‘WHO NEEDS ARMENIA?’
news.az
April 7 2010
Azerbaijan
Ilgar Mammadov Ilgar Mammadov, co-founder of the Republicanist
Alternative (Re:AL!) Civic Union, comments on an article by Armenia’s
ex-foreign minister.
When a person of such a high and honorable status as the first foreign
minister of Armenia speaks out after a long break about the future of
regional affairs and of his own country, one should listen carefully.
Unfortunately, I have just read another example of wishful ethnocentric
thinking: 73.shtml
Mr Hovannisian, you may continue in your belief that the myth about
the ‘genocide of Armenians’ will be recognized by the majority of
intelligent people of sober mind. Or that Azerbaijan will one day
again donate another piece of its historic land to Armenia after
the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from
tsarist and Soviet Armenia in the 19th century, during Stalinist
‘collectivization’, in 1948-1953, and 1987-1990.
The reality is that Armenia is dying. Not only because, as you said,
there is no rule of law, no true elections in your country, but mostly
because Armenia is increasingly poor and irrelevant.
Who needs Armenia? Your Russian metropolis? Its elite is currently
in deep debate about whether or not Russia should retain sovereignty
over the North Caucasus, not to mention its strong presence in the
South Caucasus. A bunch of US congressmen with a famously idiotic
view of the facts of history through their election funds? Or shop
and boutique owners in downtown Buenos Aires?
You can continue relying on all of these, although two decades of
such reliance by your formally independent state have yielded nothing:
as you perfectly know, in five to 10 years your country will be even
further behind Azerbaijan and Georgia and Turkey – your ultimate
friends and partners whom you look at as an envious neighbour. Stuck
in the 19th century way of thinking, your country demands territory
and ‘justice’ from all three of us under different pretexts and in
different formats.
The entire agenda that your nation’s leaders have built for ordinary
Armenians is just paranoid. You are experiencing severe depopulation,
you have no money, you have no economy, your borders are under Russian
control, your country became mono-ethnic, because sick ethnic pride
in your society cannot accommodate minorities, and yet you – one
would not expect it of a wise man – support the fantasies of your
homegrown and transatlantic nationalists.
Very disappointing. Very disappointing for me as someone who dreams of
a South Caucasus without borders – from the Black Sea to the Caspian,
a land of free trade, prosperity, cultural diversity and political
freedom.
Ilgar Mammadov Co-Founder Republicanist Alternative (Re: AL!) Civic
Union.