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More Families Resettle in Jabrayil under Azerbaijan’s Great Return Program

By Yaver Kazimbeyli September 30, 2024

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Former IDPs in Baku prepare to return to liberated Jabrayil, September 30, 2024 / Azertag

Another group of former internally displaced persons (IDPs) arrived in the reconstructed city of Jabrayil on Monday, as part of the Great Return program for Azerbaijani territories liberated from occupation.

In this phase, 40 families (123 people) have been resettled. The families have travelled from the cities of Baku and Sumgait, as well as from the Bilasuvar, Saatly, and Shamkir regions.

Special Representative of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan districts has taken necessary measures to settle the returning people in their new homes.

With this, 364 people, or 117 families, have resettled in Jabrayil as of September 30, 2024.

The first phase of Jabrayil’s post-liberation repopulation completed on September 26 with 117 displaced locals returning home.

The Armenian armed forces occupied the Jabrayil district on August 23, 1993, during the First Karabakh War in 1991-1994.

At the time of occupation, the district comprised 1 city, 4 settlements, and 97 villages. All were razed to the ground, and no building survived the destruction and looting during the years of occupation.

During the occupation, displaced residents of Jabrayil settled in nearly 2,000 locations across 58 districts of Azerbaijan, including tent camps, cargo wagons, and dormitories.

On January 5, 1994, as part of the Horadiz operation, the village of Jojug Marjanli in the Jabrayil district was liberated. In the April 2016 clashes, the Azerbaijani Army regained control of the key Lalatapa height, which fully removed Jojug Marjanli from the Armenian military’s surveillance and frequent shelling.

On October 4, 2020, during the Patriotic War, President Ilham Aliyev announced in an address to the nation that the city of Jabrayil and 9 villages in the district had been liberated from occupation.

During the Second Karabakh War, from September 27 to November 9, 2020, the Azerbaijani Army liberated the Jabrayil district. With the district's liberation, Azerbaijan partially restored state control over the Azerbaijan-Iran border.

Six days after Azerbaijan’s victory, on November 16, 2020, President Aliyev visited the liberated Jabrayil district and raised the Azerbaijani flag in the city of Jabrayil and at the historic Khudafarin Bridge.

In July 2023, President Aliyev announced that October 4, the date of Jabrayil's liberation from occupation, would officially be commemorated in Azerbaijan as the "Day of the City of Jabrayil."

Over the decades, Armenia and Azerbaijan had been locked in an armed conflict over the latter’s Karabakh (Garabagh) region. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia launched a military campaign against Azerbaijan. The war ended in a ceasefire in 1994 and saw Armenia forcibly occupying 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. Over 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 3,890 went missing, and one million were expelled from these lands in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Armenia.

On September 27, 2020, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict took a violent turn when Armenia’s forces deployed in occupied Azerbaijani lands shelled military positions and civilian settlements of Azerbaijan. During the 44 days of the war, the Azerbaijani forces liberated over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from a nearly 30-year-long illegal Armenian occupation.

The war ended with the signing of a tripartite statement by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia on November 10, 2020. Under the agreement, Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan.