Author: Lena Karagyozian

LA County Sheriff welcomes peaceful protests of Armenians, condemns attacks on Artsakh civilians

Lena Karagyozian

 

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 15:15,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that they condemn the ongoing violence and attacks against the civilian population of Artsakh and welcome the peaceful protests of Armenians in LA, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department shared the statement of the Sheriff on Facebook.

In the statement the LASD said it is monitoring the ongoing incidents in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone, “which, while, 7,200 miles away from Los Angeles, is of extreme and immediate importance to so many within the LA community”.

“We hear you and we understand. In fact, Los Angeles County is home to more people of Armenian descent than anywhere in the world outside of Armenia itself. We witness, denounce and condemn the violence and attacks occurring upon civilians in Artsakh. We welcome peaceful protests of solidarity here in Los Angeles and stand with you in our shared demand for peace”, the statement says.

Armenian Foreign Minister to travel to Washington amid fierce fighting with Azerbaijan

Lena Karagyozian
The Hill, DC
Oct 17 2020
BY LAURA KELLY

The U.S. should halt military assistance to Azerbaijan and put more pressure on Turkey to stop its interference in the conflict with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia's ambassador to the U.S. said in an interview with The Hill.

Varuzhan Nersesyan, Yerevan's representative in Washington, was speaking ahead of a summit expected to take place this month with Armenia's Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The meeting, while occurring amid the annual strategic dialogue between the U.S. and Armenia, is taking on new urgency over efforts to secure a ceasefire and calm weeks of fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan that has killed dozens of civilians, injured hundreds more and displaced tens of thousands.

Nersesyan said preparations are being made for the foreign minister's visit ahead of an official announcement expected by Armenia's Foreign Ministry and the State Department.

"We're working on the preparation of the foreign minister's visit to Washington," Nersesyan said.

The outbreak of fighting last month, the fiercest in decades with heavy military firepower on both sides, has drawn renewed international attention to the more than 30-year stalemate of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which falls within sovereign Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic-Armenians.

Armenians view the territory, which they call Artsakh, as part of their historic homeland while Azerbaijan says the area is under an illegal military occupation.

The arrival of Armenia's foreign minister in the U.S. could signal a greater push by the Trump administration to engage itself in mediation and peace efforts following the quick unraveling of an attempted ceasefire negotiated by Russia on Oct. 10.

The international community has largely regarded the U.S. as absent from efforts to calm tensions between both sides, with little public comment from President Trump on the weeks-long fighting.

Yet the U.S. – along with France and Russia – is a co-chair of the Minsk group, which is tasked with mediating a political settlement to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh and has urged both sides to abide by the ceasefire earlier mediated by Moscow as the group works to reach a negotiated political settlement.

The ambassador said he would welcome Trump taking a more active role as a mediator in the Southern Caucasus in implementing a ceasefire and called for the U.S. to exercise more pressure on Turkey, which has put its support behind Azerbaijan, to stay out of the conflict.

"Secretary Pompeo made a comment which we appreciate, where he says that Turkey reinforces Azerbaijan in this war," said Nersesyan, referring to remarks by the secretary saying Ankara is "increasing the risk" of the fighting by providing firepower and resources to Baku.

"However at this stage, what is needed is a robust action, not only statements but concrete steps," he added. "First of all, put pressure over Turkey to immediately stop its aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh."

Bipartisan lawmakers in the House and Senate Democrats have condemned Azerbaijan and Turkey as instigating the outbreak of fighting that began on Sept. 27, and have called on the administration to halt military assistance to Baku and Ankara.

Yet the international community has withheld from assigning blame to either side and has reiterated calls for a de-escalation of tensions and a return to the negotiating table.

This includes support for a Russian-mediated humanitarian ceasefire that fell apart "as its ink was drying," the International Crisis Group wrote in a statement about the ongoing fighting.

"Both sides have since struck towns and villages, with enormous damage to lives and livelihoods," the group said.

At least 34 civilians have been killed in Nagorno-Karabakh, Reuters reported, citing the territory's ombudsman, along with 633 casualties of the Artsakh Defense Forces. Azerbaijan, which doesn't disclose its military deaths, has said at least 42 Azeri civilians were killed as a result of the fighting.

Accusations of atrocities on both sides have driven Armenia and Azerbaijan farther away from the negotiating table. Armenia views Azerbaijan's aggression as an existential threat to a nation and a people who have suffered genocide and massacres perpetrated by Baku's close ally Turkey.

Yet Azerbaijan has reiterated its calls for Armenia's full military withdrawal and says it has the backing of a handful of  United Nations Security Council Resolutions from the 1990s, passed at the height of the conflict.

And the country's President Ilham Aliyev has promised to take full control of the territory and claims to have "liberated from the occupiers" about 40 settlements, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Nersesyan warned that Turkey's involvement in the conflict could trigger a wider regional global confrontation. Russia, while maintaining relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, has a mutual defense pact with Yerevan. The conflict has added another layer of tension between Moscow and Ankara, which are on opposite sides of wars in Syria and Libya.

"What we are hoping and we are expecting is that the [U.S.] administration takes steps to stop Turkey," Nersesyan said. "Otherwise this conflict can spiral out into a much larger and regional global confrontation. And that is not an exaggeration."

Azerbaijan has taken issue with Russia's alliance with Armenia and denounced Moscow's military sales to Yerevan. 

Azerbaijan denies that Turkey is militarily involved in the conflict and asserts that it only provides diplomatic and political support, Azerbaijan's Ambassador to the U.S., Elin Suleymanov, told The Hill.

Noting an expected visit by the Armenian Foreign Minister, Suleymanov welcomed the role of the U.S. as a negotiator, but emphasized that the Trump administration "should maintain its neutrality and impartiality … to be an honest broker."

"Azerbaijan welcomes every opportunity for substantive peace talks based on the basic principles and U.N. Security Council Resolutions," he said. "If there is such an opportunity in Washington, D.C., of course that is a very welcome move. I don't have an official confirmation yet from Azerbaijan as well, but I believe that such an initiative will be welcome." 

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/521521-armenian-foreign-minister-to-travel-to-washington-amid-fierce-fighting-with?amp&fbclid=IwAR0BSiVNkuP3PEtOrTislI5_C1QKJBbWyiJ3OPZBv8gzdKvGpKgFcmRZKak


‘I’m Jewish and Armenian. Israeli Weapons Are Killing My People’

Lena Karagyozian
Ha'aretz, Israel
Oct 13 2020
Opinion

Amid the Nagorno-Karabakh war, an Armenian Jewish friend came over to my home in Yerevan. She is anguished. 'Armenians are David,’ she says, and asks: Why is Israel arming a genocidal Goliath?

“I’m not Jewish or Armenian. I’m Jewish and Armenian,” Rachel said. 

It’s a heavy weight to carry, with the scars of history on both sides. But these days, in the midst of the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, being Jewish-Armenian is especially tough. 

I don’t normally write about Jewish affairs; it’s outside of my coverage area and expertise. But when a Jewish friend came over my home in Yerevan, asking me to write up her voice, I had to say yes. She was in anguish. For all that’s been said about the commercial and military dimensions of this fight, she wanted to add the moral and personal ones. 

Plus, it seemed so profoundly resonant of Jewish tradition and history: elevating a lone voice, a life caught up in the darkness of war. 

It’s a mark of the moment that my friend was afraid to write this story herself. She promised her family she’d stay anonymous – not for fear of her safety in Yerevan, but for her relatives’ safety in Israel. Israel is the largest supplier of weapons to Azerbaijan, and those weapons, including missile-laden drones, are now being used on Armenian-majority civilian areas in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Davos, Switzerland. January 24, 2018.Amos Ben Gershom / GPO

Those drones aren’t restricted to the "traditional" front lines but have brought the fighting deep into civilian territory, into the cities of Karabakh, contributing to an escalation that has now claimed civilian lives on both sides of the fight. The space occupied by the conflict is unprecedented, engulfing Azerbaijan’s second largest city of Ganja.  

"It was the start of Yom Kippur when the war broke out," Rachel said. “I didn’t know if I could face going to synagogue, because I knew Israel was providing weapons to Azerbaijan and they were killing people. It was chaos inside of me,” she said.  

"On Monday I got a phone call from a friend who works at Ben-Gurion Airport, checking on me," she said. Her friend could see the air traffic reports for Israel’s southern airfield, Uvda. "He told me there were an unusual number of Azerbaijani cargo planes landing and taking off."

As reported by Yossi Melman in Haaretz, four Azeri Ilyushin­­-76 freight planes landed and took off from Uvda in the space of week just before and after fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh broke out.

"I kept asking myself, how can Israel do this? How can they be selling the weapons for this to happen?" 

After years of living in Tel Aviv, part of it facilitating and leading tours for Birthright Israel, Rachel felt the deep moral parallels between Jews and Armenians and a sensitivity to their historical connections. There has been a Jewish community in Armenia for 2000 years. According to national mythology, the Bagratuni dynasty, kings who founded the revered early medieval Armenian city of Ani, were of Jewish origin. 

More recently, Jewish-Armenians like my friend live with the dual legacy of Holocaust and genocide; her great-grandparents narrowly survived the massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. She moved to Yerevan just over a year ago to live and breathe their cultural legacy. 

One week after the war began Rachel called the local rabbi in Yerevan for support. "He told me to come to the sukkah [the temporary outside dwelling Jews build for the festival of Sukkot, or Tabernacles] to pray for peace. I sat there with my mask on to protect against COVID-19, next to a Lubavitcher rabbi, praying that Israeli bombs won’t fall on Armenian lives,” she said. "I thought, is this fiction or is it really happening?"

Living in Armenia, Rachel said, feels like living in Jerusalem. The depth of associations, the ubiquitous echoes of history. 

"I feel Israel has a moral debt to pay, a principle of common memory. Israel has not yet recognized the Armenian genocide. Maybe we think that six million people lost in the Shoah outweigh 1.5 million Armenians lost in 1915. But the end was the same, the impact was the same: the near-annihilation of a people." 

While acknowledging the strategic value of Israel’s relationship with Azerbaijan and its backers in Turkey, she is inherently suspicious of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ambitions for regional dominance.

"Erdogan wants to finish off the Armenian people," Rachel said. When Erdogan gave a speech earlier this year vowing to "fulfill the mission our grandfathers have carried out for centuries," he invoked the Turkic conquests that stretched from Western China to the edge of the Mediterranean. In doing so, he triggered for Armenia and its diaspora a frisson of dread.

"The whole world is silent because it is afraid of Erdogan," said Rachel. "He feels that everything that is Armenian rightfully belongs to them. They’ll take Karabakh, they’ll take Armenia, they’ll try to take assets in Jerusalem. Then the Armenians will be forgotten," she lamented. 

"What has shocked me most is the silence of the Jewish Diaspora. Jews around the world who should be speaking up, not only the Israelis. The Armenians are David, defending themselves from Goliath," she said.

Now that defense includes fending off Azerbaijan’s vast military and technological advantages. That arsenal, paid for by massive oil and gas wealth, is bearing fruit after decades of long-term investment by the Aliyev family. 

Consecutively President Ilham Aliyev and his father have held political power in Azerbaijan almost continuously since 1964, when Haidar Aliyev became deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani KGB, consolidating his rule in 1969 when he became leader of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Armenians can feel like upstarts in comparison, using their wits to defend themselves and their place in the region. 

What does she want from fellow Jews, and from Israelis? Respectively, "A little bit of solidarity and fewer arms sales," she said. Resources and strategic heft may buy more influence for the Azerbaijani side of the conflict. But that doesn’t diminish the need to see and protect the humanity of the other.  

Rachel’s family members in Israel and Europe are telling her to leave Yerevan in case the fighting comes here. But she’s not interested in changing her place in this moment. 

As she describes it she’d rather bear witness to what is an existential struggle, doing what she can to ensure might does not make right in the rocky hinterland of the Caucasus.

Lara Setrakian is the CEO of News Deeply, published in collaboration with The New Humanitarian. She spent five years as a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East for ABC News and Bloomberg Television. Twitter: @lara 

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-i-m-jewish-and-armenian-israeli-weapons-are-killing-my-people-1.9229817

Greek PM demands cessation of foreign provocations in NK conflict

Lena Karagyozian

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 20:27, 8 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis referred to the situation in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone in Athena during joint statements with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

ARMENPRESS reports Mitsotakis informed that he discussed with the NATO Secretary General the concerning and tragic developments and ongoing bloodshed over Nagorno Karabakh, which apart from humanitarian disaster, destabilizes the entire region.

‘’We support the cessation of all military operations. Foreign intervention provoking hostilities must also cease. We support the calls of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs for ceasfire and resumption of the peace process’’, the Greek PM emphasized.

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 8, ARMENPRESS

Artsakh’s military regains control over previously lost height amid Azeri attacks

Lena Karagyozian

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 11:44, 7 October, 2020

STEPANAKERT, OCTOBER 7, ARMENPRESS. An Artsakhi special operations force, together with servicemen from the Volunteer Movement detachment, have organized a counterattack in the northern direction and returned a height called “Varangatagh” (Lulusaz) which was previously attacked and captured by Azeri forces, the Defense Ministry of Artsakh said.

“As reported earlier, the Defense Army units continued delivering devastating counterstrikes upon the adversary throughout yesterday, significantly improving positions,” the Defense Ministry of Artsakh said.

“The combat operations at the Artsakh-Azerbaijan conflict zone continue at this moment.”

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

In diplomatic vacuum, Armenian and Azerbaijani positions harden

Lena Karagyozian
EurasiaNet.org
Oct 5 2020
Joshua Kucera Oct 5, 2020

Azerbaijan will not stop its offensive until Armenia formally agrees to withdraw its forces from Azerbaijani territory, President Ilham Aliyev has said. The condition is inconceivable for the Armenian side to accept, suggesting that the ongoing war has no clear end in sight.

Aliyev laid out the condition even before the fighting started, on September 25, but he repeated it more explicitly in an address to the nation on October 4.

In the speech, he said that world leaders have been calling him and asking him what it will take for Azerbaijan to restore the ceasefire. “My condition is the same – to leave our lands,” he said.

He issued several other conditions that are nearly as impossible for Armenians to accept, including that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan “apologize to the Azerbaijani people” for saying in a speech last year that “Karabakh is Armenia – period!”

“The last condition is to give us a schedule for a withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories,” Aliyev said. “Then, of course, we will restore the ceasefire.”

For Azerbaijanis, “occupied territories” refers to both the former Soviet Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and the other territory surrounding Karabakh that Armenian forces also control. Armenians captured those territories in a war between the two sides as the Soviet Union collapsed, and since then Azerbaijan has been seeking to get them back, either through a peace deal or force.

The framework under which the negotiations between the two sides have been taking place envisages mutual concessions, including a withdrawal of Armenian forces from at least some of the territory they now control. But that would be accompanied by concessions from Azerbaijan, as well.

Both sides have increasingly been calling into question that framework, known as the Madrid Principles, but until now the process has still been on life support. The widening conflict is quickly snuffing it out, however.

Aliyev made his maximalist claims in a near diplomatic vacuum around the conflict. There has been little apparent international effort to bring the two sides together to stop the fighting, the heaviest since the Armenians and Azerbaijanis signed a ceasefire ending the first war in 1994.

Russia, traditionally the most active diplomatic player in the conflict, has been conspicuous by its absence. The United States, even more so. The Minsk Group of the OSCE, the diplomatic body tasked with mediating the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, hasn’t issued a statement since September 29.

By far the most active international player has been Turkey but it has only been fanning the flames of the conflict. Senior Turkish officials are regularly cheering on Azerbaijan’s military offensive and Ankara is providing military assistance, though the scope of the latter is still unclear.

Armenia would never have accepted Aliyev’s unilateral conditions, and even less so under what is effectively a violent ultimatum.

And Armenia appears to be going in the opposite direction, repeatedly floating the idea that it might formally recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent country.

"Yes, our agenda includes the issue of recognizing the independence of Nagorno Karabakh,” Pashinyan told journalists on September 30. He repeated the suggestion in an interview with Al Jazeera aired on October 3.

Karabakh’s de facto Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been more assertively backing the idea, campaigning to get not only Armenia but other countries as well to recognize the entity.

“We call on the international community to recognize the independence of the Republic of Artsakh in order to ensure the rights of the citizens of Artsakh to life and peaceful development,” the MFA said in an October 3 statement, using the Armenian word for Karabakh. “In the current situation, the international recognition of Artsakh is the only effective mechanism to restore peace and security in the region.”

The MFA also has started a hashtag, #RecognizeArtsakh, which has been picked up by many Armenian social media users.

Although Armenia heavily backs the de facto Nagorno Karabakh Republic, it – along with every other country in the world – has declined to formally recognize it. Formal recognition of Karabakh, too, would effectively scuttle the negotiations; one of the Madrid Principles is that the final status of Karabakh would be determined by a referendum.

Both Armenians and Azerbaijanis have also making rhetorical demands that only their side could control Karabakh, but formal recognition by Armenia would nevertheless be a step beyond.

Recognition “would be a complete destruction of the negotiation process,” Aliyev’s senior foreign policy adviser, Hikmet Hajiyev, told reporters on October 1.

Following this scale of fighting, however, it is hard to imagine them surviving in any case.

 

Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.

DEVELOPING: Artsakh reports downing 2 Azeri warplanes and 1 helicopter in recent hour

Lena Karagyozian

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 14:56, 1 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The Artsakh Air Defense Forces shot down 2 Azeri attacking warplanes and 1 helicopter in the past 1 hour of October 1 amid the ongoing Turkish-backed Azeri offensive, the defense ministry said. 

The ongoing battles have intensified since early morning October 1 amid heavy Azeri bombings of civilian settlements in southern Artsakh, which resulted in two French reporters from Le Monde and one local cameraman being wounded. 

The Azeri bombings of civilian settlements since September 27 have so far killed 7 civilians in Artsakh.

UPDATES:

15:12 – Artsakh says it shot down one more Azeri military aircraft. 

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

Nagorno-Karabakh: Secretary General calls for immediate end to hostilities

Lena Karagyozian
Council of Europe
Sept 27 2020

Nagorno-Karabakh reports over 3,000 Azerbaijani ceasefire violations on frontline

Lena Karagyozian
Tert.am, Armenia
Sept 26 2020

Azerbaijan's armed forces violated the ceasefire along the Line of Contact 330 times in the past week, releasing over 3,000 gunshots against Armenian defense posts from weapons of different calibers.

In a press release, Nagorno-Karabakh's (Artsakh) Ministry of Defense says the frontline subdivisions of the Defense Army maintain control over the situation in the conflict zone, taking the necessary actions to ensure reliable protection measures.