In a joint letter sent to the White House at the weekend, they condemned the closure of the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia as a “direct violation” of the Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
“Azerbaijan is once again weaponizing basic human necessities to further degrade already strained living conditions for the Armenians living in Artsakh (Karabakh). If this situation continues, a humanitarian crisis with potentially tragic consequences is imminent,” reads the letter initiated by Adam Schiff, the pro-Armenian chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“We urge the Administration to use all tools at its disposal to ensure the safety of the people of Artsakh, now and in the future, including cessation of financial support to Azerbaijan and imposition of sanctions,” it says. “We cannot allow Azerbaijan’s policy of aggression and intimidation to continue.”
The 29 lawmakers, almost all of them Democrats, complained that Biden administration ignored their earlier calls for “adequate” U.S. humanitarian assistance to Karabakh. This, they said, “makes decisive action by the Administration now all the more urgent.”
Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Committee, also condemned Baku and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in particular for blocking the vital road.
“Freedom of movement in Nagorno-Karabakh must be restored,” Menendez tweeted on December 15.
The U.S. State Department repeatedly urged Baku last week to allow renewed traffic through the Lachin corridor. It said the blockade “has severe humanitarian implications and sets back the peace process.”
A section of the road patrolled by Russian peacekeepers was blocked on December 12 by groups of Azerbaijanis demanding that Azerbaijani officials be allowed to inspect “illegal” mining operations in Karabakh. The authorities in Stepanakert rejected the demand while expressing readiness for an international environmental inquiry.
Nancy Pelosi, the outgoing speaker of the House of Representatives, reportedly promised that Washington will stop providing military aid to Azerbaijan when she visited Armenia in September in the wake of large-scale fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The Biden administration has signaled no such plans yet, however.
The U.S. Congress had banned all kinds of direct assistance to Baku through Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act passed in 1992. But a decade later it allowed U.S. administrations to waive the ban to help Azerbaijan’s military and security agencies cope with terrorist threats.
Just like his predecessors, Biden waived Section 907 in April 2021 over the strong objections of the Armenian community in the United States.