Logo of the NDP Windsor-Tecumseh riding association. Image credit: Windsor—Tecumseh NDP/Facebook

Written by: Jack Dempster

The New Democratic Party, at all levels of Canadian politics, has a long and sordid history of supporting imperialism and the bandit policies of Bay Street capitalism. In a recent example of the NDP’s brazen support to reactionary politics, an Ontario NDP riding association has signalled support to Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Recently, the Windsor-Tecumseh NDP riding association put forth a convention resolution openly supporting Azerbaijan’s drive to conquer Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave surrounded by Azerbaijani territory.

“Azerbaijan’s sovereignty is being violated by Armenia factions in Nagorno-Karabakh,” reads the motion. It continues on to say the NDP must “support and affirm Azerbaijan’s territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh,” citing international laws and United Nations resolutions which supposedly uphold “the inviolability of international borders and the inadmissibility of the use of force for the acquisition of territory.”

It is notable that this NDP riding put the motion forward. Support for, say, NATO’s proxy war using Ukraine against Russia (which even a Canadian MP admits to) is solid across all levels of the NDP. But the issues around Azerbaijan and Armenia have produced a perceived split in opinion within the party.

At the Federal Level, NDP MPs Heather McPherson and Alexandre Boulerice, alongside the Bloc Québécois, have called for sanctions against Azerbaijan. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has reciprocated, stating that “everything is on the table.” The Canadians obviously have some interest in puffing up their “humanitarian” credentials on the world stage.

Yet regardless of one’s opposition to a foreign government, unilateral sanctions represent only an act of imperialist aggression against foreign nations and states, which immiserate the working class and result in widespread economic devastation. They are based on liberal illusions that imperialism can be a force for moral good on the world stage.

The New Democrats totally partake in such illusions, but they sometimes disagree over when and where to employ them. Thus, we find this stark difference in opinion between the leading Federal NDP MP’s pushing for sanctions against Azerbaijan, and the local riding who filed the pro-Azerbaijan motion.

In comment to The Canada Files, the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC) said: “It is unconscionable to think that the NDP convention would even consider such a resolution at a time when the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan is actively committing a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign against the Armenian people after subjecting them to ten months of blockade and genocidal aggression.”

The ANCC does favour sanctions, continuing to say that: “The NDP leadership has taken a principled stance on this issue, calling on Canada to sanction Azerbaijan and hold them accountable for their crimes, and the NDP convention should do the same by rejecting this motion, which clearly aims to promote the toxic propaganda of a foreign regime in Canada.

The NDP riding association for Windsor-Tecumseh did not respond to The Canada Files’ request for comment. NDP MP’s Heather McPherson and Alexandre Boulerice did not respond to TCF’s questions.

Azerbaijan’s actions and Armenian suffering

On September 19, Azerbaijan’s military launched a lightning blitz against Nagorno-Karabakh, territory which has been fought over since the downfall of the USSR. Azerbaijan used drones to attack soldiers and also hit social infrastructure, killing a number of civilians. The aim of Azerbaijan was to finalize the conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was left uncompleted from a 2020 offensive.

On September 20, a ceasefire agreement mediated by Russia, was signed. This agreement called for the disbandment of the Artsakh Defence Army and all other Armenian-backed forces. By the end of the month, Armenian defenders agreed to dissolve their government, with Nagorno-Karabakh to become Azeri territory. Leading Karabakh politicians such as Ruben Vardanyan and Arayik Harutyunyan, have been detained. This represents the downfall of the Armenian Republic of Artsakh.

Over 100 000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh, nearly emptying the territory. This forced displacement comes on the heels of a months-long Azeri starvation blockade of the Lachin Corridor connecting Artsakh with Armenia proper. Displaced Armenians are now living in poverty and despair in Armenia’s capital Yerevan and elsewhere in the region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan’s fight for Nagorno-Karabakh

Starting in the early 1920’s, Armenia and Azerbaijan entered a period of Sovietisation. At the time the vast majority of Nagorno-Karabakh was ethnically Armenian. The Bolsheviks, however, decided to merge Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan for pragmatic reasons. Namely, they wanted to link the heavily rural area of Nagorno-Karabakh with industrialized Baku in order to speed up economic development and the growth of a proletariat in the area. Nationalistic contradictions were expected to slowly dissipate through the process of modernization and cohabitation. For decades, Armenia and Azerbaijan would live in peace.

However, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, nationalist tensions exploded. War between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out in the late 1980s. Armenians fled in huge numbers from Azerbaijan and there were pogroms against them in Baku and Sumgait. Azerbaijanis also left Armenia in large numbers. Sharp national divisions were drawn between the two peoples. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan repressed Armenians in Karabakh, who were demanding unification with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.

In 1991, both Armenia and Azerbaijan declared independence, and the Soviets withdrew. That same year, the peoples of Nagorno-Karabakh voted overwhelmingly to govern themselves. In 1994, Armenia launched a bid to seize Karabakh. By 1994, they had succeeded in taking both Karabakh and several adjoining Azeri areas and would control the region for another two decades.

In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a war to retake Nagorno-Karabakh. Using Israeli and Turkish drones, the Azeri military was able to seize portions of Karabakh. Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists backed up Azerbaijan’s war drive. At that time, Russia intervened to negotiate a ceasefire. Azerbaijan gained back its territory around Karabakh, but not the enclave itself. Russian troops were deployed along the Lachin Corridor. Intermittent fighting continued between the two sides, until December of last year, when the blockade began, leading to the current crisis.

On the face of things, one might lament that the Azerbaijani-Armenian dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is simply a tragedy rooted in the unravelling of the internationalist USSR and its replacement by various nationalist capitalist states. That is true in the general sense, but to end with such a lament would be to betray the cause of the Armenians who are currently caught in the hell of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing.

Azerbaijan is a Turkic nation, and fights on the basis of Great Turkish chauvinism. Turkey, a member of the NATO imperialist alliance, is backing Azerbaijan in its irredentist drive. So too is the Zionist regime, which has armed Azerbaijan, selling it billions of dollars worth of weapons.

The Turkish ruling class were responsible for the Armenian genocide during the late Ottoman epoch, and to this day the Turkish government refuses to take responsibility for the genocide. Today’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Azerbaijan thus produces grim historical echoes. Meanwhile, the Israelis are responsible for one of the most violent examples of ethnic cleansing in world history, namely the dispossession of Palestine and the 1948 Nakba.

When a NATO member along with Israel supports forced population transfers and irredentist warfare, neutrality is failure.

We do not know the motivations of the particular NDP riding association members who called to “support and affirm Azerbaijan’s territorial claims” on Nagorno-Karabakh. In any case, those who put forward the motion must do nothing else than hang their heads in shame over their support for NATO-backed ethnic cleansing.

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Jack Dempster is a socialist trade unionist and writer based in Toronto, Ontario.

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