Arpa Posted October 5, 2012 Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/23/travel/23EXPLORER_SPAN/23EXPLORER_SPAN-articleLarge.jpghttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/23/travel/23EXPLORER_SPAN/23EXPLORER_SPAN-articleLarge.jpghttp://hetq.am/eng/news/19200/misinformation-at-the-new-york-times.html13:50, October 5, 2012The following article about Artsakh, titled “Off the Map in the Black Garden,” and written by journalist Russ Juskalian, appeared in the Sept. 21, 2012 edition of the New York Times.On Sept. 30, Lucine Kasbarian of NJ and MA sent a letter (please see below) to the NY Times in response. To date, the paper has not published her letter. She has granted her permission for it to be published here. (Russ Juskalian can be reached at: russ@journ.umass.edu or russ@russjuskalian.com)To the Editors:It was disappointing to see an article about the rarely written-about Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR, or Artsakh, its ancient Armenian name), miss its mark (“Off the Map in the Black Garden,” Sept. 21;http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/travel/off-the-map-in-nagorno-karabakh-a-region-in-the-southern-caucasus.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).Writer Russ Juskalian’s curiosity about his ancestry prompted his visit to this historically Armenian territory, and yet his reporting demonstrates a failure to grasp certain fundamental facts.Armenian Karabakh was given to Azerbaijan in 1923 by Josef Stalin to placate Turkey -- kin to Turkic Azerbaijan. A natural desire by Karabagh Armenians to be reunited with Armenia, driven by the 1988Azeri pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait, propelled the Armenian self-defense movement that culminated in the Karabakh War (1988-1994).Juskalian’s article improperly states that the War originated because of pogroms on both sides and falsely claims that genocided Armenians genocided civilians beyond the battleground. He thus perpetuates falsehoods and trivializes a victorious struggle against oppression, especially when his article appears on the Armenian independence anniversary and following a deplorable Azeri act.In a move that shocked the world conscience, on August 31, Azerbaijan pardoned, promoted and celebrated a convicted and extradited Azeri lieutenant who savagely hacked to death a sleeping Armenian lieutenant attending a NATO “Partnership for Peace” program in Hungary.One must wonder why NATO and the “great policeman of the world” have done nothing about it. On September 25, Azeri snipers killed a 19-year old Armenian soldier, the latest in countless Azeri killings across the line of contact. Why mislead readers about politics on the ground by publishing an NKR travel article when even NATO will not enter the region to control naked Azeri aggression, which is a routine occurrence?Sincerely,Lucine KasbarianTeaneck, NJ Off the Map in the Black GardenRuss Juskalian for The New York TimesThe road from Kalbajar to Armenia over the Sotk Pass.By RUSS JUSKALIANPublished: September 21, 2012 STANDING on a limestone ridge in the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains, I surveyed the landscape that lay before me. To the west, illuminated by a late-day sun and with ever more craggy peaks as a backdrop, was Vankasar Mountain, capped by a solitary, ancient church. To the east, yellow grassland and scrub stretched to the horizon. And then there was the ghost city of Agdam, its thousands of ruined buildings representing the last exchanges of a late 20th-century conflict that many people have never heard of.A once grand home in Shoushi reduced to rubble.I had come to the breakaway Southern Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh expecting a land of extremes. Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave whose name means “mountainous black garden,” appears on few maps. Its tumultuous recent history would affect any traveler, no doubt, but for me, the experience of visiting this place had a personal dimension. My grandmother had fled Anatolia as a girl, escaping an Armenian genocide at the hands of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. To come to Nagorno-Karabakh, a place where Armenians have asserted their right to live freely — but at the cost of having forcibly removed their Azeri neighbors — generated mixed emotions, to say the least.Once part of an ancient Armenian kingdom, Nagorno-Karabakh was made a special autonomous oblast, or administrative zone, under the authority of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, by Stalin in the 1920s. This designation temporarily calmed fighting between the predominately Muslim Azeris and mostly Christian Armenians who lived in the region. But as the Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s, old ethnic feuds turned bloody, and both ethnicities were subjected to pogroms and persecution at the hands of the other. Armenians, representing around 75 percent of the Nagorno-Karabakh population at the time, sought independence from Azerbaijan. Skirmishes led to full-on war by the early 1990s, resulting in upward of 30,000 casualties and hundreds of thousands of displaced people on both sides.In 1994, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh effectively won that war and claimed independence with the signing of a cease-fire order. In the process, nearly the entire Azeri population was forced to flee. Today, the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.) is not recognized by any other country in the world. With no official borders, Armenian and Azeri soldiers are still dug into trenches on the front lines.Though I had become interested in the region because of my ethnic heritage, once I started digging into the history of Nagorno-Karabakh, I wanted to experience what was said to be a breathtaking landscape filled with ancient monasteries, mountainous tableaus and hard-working people trying to rebuild.So last spring I went there, accompanied by my girlfriend. I didn’t expect luxury hotels, haute cuisine or air-conditioned buses, and I didn’t find them. Instead, we stayed at local homes where running water might not be guaranteed, ate simple meals with our hosts and traveled in Soviet-era knockoffs of Fiats and antiquated minibuses with bald tires. In exchange for the lack of amenities, I was hoping not just to understand more about this little-known area, but also to understand more about my own background.EARLY on a humid May morning, we headed to a dusty square in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where we boarded a crowded minibus, called a marshrutka, bound for Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert — a trip that would take eight hours. Aside from two Asian tourists, the bus was filled with local women carrying toddlers, and old men, a few of whom played cards on an upturned cardboard box. The final part of the route twisted almost 10 miles through the Lachin Corridor, a mountain pass that had previously been (or still is, depending on whom you ask) a part of Azerbaijan.By the time we got to Stepanakert, it was raining. We headed to the Foreign Ministry to pick up our travel papers, checked into a simple hotel and fell asleep. Early the next morning, the sun still burning off the night’s fog, we explored the covered market in central Stepanakert. The air was filled with the scent of ripe cherries and local herbs. In one corner, two women with faded aprons and orange-tinted hair worked over a griddle. The first rolled balls of dough into discs. To each disc, the second added a small mountain of chopped herbs and then folded the dough over the filling. The grilled stuffed bread, called jingalov hats, tasted of pungent mustard greens and watercress.A 20-minute drive away, in the town of Shoushi, we met Saro Saryan, who, with his wife, runs a homestay, which would become our base. Dressed in a blue Ministry of Civil Defense uniform and cap, Mr. Saryan greeted us in his booming voice. “Russ? Come,” he said.Mr. Saryan walked with us around town, first showing us the old fortress walls, and then the Tolkienesque Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, built of white limestone. As we approached a massive stone building that stood gutted, Mr. Saryan said, “This used to be a university. My hope is that one day you can come back and see students here.” Past bombings had transformed the broad hallways. In one room, the ceiling had been replaced by sky, the floor was covered in kudzu-like shrubs, and tufts of wildflowers clung to empty niches.Shoushi clearly has seen hardship upon hardship. One of the only Azeri-majority strongholds in the 1980s, then called Shusha, it was the staging site for rocket attacks on Stepanakert, which was mainly populated by Armenians. Much of the town, including the university, was damaged first by Armenian bombardment, and then by the Azeris after the Armenians took control in 1992. The capture of the town by the Armenians was a turning point in the war.That evening, for 5,000 dram each (around $12), we slept in a room around the corner from the Saryans’ kitchen. On most days we sat down with the Saryan family to a dinner of lavash bread, fresh cheese, honey and grilled meat or stuffed grape leaves.Over the next few days we hired a taxi, so we could see more of the region’s Armenian ruins. There was the white-stone Amaras monastery, swathed in knee-high grasses and the occasional wild poppy plant; the 13th-century Gandzasar monastery, whose walls and floor, some believe, contain the head of John the Baptist, the jaw of Gregory the Illuminator and the right hand of St. Zachariah; and Dadivank, where immense Armenian steles known as khachkars, some over 1,000 years old, stood in repose.At one point, while traveling on the Stepanakert-Martakert Highway in a battered taxi, I saw the ruins of stone buildings. “Agdam?” I asked the driver.“Agdam,” he answered, quietly. “No photo.” Agdam had been an Azeri village that the Armenians had razed during the war. Some 40,000 people fled, and many were killed. As hundreds of abandoned homes, many reduced to foundations, came into view, the driver stepped hard on the gas.While the Nagorno-Karabakh war was one of independence — fought within the context of a century-old genocide against the Armenians by the Turks, the fall of the Soviet Union and anti-Armenian pogroms — it was difficult for me, with my background, not to feel dismay that the same persecution the Armenians had suffered was perpetrated upon their Azeri neighbors. What about the former Azeri girls and boys, now refugees about my age, whose memory of home is fading like a photograph left too long in the sun? Most, I learned, have settled in other parts of Azerbaijan. And while I may never be able to see Azerbaijan because of my ethnicity, they may never get to see the place where they were born.When I mentioned this to Mr. Saryan — an Armenian who fled Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, around the time of the anti-Armenian Sumgait pogrom in 1988 — he said he still had nostalgia for Baku, where he had spent most of his life. “I was part of a group of refugees who met our Azeri counterparts in Vienna,” he said. “I was just in touch with one of them on Facebook yesterday.”WE had only two days to travel via the northern road from Kalbajar province back to Armenia — amid snow-capped peaks and over the infamous Sotk Pass and its open-pit gold mine. Joined by an Austrian named Barbara who had also been staying at Mr. Saryan’s, we charted the route with a stop at a thermal spring. As we approached the Zuar spring, Barbara gasped. The natural pool was belching soap bubbles from the soap someone had dumped in. Dozens of middle-aged men splashed about. Immediately the center of attention, we had no choice but to join them. After a quick splash, we were invited for a warm beer and a shot of throat-scorching mulberry vodka.We continued to the town of Kalbajar, ascending a 6,500-foot plateau via a series of steep switchbacks. Like Agdam, this place was mainly non-Armenian before the war; it is now controlled by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.Kalbajar, too, looked like a ghost town — except that some of the homes were occupied by ethnic Armenians, many from the Armenian diaspora, coming from Georgia, Russia and elsewhere. With almost no tourism infrastructure, a doctor arranged a place for us in a hospital outbuilding where we slept on two wobbly metal beds.In the morning, we headed back toward Armenia with two young men we had hired to drive us in a 72-horsepower Soviet-built Lada Niva. We traveled for hours, over mountains, into valleys and back up again. Finally we came to the Sotk Pass atop a rocky hill of debris dumped over the edge of the mountain by huge mining trucks. The road went from dirt to fist-size stones. Crossing this geo-industrial outpost was like passing through a portal. The earth itself seemed to be in upheaval, with whorls of dust spinning into the air by heavily laden trucks.And then it was over. We headed back down the other side, back into Armenia without so much as a sign to mark the border.But my mind was still running in circles around Nagorno-Karabakh. I was thinking mainly about the war, and about Mr. Saryan’s son, who, the day after graduating from high school, had led us to a gorge near Shoushi. I asked him if he could imagine having an Azeri friend. And, as if the question itself had puzzled him, he said, “Why not?”=====IF YOU GOVisiting Nagorno-Karabakh is not for the faint of heart. Every year soldiers on both sides of the front lines are killed by sniper fire. Outside Stepanakert, accommodation is mainly limited to homestays.Visas can be arranged in advance in Yerevan, Armenia, or upon arrival in Stepanakert at the foreign ministry. If you plan to visit Azerbaijan in the future, ask for the visa to be put on a separate piece of paper that can be removed from your passport. Azerbaijan will not allow entry to anyone with a Nagorno-Karabakh Republic visa in their passport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpa Posted October 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 (edited) http://hetq.am/eng/n...york-times.html Dear Mos, seems like we had been working on the same topic simultaneously. Please use your discretion to whether merge the two or remove one or the other (mine?).---I posted the above with no comment to see the general reaction to it before I opine.I can think of several points, first off - Why was Ms. Kabarian prompted to respond? Once again I may have a few opinions but I will wait to see others. Edited October 5, 2012 by Arpa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpa Posted October 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 Please allow me to repeat my question from above.What was it that compelled Ms. Kasbarian to respond to the article at the NYT?First a word about Mr. Juskalian. Did he choose the heading to his article himself or was it amended by the editors at the NYT? Judging from his E-address he seems to be a student at U-Mass (journalism?), and very young Was he trying to comply with his instructors to be “neutral”, citing second and third party historical commentaries?Which brings us back to what may have bothered Ms. Kasbarian, just as it bothers me. Mr Juskalian cites pre-independence sources and pre-independence furk-asszeri names of the towns and villages. Does Mr. Juskalian read Armenian news and articles? Does he know that now all those towns and villages are named by their historical Armenian names?The good thing about Mr. Juskalian’s article is his description of the drive back to Yerevan via Khachen**, he calls it “kalbajar“ ***, We will come back to the nitty-gritty. When I went to Stepanakert we traveled through Goris both ways. A whole day’s drive.**As promised, we will get back to this issue. Maybe under a separate topic.***Yes we know that the Yerevan--Stepanakert and visa versa air route will soon be inaugurated. How about a drivable super highway, of Yerevan-Sevan-Stepanakert with stops at every village and town? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpa Posted October 6, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2012 See the below letter by Dr. Najarian.But before we get to that let us see what the most disturbing assertions by Mr. Juskalian are , aside from the fact that he uses the furko-asszeri-Persian names of the towns and villages, see what he says below, short of accusing the Armenian side of perpetrating “genocide”. Where does he get his “facts”? Curiously he may not have heard the others’ account of khojalu.Dr. Najarian, as she says below was there during the worst times as opposed to our intrepid journalist’s two days.No wonder the NYT readily published his article while they have refused to publish Ms. Kaebarian’s letter. At one point, while traveling on the Stepanakert-Martakert Highway in a battered taxi, I saw the ruins of stone buildings. “Agdam?” I asked the driver.“Agdam,” he answered, quietly. “No photo.” Agdam had been an Azeri village that the Armenians had razed during the war. Some 40,000 people fled, and many were killed. As hundreds of abandoned homes, many reduced to foundations, came into view, the driver stepped hard on the gas.While the Nagorno-Karabakh war was one of independence — fought within the context of a century-old genocide against the Armenians by the Turks, the fall of the Soviet Union and anti-Armenian pogroms — it was difficult for me, with my background, not to feel dismay that the same persecution the Armenians had suffered was perpetrated upon their Azeri neighbors. What about the former Azeri girls and boys, now refugees about my age, whose memory of home is fading like a photograph left too long in the sun? Most, I learned, have settled in other parts of Azerbaijan. And while I may never be able to see Azerbaijan because of my ethnicity, they may never get to see the place where they were born=====JUSKALIAN'S 'MIXED EMOTIONS' IN TIMES' PIECE ON KARABAGH ARE BAFFLINGBy Dr. Carolann NajarianArmenian Mirror Spectatorhttp://www.mirrorspectator.com/pdf/100612.pdf October 6, 2012Russ Juskalian, in his article, "Off the Map in the Black Garden"(New York Times Travel Section, September 21, 2012) describes having"mixed emotions" during his visit to Nagorno-Karabagh, (the BlackGarden or Artsakh) he recently visited. He writes about dual feelingsof sadness for the Azeris forced to leave Nagorno-Karabagh and whocannot return because of ethnic conflict, and those he feels for hisgrandparents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 who could notreturn to their homes in Turkey. Perhaps I, too, the child of ArmenianGenocide survivors, would have had the same conflicting emotions hadI, as a physician, not spent years (rather than the two days he did)bringing medical relief to the people of Nagorno-Karabagh, duringand after their war of liberation.Referring to Armenians and Azeris, Juskalian writes, "... both ethnicgroups were subjected to pogroms" - a statement which grossly misleadsthe reader. Even a superficial review of that history will clarifyimportant facts about how the conflict started. The pogroms wereagainst the Armenians living in Azerbaijan and started long beforethere was any armed conflict.Briefly, in February 1988, in the port city of Sumgait, Azeri gangs,with government issued lists of Armenian residences, went on amurdering rampage, house by house. The killing continued for threedays before the Azeri government took action to stop it.Next, the Armenians of Baku were targeted (January 1990), brutallybeaten and many murdered either in their homes or as they fled. Allthis was in response to peaceful demonstrations and lawfully-submittedpetitions for self-determination by the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabaghto Moscow for either return of Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia, or forthe right to self-determination. In other words, the Armenians ofNagorno-Karabagh wanted to take advantage of Glastnost, promisedby Mikhail Gorbachev, and to be free of the Azeri domination whichStalin had placed on them. (The history of that period - the humanrights violations, the pogroms against the Armenians, the brutal crackdown in Nagorno-Karabagh, the blockade of the area, and the war thatfollowed are well documented and easily accessed online.)Fast forward to 2004, to a NATO-sponsored English language course inBudapest where an Armenian military officer attending the course wasmurdered by an Azeri military officer - a fellow attendee. The Azeriadmitted to the brutal murder, butchering the sleeping Armenian withan ax with more than 16 blows nearly severing his head. The courtfound no other reason for the horrendous act other than the soldierwas Armenian. Sentenced to life in prison, the murderer was recentlyextradited back to Azerbaijan by the Hungarian government, assured byAzerbaijan that he would serve his full sentence. Instead, PresidentIlham Aliyev not only immediately pardoned the murderer, but he washailed as a national hero and promoted to a higher military rank.(See Amnesty International's statementhttp://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR55/015/2012/en/8e84f955-9f8f-488cad34-c68a744b6878/eur550152012en.html)Mixed emotions? Yes, I too, have mixed emotions based on the fears Ihave. I fear that the fragile 1994 cease-fire between Azerbaijan andNagorno-Karabagh will not hold and that the foreign powers chargedwith monitoring and negotiating full peace will fail. The consequenceswill be sad indeed for the Armenians of the regions, albeit Azeris too,will pay a high price in blood and treasure.Articles such as Juskalian's about Nagorno-Karabagh written inignorance and with self-serving flagellation do a great disserviceto these brave Armenians without advancing the cause of peace. Itwould have been better if Juskalian had stayed home.-Carolann S. Najarian, M.D.President, Armenian Health Alliance, Inc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpa Posted November 30, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 30, 2012 Taros@ Artsakhin. In spite of the neighborhood big bully asszeribokhjan just as that other big bully assrael. http://www.fahnenversand.de/fotw/images/a/az!artsa.gif http://www.fahnenversand.de/fotw/images/a/az!artsa.gif-----http://news.yahoo.com/un-recognizes-state-palestine-220519034.html http://www.dailystar.com.lb/dailystar/Pictures/2012/11/30/121098_mainimg.jpg The big bad bully of that neighborhood;====Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the General Assembly shortly before the vote "defamatory and venomous," saying it was "full of mendacious propaganda" against Israel.====And see which big dog that tail is wagging.----UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize a Palestinian state, a long-sought victory for the Palestinians but an embarrassing diplomatic defeat for the United States.====One wonders how the furks and the asseris voted!I wonder what the Palestinians were chanting? Falastine biladna, wal yahud kilabna? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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