New York Times Writer Displays Bias for Azerbaijan in Article

There is more than one falsehood in the above statement. Why should a New York Times writer endorse freely what the Azeri government has been harping along that Karabagh is within Azerbaijan’s borders, when even in the harshest Stalinist period it had a special status as a autonomous region (oblask) similar to the Nakhichevan exclave, which was an autonomous republic, both brought under Azeri rule by a ruse of Stalin? During the Soviet period, 60 percent of Nakhichevan’s population was Armenian, but the region was depopulated through the “brotherly” conniving of KGB colonel and Politburo member Heydar Aliyev, who eventually became the leader of Azerbaijan and was in turn succeeded by his son, Ilham, in a democratic nation (irony intended).

Your correspondent dwells at length on Azerbaijan’s refugee problem, noting some heart-wrenching cases, which sound very tragic when taken out of historic context.

First, the refugee problem was the outcome of the war, which the Azerbaijani government launched against the Armenians in Karabagh.

Second, while the Aliyev dynasty and its minions reap the nation’s vast oil wealth, living at an obscene level of opulence, i.e., residences in Dubai and Paris shopping blow-outs, they keep the refugees as political pawns to make a case vis-a-vis the international community on the cruelty of Armenia.

It looks like your writer’s heart has been bleeding when writing about the Azeri refugee problem.

The following quote covers only one side of the refugee problem, which intentionally leaves out the other phase: “Among the forces driving Baku refugees who have spent nearly two decades in limbo. The United Nations says there are 586,013 — 7 percent of Azerbaijan’s population, which is one of the highest per capita displacement rates in the world, according to the International Displacement Monitoring center.”