abstract

Diplomacy plays an invaluable role during war to bring belligerents on favorable terms. It helps statesmen to open channels of communications with a range of actors e.g., allies, foe and neutral states to prevent them from becoming a party. Armenia illegally occupied twenty percent of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. It used track I diplomacy for delaying tactics, blatantly refused to withdraw occupation forces despite United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Yet, Baku did not lose faith in the multilateral approach. It anticipated and endeavored to resolve the Karabakh conflict in the light of policy based on war avoidance. This paper using qualitative research method highlights and analyses available literature on President Ilham Aliyev’s role in achieving Azerbaijan’s national objective during the war and in the post-war era. After coming to power President Ilham Aliyev decided to regain military strength and introduced a military modernization process. In pursuit to achieve this objective presidential office paid special attention to acquire dual use medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), long-endurance Hermes-900 surveillance drones, and Heron; loitering munitions such as SkyStriker, Harop and Orbiter 1K, and Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Beside military modernization, President of zerbaijan was active at diplomatic front to prevent Armenian allies from entering war against Azerbaijan. Combination of politico-military efforts paved the way to force the enemy to withdraw occupation forces. Conversely, lost pride and glory was returned to the masses of Azerbaijan. The second task authors believe performed by President Ilham is to highlight enemy war crimes. In conclusion, victory in 44 Days war was ensured because leadership and the masses were on the same page