On the 13th June 2021 a tour of the newly recovered Azerbaijani territory of Agdam was hosted by the Azerbaijani Government. This is the second international delegation to visit the Azerbaijani district of Agdam and see a presentation about how the Azeri government plans to reconstruct and repopulate the area. The event was attended by international press, politicians, diplomats and military attaches from various countries including Czech Republic, Russia, Iran, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and China.

The event was hosted by Hikmat Hajiyev, the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and co-hosted by the famous National Geographic photographer, Reza Degati.
The tour of ‘liberated’ Agdam led the attendees around various locations within Agdam of historical significance to the Azerbaijani people. Several speakers discussed the alleged crimes and vandalism of the Armenian forces against the historical Azeri sites and spoke about the Azeri plans to construct a smart city in the region.

Agdam previous had around 28 thousand Azeri residents who were forced to flee the city in 1993 when the armed forces of Armenia attacked the city. The Azerbaijani residents of Agdam fled eastwards and became IDPs in Azerbaijan proper. Azerbaijan had around one million internally displaced peoples (IDPs) in the early 1990s and has since been determined to retake Nagorno Karabakh and the seven surrounding territories.

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has been a simmering conflict in the south Caucasus region for almost 30 years. There have been occasional flare ups in fighting on the front lines between the two neighbouring countries but most considered it to be a frozen conflict. The conflict escalated in September 2020 and ended November after 44 days of intense fighting between the two nations. The Azerbaijani armed forces made large territorial gains in both Nagorno Karabakh and the seven bordering regions.


1.10 Hikmat Hajiyev, the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan – “We are have the strategy of the Azerbaijani government to make Karabakh a land of peace and prosperity, development and mutual coexistence. It will require a lot of work and as everybody can see everything has been destroyed. We are going to start from scratch. And Armenia conducted a scorched earth policy and destroyed everything, it was a huge vandalism. But we have already started with the construction process, but our reconstruction process is also accompanied with are demining process. And with the mines planted by Armenia for thirty years of occupation It can be counted by hundreds of thousands. Mine clearance is an impediment for our work and also challenges the life for our civilians and military, including the people who are engaged in mine clearance but we are going to manage it. Agdam is our first stop in this process to start the grandest reconstruction process and ensure dignified and secure return of Azerbaijani IDPs and refugees. For thirty years they were longing [for Karabakh] but always think we cannot return. Thirty years have passed from the life of the people Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs, we cannot return [those years] back.

2.59 National Geographic photographer, Reza Degati –
“What I have discovered here from the beginning of the second war till now after the liberation. I was photographing the whole of Karabakh it has been six months as of now and I think that the world should know what happened here. The amount of destruction that I see here, the amount of vandalism that they have done, it is unbelievable. No national would accept this, nobody in the world would accept that such a things happen to the grave yards, taking out all the bones, all the skeletons, everything has been taken out of those graveyards and destroying all the houses. There is no single house that remains intact, not one house, everything was destroyed.”