The ruling elite has leveraged the bogeyman of Islamic extremism to cast itself as the guardian of a secular and stable Azerbaijani state to rationalize the adoption of more autocratic policies both domestically and internationally.
For years to come, its violent dissolution will loom large in the Armenian consciousness and reverberate across other majority-minority conflicts around the globe.
The Georgian capital will soon be shooting away fireworks like there's no tomorrow. For some of the city's non-human denizens there indeed may not be a tomorrow.
The apparent easing of U.S.-Azerbaijani tensions has done nothing to slow the wave of arrests that began amid a state media campaign signaling a hunt for "U.S. spies."