Outside Eye: A Non-armenian's View Of Life In His

[Harut]

Outside Eye: A non-Armenian's view of life in his adopted home

 

By John Hughes

Editor

 

http://www.armenianow.com/files/pub/867_01.jpg

 

For some of us, finding reasons to like President Robert Kocharyan don’t come as often as we’d like. When it happens, it is more likely acquired tolerance rather than outright appreciation that redeems the man.

 

But this week provided an occasion to feel good about one thing: Kocharyan is not Mikhail W. Bushaashvili, his neighboring Georgian revolutionary-turned-suck-up contemporary.

 

I refer, of course, to this week’s meeting between US President George W. Bush and Mikhail Saakashvili in East Washington, D.C., aka, Tbilisi.

 

The American president in his “if you only knew” grin and walking like he has briars in his arm pits, and the Georgian so giddy with glee to have the Leader of the Free (at great expense) World at his side – the two might at any moment have broken into a jig, twirling each other like schoolgirls at Last Bell.

 

George in Georgia and Mikhail in Bliss. Whoopee, ain’t democracy grand (especially when the grenades are duds)! I tried to imagine the same scene in Yerevan. I’m glad that I couldn’t.

 

 

Face control

It was enough to inspire de facto appreciation for the stoicism of Kocharyan and his pal to the north, Vladimir Putin. When did it become necessary for Western presidents to become cheerleaders instead of simply leaders? (Ah, for the days when bald, fat Khrushchev banged a shoe on a United Nation’s table.)

 

Listen to what W told the Georgians:

 

“You are making many important contributions to freedom’s cause, but your most important contribution is your example. In recent months, the world has marveled at the hopeful changes taking place from Baghdad to Beirut to Bishkek. But before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq, or an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world: Freedom will be the future of every nation and every people on Earth.”

 

Indeed, let freedom ring!!!! But, about that “Purple Revolution” . . . uh, need we mention that on the day cheers went up in Tbilisi, 60 innocent Iraqi civilians died in the war Mr. Bush started? Given the choice (which they weren’t), do you think those people would rather be alive though oppressed, or dead but “free”?

 

And, for what it’s worth, some of us whose passports bear the US seal worry that America’s President’s definition of “freedom” and “democracy” strike closely to a kinder, gentler form of totalitarianism that hardly separates democratization from domination.

 

Somewhere very close to frothing, the Roseman himself joined the propaganda of short-sighted pride:

 

“Throughout our history any leader of a large state would come to Georgia as an aggressor or enslaver,” Saakashvili said. “Today, for the first time in the history of our country, the leader of the world’s most powerful state stands next to us and he stands as our companion.”

 

Freedom may make a country free but “companionship” often comes with a price. And I’m guessing that the price of Bush’s Georgia visit goes way beyond whatever it cost the country where electricity isn’t even a regular service, to turn Freedom Square into a red, white and blue hullabaloo.

 

“Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world: Freedom will be the future of every nation and every people on Earth.”

 

And in Iraq, the message is the echo of gunfire and suicide bombs and it says: If necessary, we will kill you to make you free.

 

In the US President’s roll call of heroes, so alliteration-ally convenient to link Baghdad with Beirut and Bishkek, was there any thought that as near to Tbilisi as D.C. is to Delaware (to keep the aliteration) Armenian citizens were still recovering from senseless bludgeoning, when last year they tried to hop the democracy train encouraged by the smell of Georgia’s roses but crushed by Armenia’s smelly reality?

 

America loves a winner, especially if he speaks Ivy-League English. And: While maybe love can’t be bought, then friendship is as close as a State Department aid allotment and troop training by the yanks. Coming close (as in Armenia’s failed opposition) doesn’t count in war and democracy pimping.

 

Should we feel slighted that GWB stopped to smell the roses in the neighborhood, but didn’t hop down to say “howdy” in Yerevan? After all, Mr. Putin occasionally pops in. And this is a year of commemoration. . .

 

Oh, right, that.

 

“Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world . . . “

 

Right. It’s about courage. Like having enough courage to take a 30-minute plane ride to lay a wreath at a memorial for a million people who never got a chance to be courageous. But then, what would those lovers of democracy, the Turks and the Azeris, think of that?

 

Probably not the same as the Georgian cheerleader.

 

http://www.armenianow.com/eng/?go=pub&id=867

[hytga]

cheerleader

that's hillarious :-) Edited May 16, 2005 by hytga

[Nakharar]

Hilarious indeed. All we need is another yesman in Yerevan and we'll get doggie biscuits thrown our way. By the way, Saakashvili's mother is a renowned Turcologist. So he most likely isn't only bosom buddies with the Americans.

[Anahit]

America’s President’s definition of “freedom” and “democracy” strike closely to a kinder, gentler form of totalitarianism that hardly separates democratization from domination.

 

MALADEC! i have written exactly the same in my papers, just without the words "kinder", "gentler" : SRTICS JUR A XMUM...

[Nakharar]

Do you write articles for journals? I'd be interested if you could share it with us.

[Armen]

Interesting how John Hughes became a Hayastantsi who feels all the flows related to that theatre called "Georgia". I like it though. It contrasts well with Armenian extreem individualsim.

[Armen]

Eurasia Daily Monitor -- The Jamestown Foundation

 

U.S. RELUCTANT TO PRESS YEREVAN DESPITE FREEDOM PLEDGE

 

U.S. President George W. Bush's emphatic endorsement of Georgia's 2003 "Rose Revolution" and its consequences was meant to demonstrate U.S. support for similar change elsewhere in the world. But it exposed a fundamental contradiction in his administration's stated pursuit of democratization across the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

 

While holding up Georgia as a role model for other, less democratic ex-Soviet countries, the United States appears reluctant to go to great lengths in forcing their rulers to stop rigging elections and abusing human rights.

 

Authorities in at least one of them, Armenia, have surely taken notice. Washington did not condemn them for unleashing unprecedented repression against their political opponents last year and are hardly facing U.S. pressure at the moment.

 

John Hughes, editor of Armenianow.com, a Yerevan-based online publication, had reason to wonder: "In the U.S. President's roll call of heroes … was there any thought that as near to Tbilisi as DC is to Delaware Armenian citizens were still recovering from senseless bludgeoning, when last year they tried to hop the democracy train encouraged by the smell of Georgia's roses but crushed by Armenia's smelly reality?"

 

Bush's pronouncements during his visit to Georgia were rather ambiguous in that regard. "As you watch free people gathering in squares like this across the world, waving their nations' flags and demanding their God-given rights, you can take pride in this fact: They have been inspired by your example and they take hope in your success," he told tens of thousands of people in Tbilisi's Freedom Square on May 10.

 

Indeed, thousands of disgruntled Armenians were inspired by the Georgian revolt when they took to the streets of Yerevan in April 2004 to demand President Robert Kocharian's resignation. The most important of the opposition demonstrations at the time took place just meters away from the U.S. embassy in the Armenian capital and was brutally broken up by security forces on the night of April 12-13.

 

The wholesale beatings and arrests of peaceful demonstrators were followed by the ransacking of the offices of Armenia's main opposition parties. They were part of the regime's broader crackdown on dissent that involved mass imprisonments of opposition activists across the country, a transport blockade of Yerevan and worst ever violence against journalists. Human Rights Watch condemned and provided a detailed account of the "cycle of repression."

 

The U.S. State Department, however, stopped short of explicitly criticizing Kocharian's handling of the protests, calling instead for a "dialogue" between the two sides. As if to drive home Washington's point, the then-U.S. ambassador to Armenia, John Ordway, dined with Kocharian at a jazz club in Yerevan a few days later. It was the very nightspot where Kocharian's bodyguards beat to death in September 2001 a man who greeted the Armenian leader in a way they found too familiar.

 

Despite the glaring lack of U.S. support for their efforts to replicate the Rose Revolution, leaders of Armenia's increasingly pro-Western opposition have continued to pin their hopes on Washington. Especially after the Bush administration threw its weight behind last November's "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine.

 

But as a senior U.S. administration official indicated in a conference call with Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists ahead of Bush's trip to Tbilisi, Washington does not consider regime change imperative for Armenia's or Azerbaijan's democratization. The United States will instead work with "reformers in and outside the two governments," the official said.

 

Observers were quick to note that virtually no Armenian oppositionist was invited to the official opening on May 6 of a new U.S. embassy building in Yerevan. Kocharian and most members of his government attended the ceremony. The current U.S. ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, subsequently denied snubbing the opposition, citing a lack of space for guests in the vast embassy compound.

 

Evans has repeatedly said in recent months that Armenia is "headed in the right direction" both politically and economically. "Sometimes progress is not as swift as we'd like, but the basic direction is right," he told a group of Armenian-Americans last February.

 

Evans did not specify what he means by "progress." The two disputed presidential elections held by Kocharian in 1998 and 2003 were criticized by the U.S. in equally strong terms. The 2003 vote was the most violent in Armenia's post-Soviet history. Yerevan's human rights record, regularly slammed by the State Department, has also hardly improved under Kocharian.

 

On the contrary, last year's crackdown on the Armenian opposition was the worst since the Soviet collapse. The Armenian law-enforcement agencies have since been exercising KGB-style functions of secret police monitoring and suppressing opposition activity. The situation with freedom of speech has likewise deteriorated since the scandalous closure three years ago of Armenia's sole television station critical of Kocharian.

 

The ruling regime is thus inherently disinterested in genuine political reform as it would mean an almost certain loss of power and enormous wealth accumulated by its members. Whether the Americans fail to realize this, distrust Kocharian's foes, or have more overriding regional priorities such as a resolution of the long-running Artsax conflict is not clear.

 

Armenianow's Hughes suggested that the U.S. motives are not necessarily rational. "America loves a winner, especially if he speaks Ivy-League English," the American editor explained, referring to Georgia's U.S.-educated President Mikheil Saakashvili. "Coming close (as in Armenia's failed opposition) doesn't count in war and democracy pimping."

 

(Armenianow.com, May 13; RFE/RL Armenia Report, May 13, May 10; U.S. State Department statement, April 14)

 

--Emil Danielyan

[Anahit]

Do you write articles for journals? I'd be interested if you could share it with us.

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Oh, they are all in CHINESE! And i am kind of shy... I don't even want to let my friends be present during my dissertation's debate

 

But will do it sooner or later (after translating, of course !).

[gamavor]

When speaking of American pressure for American style "democracy", what comes to mind is the regime of Pinochet. Clearly a dictatorship, which managed to improve the Chilean economy and the regime itself was puppet in the hands of the Americans who were very satisfied of the status quo in Chili. Same is valid for Turkey. Same for Saudi Arabia and number of other examples around the globe.

 

It all has to do with business of course, but the pattern is clear that such American scenarios are possible only for countries whose regimes are isolated from the international political process.

 

Europeans would have fall in the same trap if they weren't smart enough to put their international dealings with the Americans on a solid legal base through number of export-import agreements.

[Anileve]

John Hughes is brilliant.