More than 100 Armenian soldiers were killed—several later mutilated beyond recognition—in Azerbaijan’s two-day bombardment.

Modern hostilities between Armenia, an ancient nation, and Azerbaijan, which was created in 1918, began in late 2020, when war erupted over disputed territory now known as “Nagorno-Karabakh.” Although it was Armenian for thousands of years, known as Artsakh, and remains predominantly Armenian, after the dissolution of the USSR, it was allotted to Azerbaijan, causing problems since and culminating in the recent wars. (See “15 Artsakh War Myths Perpetuated By Mainstream Media.”)

On the surface, and as widely reported by media, this is yet another territorial dispute, this time between (Christian) Armenia and (Muslim) Azerbaijan.  Beneath the surface, however, lurks that old Muslim-Christian divide, typified by jihadist hate for “infidels.”

Many factors validate this view.  For starters, Christian Armenia’s ancient Muslim nemesis, Turkey, had funded Sharia-enforcing “jihadist groups” that had operated earlier in Syria and Libya—including one that had kept naked, sex-slave women in prison—to terrorize and slaughter the Armenians at the start of the late 2020 war.

One of these captured mercenaries later confessed that he was “promised a monthly $2,000 payment for fighting against ‘kafirs’ in Artsakh, and an extra 100 dollar[s] for each beheaded kafir.”  (Kafir, often translated as “infidel,” is Arabic for any non-Muslim who fails to submit to Islam, which makes them enemies by default.)

Among other ISIS-like behavior committed by the Islamic coalition of mercenaries, Turks, and Azerbaijanis that waged war on Armenia, they “tortured beyond recognition” an intellectually disabled Armenian woman by sadistically hacking off her ears, hands, and feet, before finally executing her.   Similarly, video footage showed camouflaged soldiers overpowering and forcing down an elderly Armenian man, who cries and implores them for mercy, as they casually try to carve at his throat with a knife.

Just last week, Azerbaijani forces created mounds of decapitated and mutilated Armenian soldiers.  One of them, a female, was raped, had both arms and legs cut off, one eye gouged out, and her own fingers mockingly stuffed inside her mouth and private parts.

None of this is surprising; as usual, once the jihad on Armenia became official, the Christian foe was hated with an unbridled ferocity.  Even Nurlan Ibrahimov, the head, not of politics, but of the press service of Qarabag football club of Azerbaijan, had to chime in: “We [Azerbaijanis] must kill all Armenians—children, women, the elderly. [We] need to kill [them] without [making a] distinction. No regrets, no compassion.”

Confirming such murderous sentiments, Arman Tatoyan, an Armenian human rights activist, reported:

The President of Azerbaijan and the country’s authorities have been implementing a policy of hatred, enmity, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Armenia, citizens of Armenia and the Armenian people for years.  The Turkish authorities have done the same or have openly encouraged the same policy.

By way of example, he said that Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev once publicly boasted that “the younger generation has grown up with hatred toward the enemy,” meaning Armenians.