Azerbaijan's vague "threat" to shoot down Armenian airliners

A number of news organizations reported today that Azerbaijan is threatening to shoot down civilian airliners if they use the new airport in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital city of Stepanakert.

The re-opening of the airport, closed in the early stages of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the fate of Karabakh in 1991, was announced last year after a fund-raising drive and construction that began in 2009. There have been delays reportedly connected with the completion of the main terminal (which is unbelievably ugly, if I may editorialize), but recently it looked like daily flights between Yerevan and Stepanakert would become a reality by May of this year.

This story from RFE/RL says that the flights would be operated by  “a newly established Karabakh airline, Artsakh Air,” and that the likely fare would be in the neighborhood of 18,000 and 21,500 drams, about USD $50-$60.

Now, I’m sure you can get a mashrutka from Yerevan to Stepanakert, but it takes forever, and if you go by taxi it’s still going to be about seven hours and will cost you roughly $100.  It’s a beautiful trip, but the air link is badly needed.

Today’s threat to take military action against airliners came from Arif Mammadov, the chief of Azerbaijan’s Civil Aviation Administration, although the wording of the “threat” seems deliberately vague to me, giving the Azerbaijani government maximum room for maneuver.  This AFP story says that Mammadov reminded reporters that “[a]ccording to the law on aviation, it is even possible to physically destroy airplanes which are heading” to Karabakh from Armenia.  (Italics added.)

OK, but that doesn’t mean they will do it.

And today’s RFE/RL story quotes Mammadov from the same press conference today as stressing Azerbaijan’s objections to the International Civil Aviation Authority last October:

“We notified that the airspace over Karabakh is closed,” Mammadov said, according to the APA news agency. “The law on aviation envisages the physical destruction of airplanes landing in that territory.”

That sounds like a slightly different translation of the same quote from the AFP piece.

Images of airliners getting blasted out of the sky are certainly terrifying.  But I think Mammadov was being very careful when he wrapped this alleged threat in the context of what the law “envisages.”

RFE/RL adds that according to Mammadov, the Azerbaijani government “sent another letter to the ICAO recently warning that the disputed region’s airspace was closed and ‘at the disposal of Azerbaijan’s Air Force.'”

So they aren’t happy.  And the Azerbaijani government has been steadfast in doing everything it can to prevent economic growth in Nagorno-Karabakh as well as any developments that could lend legitimacy to NK’s de facto and unrecognized government.

But let’s just say that the announcement from Baku is angry rhetoric, calculated to make the Armenians think twice.  I doubt that the Armenians will be deterred from inaugurating air service to Stepanakert, nor are we are going to see airliners shot down by the Azeris.