ANCIENT ARMENIA FIGHTS TO SURVIVE ISOLATION
by Sebastian Smith
Agence France Presse — English
March 15, 2007 Thursday
Tantalisingly close and cruelly distant, Armenia’s national symbol,
the legendary Mount Ararat, soars just beyond reach for a country
fighting to escape isolation.
The snow-capped mountain — named in the Bible as the place Noah’s
Ark grounded after the Great Flood — dominates the horizon from as
far away as Armenia’s capital Yerevan.
But that proximity is an illusion. The extinct volcano lies just
across Armenia’s hostile border with Turkey, turning a centuries-old
source of inspiration into an emblem of this Christian people’s
growing difficulties.
"Ararat symbolises all Armenia, all the pain in our soul," Arsen
Yegikian, 32, an auditor, said as he visited the church of Khor Virap,
a popular viewing point on the frontier.
All four of Armenia’s borders are either closed or problematic,
forcing this landlocked and resource-poor state of three million
people to struggle for access to the world.
Turkey shut its land border in 1993 in support of Armenia’s eastern
neighbour, Azerbaijan, which lost a war in the early 1990s with
Armenian forces for control of Nagorny Karabakh and a swath of other
Azeri territory.
On the Azeri-Armenian border, the cut-off encompasses air, rail,
road, telephone and postal links.
Meanwhile, Armenians can only access their main economic and military
ally, Russia, through Georgia to the north and the road route is all
but excluded due to Russian-Georgian tensions.
The way south to Iran is open and a new pipeline bringing Iranian
gas is about to enter service, but with Tehran and Washington in a
dangerous stand-off many here are afraid that border could also shut.
"If something happens tomorrow with Iran — God forbid — it will be
even harder," Deputy Foreign Minister Arman Kirakossian told AFP.
Increasingly Armenia, a proud nation with an ancient language
and unique alphabet, finds itself left out of projects that are
transforming the rest of the ex-Soviet Caucasus.
New oil and gas pipelines snaking from Azerbaijan to Western markets
bypass to the north. Just last month, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey
agreed to build a new east-west railway route — again missing Armenia.
The people of this starkly beautiful and rugged land are trying
to fight back and last year gross domestic product (GDP) posted
double-digit growth.
One key to salvation has been a diaspora estimated at almost nine
million people scattered across the United States, Russia, Europe,
Asia and the Middle East.
These are descendants of refugees from the mass killings of Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century and about a
million others who left the poverty of post-Soviet Armenia during
the last 15 years.
Their donations and transfers to Armenia amounted to 1.2 billion
dollars (900,000 euros) last year, an impressive chunk of the country’s
6.5-billion-dollar (five-billion-euro) GDP, economist Tigran Jrbashyan
said. "Emigres are Armenia’s version of oil."
About 30 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to
the World Bank, and the countryside beyond Yerevan is littered with
shut-down ex-Soviet factories.
But according to Jrbashyan, the cutting of Armenia’s traditional trade
routes has also forced the economy to switch from cheap bulk exports to
more profitable high-tech sectors, such as IT and diamond processing.
Construction is also booming — rising 43 percent last year — and
Yerevan is being transformed into a sophisticated city.
"I don’t want to exaggerate, but in conditions of a blockade by
Azerbaijan and Turkey, as well as a conflict, we have still managed
economic success," Kirakossian said.
Such confidence, however, masks widespread fears about Armenia’s
vulnerability. Many ordinary people, for example, worry how Russian
investors are gobbling up strategic enterprises, including most of
the energy network.
Yegikian, standing by the stunning church of Khor Virap, said his
people were desperate to join the outside world.
"Everyone here is for opening that border," said Yegikian, gazing
across no-man’s land to a Turkish village. "Globalisation is happening
and we can’t stay outside."
Armenians may "never" trust Turks, Yegikian said, "but when you
talk in the language of business, then everything else falls into
second place."
Of course, even reopening the border would not change the fact that
Mount Ararat is likely always to remain Turkish.
>>From Khor Virap you plainly see the border fence and watchtowers.
Chimney smoke rises from a Turkish village.
"Of course this is hard to bear," said Kirakossian, whose office is
decorated with a picture of the iconic mountain. "But if we had normal
relations with our neighbours, then people could at least visit."
From: Baghdasarian