Nagorno Karabakh -=- ARTSAKH

[Yervant1]

Irish Independent

Nov 3 2023

Last ethnic Armenian residents flee troubled Nagorno-Karabakh area by bus

An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh carries her suitcase to a tent camp after arriving to Armenia's Goris in Syunik region, Armenia, last Friday. Photo: Vasily Krestyaninov

Aida Sultanova and Avet Demourian

The last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh has left the region, completing a gruelling week-long exodus of more than 100,000 people – over 80pc of its residents – after Azerbaijan reclaimed the area in a lightning military operation.

The bus carried 15 passengers with serious illnesses and mobility problems, said Gegham Stepanyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman. He called for information about any other residents who want to leave but have had trouble doing so.

In a 24-hour military campaign that began on September 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate. Separatist authorities then agreed to dissolve their government by the end of this year.

Azerbaijan Interior Ministry spokesman Elshad Hajiyev said on Monday that the country’s police have established control over the region.

“Work is conducted to enforce law and order in the entire Karabakh region,” he said, adding that Azerbaijani police have moved to “protect the rights and ensure security of the Armenian population in accordance with Azerbaijan’s law”.

While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians, most of them fled the region, fearing reprisals or losing the freedom to use their language and practise their religion and customs. The Armenian government said on Monday that 100,514 of the region’s estimated 120,000 residents have crossed into Armenia.

Health minister Anahit Avanesyan said some people died during the journey over the mountain road into Armenia which took as long as 40 hours. The exodus followed a nine-month Azerbaijani blockade of the region that left many suffering from malnutrition and lack of medicines.

Sergey Astsetryan (40), one of the last Nagorno-Karabakh residents to leave in his own vehicle on Sunday, said some elderly people have decided to stay, adding that others might return if they see it is safe for ethnic Armenians under Azerbaijani rule.

“My father told me that he will return when he has the opportunity,” Mr Astsetryan told reporters at a checkpoint on the Armenian border.

Azerbaijani authorities moved quickly to reaffirm control of the region, arresting several former members of its separatist government and encouraging ethnic Azerbaijani residents who fled the area amid a separatist war three decades ago to start moving back.

The streets of the regional capital, known as Stepanakert to the ethnic Armenian population and Khankendi to Azerbaijanis, appeared empty and littered with rubbish, with doors of deserted shops left open.

The sign with the city’s Azerbaijani name was placed at the entrance and Azerbaijani police checkpoints were set up on the city’s edges, with officers checking the boots of cars.

Russian peacekeeping troops could be seen on a balcony of one building in the city and others were at their base outside it. On Sunday, Azerbaijan prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for former Nagorno-Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan, who led the region before stepping down last month.

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia.

After a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains along with surrounding territory captured earlier by Armenian forces. Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan alleged that the exodus of ethnic Armenians amounted to “a direct act of ethnic cleansing”.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/last-ethnic-armenian-residents-flee-troubled-nagorno-karabakh-area-by-bus/a1972808747.html

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

Nov 4 2023

‘Sadness in our hearts’: Armenian Christian recounts family’s escape from Nagorno-Karabakh

Anya Safaryan (right), 78, who fled from Azerbaijan's controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh, sits on a bed at a sports complex set up as a temporary shelter in the Armenian city of Artashat on Oct. 8, 2023. | Credit: Karen Minasyan/AFP via Getty Images

By Peter Pinedo

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 4, 2023 / 07:00 am

The little-known but decadeslong conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted anew on Sept. 19, resulting in hundreds killed and a massive refugee crisis from the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Lyudmila Melquomyan, 47, who is among the more than 100,000 Christian Armenians who fled their ancestral homeland after Azerbaijian launched an offensive, recently shared her harrowing experiences with CNA.

“Nobody wants to leave his homeland, but we had to in order to save the lives of our children, to protect them from war, starvation, and further atrocities of Azeris,” Melquomyan told CNA.

Melquomyan was born in the city of Hadrut and had lived in Nagorno-Karabakh her entire life until last month when, she said, “the whole population was forced to leave, escaping the genocide of Azerbaijan.”

What is happening?

The crisis centers on the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known by its ancient name of Artsakh. Though internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh was primarily made up of Armenian Christians who claimed self-sovereignty under the auspices of the “Republic of Artsakh.”

Their bid for independence came to an abrupt end, however, when the Azeri government launched a short but intense military campaign on Sept. 19. The assault ended with more than 200 Armenians dead and a mass exodus out of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan launched its offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh after a more than nine-month-long blockade of the region in which the delivery of all food, medical supplies, fuel, and humanitarian aid were severely restricted. By the time Azeri forces moved to wrest control of the region, the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh were already critically low on food, supplies, and necessities like electricity and heating.

On the morning of Sept. 19, “when all the people were at offices and children at schools,” Melquomyan said, the Azeri military began launching artillery and mortar strikes on both military and civilian positions.

“When the missiles were being fired my 17-year-old daughter was awfully scared and began to cry,” Melquomyan said. “My younger son behaved like a brave man; he didn’t show his fear. As for me, I was afraid for my kids’ lives, not for me.”

Melquomyan feared especially for the life of her eldest son, who was a soldier in the Artsakh military.

The breakaway region’s Artsakh Defense Forces fought back, but vastly outgunned and without any outside support, the Armenians were forced to surrender just one day after the start of the offensive.

“Our hungry but brave soldiers fought as much as they could,” she explained, “but without armament, without [the] support of Armenia, left alone … many people were killed or injured, even civilians.”

According to Melquomyan, many Artsakhis, including a 15-year-old relative of her husband’s, are still missing.

Though the Azeri government promised to integrate ethnic Armenians into the country, widespread fears of more violence, reprisals, and religious and cultural persecution led to a massive exodus.

In the days that followed, videos on social media showed miles-long lines of cars filled with Armenians attempting to leave their homeland to escape Azeri rule.

Melquomyan said that people began fleeing just five days after the Azeri offensive, on Sept. 24.

With her family, Melquomyan also fled, leaving her home for the very last time at noon on Sept. 25.

“It was a terrible way with long miles [of] traffic jam, without food and water, sadness in our hearts, tears, homesickness,” she said.

Though the journey to Armenia proper would typically take only six hours, Melquomyan said that it took her family some 36 hours to get out. All the while, she feared that somewhere along the way Azeri authorities would stop and arrest them.

“When driving out of Artsakh I was also afraid that they would stop and arrest my eldest son (he was driving the car) and maybe me too,” she explained. “My daughter was terribly scared and pale, she was always saying: ‘It’s hot, open the window,’ though it was quite cool in the car, she was short of air.”

While over 100,000 Artsakhis successfully escaped into Armenia, not everyone was able to get out. The Azeri government has arrested several high-ranking Artsakh officials and at least one Artsakhi civilian, charging them with war crimes and treason.

Additionally, some 68 Armenians, including women and children, were killed and hundreds more were injured when a gasoline tank exploded beside the highway leading out of Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital city, Stepanakert.

Rebuilding a new life

Though she was able to escape, her new life in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city, has not been easy. Far from her ancestral homeland, she and her family must now struggle just to survive and to rebuild their lives. It’s a common struggle that all the Artsakhi refugees share.

“One of the problems is too high [a] renting price, the other one is unemployment,” she said.

Though she said that the Armenian government and aid groups are attempting to help by supplying food and household and hygiene items, many are still struggling to get by. Moreover, the physical and emotional scars that many Artsakhi refugees now bear will last for the rest of their lives.

A people deeply rooted in tradition, perhaps the greatest struggle of all is being separated from the land of their parents and forebears.

“We left the graves of our parents, children, brothers, and sisters,” Melquomyan mourned.

Both her mother and brother were buried in Hadrut. By the time her father died in 2022, however, Hadrut had already been occupied by Azeri forces.

“We had to bury him not far from Stepanakert,” she said, “but he asked me so much before dying to bury him in our native Hadrut.”

Despite everything, Melquomyan said that “each citizen of Artsakh hopes to return someday.”

Armenia in crisis

Though the battle for Nagorno-Karabakh has ended in a devastating defeat for the Armenians, many fear that Armenia itself may also be in danger of invasion.

Wedged between Azerbaijan and the region’s major power, Turkey, Armenia sits much like an island in a sea of enemies who are ethnically, religiously, and ideologically opposed to it.

Robert Nicholson, president of the Christian advocacy group the Philos Project, told CNA that “at this point, an invasion by Azerbaijan into southern Armenia is very possible.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan have participated in several peace talks and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said last week that they were nearing a peace agreement. However, the two countries continue to engage in clashes at their border.

Nicholson said that at this time “it is hard to imagine Azerbaijan signing a peace agreement.”

According to Nicholson, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan have been “very open” that they “would like to seize southern Armenia” as part of a plan to “reassert Turkic-Islamic international supremacy.”

Armenia’s southern Syunik province, Nicholson explained, is the “only stretch of land that stands in the way of the pan-Turkic dream of a contiguous, Turkic federation stretching from Istanbul to Central Asia.”

“Aliyev has openly discussed his desire to take further territory,” Nicholson explained. “He recently instructed government officials to start assigning Azeri names to cities in Armenia, and a joint conference was recently held with Turkey to promote the revisionist idea that Azerbaijan has a historical claim over Armenia.”

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255915/armenian-refugees-escape-nagorno-karabakh

[Yervant1]

Nov 7 2023

The Haunting 100-year Parallel Between Greeks and Armenians

The destruction of Smyrna and the haunting parallels with the erasing of the entire

120,000-plus Armenian community of Karabakh. Public Domain

2023 marks the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne, which efficiently ended the last traces of Greeks in Asia Minor and the Armenians in Artsakh.

By Julian McBride

2023 marks the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne, which efficiently ended the last traces of Greek civilization and Hellenism in Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor. This centennial has brought trauma for many descendants of the Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor Greek communities who suffered from a genocide overlooked by the entire world.

Today, another ancient civilization has ended as Azerbaijan completed its mission with the erasing of the entire 120,000-plus Armenian community of Karabakh along with the few handfuls of Greeks that lived there in Mehmana.

Genocide of Greeks in Asia Minor and Armenians in Artsakh

Much to the ire of the international community, Azerbaijan recently conducted a lightning campaign to finish off the remaining Armenian militias in the Karabakh region. The military campaign forced 120,000 plus Armenians to flee, fearing massacres such as sexual assaults and beheadings documented by global NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various media organizations.

The fall of Armenian civilization in the Nagorno-Karabakh region marks the end of 3,000 plus years of history in which Armenians endured various empires that often passed through the area from the Assyrians, Greek Macedonians, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, and Russians.

2023 brings scars to Armenians and Greeks, as the descendants of Hellenes from Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor commemorate a hundred years of forced population transfer under the Lausanne Treaty. In the aftermath of the disastrous Asia Minor campaign, the majority of Greeks in Asia Minor fled in lieu of massacres, which culminated in the Great Fire of Smyrna, known as the final act of the Greek genocide.

The remaining Greeks of Nicomedia, Cappadocia, Smyrna, Adrianople, Caesarea, and other places were transferred to the Hellenic Kingdom in return for the Turks of Crete. Only the Greeks of Constantinople were spared until the Istanbul pogrom of 1955.

The Role of the World Powers

Despite claiming to ‘keep the peace,’ the international community and great powers ultimately failed the Karabakh Armenians and Anatolian Greeks.

Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics and disassociating their obligations as ‘peacekeepers’ left the Armenians vulnerable to attack by Azerbaijan with no other true allies coming to aid. As British military support waned, Vladimir Lenin would fuel the Kemalists with Russian weaponry in the Greco-Turkish War.

Western nations have placated Azerbaijan’s genocidal ambitions with gas deals, with examples including the European Union. Likewise, great powers who won WWI, such as the UK, France, Italy, and the US, watched as hundreds of thousands of Greeks were slaughtered in

Smyrna and refused to intervene on their ships to save them because they saw Mustafa Kemal as a new partner in the Western fold.

The Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sevres, not only consolidated the Kemalist gains and formed the Turkish Republic, but Greeks were forced to leave regions that weren’t won in the war, such as Eastern Thrace and Northern Epirus.

The trilateral treaty between Armenia, Russia, and Azerbaijan also sealed the fate of Karabakh Armenians. Armenia was forced to cede districts in Karabakh that weren’t lost in 2020, such as Hadrut, and ultimately, the Artsakh Armenians were left at the mercy of a failing Russian peacekeeping mission and the brutal Azerbaijani state.

Greek and Armenian ancient civilizations gone

Smyrna’s destruction and tragedy represented the cataclysmic end of the Greco-Turkish War and the nail in the coffin of 3,000 years of Hellenism in Asia Minor. Smyrna was one of the starting points of Mycenean migration post Bronze Age Collapse, which started millennia of Greek heritage throughout Anatolia.

The ethnic cleansing of Artsakh also represents millennia of Armenian history in the region. Azerbaijan, internationally condemned for cultural genocide in Nakhichevan, will most likely replicate the despicable acts of heritage erasure in Karabakh.

Turkification and forcible assimilation have played a role in the region, and with Erdogan and Aliyev having a greater geopolitical agenda for pan-Turkism, Armenia is now the sole factor in their way of achieving the final goal.

Akin to the Greek Genocide and destruction of Hellenism in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, the world has also glossed over the plight of Armenians in Artsakh, who only wanted to live in self-determination away from a genocidal dictatorship akin to the Anatolian Greeks. Today, we say farewell to Anatolia and Artsakh—two ancient civilizations the world glossed over.

https://greekreporter.com/2023/11/07/haunting-100-year-parallel-greeks-armenians/

[Yervant1]

Protothema, Greece

Nov 7 2023

Another New War? Azerbaijan’s Heroes: Soldiers who behead Armenians – Analysis

Author: Newsroom | Published: November 7, 2023

After Azerbaijan besieged & starved 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh for nine months they bombed their communities – Will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 13 that in the coming weeks, Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has threatened Armenia with war multiple times.

Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are also playing their war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper Türkiye on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia’s Syunik (Zangezur) province as “snakes”, “gangs” and “terrorists”. One headline reads: “The new nest of the snake is Zangezur”. It claims that the Armenians displaced from Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) are receiving military training in “terror camps in Zangezur”.

When the Turkish media uses such words, its intent is to prepare the public for an upcoming war against an “enemy”.

See Also:

It’s not just the F-16s, Turkey shouldn’t get any weapons – Analysis

On November 1, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a Red Flag Alert “due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks”.

The US government also knows that the next step for Azerbaijan and Turkey is to attack the Republic of Armenia.

Continue here: Gatestone Institute

https://en.protothema.gr/another-new-war-azerbaijans-heroes-soldiers-who-behead-armenians-analysis/

[Yervant1]

Asbarez.com

Paris Mayor Blasts Baku for Arrest of Artsakh Officials

by Asbarez Staff

November 7, 2023

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo with Luis Moreno Ocampo in Paris on Nov. 6

 

Will Grant ‘Honorary Citizenship’ to Artsakh Residents

Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, blasted Azerbaijan for “arbitrarily arresting” Artsakh officials soon after more than 100,000 Artsakh residents were forcibly displaced from their homes last month.

“The tragedy continues in Armenia. Azerbaijan is guilty of arbitrarily arresting the former officials of Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] and destroying the Armenian heritage in this territory,” Hidalgo said in a post on X, which detailed her meeting with human rights advocate Luis Moreno Ocampo, who in a report this summer said Azerbaijan was actively committing genocide of Armenians.

“Yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss it with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the author of the report on the process of genocide carried out by Azerbaijan during the blockade of Lachin corridor,” added Hidalgo.

Ocampo will received the “Champion of International Justice” award during the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region’s annual awards banquet on Sunday.

“Our thoughts are with the casualties, their families, 100 thousand [Armenian] refugees and political prisoners held by Azerbaijan,” she said.

“On December 10, on the occasion of international Human Rights Day, I will hand honorary citizenship of Paris to the representatives of Artsakh Armenians,” Hidalgo announced. “Also, Paris calls for the immediate release of all Armenian captives being held by Azerbaijan.”

Armenian parliament member Arman Yeghoyan said that the European Region Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie (OIF) has adopted a resolution expressing unconditional support to Armenia and particularly the Armenians of Artsakh, Armenpress reported.

Yeghoyan, who is representing Armenia at the assembly, said in a statement on Tuesday that the resolution stresses the need for respect of the rights of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, and strongly condemns all forms of ethnic cleansing and the destruction of religious and cultural heritage in Artsakh.

Preserving Armenian cultural property in Artsakh was also on the agenda of the general assembly of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property currently underway in Rome.

Armenia was represented at the session by Harutyun Vanyan, Director of the Department of Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments at Armenia’s Education Ministry, and diplomats from the Armenian Embassy in Italy, the ministry said in a statement. Ambassador of Armenia to Italy Tsovinar Hambardzumyan attended the opening session.

Vanyan delivered a report on the issues of preservation of the historical-cultural monuments in Artsakh. He stressed that saving Armenian historical-cultural heritage in Artsakh will only be possible through the pressure and levers by reputable international organizations. Vanyan noted that unfortunately the Armenian heritage in Nakhichevan was not protected in the past during a similar situation.

Specific facts and numbers on vandalisms and destruction of monuments by Azerbaijan were presented at the session. The report also noted the resolutions and decisions adopted by reputable international organizations, which Azerbaijan has been disregarding.

An agreement was reached to cooperate as part of the ICCROM First Aid and Resilience for Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis (FAR) project, given the number of at-risk monuments in Armenia.

https://asbarez.com/paris-mayor-blasts-baku-for-arrest-of-artsakh-officials/?fbclid=IwAR06AaHnXjWZQx3_1sJaNrzKQvQdoq7TQncQopQG_dl9pw570CRUmr56Ykc

[Yervant1]

The European Conservative

Nov 8 2023

World Media Silent as Azerbaijan Bombs Armenian Hospitals and Schools

Azerbaijan has driven Armenians out of their ancestral homeland.

• Uzay Bulut
• — November 8, 2023

There is a striking difference between the media response to Azerbaijan’s 2020-2023 aggression against Armenians of Artsakh, which ended in a genocide, and the media’s reaction to Israel’s retaliation in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7th invasion, massacre, and hostage-taking. Most international media ignored Azerbaijan’s bombings, in 2020, of hospitals, schools, kindergartens, homes, and other non-military targets in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). They have also ignored the beheadings and mutilations that Azeri soldiers have committed against Armenians.

Artsakh is an Armenian republic in the South Caucasus. Indigenous Armenians lived there for millennia until Azerbaijan bombed and invaded their territory on 19-20 September 2023, forcing around 120,000 Armenians to flee for their lives. Azerbaijan claims the region because, in the 1920s, Stalin granted Artsakh to Soviet Azerbaijan as an autonomous oblast as part of his “divide and rule” strategy. However, Artsakh has never been part of an independent Azerbaijan; instead, it has historically been an integral part of Armenia. In fact, in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw the creation of two independent and legally equal republics: Azerbaijan and Artsakh.

Since then, Azerbaijan’s aggression has been unceasing. The September bombardments were Azerbaijan’s second military assault against Artsakh since 2020. An earlier assault took place between 27 September and 9 November, 2020, during which Azerbaijan indiscriminately bombed civilian areas, including hospitals and schools, for 44 days. On 28 October 2020, news website EVN reported:

Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, and the town of Shushi came under intensive shelling today by Azerbaijani forces. A maternity hospital in Stepanakert and other civilian infrastructure were heavily damaged. One civilian was killed and several others wounded including first responders of Artsakh’s State Service of Emergency Situations.

The Associated Press then released video footage showing the shelling of the maternity hospital in Stepanakert by Azeri military forces. Artak Beglaryan, a former state minister of Artsakh and at the time the region’s human rights ombudsman, went to the site of the bombed hospital and posted a video on his X (formerly Twitter) page:

My video message and introduction on the Azerbaijan’s today’s deliberate strike on the Republican medical center of Stepanakert, including maternity and child hospital. Intl community bears responsibility for these #WarCrimes as doesn’t stop them. #DontBeBlind

Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a statement:

This war crime, which is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, customary law, clearly shows that Azerbaijan’s target in Artsakh is the people—infants, mothers, the elderly.

On 26 February 2021, Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled “Unlawful Attacks on Medical Facilities and Personnel in Nagorno-Karabakh: New Research on Three Incidents from 2020 Conflict,” in which they detailed events of the attacks:

Human Rights Watch documented multiple unlawful strikes on a public hospital in Martakert in September through November 2020, and an unlawful strike on a military hospital in the town’s outskirts in October …

Two doctors [of the Martakert Public Hospital] said that when the shelling began on September 27, staff moved all 39 patients, including children and mothers with newborn babies, to the basement. Those whose health allowed it were discharged that day, and the rest were promptly evacuated to Stepanakert…

On September 28, a group of five apparent Azerbaijani servicemen attacked an ambulance…, killing a military doctor, Sasha Rustamyan, 26, and injuring the driver and the accompanying Armenian army sergeant.

Despite these reports, few governments showed concern. Most mainstream media outlets did not even report on these unlawful military attacks against Armenian medical centers, patients, and medical professionals. Schools were also indiscriminately bombed by Azeri forces. The Human Rights Ombudsman of Artsakh issued a report on 9 November 2020, in which it documented Azeri attacks against Armenian children and schools:

Targetings of civilian objects have been deliberate and indiscriminate—strikes on communities have been recorded from the very first day of the offense. The attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces on civilian households have put life and health of children, women, the elderly and the entire peaceful civilian population, as well as their property, schools and other civilian objects in real danger. Moreover, these assaults have not been tempered relative to other targets and have included the full use of air force, missiles, artillery, attack UAVs and even internationally prohibited weapons and methods …

Densely populated areas, including schools and kindergartens, have been indiscriminately targeted. The armed forces of Azerbaijan have been acting with clear intention to damage lives and health of the civilian population, including children. Based on preliminary data, 71 schools and 14 kindergartens … have suffered material damages from the shelling, rocket and air strikes by the Azerbaijani armed forces. As a result of the Azerbaijani attacks, all the 220 schools and 58 kindergartens were closed. Consequently, all the 23,978 children in Artsakh have been deprived of the Right to Education, the opportunity to attend school and 4,036 children of receiving preschool education.

During and after the war, many Armenians, both civilians and soldiers alike, were beheaded or mutilated. Many videos of the beheadings and mutilations were posted on social media by Azeri accounts. According to a report by Artsakh’s Human Rights Ombudsman, some examples include:

Yuri Asriyan, a resident of Azokh village, Hadrut region, could not leave his place of residence due to health problems. He was captured on October 21 by Azerbaijani troops who invaded the village. Later, in December 2020, a video was spread on the Internet, which contained the scene of Asriyan being beheaded. He repeatedly asked not to be beheaded in the name of ‘Allah’, but a soldier in the uniform of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces beheaded him. Asryan’s body was found on 21.01.2021.

Gennady Petrosyan, a resident of Madatashen village of Askeran region, returned to the village after evacuation on 27.10.2020 to pick up his remaining possesions. During the same period, Azeri soldiers in the village captured him and later in November posted a video on the Internet, which clearly shows Petrosyan being beheaded, and his body and amputated head placed next to the body of a pig.

Alvard Tovmasyan was born in 1963, lived in the village of Karin Tak in the Shushi region, and suffered from mental illness. Her body was found on 13.01.2021 as a result of search operations in the same village. Examination of her body revealed obvious signs of torture; her left ear and tongue were cut off. The corpse was identified by relatives and comparative examination of DNA samples.

The war was halted with an agreement signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, and brokered by Russia, on November 9, 2020. Yet, the Azeri aggression never stopped. During Azerbaijan’s illegal blockade that lasted from December 2022 to late September 2023, Armenians were besieged in their own land for nine months. They survived with very little food, medicine, or fuel. Then, on 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan again bombed Artsakh, invaded forcibly displaced the Armenian population, and arrested its political and military leaders. On October 19, Anahit Manasyan, the human rights ombudsman of Armenia, said, “Numerous bodies, including those of children and women, bearing signs of torture and mutilation, have been taken to Armenia from Artsakh.”

Many people regularly follow the news and international developments, but are unaware of the true scale of the 2020-23 Armenian genocide committed by Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey. Azerbaijan’s two brutal wars, carpet bombings, siege starvation, beheadings, and mutilations of Armenians, and its violent targeting of hospitals and schools in Artsakh, should have made headlines in the West.

Despite the many crimes Azerbaijan has committed against Artsakh’s indigenous and peace-loving Armenians, there has been very little factual media coverage. The Western mainstream media has been mostly silent—perhaps even complicit with Azerbaijan. Their silence has helped Azerbaijan drive Armenians out of their ancestral homeland. Tens of thousands of Armenian families have lost their homes, left everything behind, and are now refugees struggling with economic, medical, and psychological problems.

The question demands an answer: Why have most Western media outlets been so blind and apathetic in response to the past three years of the Artsakh Genocide?

Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a research fellow of the Philos Project.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/world-media-silent-as-azerbaijan-bombs-armenian-hospitals-and-schools/

[Yervant1]

Nov 9 2023

The Resurrection of a Conflict: Analyzing the Nagorno-Karabakh Situation

By:Nikita Triandafillidis

Date:

November 9, 2023

Two months ago, Azerbaijan attacked Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, violating the 2020 ceasefire agreement. Analysts and witnesses alerted the world about a potential second Armenian genocide, disguised as anti-terror operations by Azerbaijani forces.

The world leaders and international institutions expressed their usual default statements, calling for de-escalation of the conflict, protection of human rights, and how they monitor the situation with great concern. A month later the world forgot about the thousands of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, who under a new hostage agreement that they signed with the Azerbaijani side, will see the Republic of Artsakh, as it’s known among Armenians, dissolved and erased by January 1st, 2024.

It is important to shed light on the situation in the region, a region that has been in turmoil for decades. To uncover the truth behind Azerbaijan’s victory and shifting geopolitical tensions, it is essential to analyze the history, conflicts, and recent attacks on Armenians over the past three years.

An endless bloodshed

The enclave in southwestern Azerbaijan, surrounded by Azerbaijan’s recognized territory, has been the subject of numerous controversies for a long time. The Republic of Artsakh has always been at the center of violence since the early 19th century when tensions between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis were a daily phenomenon. However, tensions eased when the Soviet Union took control of the area, establishing an ethnic population of Armenians inside the territory of Azerbaijan.

The Soviet system of control, together with their promotion of an international proletarian spirit that ignored religion, seemed to have been efficient enough to stop any ongoing bloodshed. However, tensions were resurrected again in the 80s, when the grip of the Soviet Union on the region was loosening. Without Soviet control, the region became a field of human loss and tragedy as tens of thousands of people from both sides lost their lives. From 1988, until the peace treaty agreement in 1994, this mountainous region in Azerbaijan had experienced, firsthand, the bloody aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Almost three decades later, the conflict restarted in 2020, with both sides accusing each other of attacking first. After weeks of fighting, the Russian Federation negotiated a peace treaty between the two sides by establishing Russian peacekeepers to monitor the area. In addition, the Lachin corridor was to be established and controlled by the Russians, to ensure the safety of a passage between Armenia and the disputed area in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Three years later, in September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a supposed anti-terror operation, aiming to disarm and neutralize any Armenian military presence in the area. Almost 200 people lost their lives. In the following days, Azerbaijan had complete control of the region. With the fall of the Republic of Artsakh, thousands of ethnic Armenians fled to Armenia, warning the international community that a second Armenian genocide would be underway.

The total control of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijanis and their crimes against the Armenians has been purposely ignored by the majority of the world. What’s interesting are the factors and political games that have allowed Azerbaijan to act this way, persecuting Christian Armenians and ignoring international rules of combat. Azerbaijan, an artificially made state, created by the Soviet Union, has risen in the political arena. Analyzing their success and the failures of Armenia is critical to have a clearer view of the rapidly shifted geopolitical outlook of the area.

The Failures of Nikol Pashinyan: The Shift Toward the West

Since 2018, Nikol Pashinyan has emerged as the leading figure for the nation of Armenia. For years, he has been advocating for closer ties with Moscow, a logical approach since Moscow has been a close ally of Yerevan. However, for the last couple of years, Pashinyan has lured Armenia to make the same mistakes that the country of Georgia had made years ago. Turn to the West for help. By implying that Russia is incapable of being a security guarantor for the region, Pashinyan condemned the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh to flee their homeland and become persecuted refugees. In a matter of a few years, Pashinyan managed to bring the relations between Russia and Armenia to a cold level, foolishly believing that the shift towards the West would be beneficial for his country.

Ignoring the common security concerns between the two states and choosing to consult the West for help, while at the same time pointing the finger at Russia, show the incapabilities of Pashinyan to lead his country. Inviting U.S. soldiers to stage joint drills with Armenian soldiers and withdrawing its representative from the CSTO military bloc, would have never achieved anything positive for Armenia. However, short on options to save his political position, Pashinyan gambled that the West would back him up after witnessing his anti-Russia rhetoric. On the contrary, his actions only managed to waste precious time in peacefully resolving the conflict and ensuring the safety of the ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinyan’s visits to Prague and Brussels months before the resurrection of the conflict proved to be wasteful and harmful. By choosing to follow newly agreed declarations of the past, Pashinyan completely ignored several trilateral agreements that have been in place since 2020. For example, the deployment of a CSTO observer mission to areas bordering Azerbaijan was not brought into existence, simply because they were never signed in the first place by the Armenian leadership.

The implementation of the trilateral agreements of 2020 between Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, were completely stalled because of this Armenian shift towards the West. By acknowledging the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan but at the same time choosing not to address and guarantee the safety of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Nikol Pashinyan showed the world how little he and his pro-western government cared for an actual ceasefire and a resolution guaranteeing the safety of Armenians in the area.

Today, after the one-day war defeat of the ethnic Armenians, Pashinyan is mostly focused on his internal government failures and the major protests that are being formed all over Armenia. Even now Pashinyan continues to use Western rhetoric regarding the protests, labeling them as Russian-led groups, seeking to disturb peace. However, no matter how much he wants to portray these reactions against his failures as Russian-backed “color revolutions”, his accusations have no basis in reality. What matters is that in reality, thousands of people lost their homes, their lives, and in a way their own identities, by relying on a man who had no desires other than saving his political image and position of authority over Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s Political Maneuvers: The Hidden Hand of Israel

Over the last few years, Azerbaijan has been benefiting from its close alliance with Israel. For someone who might not be involved in the geopolitics of the Caucasus area, this alliance might seem very random. However, both states have been benefiting from each other, and with the current victory of Azerbaijan, and the ongoing war of Israel against Hamas, this alliance might grow even stronger. Israel has enjoyed the imports of oil from Azerbaijan and in return, Azerbaijan has received much-needed weaponry. Weapons and military technology that were critical to their victory in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It has been reported that at least 60% of Azerbaijan’s weapons purchases came directly from Israel. Tactical and intelligence drones in particular, that provided an advantage over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, were critical in the victory of Azerbaijan. By supplying weapons to Azerbaijan, Israel managed to get access to a steady oil supply and be within proximity of its archenemy, Iran. This discreet alliance between Baku and Tel Aviv has allowed Israeli forces valuable access to Azeri infrastructure and airfields. Reports from within the country show Mossad agents operating near the borders with Iran. It is speculated that the border region between Azerbaijan and Iran is a vital area for the ongoing spy network of Israel against Iranian forces.

Antagonizing Iran is the main driving force behind this alliance. However, supporting Azerbaijan against Armenia has also various economic results for Israel. Thousands of Armenians have fled their lands, leaving behind the vast lands needed for development. Azerbaijan has announced the promotion of lucrative investments in the stolen lands of what was once been the Republic of Artsakh. As a result, this has attracted the attention of Israeli companies that cannot wait to get their hands on these investment opportunities. These investments are mostly focused on the renewable energy, health, and agriculture sectors.

The Role of The Big Players

A war between two states affects not only the nations fighting but also a plethora of various states seeking to benefit by siding and supporting the right side. One such nation is Erdogan’s Turkey. Since the resurrection of this conflict back in 2020, Turkey has been a close ally of Azerbaijan, providing it with weapons, resources, and valuable political security against Armenia. The unconditional support of Turkey towards Azerbaijan brought numerous benefits to Turkey. Primarily, it guaranteed a steady flow of oil towards it, which allowed Turkey to diversify from its energy dependency on Russia. In addition, apart from its energy security concerns covered, Turkey can also benefit economically from Azerbaijan’s win. With the war over and the Nagorno-Karabakh area cleared of ethnic Armenians, Azerbaijan can focus on building valuable infrastructure in the area, focusing on creating a road towards its exclave Nakhchivan, which can be a significant economic boost for trading between both nations.

Apart from Turkey, the U.S., E.U., and Israel can be more than happy to see Azerbaijan dominate in the area, as that means that Azerbaijan can potentially replace Russia as a reliable energy partner. Of course, the support of the U.S and the E.U countries towards Azerbaijan has been labeled as hypocritical as we listen every day on the news platforms how they denounce violence and worry about the protection of human rights, yet they purposefully ignore the crimes that Azerbaijan has committed.

How else could someone describe their behavior if not hypocritical, when they have allowed Azerbaijan to desecrate one of the world’s oldest Christian communities? There have already been reports about the destruction of Christian monuments and churches. This systematic destruction of cultural heritage will only get worse, as thousands of Armenians flee from the area fearing for their lives. Not to mention the numerous acts of barbarity committed by the Azerbaijani forces. Torture, beheadings, and executions of Armenian soldiers, the use of cluster and phosphorus munitions against civilians, psychological and physical violence against women and children, and many more horrific actions committed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan. Yet, we see no condemnation from the West, we do see however leaders praising Azerbaijan as a strategic energy partner, sacrificing every inch of integrity left in them just to go against Russia in the hopes of weakening the country.

Lastly, a state that was mentioned already a few times in this conflict is Russia. The Russian Federation has been the de facto political actor in the area and the conflict. Unlike other countries that seek to choose a side, Russia has been trying to achieve a balance between both fighting sides, as it is vital for it to remain as neutral as possible, hoping to bring stability to the area. Russia has deep historical ties with Armenia due to a common religion and common strategic ambitions. However, Russia needs to treat Azerbaijan with the same mutual respect, as it risks losing its sphere of influence in the Caucasus to Turkey and the West.

While some would suggest that the defeat of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh could pose a setback for Russia, they will be undeniably mistaken. With the defeat of Armenia, the noose is getting tighter on Nikol Pashinyan and his pro-western government. Massive protests erupted in Yerevan and other major cities in Armenia, calling for the resignation of Pashinyan and dissolution of the government. Something like that could only benefit Moscow, as a shift towards a pro-Russian stance in the internal affairs of Armenia will guarantee Russia’s grip on the region.

No matter who gains more from Azerbaijan’s victory, one thing is for certain. Thousands of people lost their lives and homes over the past three years. Thousands of people found themselves as refugees in their land. They have been witnesses to the barbarity of Azerbaijan’s forces and their hatred towards Christianity. They have seen the international community failing them and close allies turning their backs on them. In the end, another proxy war has ended, with all the different players involved gaining different things. Cruelty and barbarism from the Azerbaijani side have masqueraded as a just war, while ignorance from the West has been labeled as a strategic partnership. Three years later, peace has been labeled as a massive exodus for the Armenian people and the destruction of the Christian community.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/11/09/the-resurrection-of-a-conflict-analyzing-the-nagorno-karabakh-situation/

[Yervant1]

 

Jadaliyya

Nov 9 2023

 

Where Is the International Will to Respond to the Ethnic Cleansing Taking Place in Karabakh/Artsakh?

By : Jadaliyya Reports

As a community of critically engaged scholars and global citizens, we are shocked by the belated and insufficient response of the international community to the ethnic cleansing of what was, until weeks ago, the Armenian-populated enclave of Karabakh/Artsakh, located within the internationally recognized boundaries of Azerbaijan.

The precarious conditions of the local population were alarming enough for former International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to declare on multiple occasions that Azerbaijan's actions in Karabakh/Artsakh are in violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention. He stated in unwavering terms that “we cannot accept a new Armenian genocide in 2023,” a statement that recalls how only a century earlier the Ottoman Empire erased its indigenous Armenian inhabitants.

During the recent Azerbaijani campaign, more than 100,000 Artsakh Armenians who were ethnically cleansed from their homes were subject to dehumanizing epithets, including that of being labeled "terrorists," in a climate of inflammatory rhetoric that usually accompanies state violence, or worse, genocide. Caravans of Armenians were expelled fromthe mountain enclave to safety in Armenia, forcibly displaced by legitimate fears of atrocities, state-sanctioned ethnic hatred, and the suppression of their cultural rights. For the first time in the recorded history of the region, this majority ethnic Armenian enclave is depopulated of Armenians. They wereethnically cleansed while the world stood and watched.

In 2020, Azerbaijan invaded the self-proclaimed Artsakh Republic, and has since committed horrific crimes against both military personnel and civilians. Documented by international human rights groups and openly shared on Azerbaijani social media, Armenians were decapitated, mutilated, and raped in the course of the invasion which largely reduced the Artsakh Republic’s territorial holdings. In addition, the Lachin Corridor that connected non-contiguous Karabakh/Artsakh to its Armenian neighbor has been blocked since December 2022, placing the territory under siege, an action that the International Court of Justice ruled was a “real and imminent risk” to the population. Siege, a technique used in mass atrocities in Tigray and Syria, starved the population of medical, food, and life-saving supplies, producing a classic case of ethnic cleansing by attrition.

Leading up to the military campaign to disarm and dismantle Artsakh in late September, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan (a close ally of both the US and Russia), has used a new single lettered slogan mimicking Russia’s fascist Z symbol that propagandizes its genocidal campaign in Ukraine. Baku has already signaled that the conquest of Karabakh/Artsakh will not be enough, having renamed neighboring Armenia “Western Azerbaijan,” giving parts of sovereign Armenia Azerbaijani place names in media broadcasts and speeches.

Currently, Armenians of Karabakh/Artsakh have been reliant on Russia, whose role as peacekeeper in the region is in name only. Azerbaijan, a country given the status of “not free” by Freedom House, is not a place where the Armenians of Artsakh can live freely without persecution, a status that even Azerbaijani citizens do not receive from their own government.

As scholars and concerned global citizens, we urge the international community to place pressure on Azerbaijan and to establish guarantees and mechanisms for the safe return of Armenians to the region, including the protection of their inalienable property and right to live in their ancestral homeland. We ask that the United Nations deploy peacekeepers to protect the safe passage for all remaining refugees and heed warnings about the destruction of Armenian heritage that is sure to follow the evacuation of Armenians from the region. Azerbaijan’s pattern of targeting Armenian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries is well-documented by monitoring agencies. We urge the international community to take action to protect some of the world’s oldest Christian heritage from established patterns of destruction. Lastly, we call for Armenia’s beleaguered democracy and civil society—and, indeed, its sovereignty and territorial integrity—to be ensured and its people assured that they have not been abandoned by the international community. Only with guarantees that international law and treaties will be upheld in the troubled region can the cycle of violence finally be broken.

Signed,

Levon Abrahamian, Head of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography, NAS RA.

Can Aciksoz, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UCLA

Hakem Al-Rustom, Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History, Assistant Professor of History and of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Dr. Avril Alba, Associate Professor in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilization, Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, Deputy HoS (Research) School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Sydney.

Anna Aleksanyan, postdoctoral fellow at the Armenian Genocide Research Program of the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA

Sophia Armen, Independent Scholar

Richard Antaramian, PhD, Associate Professor of History, University of Southern California.

Dr. Sebouh David Aslanian, Professor of History and Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History, UCLA.

Maral N. Attallah, Distinguished Lecturer, Dept. of Critical Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cal Poly Humboldt.

Dr. Levon Avdoyan, Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist (retired)

Babayan Kathryn, Professor, History & Middle East Studies, University of Michigan.

Peter Balakian, Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English, Colgate University.

Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law, Yale University

Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University.

Tina Bastajian, Lecturer, Amsterdam University College; Sandberg Institute.

Jean- Philippe Belleau, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Houri Berberian, Professor of History, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, Director of the Center for Armenian Studies, University of California, Irvine.

Matthias Bjørnlund, historian, genocide scholar.

Donald Bloxham, Richard Pares Professor of History, University of Edinburgh.

Eric Bogosian, American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, historian

Ne’lida Elena Boulgourdjian, Professor of History, University of Tres de Febrero, Argentina.

Talar Chahinian, Lecturer, Program for Armenian Studies, University of California, Irvine.

S. Peter Cowe, Distinguished Professor, Narekatsi Chair of Armenian Studies, Near Eastern languages and Cultures, UCLA.

Asya Darbinyan, Executive Director, Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education (Chhange).

Dr Vazken Khatchig Davidian, Associate Faculty Member, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.

Ruben Davtyan, PostDoc in Archaeology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

Bedross Der Matossian, Professor of History and Hymen Rosenberg Professor in Judaic Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Independent Visual Artist

Dzovinar Derderian, Lecturer, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley, Executive Director, Armenian Studies Program.

Hossep Dolatian, Visiting Scholar, Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University.

Samuel Dolbee, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Vanderbilt University.

Atom Egoyan, Filmmaker.

Caroline Ford, Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Andrea S. Goldman, Associate Professor, Department of History, UCLA

Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan

Rachel Goshgarian, Associate Professor of History, Lafayette College

Chris Gratien, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Virginia

Talinn Grigor, Professor of Art History, University of California, Davis

Dr. Edita Gzoyan, Acting Director at Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Associate Professor, ArtCenter College of Design.

Prof. Garry R. Hannah. Executive Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA School of Law

Diana Hayrapetyan, PhD Candidate, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University

Katsuya Hirano, Associate Professor, UCLA

Dr Tessa Hofmann, Scholar of genocide and Armenian studies, author; formerly Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Eastern European Studies

Margaret C. Jacob, Distinguished Professor of Research, Emerita, Department of History, UCLA

Arsinée Khanjian, Actor and Political Activist

Ayşenur Korkmaz, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

Nancy Kricorian, Writer

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Delaware.

Dr. Suren Manukyan, Head of the UNESCO Chair on Prevention of Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes, Yerevan State University.

Seta Kabranian Melkonian, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Services, University of Alaska, Anchorage.

Ronald Mellor, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Ani Kalayjian, Prof., Association for Trauma Outreach & Prevention, ATOP, Meaningful world, and Columbia University.

Philippe Raffi Kalfayan, Ph.D., Associate Researcher and Lecturer in International Public Law at Paris Pantheon-Assas University, France.

Dikran M. Kaligian, historian, author

Dr. Sossie Kasbarian, Senior Lecturer, University of Stirling

Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of History UCLA

Thomas Kühne, Strassler Colin Flug Professor of Holocaust History, Clark University

Dr. Umit Kurt, University of Newcastle, the Center for Study of Violence.

Sergio La Porta, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, California State University, Fresno

Jacob Ari Labendz, Scholar of Jewish History and Culture

Marc A. Mamigonian, Director of Academic Affairs, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)

Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University

Afshin Matin-Asgari, Professor, Department of History, California State University, Los Angeles

Deborah Mayersen, Senior Lecturer in International and Political Studies, School of Humanities and Social Studies, University of New South Wales Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy

Ronald Mellor, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles

Franz A Metcalf, Instructor, CSULA, Review Editor, JGB, H-Buddhism

Muriel Mirak-Weißbach, Author and Journalist, Armenian Mirror-Spectator, Mainz-Kastel, Germany

Dirk A. Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations, The City College of New York, CUNY

Khatchig Mouradian, lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University.

Tsolin Nalbantian, Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

Dr. Melanie O'Brien, Visiting Professor, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota; President, International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Dr. Darren O’Brien, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland.

Sheila Paylan, International Human Rights Lawyer and Former Legal Adviser to the United States.

Dr. Rafal Pankowski, Professor at Collegium Civitas, co-founder of “NEVER AGAIN” Association, Poland

Hrag Papazian, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University of Armenia

Jess Peake, Assistant Director, the Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA School of Law

Rubina Peroomian, Ph.D., Genocide Scholar (independent, formerly UCLA)

Pirinjian Lori, PhD Student in Armenian Studies, UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, Professor of Modern Middle East History, California State University, Fullerton

E. Natalie Rothman, Professor of History, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto, Scarborough

Teo Ruiz, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

Joachim J. Savelsberg, Professor of Sociology and Law, Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, University of Minnesota

Elyse Semerdjian, Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies, Clark University

Viviane Seyranian, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Gayane Shagoyan, Leading Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Societies of Armenia

Awring Shaways, Founding President of KG Lobby Center and Member of IAGS

Christopher Sheklian, Postdoctoral Researcher, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Tamar Shirinian, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Gregory. H Stanton, Founding President Genocide Watch

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Distinguished Professor of History and Irving & Jean Stone Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA

Ronald Grigor Suny, Willian H. Sewell, Jr. Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, The University of Michigan

Frances Tanzer, Rose Professor of Holocaust Studies and Modern Jewish History and Culture, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College of CUNY

George Theoharis, Professor of Educational Leadership & Inclusion Education, Syracuse University.

Henry C. Theriault, Founding Co-Editor, Genocide Studies International, and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Worcester State University History and Civilization Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.

Glenn Timmermans, Associate Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, China.

Artyom Tonoyan, Visiting Professor of Global Studies, Hamline University.

Alison M. Vacca, Gevork M. Avedissian Associate Professor of Armenian.

von Joeden-Forgey Elisa Dr., Executive Director, Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.

Hrag Vartanian, Art critic and Editor-in-chief, Hyperallergic

Keith David Watenpaugh, Professor and Director, Human Rights Studies, University of California, Davis

Dr. Stephanie Wolfe, Weber State University, First Vice-President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars

Hrag David Yacoubian, Assistant Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, PhD Candidate at University British Columbia

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, Professor of Art History, University of California, Davis

Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary and Presidential Candidate

Anahita Mahdavi-West, Professor, Long Beach City College

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45479

[Yervant1]

Panorama, Armenia

Nov 9 2023

Artsakh exodus was genocide, says former ICC chief prosecutor

The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, believes that countries are deliberately ignoring the risk of genocide to avoid the obligation to prevent it.

In an interview with Armenpress Brussels correspondent, Ocampo said that the forced displacement of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh after the Azerbaijani attack constitutes genocide.

Mr. Ocampo, on August 7, you provided and then published your professional opinion to the President of the Republic of Artsakh, considering the blockade and complete siege of Artsakh as genocide. What process could have been started at that time to prevent the coming disaster?

Well, the report was important because we made a point in the public opinion. However, states are doing something fascinating, they are deliberately ignoring the risk of genocide to avoid the obligation to prevent genocide, that’s what we found. We found basically that states are trying to avoid the word genocide. Even because when the US Congress took the report and started activities, then US State Department, without mentioning genocide said they will protect Nagorno Karabakh internationally. But it was late too late. They said that and three days later Aliyev attacked.

How do you interpret what happened after September 19 in Nagorno Karabakh? It seems that when many say genocide, they only imagine a massacre. But in a few days, more than a hundred thousand people forcibly left their homeland, leaving behind everything.

That is a genocide as well, under Genocide Convention article 2B. There's a new report by Juan Mendes saying that the fact that 100,000 people left is showing the mental harm. The fact that they left everything. So that is another form genocide to be, not only killing. The killing was not massive, but there is a mental harm of all the community leaving their land.

What legal mechanisms are there for the rights of the people of Artsakh that can work and how realistic do you consider the restoration of the rights of these people according to international norms?

I think it's important now that France is pushing for that. That's an important state that is pushing the agenda and it's something we should fight for. We should fight for gaining respect of the right of the people, because the people, even if they are not there, they are still the owners of the land and the place, so their rights must be respected. And I think a different priority is to recover, to release the hostages. There are 53 people in jail in Azerbaijan. The problem is international law is not something like if someone steals your bike, you can go to the police and the courts. No, there's nothing like that. We have the International Court of Justice presumably for states, and there is the International Criminal Court for prosecuting individuals. The legal process for releasing these people is not clear, but we should develop the process politically. That is why this meeting is important.

https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2023/11/09/Luis-Moreno-Ocampo/2923751

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

what can UNESCO do ? other then take some $$$$$ from vandal

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

The National Interest

Oct 4 2023

Tragedy and Opportunity in Nagorno-Karabakh

The United States has tended to think about this crucial region too little and too late. But a strategic opportunity still exists.

by Daniel Sneider

In the span of mere days, the long-disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, home to Armenians since antiquity, has disappeared as a political entity. By the evening of September 29, almost 100,000 people, over 80 percent of the enclave’s population, had crossed to Armenia, fleeing with the clear encouragement of the Azerbaijan regime.

The Azerbaijanis seized back control of this region from a self-styled independent state, closely tied to Armenia itself, in a series of military campaigns beginning in 2020 and culminating in a lightning strike on September 19-20. The triumphant mood was palpable in Baku when I visited just prior to the latest attack—from huge electronic displays of patriotic flag waving on the skyscrapers that had been built with oil and gas riches to a carpet woven with a map of Nagorno-Karabakh, which a museum guide breathlessly described as “our land.”

Back in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia, the mood was considerably darker. On the first day of the beginning of the latest attack, a senior Armenian foreign ministry official was anticipating the collapse of resistance. “It’s a series of actions that can lead to only one thing—the complete ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh,” he told me.

This humanitarian disaster is taking place as the world watches, issuing ritual statements of condemnation but apparently unable to intervene. Armenia is left largely on its own to cope with a massive influx of people who have been forced to leave possessions and homes, some lived in for centuries, with no hope of return. Azerbaijani forces are arresting Karabakh Armenian leaders, preparing to hold show trials for their “crimes” of resistance. Any acts of resistance are likely to justify brutal and violent repression of those who remain.

Armenians are haunted by the historical memory of the Turkish genocide of 1915, when a million or more Armenians were murdered by the Ottomans amidst the chaos of World War I. U.S. Agency for International Development director Samantha Power, a witness to similar scenes of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the author of a hallmark study of the failure to respond to genocide, came to Armenia immediately after the attack, offering condolences and a mere $11.5 million in refugee aid.

This war in what seems like a distant and peripheral corner of the world deserves our attention. It is a test of the willingness to tolerate acts of violation of fundamental human rights, at a time when these values are on the line in the nearby war in Ukraine. As in that war, the Russian state is asserting its imperial heritage and is determined to punish those whom it sees as disloyal and turning to the West.

The Azerbaijani offensive is possible only because of a de facto alliance of autocrat Ilham Aliyev with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Armenia and its democratically elected government led by Nikol Pashinyan are being punished by Putin for the crime of seeking to broaden ties to the United States and the European Union. Weakened by war in Ukraine, and worried about losing control of its former imperial backyard in the South Caucasus, Putin decided to greenlight the return of Azerbaijani rule over Nagorno-Karabakh and abandon Russia’s traditional role as a protector of Armenia.

Russian peacekeeping forces in Nagorno Karabakh have become nothing more than doormen for the ethnic cleansing operation.

“The Russian peacekeeping operation is a sham,” a veteran Armenian political leader told me. “Without the agreement of Putin, neither Azerbaijan nor Turkey could have pursued this war.”

Meanwhile, the conflict is hardly over. An emboldened Azerbaijan, handed a virtual blank check by Turkey and Russia, demands, and prepares to seize, a land bridge across Armenian territory that will connect it to the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan and through that to Turkey. Azerbaijan dictator Aliyev now talks of recovering “western Azerbaijan,” referring to claims on Armenia itself, a claim manifested in attacks along the border, including in recent days.

The immediate origins of this war lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a moment I witnessed first-hand as the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor. A mass movement of Armenians rose up to demand independence and the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to their territory. The region had been placed in the 1920s by Joseph Stalin under the authority of the ethnically Turkish Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, an act that Armenians had long seen as unjust.

As Soviet authority waned, both Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed independence, leading to a fierce war that ended in a 1994 ceasefire. The war left a legacy of mutual acts of ethnic violence and deepened hatred. The fighting left the Armenians in control of a vast swath of Azerbaijani territory, including establishing a land corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. They avoided the sovereignty issue by establishing an independent Nagorno-Karabakh.

The plan was to trade most of the captured Azerbaijani land for a permanent peace, but compromise proved elusive. Conflicting claims of sovereignty could not be resolved, despite the efforts of a group formed by Russia, the United States, and France. Intransigence on both sides grew as time went by. Eventually, the Azerbaijanis regained military strength, using oil and gas revenues to buy advanced arms from Turkey, Israel, and Russia (which supplied both sides), along with Turkish training and officers, to try to resolve the conflict by armed means.

In a weeks-long offensive in 2020, coming when the world was distracted by Covid-19 and the United States was under the isolationist rule of Donald Trump, the Azerbaijanis restored control of all of their occupied territory and much of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. The Russians only intervened at the end to negotiate a ceasefire that ceded much to Azerbaijan and implanted Russian troops on the ground as “peacekeepers.”

Armenian officials believe relations with Moscow had already started to fray after a civic movement brought the reformist government of Pashinyan to power in 2018, removing more pro-Russian leadership. “It started when Russia didn’t like a more open, democratic Armenia,” the senior foreign ministry official said.

“The Russians are much more comfortable working with Azerbaijan than with the current Armenian government,” says Tigran Grigoryan, the head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, an Armenian-based think tank. “Aliyev and Putin speak the same language. That is not true for Putin and Pashinyan.”

Still, the Armenian government has been very careful not to upset its traditional allies in Russia, joining the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) organized by Moscow along with Belarus and a handful of other former Soviet republics. The reality is that the Russians retain huge leverage in this small nation—a Russian army unit remains based in northwestern Armenia near the Turkish border and patrols that border. Armenia remains dependent on Russia for most of its energy needs, including the operation of a dangerously aging nuclear power plant. Furthermore, millions of Armenians work in Russia, with their remittances key to the economy back home.

“We never wanted to provoke Russia,” the senior official said. “Why should we? We always wanted more room to maneuver.”

Russia has traditionally opposed the expansion of Turkish influence in the region, but amid the Ukraine war, the situation has completely changed, and Russia is clearly far weaker than before. “The Russians needed a new status quo in the South Caucasus,” explained Grigoryan. “They could tolerate the Turks, but their main concern is the West.”

Armenian analysts compare this to the bargain that the Bolshevik leaders struck in 1921 with the Turks to oust a British-led intervention into the South Caucasus. That deal included the decision to give Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

In broader historical terms, this is the delayed resumption of “a protracted process of imperial disintegration,” says Ukrainian historian Igor Torbakov, a prolific writer on the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires. That created “imperial shatter zones” from the Middle East and the Balkans to the Caucasus, leading to forced “unmixing of peoples.” The Bolshevik deal with Kemalist Turkey restored the empire and created a relative peace for seventy years but “the Soviet implosion opened up the nationalist Pandora’s box for the second time in the 20th century,” Torbakov says.

For the Armenian government, the clearest signal of Moscow’s abandonment came a year ago when Azerbaijani attacks along the border with Armenia itself—beyond the Karabakh region—failed to trigger a Russian response. This was a violation of commitments that should have been the result of Armenia’s participation in CSTO.

Pashinyan began to speak out more openly about Russia’s failure to live up to its expected role. Both the European Union and the United States stepped up efforts to mediate the conflict, leading to two rounds of talks convened by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May and July of this year which seemed to be leading toward some agreement. But Putin stepped in and called his own meeting in Moscow, a move meant “to remind people who is the master of the house,” the senior Armenian official recounted.

Moscow has been openly carrying out a verbal war with the Pashinyan government—responding angrily to even small gestures of independence such as the dispatch of a humanitarian aid mission to Ukraine led by the prime minister’s wife and the holding of a small-scale joint military exercise with the U.S. 101st Airborne carried out just days before the Azerbaijani attack. Former Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev warned Yerevan against “flirting with NATO.”

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/tragedy-and-opportunity-nagorno-karabakh-206870

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

Nagorno-Karabakh hearings held in Basque Parliament

11:37, 13 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The Committee on European Affairs and External Action of the Basque Parliament has held hearings regarding the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK).

AGBU member, Spanish-Armenian lawyer Levon Grigorian was asked by the committee to deliver a briefing on the situation in NK.

In his remarks, Grigorian said that the protection of human rights is a responsibility that goes beyond any political, cultural or ethnic differences.

“Regardless of our origin, it’s important that we unite in his common work. Ethnic cleansings are a direct encroachment against human dignity and the main human right, the right to life. The rights of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh require international protection, while the status of Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be determined by the war started by Azerbaijan,” the lawyer said.

Grigorian called for an independent investigation into crimes against humanity perpetrated by Azerbaijani authorities, claiming that sanctions against the current Azeri regime would be crucial for preventing the possibility of a new Armenian genocide.

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1124005.html?fbclid=IwAR1L9Zx-nH6weZJLN9xItdgOK5-eWHlBMCqUIvmcAvnjsC7tBMr9vodTehY

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

Nov 16 2023

An unnoticed ethnic cleansing We must not forget the Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh

by Simon Kennedy

An Armenian bishop recently prayed what could be the last liturgical Christian prayer in Artsakh, otherwise known as Nagorno-Karabakh. This is a terrible tragedy, and we must not look away or be distracted by the other conflicts occurring in Europe and Middle East. An ancient Christian people are being displaced before our very eyes.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a formerly autonomous republic nestled between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. It was, until very recently, home to over 120,000 Christians and operated as an ethnic enclave under the watchful eye of Russian peacekeepers.

The region is a disputed territory. The dispute erupted into open war in 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Tensions have remained high after the ceasefire. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian peacekeeping oversight has diminished to the point where Azerbaijan’s government could act decisively and take control of the region.

The past two months has seen a dramatic shift in the direction of Azeri control. A putative anti-terrorism operation in late September was, in fact, a bombardment of Armenian Christian centers, including the capital, Stepanakert. The attacks, which continued over the next weeks, led to the end of Armenian resistance.

On Sept. 28, the president of the Republic of Artsakh decreed that all local governments in the region would cease to operate and exist by Jan. 1. By this time, over half of the Armenian population of the breakaway republic had fled.

The Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, assured the international community that the Armenian population retained their rights as ethnic minorities within Azerbaijan’s legal framework. However, the reality has been much darker for the Armenian Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

By Oct. 3, as the Azeri army entered the region with a ground force, it was clear that the Armenians had abandoned hope. Within 24 hours, Azeri control of the region was assured, with reports of half-eaten food and personal belongings left behind indicative of the haste with which the Christian population fled.

The reasons for this haste have become clear as reports of starvation, shelling, and terror on the Armenian civilians emerged. Ethnic cleansing and genocide have been used to describe the actions taken by the Azeris as they acted to clear the region of Armenian elements.

Nagorno-Karabakh was the last ancient site of Armenian culture.

This is unquestionably a massive human tragedy. More than 120,000 people have been displaced from their homes and forced to flee in the face of terror and the threat of extinction. But there is more for Christians to consider as this unfolds.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an ancient site of Armenian culture and Christianity. Christianity has been present in the region for something like seventeen centuries, with traditional claims that it stretch back to the first century after Christ. Indeed, Armenia was the first nation to make Christianity its established religion.

Nagorno-Karabakh is more than simply a Christian and Armenian enclave. As the Danube Institute’s Csaba Horváth writes, “Nagorno Karabakh … represented the last remaining intact ancient pocket of unbroken Armenian demographic continuity.”

Armenians have been a pilgrim people, shunted from place to place over the centuries. Nagorno-Karabakh was the last ancient site of Armenian culture. It is also the last ancient site of Armenian Christian culture, one that is now entirely in the hands of a Muslim regime that has acted for decades to destroy the Armenian Christian heritage.

Events in Israel and Ukraine continue to hold the attention of the international community, and that’s understandable. The Azeris and Armenians are close to striking a peace deal, meaning the conflict will further retreat from the news cycle.

Yet, as Azerbaijan seizes control and begins recriminations against Armenian leaders, and Azeris look to move into the region, western Christians seem almost uninterested in the sad fate of tens of thousands of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

The destruction of Christianity in Nagorno-Karabakh is both a humanitarian tragedy and a religious tragedy. Western Christians must not look away.

Simon Kennedy

Simon Kennedy is a research fellow at the University of Queensland and a non-resident fellow at the Danube Institute. He is also associate editor of Quadrant Magazine.

https://wng.org/opinions/an-unnoticed-ethnic-cleansing-1700132361

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

U.S. developing record of what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, says State Department official

10:39, 16 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The United States is developing a record of what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh and is working on support for Armenia, James O’Brien, Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, announced during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, RFE/RL’s Armenian service reported.

During the hearing on “The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh” held by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, James O’Brien noted that the subject of investigation is not only what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh during September when the region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population fled their homes within a matter of days after a lightening military operation launched by Azerbaijan, but also during the months preceding it.

“We have commissioned independent investigators, we have our own investigators working in the field. There is information available from international non-governmental organizations and other investigators. And as we develop the record of what happened, we will be completely open about what we are finding. I can’t put a timeline on this investigation, but we will inform you as we go forward,” RFE/RL’s Armenian service quoted O’Brien as saying.

“The second thing we are working on is support for Armenia… I am very impressed by the Armenian government’s commitment to reforms and diversifying relationships that it has – economic, political, energy and security – particularly in the Trans-Atlantic community. And I think we owe it to the people of Armenia to help them through this difficult situation so that those choices they have made very bravely are able to help them to make them have a more secure, stable and prosperous future,” the U.S. diplomat added.

Speaking on behalf of the Department of State, O’Brien said that Washington insists that Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians have complete access to the territory, on the protection of the property and culture and that they receive adequate information “so that they can make real choice about their future.”

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1124247.html?fbclid=IwAR3HEc3BLzbqx0380GTzD_6uhnr8oD36wynEHN39GGufdm2EEfWyjAf6gwc

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

EU ‘demanding very clearly that people of Nagorno Karabakh need to have guarantees for safe return' – Exclusive

12:12, 17 November 2023

BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. The European Commission’s lead spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy Peter Stano has commented on the EU’s decision to launch visa liberalization talks with Armenia and support the country through the European Peace Facility.

In an exclusive interview with Armenpress Brussels correspondent, Peter Stano also commented on Azerbaijan’s recent statement accusing the EU of ‘undermining peace and stability’ in the region.

The EU spokesperson also spoke about the importance of the return of forcibly displaced Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh under international guarantees.

Armenpress: The High Representative spoke about the possibilities of visa liberalization. To what extent is this realistic and on what processes does it depend on being brought to life?

Stano: The European Union said very clearly at the level of the leaders of the European Union in their meeting in October that we want to explore ways to further support Armenia and deepen our cooperation with Armenia and then in the follow up discussions this week by foreign ministers, the Foreign Minister said that one of the ways we are looking at is the visa liberalization. So, we are going to explore options for visa liberalization with Armenia. This means we will start the process to see whether it's feasible, whether it's possible. Visa liberalization is something that is very important because it's tangible and visible for people. But it's also something where all the Member States need to agree eventually and where there are also tasks to be fulfilled on the side of the partner country, in this case of Armenia, but again, it's important that there is an agreement. We want to start to look at the options and explore the possibility of visa liberalization. So, we are launching a process. This is the start of the process, but it is a process that eventually, if everything goes well, might bring a lot of benefits for the Armenian citizens.

Armenpress: What kind of tasks? Can you give one or two examples?

Stano: In general, for visa liberalization, there are technical requirements that means biometric passports, for example, but also political requirements to make sure that the political framework in the country prevents people from misusing the asylum system. First of all, that people are not forced to leave the country and claim asylum. Because this is one of the main priorities when it comes to visa. Free visa regimes that we don't want to have sudden increase of asylum seekers and in order to prevent the misuse of the, let's say, visa free or liberalized travel regime. So political criteria and technical logistical criteria on the side of the applicant and then of course the Member States need to be convinced, need to be assured that everything has been done on the side of the partner country that the visa liberalization in this case will not be misused.

Armenpress: The second point of the press conference by the High Representative was the support via the European Peace Facility mechanism. What exactly does supporting Armenia within the framework of the European Peace Facility represent? This is interpreted in various ways in Armenia, how would you explain it?

Stano: Maybe it would be good to explain what European Peace Facility means. The European Peace Facility is an instrument, a financial instrument, of the European Union through which we are supporting countries. When it comes to strengthening their resilience, their ability to strengthen their stability and security, and the European Peace Facility has two levels, I would say, for example, in Ukraine we are using it very much to help the military to defend the country against Russia's illegal aggression. But then in other countries we are using the EPF, for example, to finance our peace missions or observation missions or monitoring missions. This is the case also with Armenia. So, for example, the EU mission, which is currently in Armenia is also something that is financed through the EPF as well. So, there are many ways how to support, especially the safety, security, stability and resilience of the country. So, the Member States have said this is another means of our support or of our willingness to support Armenia, to look also at ways how we could support Armenia's resilience through EPF. Again, this is the start of the process. So, we are looking at ways how to support, with what to support. So, there is no concrete proposal yet about how this support could look like. But when you look around at other countries, what we are doing, for example we are helping countries, in case of Moldova, to improve their ability to counter foreign interference we are helping countries to improve their capacities to fight cyber-attacks. So, these are ways through which or these are ways which are being supported through the European Peace Facility, but again, in case of Armenia, anything is possible. So, Member States are starting the discussions about what would be the best way to use the EPF to support Armenia.

Armenpress: The Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan criticized Mr. Borrell's statements during the press conference and said "the EU's attempts to supply Armenia with weaponry and thereby support its insidious militarization policy that undermines peace and stability in our region, encourages a policy leading to new confrontations in the region, that lays a responsibility on the EU. Plans to employ the European Peace Facility, which, among other areas, implies the buildup of military capabilities, serve to exacerbate tensions in the region". In fact, Azerbaijan threatens not only Armenia but also the EU. What is your take on this? Azerbaijan criticizes the arming of Armenia, while it has three times higher military budget, and weapons shipments do not stop landing at the Baku airport. How do you interpret this rhetoric of Azerbaijan?

Stano: I think it's logical that every country takes steps, sovereign independent steps to protect itself. That means also beefing up its military and acquiring military assistance from wherever they decide. So, every country does it. We don't need to name names, but every country does it. That's like basic doctrine of defending itself or having the army able to defend yourself, so countries are receiving military support from partners, from markets, you know. They might get it depending on their relations. This is the right of every country that is independent and sovereign, and no one has any right to meddle into it as long as all the international laws and agreements are being met. But again, the support or what the European Union has said in terms of supporting Armenia has nothing to do with arming Armenia. We just want to increase or support Armenia in strengthening its democratic institutions and its ability to protect itself against any kind of threats, I mean, we said very clearly that we stand very firmly by Armenia's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is one of the cornerstones not only of our relations with Armenia, but of international relations. This is why we are helping Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting exactly because its neighbor Russia blatantly violated the UN Charter, international laws and bilateral agreements and wants to deny Ukraine the right to exist and the right to be sure and independent country that takes its own decisions. But in case of Armenia, we are in a different situation, of course, but in terms of principles, of course the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Armenia needs to be respected and if it will not be respected, there will be consequences for whomever violates this. This is a very clear position of the European Union. Secondly, our support to Armenia is for democratic institutions to help the country in its current situation to strengthen the democratic institutions and the ability, the resilience of the democratic institutions and not arming Armenia. So, anyone who is criticizing the European Union for what we are doing vis a vis Armenia should try to maybe reconsider twice and try to understand what we are doing and what we are saying, because in no way what we are doing with Armenia is directed against anyone else. The European Union has a track record of being very transparent partner providing assistance, whatever assistance, political, economic or be it military in a very transparent way. So, there is no need to be concerned because this is for the sake of Armenia, of the Armenian people and to strengthen the democratic institutions and reinforce the respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Armenia.

Armenpress: How was this statement, or more precisely this threat received by the EU institutions?

Stano: The European Union is very transparent when it comes to managing our relations with third countries, with our partners. We have nothing to hide and again, our bilateral cooperation with one is not directed against anyone else. This is just between the two of us, in line with European policies and principles and the European Union actually is one of the very few actors in the world where these principles are very transparent, very inclusive and very transparent. So, we are not doing, you know, like black deals or something behind the table with hidden agenda and it's not the European Union which provokes instability. It's not the European Union that makes unilateral military steps. But what we have seen in case of Nagorno Karabakh, we have seen unilateral military steps, launching of a military operation despite previous assurances that the issue will not be solved militarily. So, one needs to be a little bit also like self-reflective when pointing fingers to others. But again we say there is absolutely no reason to criticize anything the European Union says or does vis a vis Armenia. This is very transparent. It's not directed against anyone and we are working honestly frankly and sincerely in order to bring more stability into the region to prevent unilateral steps to prevent military actions, because we believe, based on our own experience, that issues, problems and frictions are best solved by talking, by engagement and sitting at the negotiating table. And that's why we are always happy and standing there to be also ready to facilitate or continue facilitating the normalization process between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which was also another thing that came out of the European Union, from the Council in October, and from the ministers meeting this week we called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to resume the negotiations and resolve all the pending issues with the view to conclude the peace treaty, ideally by the end of the year. We are there to support. We cannot, of course, impose, we cannot force anyone. But again, the EU is an honest broker without any hidden agenda. Our only aim is peace, stability and prosperity for everyone.

Armenpress: The Azerbaijani side first rejected the meeting in Granada at the last moment, then the meeting scheduled for the end of October in Brussels. How do you interpret these rejections by Aliyev? To what extent does the EU consider Azerbaijan’s steps as constructive?

Stano: Our role as the facilitator or mediator is not really to commend the behavior of one side or another. Our role and our efforts are focused on being there for both parties, as long as they are willing, to help them to find solutions. We are facilitators. We cannot impose, we cannot force. We do our best. We offer our capacities, our energies, our time, sometimes also our resources to make sure that the engagement continues. And when the parties are ready, then we mediate the specific meetings. But even despite the fact that what you mentioned about the meetings at the higher level that have been cancelled, the engagement is still going on, you know. So, we have a lot of bilateral engagements, both with Armenian partners with Azerbaijani partners, both in Brussels and on the ground in Baku, in Yerevan. So, I mean, we try to do our best. Again, encouraging parties to get together, to have the meetings, the sooner the better, and I think this was also captured, this political expectation of the European Union was captured in the call from the Foreign Affairs Council this week, when the High Representative said that we call for the resumption of negotiations and we want to see them continue and we stand ready to continue offering our services in this process, because in the end it was both parties who turned to us after they realized that Russia is not an honest broker, after they realized that you cannot really rely on Russia, because Russia has its hidden agenda. And in the case of Armenia, Russia failed hugely to deliver on its commitments to Armenia. So, we are there because we are an honest broker, we will do our best because our best motivation or strongest motivation is our own history. We know that we had a troubled history of relations between countries in Europe. We were fighting each other. We were killing each other, but we found a way forward to create the unique community which is called European Union and we want to share this experience, the best practices also with the people in the Southern Caucasus and in the region east from us, because we know that in the end the only ones who are suffering are ordinary people, and we want to prevent that. So, we are there standing ready to help, to advise, to encourage. But again, we will not impose, we cannot impose and we will not be forcing anyone.

Armenpress: As you say, after all these military attacks and the political calculations, ordinary people pay the bill and it is the case for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. What does the EU plan to do to protect the rights of the forcibly displaced NK residents, apart from financial support?

Stano: First of all, the EU was not silent when it comes to that, we are very well aware of, maybe disappointment or criticism that the EU has not done enough, but I have to remind everyone that the EU is not an interventionist force. The instruments we have at our disposal are political and diplomatic and we are using them in terms of political or diplomatic instruments. There were statements, public statements condemning the unilateral military operation in Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan very, very swiftly. I can recall only two very strong statements by the High Representative and Member States on this issue, I can recall the special session of the United Nations Security Council, where the High Representative, on behalf of the European Union, publicly delivered very strong messages condemning this, expressing our shock about the sudden displacement and mass exit of people from Nagorno Karabakh. So, the European Union was loud and vocal, not only in the public domain, because we were doing the same in international fora, which are maybe not so loud and not so visible to the broad public and the same we were doing bilaterally, delivering messages to partners who are relevant in this context, not only to Azerbaijan, of course, but also allies of Azerbaijan, because as I said, the EU is very transparent and it's important for us to speak up when the principles are violated. And then we are demanding very clearly, that the people of Nagorno Karabakh need to have guarantees for a safe return. You know, their property cannot be reoccupied or confiscated or resettled by someone else. There needs to be guarantees for the safe return of these people if they decide to return. We also increased our humanitarian assistance to those who fled to Armenia. We keep demanding international access and international presence in Nagorno Karabakh as part of these assurances for the people. We are also encouraging Azerbaijan authorities to launch really a meaningful, credible dialogue with the Karabakh Armenians, because the situation needs a solution and the solution cannot be that these people, more than 100,000 people simply leave their houses and their home basically. So, we continue working in engaging both with Azerbaijan, Armenia but also with international partners, because this is a task for the international community. Again, it's not the EU who will come and impose a solution on someone. So, we need to use diplomatic and political means through international fora and through cooperation with international partners to make sure that there are enough guarantees so that people, if they decide so, they can return to their homes.

Lilit Gasparyan

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1124344.html?fbclid=IwAR0N-9debRc125sjcB2DMCVtqZLjxuyX7MVUcRrdYvXu1wkSBFwIxASwLgk

[Yervant1]

Meduza

Nov 17 2023

‘We left everything’ Uprooted and jobless, Nagorno-Karabakh refugees start from scratch in Armenia

3:55 pm, November 17, 2023

Source: Meduza

Story by Sona Hovsepyan for The Beet. Edited by Eilish Hart.

Two months ago this week, Azerbaijani forces carried out a 24-hour offensive that led to the fall of Artsakh, the erstwhile breakaway republic in Nagorno-Karabakh. After more than three decades of bloody conflict that included two full-scale wars, Azerbaijan’s blitz offensive on September 19–20 forced the surrender of the separatist government and its army. Following Stepanakert’s capitulation, Baku finally lifted the Lachin Corridor blockade, opening the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia after nine long months. Fearing reprisals at the hands of Azerbaijani forces, Karabakh’s predominantly ethnic Armenian population began fleeing the region en masse. By October 1, Armenia had taken in more than 100,000 displaced people — nearly the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

For many Karabakh Armenians, this was not their first evacuation from the region. But with Azerbaijan in full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, it seems unlikely that they will return. With this in mind, the Armenian government has rolled out financial assistance and is offering a “temporary protection status” for the displaced, as well as the prospect of full citizenship. In the meantime, many displaced families struggle to find adequate housing and make ends meet. For The Beet, Yerevan-based journalist Sona Hovsepyan reports on how Karabakh refugees grapple with the difficult task of rebuilding their lives from scratch.

This story first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

“My six-year-old grandson woke up in the middle of the night and cried, ‘Grandpa, I want our home,’” Areg Mirzoyan recalled, breaking down in tears.

Mirzoyan’s family is originally from Arajadzor, a village in Nagorno-Karabakh. They are among the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians rendered homeless and unemployed after Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive drove them from the disputed enclave in late September. Mirzoyan’s family settled in Malishka, a village 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. Locals provided them with temporary housing: a single bedroom for a family of six.

“I never imagined it would turn out like this. I thought we would go back to our homes,” Mirzoyan told The Beet.

But nearly two months after the exodus, finding permanent accommodations and employment are now top priorities for former Nagorno-Karabakh residents.

On October 17, during his speech to the European Parliament, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Armenia had accepted 100,000 displaced people in the space of a week “without establishing refugee camps and tent settlements.” He also added that Armenia needs more international assistance, including financial support.

Earlier, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan reported that various governments and international organizations had donated more than 35 million euros ($37 million) in aid through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Mirzoyan’s family members are struggling to find jobs in the village, where farming is the only occupation. His son, Amran, was a soldier in the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, but he has yet to find work and does not plan to continue serving in the military. Mirzoyan and his wife, Sevil, are both retired but have yet to receive pensions from the Armenian government.

In late October, the Armenian government announced that displaced Karabakh Armenians would be granted “temporary protection status.” Labor Minister Narek Mkrtchyan later clarified that refugees registered at an address in Armenia may also be eligible for pensions and other government benefits. However, those who take Armenian citizenship would forfeit the social support provided to refugees.

During the interview, 63-year-old Mirzoyan pointed to the clothes on his back — the only things he could save while fleeing his home during the Azerbaijani attack.

The family left in a rush without taking additional clothing, money, or food with them. Mirzoyan’s three-year-old granddaughter, Alice, arrived in Armenia barefoot because her shoes were broken. Neighbors and volunteers in Malishka donated new clothes and other necessities for the children.

‘The stores in Artsakh were empty’

Mirzoyan recounted how his grandson, also named Areg, was astonished upon entering a grocery store in the Armenian border city of Goris, which was the first to receive displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh.

“He said to me, ‘Grandpa, look at how many candies there are here.’ The stores in Artsakh were already empty, with literally nothing in any of them. The child was amazed,” said Mirzoyan.

In the nine months leading up to Azerbaijan’s September 19–20 attack, Nagorno-Karabakh was under a blockade. It began when Azerbaijani activists blocked the only road connecting Karabakh to the outside world: the Lachin Corridor, or “the road of life,” as Armenians call it. As access to food, medicines, and vital services dwindled, the region descended into a humanitarian crisis.

On the eve of the Azerbaijani offensive, Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanyan, told The Beet that the region was experiencing a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Nagorno-Karabakh residents had no access to basic necessities such as food and healthcare during the blockade, nor the right to free movement,” said Mariam Muradyan, the children’s rights officer for the Caucasus at Global Campus of Human Rights. The blockade and subsequent exodus have had a huge impact on children from Nagorno-Karabakh, she added.

“The government has to look at the individual demands of Karabakh refugees, which is a challenging process,” Muradyan said. The most important thing now, she continued, is that the Armenian government provides psychological help to displaced children and their families.

UNICEF-supported social workers reported in October that Nagorno-Karabakh’s displaced children — who number more than 30,000 — were showing “signs of severe psychological distress” and were at risk of deteriorating mental health unless they received immediate support.

Mirzoyan said his grandson Areg remembers the recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh well; even weeks later, every loud noise makes the six-year-old jump out of his skin.

‘Everyone calls for peace, but nothing changes’

Despite everything they’ve been through, the Mirzoyan family still hopes to return to their homeland one day. However, they fear living under Azerbaijan’s control. “If we have the opportunity to go back, we will go back immediately, but we can’t live side by side with Azeris,” Mirzoyan said.

After taking control of Nagorno-Karabakh in September, Baku presented a plan for reintegrating the region’s ethnic Armenian population. However, Human Rights Watch warned that Baku’s assertions are “difficult to accept at face value” given the months-long blockade of the enclave, decades of conflict, impunity for apparent war crimes, and Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record.

Seda Avanesyan, 69, fled Nagorno-Karabakh with her family on September 25 after Azerbaijan opened the Lachin Corridor. Initially, they stayed with relatives, but now they rent a house in Malishka. Avanesyan’s family members are willing to undertake any work to earn a living, but her daughter has yet to find a job. Her son-in-law, a soldier, plans to continue serving in the Armenian army. And her grandchildren, eight-year-old Anahit and 11-year-old Nare, have already started attending a local school.

Avanesyan, who is from Askeran, recalled a time when Karabakh Armenians used to interact with Azerbaijanis from a neighboring town. But now, she said, people find it difficult to trust the reintegration process.

“We had a good relationship during the Soviet Union; we used to communicate and trade with Azerbaijanis from Akna, but now it is not possible to live alongside each other,” she told The Beet. (Akna is the Armenian name for the town of Aghdam, which was left completely destroyed and deserted after the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. Yerevan ceded Aghdam to Azerbaijan under the ceasefire that ended the 2020 war.)

“We were hungry and thirsty for 10 months, but in the end, we hoped everything would be fine,” Avanesyan continued. “The opposite happened. Everyone calls for peace, but nothing changes.”

The ICRC reported that only a small number of Karabakh Armenians had chosen to stay in their homes as of mid-October, while others had been unable to leave the region. According to Red Cross teams, some of these people required medical help, food and water, or assistance securing transportation out of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Earlier, a U.N. mission estimated that between 50 and 1,000 ethnic Armenians remained in the region.

‘We don’t have another option’

Emma Baghdasaryan, a 20-year-old student living in the town of Armavir in the west of Armenia, assisted displaced families in the aftermath of Azerbaijan’s September offensive and throughout the 2020 war. She volunteers with the Armavir Development Center, a non-profit organization providing the displaced with food, blankets, and sanitary items.

“Volunteering is a form of patriotism for me. I don’t have extra money to help families. It’s the only thing I can do for Artsakh’s people,” Baghdasaryan explained. “I believe that families from Artsakh simply need warmth, understanding, and appreciation.”

According to Naira Arakelyan, executive director of the Armavir Development Center, there is still an urgent need for volunteers. Arakelyan also emphasized that many Karabakh refugees are living in poor conditions.

“Karabakh Armenians need social and psychological support; everyone is under immense stress right now. The living conditions in the temporary housing that people have rented are terrible,” Arakelyan told The Beet. “There are no beds, refrigerators, washing machines, or other necessary items in most of the apartments.”

Andranik Aloyan, 44, fled Nagorno-Karabakh along with his pregnant wife, two small children, and 71-year-old father. Their journey from the town of Martuni to Armenia took an exhausting three days; at night, the family slept in their car.

“We didn’t have bread after September 19. My children had nothing to eat for [a] few days. My wife was pregnant, and, in that condition, we left everything and fled to Armenia,” Aloyan said.

This marked the family’s second flight from Nagorno-Karabakh: they previously fled the region during the 2020 war. In the months before the exodus, the family experienced constant fear and anxiety due to the blockade, Aloyan recalled. His wife, Hasmik Antonyan, lacked access to vitamins and basic healthcare throughout her pregnancy, causing a delay in her childbirth. She was then hospitalized on September 19, during the Azerbaijani attack. She eventually gave birth to their son after the family reached Armenia.

Today, Aloyan and his family live in the village of Getap in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor province, a two-hour drive from Yerevan. Their new house, which they are renting, is unsuitable for winter. Some of the windows are broken, and the gas and water supply lines need to be replaced before the colder weather comes, Aloyan said. “The house is in terrible condition; it’s very damp. We are cleaning it so that we can move in. Right now, we don’t have another option,” he explained.

On November 13, Aloyan told The Beet that, so far, only he had received a support payment from the Armenian government, which has promised to provide each displaced person with a one-time payment equal to $250 and an additional $125 per month to cover rent and utility costs (for a period of six months). His wife, father, and children were still waiting to receive their respective payments, he said.

Aloyan was a soldier in Nagorno-Karabakh and is still looking for a new job. His son and daughter have yet to start kindergarten in Armenia. For now, their parents’ priority is readying the rental house for winter, and afterward, they will send the children to nursery school.

Having fled Nagorno-Karabakh for the second time in three years, the family has decided not to return. “No, we don’t want to go back. I am scared for my children,” said Aloyan. “We can’t live there anymore.”

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/11/17/we-left-everything

[Yervant1]

Nov 16 2023

Israel’s Other War: Ethnic Cleansing in the South Caucasus

by James Carden Posted onNovember 16, 2023

YEREVAN – Over the past month, legacy and social media have been saturated with reports of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, which is being met with growing calls from the international community to invoke the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Less known, however, is the role the Israeli government has played in another genocide that took place in West Asia only a month and a half ago. This genocide, little noted in the Western press, involved the ancient Christian community of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, known within Armenia as the Republic of Artsakh, that was ethnically cleansed by the Ilham Aliyev, the Shia dictator of Azerbaijan, in late September and early October. The muted response to Azerbaijan’s crime might plausibly be chalked up to the strength of its well-funded and influential lobby in Washington which profits off of the oil and gas revenue generated by SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. SOCAR has links to the Podesta Group (co-founder John Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser to President Biden), lobbying powerhouse BGR Government Affairs, LLC, as well as numerous think tanks and academics associated with, among others, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the American Foreign Policy Council.

Yet another reason for the subdued response by Washington is the well documented ‘special relationship’ between the 51st US state, Israel, and Azerbaijan. A discussion I had last week with the Armenian academic Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan, who serves as Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies and Senior Research Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) of Armenia, shed some light on the role the Israeli government and its defense industry has played in enabling Azerbaijan – and why.

The relationship between the two countries began to deepen around 15 years ago when Azerbaijan, flush with revenue from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, began looking to purchase advanced weapons systems.

According to Poghosyan, “as late as September 2023, just before the most recent Azerbaijani attackseveral cargo planes went to Israel and came back to Azerbaijan full of weapons. And there is even information that Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan even after October 7th.”

The AP reports that it is estimated that Israel has supplied Azerbaijan with “nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020.”And just this week it was reported that Azerbaijan inked a $1.2 billion dollar deal with Israel Aerospace Industries to purchase the Barak MX air defense system, described as “a modular air defense system… designed to address missile and aircraft threats.”

The question then arises: Why is Israel, which claims to be under a near constant threat of missile attacks from the south in Gaza and potentially from the north by Hezbollah, doing this?

Poghosyan notes that he doesn’t think money is the reason, after all, fully 20 percent of the Israeli defense budget is covered by the American taxpayer.

The real reason has to do with Iran.

According to Poghosyan, Azerbaijan has agreed “to allow Israel to use their territory for anti-Iranian activities. And we are speaking about covert activities, foreign intelligence… Azerbaijan gave the green light to Israeli special services, especially its foreign intelligence service, to do whatever they want in Azerbaijan. Of course now they have access to that security zone around Nagorno-Karabakh, which borders Iran.”

Poghosyan notes that in recent years (in the aftermath of its earlier attempt to subjugate Nagorno Karabakh in 2020) Azerbaijan constructed two airports in the territory it gained around Nagorno Karabakh. “They are,” says Poghosyan “supposedly civilian airports, yet they are located very close to Azerbaijani-Iranian border – a distance of 30, 40 kilometers from the border. There are a lot of reports that Israeli military intelligence or foreign intelligence operatives are using these airports for operations against Iran.”

Israel’s role in assisting Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh is well known inside Israel, which it must be said, conducts a far more robust debate over Israel’s foreign policy than is allowed here in the United States.

The estimable Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently editorialized that Israel has, in their words, “its fingerprints” all over Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. Haaretz also contends that “Israel hasn’t just supplied Azerbaijan with arms. It has also helped it distort history” by its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, which the Israeli regime merely defines as a “tragedy.”

Meanwhile, the situation in Armenia grows more ominous by the day, as Azerbaijan escalates its rhetoric (last week accusing Armenia of, among other things, illegally “occupying” eight villages on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border) and stands ready, with the eager help of Tel Aviv, to once again make a mockery of both international law and common decency.

James W. Carden is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.

https://original.antiwar.com/james-carden/2023/11/15/israels-other-war-ethnic-cleansing-in-the-south-caucasus/

[Yervant1]

Nov 20 2023

Armenia: The Forgotten Conflict

Azerbaijan is doing in the Artsakh region what Russia is doing to Ukraine—but the U.S. and Europe are looking the other way.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Territorial conquest is back around the globe, whether we like it or not. For decades, the internationalist fantasies of the bipartisan establishment have driven us to support expensive and unwinnable projects in every place from Kabul to Kiev. Internationalist overstretch weakened America from a unipolar position after the fall of the USSR to the current multipolar order.

In the vacuum left by an America weakened by government incompetence, military overstretch, and economic insolvency, the neocon cousins of the liberal internationalists see the fraying order and believe the solution is indiscriminate American intervention. Yet the right answer to American decline isn’t to waddle even more into peripheral conflicts around the world, but instead to defend our homeland against emerging threats from both near and far.

The internationalists in both parties are intent on convincing Americans to direct taxpayer dollars to Kharkiv that still looks better than parts of San Francisco—at least before Gavin Newsom gave the city an emergency face-lift in preparation for Xi Jinping’s recent visit.

Amid this narrative onslaught, one such invasion has gone conspicuously forgotten: Azerbaijan’s invasion in September of the previously autonomous Artsakh region adjacent to Armenia.

Some context: Artsakh has been populated mostly by Armenians since antiquity. Armenians are Christians who speak an Indo-European language. When the Soviets took control of the Caucasus in the early 1920s, they designated Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan, recognizing its unique majority ethnic Armenian character in the otherwise Azeri republic. Azeris are Muslims who speak a Turkic language. This situation held until the late 1980s, when tensions boiled over into violence. It wasn’t long after the fall of the USSR in 1991 that war erupted in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1992-1994.

Against all odds, the Armenians won the war and established control over Artsakh. Azerbaijan worked with its pan-Turkic big brothers in Turkey to slowly rearm, aided by two decades of military assistance from the U.S. American taxpayers were made for 20 years to arm the greatest enemies of the world’s oldest Christian country. Even worse, supporting Azerbaijan seems like the rare case where American foreign policy elites understood the sin they were committing but still did it—and did it for money.

In 2020, Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh and defeated the Armenians in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. All of the American military assistance helped. They regained much of their lost territory and reduced Artsakh to a single road link to Armenia, the Lachin Corridor. In late 2022, they blockaded the road and slowly choked Artsakh to death. When Azerbaijan formally invaded again in September 2023, Armenia was completely outmatched and sued for peace after a day. Now, in just a few weeks, over 100,000 Armenians have fled their ancestral homeland in Artsakh to live as refugees in the rest of Armenia.

In other words, Azerbaijan is doing the same thing to the Artsakh region that Russia is doing to Ukraine—but the U.S. and Europe are looking the other way and pretending not to notice. It is because Azerbaijan has one of the most effective lobbying operations in the U.S. and other Western nations.

Bankrolling it all is oil and gas. Azerbaijan’s largest employer, taxpayer, and piggy bank for influence-peddling is the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). SOCAR has a fancy office that opened in Washington, D.C. in 2012, right around the time Azerbaijan was campaigning for exemptions in the Iran sanctions that would allow construction to continue on their Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). If that was the goal of SOCAR’s office, it worked. President Obama’s 2012 Executive Order on sanctions exempted the pipeline, and so did the Iran Freedom and Counter Proliferation Act.

John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and now heading up “clean energy” projects for Biden, was the co-founder of the Podesta Group, the D.C. lobbying firm that represented the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the United States from 2009 to 2017. John left the firm early on, but kept close ties with his brother Tony, the other co-founder and principal. In 2016 FARA filings, the Podesta Group made 17 pages of contacts on behalf of Azerbaijan that year. By comparison, another client of theirs, India, had four pages. All of those contacts paid off; between February and June of 2016, the Podesta Group was paid $379,325.73 for its work on behalf of the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

All of that caviar has made Azerbaijan a lot of powerful friends. American interests abroad shouldn’t be guided by foreign lobbyists, but all too often, it seems that's exactly who is making the crucial decisions on how and where to divert our precious resources. Unfortunately, American foreign policy is heavily influenced by whoever can write the largest check—or, in the case of Ukraine, whoever can write the largest check to the President’s ne’er-do-well son.

The right solution isn’t for the U.S. to militarily intervene in Artsakh, any more than we should be militarily engaged to allow Ukraine to recapture the Russian-occupied regions of the Donbas. Rather it is for the U.S. to disengage by ceasing its layers of explicit and implicit support for Azerbaijan.

Chief among these layers of support is Section 907. In 1992, Congress passed the Freedom Support Act. Included in the legislation was Section 907, which explicitly banned the U.S. from sending direct aid to the government of Azerbaijan. This legislation worked as designed until 2001, when the Senate adopted an amendment that allowed the president to waive Section 907, which American presidents have done annually ever since. Put another way, since 2001, the U.S. has provided military assistance to Azerbaijan—our foreign policy elites helped build the war machine used to push Armenians out of Artsakh.

Much of that military assistance would have been beyond Azerbaijan’s means if not for the various gas pipelines they have built with Western assistance. Europe needs gas to fuel its economy, and America sits atop one of the world’s great gas bounties. We could have supplied Europe with a near-endless supply of liquified natural gas, but instead, we acceded to the climate change agenda. We restricted our gas industry at home, while encouraging our biggest oil and gas companies to lead all sorts of projects abroad. The climate cult made Azerbaijan and its petro-pals flush with cash.

All Armenia needs is a fair chance. Armenia needs America to stop enabling Azerbaijan.

The ways to do it are simple. Shut down the Azerbaijan lobby. Cease publishing its lies in the complicit U.S. press. Stop delivering military assistance to Baku’s dictator. Unleash the American energy sector and use our bountiful resources to undermine Azerbaijan’s gas markets in Europe.

This last part is key: Greater American prosperity, made possible by a robust revival of America First policies at home, can usher in a new era of peace around the world. Imagine America unburdened by heavy-handed influence peddling at the highest echelons. Imagine America unashamedly pursuing its own interests.

It’s time to stand up for what's right. It’s time to stand up for American interests.


Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy is an American businessman and author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/armenia-the-forgotten-conflict/?fbclid=IwAR3vwSzT0NxRlsp9CjRzw4w7b4xBgPC4x_tfnCRypNBk7jF-pxPPGn7pgaQ

[Yervant1]

FIRST THINGS

Nov 21 2023

EUROPE HAS FAILED ARMENIA
by Antonia Arslan

Iam Armenian-Italian. One morning three years ago, I woke to the news that my beloved Artsakh was under attack. I remember sucking in my breath as the words of the Italian song “Bella ciao” flooded my head: Una mattina mi son svegliato / O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao / Una mattina mi son svegliato / E ho trovato l’invasor—“One morning I woke up / Oh goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful, bye, bye, bye / One morning I woke up / And I found the invader.”

I know invaders. I lived through a war as a child growing up in Veneto. I remember the sight of soldiers with machine guns, and checkpoints. I remember food rationing. I remember “Pippo,” the solo fighter plane that could drop a bomb or tin foil, could fire at us or just fly away. I remember the whistle of a bomb as it dropped from the sky. I remember the English pilot we hid and fed, and whose parachute we transformed into shirts for us girls. And I remember the darkness of those nights of the war, when we all covered our windows with thick blackout curtains. Oh, do I remember the invasor. I am old, very old.

I was a child then, and like all children considered myself immortal. I had the luxury of seeing the horrors of the invasor from afar. This does not mean that I did not know them—that I wasn’t there when my mother risked being arrested by the Nazis, or when my father and grandfather worriedly wondered if Armenians would be traded for alliances, or when they hid Jews in their clinic.

It also does not mean that I did not know what I had to do during the war. Despite what modern parents may think, children can and need to shoulder their own responsibilities. I did. I was the eldest. I knew that my parents could not protect the littler ones if they had to watch out for me too. So every night, I made sure my shirt and skirt were properly folded, and my shoes and socks were placed where I could quickly reach them if the air-raid sirens went off. I also knew what to do during an air-raid. One night my parents forgot me while they hurried with the other children to get to the bomb shelter. With the sirens howling, I quickly dressed and made my way down the staircase. When I got to the atrium, I saw my grandfather. “Are you afraid?” he asked me. “No,” I replied. “I am not either,” he said. So we sat side by side on a bench and heard the bombs drop on the city.

I remember the joy we all felt when the Americans arrived. With them came food (chocolate and peanut butter, most importantly), protection, smiles, and laughter. It was not just a liberation. It was a sunrise: a chance to start anew. I owe Americans my life. When I was about to die from one of those terrible diseases that all wars bring, my grandfather was able to purchase the penicillin that broke the fever that caused me to lose all of my hair.

I watched the world begin to rebuild. There were ominous signs then, signs that I have since understood are the aftermath of our terrible modern ideological wars: a referendum that all of Italy suspected had been manipulated, the private vendettas against the collaborators and allies of the invasori, the micro–civil war in central Italy that the writer Giovannino Guareschi described so well. The war was over when Italy began its massive effort to start over. Ideological warfare was not.

The Cold War had already broken out while Adenauer, Schuman, and De Gasperi began to lay out the plans for a united Europe. We, the children of the war, rejoiced in their plans. They meant freedom: a solid future. Such was my own hope in the united Europe that I stayed in the Europa-Haus dormitory while I studied in Göttingen, and lived alongside my Spanish, French, German, and Norwegian friends. We all wore pins with the European flag.

But the ideological battle that the war had left in its wake killed our dream before it was born. The late sixties were filled with loud, angry protests, and the seventies with terrorism. Worse than the violence was the hypocrisy of those who ignored the underlying discord, who refused to address it. And now that hypocrisy has destroyed Nagorno-Karabakh.

The war that I grew up in never really ended. It has reached my beloved Artsakh, the Artsakh in which I drank Tuti oghi (mulberry vodka) under a star-filled sky near the excavations of the old city of Tigranakert, the city founded by the great Armenian king Tigran the Great. It was handed over to Azerbaijan after the 44-Day War in 2020. And now, more recently, over 100,000 Armenians have been driven from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan launched an attack in September.

I saw that governments would make grand statements about morality and do nothing. I saw that they would try to take advantage of the unrest in the Caucasus in order to further their own ideological agendas. I saw that it would be the people, my people, the Armenians of Artsakh, who would suffer.

I hope the United States, who liberated us before, will remember its extraordinary generosity. Our memories of violence stretch back millennia. Centuries and centuries of wars and invasions have made hypocrites of us.

But America is young; it can still be a beacon, an example. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey has introduced a bill to “prevent ethnic cleansing and atrocities against ethnic Armenians.” He recognizes that this is not a matter of “two sides” who “simply have differences,” as Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, claimed days after innocent Armenian civilians were bombed by Azeris. I thank Rep. Smith for his support—and, more importantly, for caring about the truth, which is so often the first casualty of war.

Antonia Arslan was a professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua. She is the author of the international bestseller Skylark Farm.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/11/europe-has-failed-armenia

[Yervant1]

rfi
France, Nov 25 2023


Armenians warn ethnic cleansing risks being forgotten – again

Amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the ongoing war in Ukraine, the exodus of ethnic Armenians from the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh is getting little media attention – to the chagrin of Armenians, who feel betrayed by the international community, for the third time.

Jan van der Made

"I'm the third generation of Armenian genocide survivors," says Aline Kamakian, a chef and owner of a string of restaurants in Armenia and Lebanon, who volunteers to help refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Kamakian, who is part of the vast global Armenian diaspora, is referring to the massive campaign of ethnic cleansing launched by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, which murdered up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians.

The mass killings and death marches saw entire villages destroyed, and prompted the remaining population to flee on a massive scale.

"I always thought that because there was no TV or internet at the time, that's why the genocide arrived. Because if someone would know what's going on, no way that any country would let that happen," Kamakian told RFI in an interview at the offices of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (Agbu) in Paris.

• Spectre of 1915 Armenian genocide looms over Nagorno-Karabakh

The world did pay some attention to the genocide at the time. There were books and even a Hollywood movie based on the story of an Armenian girl, Aurora Mardiganian, who managed to escape while her relatives were killed.

Her memoir and the film adaptation, as well as efforts by Western diplomats and Armenians who had fled abroad, resulted in a global support network and generated sympathy among the public at large.

Film poster of "Ravished Armenia," a Hollywood production from 1919 about the Armenian genocide four years earlier, based on the book by Aurora Mardiganian, who plays herself. © Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute

But global attention was mainly focused on World War I and its aftermath, and the Armenian genocide, already underreported when it happened, was quickly forgotten.

Two decades later, Adolf Hitler – who, according to some researchers, was inspired by the tragic events to target Jews – famously asked on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Pogroms

Under Soviet rule from 1921 to 1989, the semi-autonomous "Armenia Soviet Republic" lived in relative peace. But when the Soviet Union started to fall apart, hostilities flared again in Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in a brutal, six-year war starting in 1988 that cost the lives of some 25,000 people.

And in 1990, according to the Council of Europe, hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in Baku – capital of the then Azerbaijani Soviet Republic – faced "a large-scale series of pogroms" where "hundreds of Armenians were murdered, mutilated, persecuted, displaced". As a result, the Council's members declared in 2020, "under the threat of extermination, around 250,000 Armenians were forced to flee Azerbaijan".

But the episode wasn't widely reported as it was – once again – overshadowed by other matters, in this case the turbulent events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile the conflict continued, and according to Human Rights Watch, both sides were guilty of extreme atrocities. In 1994 a stalemate resulted in a fragile peace guarded by international peacekeepers, but hostilities broke out again in 2020.

That war ended with a Moscow-brokered ceasefire. A Russian force of 1,960 military personnel and 90 armoured personnel carriers was deployed in the enclave to keep the peace, with a renewable five-year mandate.

But in 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan stepped up its actions against Nagorno-Karabakh, blocking its supply routes and starving the population.

On 19 September, the bombing started – and forced the 200,000 remaining Armenians to flee the territory.

• Nagorno-Karabakh almost empty as most of population flees to Armenia

'State of shock'

The Armenians are "still in a state of shock", according to Richard Giragosian, director of the Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center, who spoke to RFI in Paris.

"The unexpected surrender by the Karabakh leadership and military was rather shocking to many in Armenia, but also to everyone forced to flee from Nagorno-Karabakh," he says.

The government in Yerevan finds itself confronted with the task of receiving and housing the sudden influx of tens of thousands of refugees.

"Part of the problem is international assistance," according to Giragosian. And aid, as significant as it's been, has not been quick enough to respond to urgent needs.

The Armenian diaspora, however, jumped into action.

Kamakian, who was born and raised in Lebanon but keeps strong ties with Armenia, flew to Yerevan and traveled to Goris, where most of the refugees concentrated after their journey over the mountain pass from Nagorno-Karabakh.

"People were very tired, depressed," she tells RFI.

"They are people [who have been] living there since centuries and now going out of that and becoming refugees in Armenia.

"So what we were trying to do is at least to give a small comfort," she says, such as a hot meal that offers a familiar taste.

'No one did anything'

But when asked about how she feels about the waning attention from the West, Kamakian says she's disappointed.

"We are watching it live on the internet and nobody's moving. Maybe because we don't have gas, or because we're not politically wanted, no one talks about it. There was a ten-month blockage. No one nobody did anything," she says.

"The perception is hypocritical discrepancy between coverage of Ukraine versus neglected coverage of the plight of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh," adds Giragosian.

"And now with the situation in Gaza, it's even worse in terms of the news cycle, which has moved on very quickly."

Though many countries, including France, have sent observers and promised aid or weaponry, not much has materialised yet.

"'Disappointed' is a very small word when you see your own country, your own people being brutally genocided and nobody talks about it," says Kamakian.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20231125-armenians-warn-ethnic-cleansing-risks-being-forgotten-%E2%80%93-again