Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

By Varsen Aghabekian, Dar al-Kalima University Press, 2023, paperback, 226 pp. MEB $25

The Saga of Survival fills an important gap in the history of the Armenians of Palestine. While there are good studies about the Armenian communities of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, an analysis of the Armenians of Palestine has been missing. Varsen Aghabekian fills this gap by telling the history of Armenians in Palestine during the inter-war period (1918-1948). What is unique about this study is that Aghabekian is able to intertwine her family history with that of the history of the larger Armenian community of Palestine. The strength of the book does not lie in unearthing new primary sources to reconstruct history, rather it is heavily based on oral history, an extremely valuable source that no other scholar in the area has utilized.

The Armenian presence in Palestine dates back to the fourth century CE, when Armenian pilgrims began arriving in Jerusalem after the discovery of the holy sites of Christianity. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in its present form came into being in the first decade of the 14th century, when the Brotherhood of St. James was established in the Holy City. It was around the Armenian Patriarchate that a small Armenian community sprang that eventually formed the Armenian Quarter, which encompasses one-sixth of the Old City of Jerusalem. Those descending from this early community are known as “the locals” (kaghakatsis), while those who arrived after the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) are known as “visitors” (zuwwar). 

In her book, Aghabekian is able to show the common and interconnected histories of Armenians and Palestinians. What is unique about the Armenians of Palestine is that they suffered multiple catastrophes: the Armenian Genocide, the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa. Aghabekian concentrates on the first two catastrophes. In the course of five chapters, she discusses the rise of the Armenian community of Jerusalem from the ashes of genocide, the challenges faced by the community and the important role played by Armenians in the context of Palestinian history. She concludes the book with the Nakba, which became the turning point for the Armenians of Jerusalem, leading to dispossession and the immigration of thousands to surrounding countries, Europe, the United States and Australia.

Aghabekian also discusses the struggles surrounding the arrival of Armenian refugees during and after the genocide. The Armenian Patriarchate had a monumental task to feed and take care of the refugees, while local Armenians also assisted the refugees. Despite a brief period of tension between both groups due to cultural and linguistic differences, their relations improved during the British Mandate period. It is this period upon which Aghabekian most concentrates by bringing the voices of the living and the dead to life. Her father, for example, Ohannes Aghabekian, becomes one of the important voices in the book. In describing the difficulties of life during the 1930s, he recalls: “I used to walk over 10km to Battir and bring vegetables on my back to sell in Jerusalem so my family would have food to eat. I was only 12 years old.” Unlike other historians, Aghabekian also tells the story of the Armenian Catholic community in Jerusalem, mostly formed by the survivors of the genocide.

Aghabekian demonstrates how the local Armenians who were fluent in Arabic were much more integrated in Palestinian society. With their excellent education, acquired mostly from missionary schools, they were able to occupy important positions within the British colonial administration. Armenians also excelled in diverse professions, such as medicine, photography, ceramics, shoemaking, goldsmithing and silversmithing, among others. 

The Armenians of Jerusalem were not immune to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. In Aghabekian’s words, “Armenians have suffered politically, socially and economically like Palestinians, including the loss of properties in 1948.” In chapters four and five, Aghabekian tells the story of the Armenians during the 1948 war and its aftermath. She specifically concentrates on Patriarch Guregh Israelian, who played an important role in alleviating the suffering of the Armenians. She expresses Armenians’ fear and anxiety upon becoming refugees for a second time. During the war, thousands of Armenians from throughout Palestine poured into the Armenian Patriarchate looking for a safe haven. Despite this, around 40 Armenians were killed by the Haganah militia’s shelling, including my great cousin Hagop Der Matossian. Similar to the other Palestinian upper-class families, Armenians lost most of their businesses and homes in West Jerusalem. 

The Saga of Survival is a fantastic book that tells the story of the Armenians of Palestine during a critical phase of the modern period. The book is unique as it tells the story of the period from those who experienced it, and not through the perspective of colonial archives. No other scholar has successfully utilized such a rich trove of oral history to tell this unique story. The book is extremely important to scholars and non-scholars alike who are interested in understanding the complexities of the Armenians of Palestine during the Mandate period, as well as the previously untold details relayed by Armenian witnesses and victims of the Nakba.

Bedross Der Matossian is a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the former president of the Society for Armenian Studies.

Azerbaijan rid itself of Russia’s “frozen conflict” hotspot. Routing Yerevan’s army has accelerated the changes in the geopolitical landscape of the Southern Caucasus.

On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan renewed its military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. The aim of its “anti-terror operation” was to force what it referred to as “illegal Armenian military formations” to surrender their weapons and to dissolve the “illegal regime” of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. 

After less than 24 hours of fighting, the Armenian side surrendered. The message is that Azerbaijan has decided to once and for all suppress any form of self-determination for the ethnic Armenian population living in the once-autonomous province.

The return of kinetic warfare ended a period of rising hopes that, after more than three decades of intermittent war, Armenia and Azerbaijan might finally be nearing a negotiated peace. A first step was taken in early May 2023, when United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan for preliminary talks in Washington. Significant progress was said to have been made, as the sides “agreed on principles” for normalizing their bilateral relations.

By early June, optimism was growing that a peace deal might be signed by year’s end. Yet, matters started to slip by the end of the month when the parties met for intense talks in the U.S. The Azeri side imposed a blockade on the ethnic Armenian population in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, trapping some 120,000 people and provoking accusations of genocide from the Armenian side. The official explanation from Baku was that it was merely a question of environmental activists seeking to stop illegal mining.

The failure of Western-led mediation will translate into a significant loss of influence.

Attempts at mediation continued, involving the U.S. and the European Union, and separately, Russia. Yet, on July 21, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned that renewed war must be considered “very likely” without a peace deal. The conflict was edging toward a resolution with force mainly because the geopolitical framework had turned decisively against Armenia. 

There are three dimensions where the stakes in the process go far beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

The first concerns the international order of peaceful conflict resolution. When the Soviet Union collapsed, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh found themselves a landlocked minority inside independent Azerbaijan. Taking up arms to fight for independence, they were supported by the armed forces of Armenia, which, in turn, were backed clandestinely by Russian armed forces. The outcome was an Armenian occupation of territories that stretched between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia proper. The self-declared Republic of Artsakh was proclaimed in September 1991.

Following the 1994 cease-fire agreement, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) embarked on a lengthy but feeble process of seeking durable peace. That process was halted in 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a military offensive to recapture the Armenian-occupied territories. With support from Turkey, the Azeri forces came close to complete victory. In a last-ditch intervention, Russia managed to broker a cease-fire that entailed the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Their primary mission was to ensure free movement along the Lachin Corridor that connects Armenia proper with the remnants of Artsakh.

Three years later, Azerbaijan delivered the final blow to the enclave, and now it is questionable if the West will have any future role in the South Caucasus. The failure of Western-led mediation will translate into a significant loss of influence. The problem is compounded by a crisis in the EU’s relations with Georgia. These approached rock bottom as the government in Tbilisi has been reluctant to condemn the Russian war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey are tightening, and the geopolitical circumstances in this strategically important region have shifted in their favor.

The second and related dimension concerns the future role of Russia in the South Caucasus. While Armenia and Azerbaijan remained at war, Moscow was able to cement its role as regional hegemon by playing both sides. Although it presented itself as a protector of Armenia, with a sizeable military garrison at Gyumri, it was not shy about selling weapons to both sides. The war in 2020 has brought that balancing act to a screeching halt. 

Although the Moscow-brokered cease-fire that year did save the Armenian forces from a rout, that intervention may well have been the last stand for Russia in the South Caucasus. 

Having long been able to use the frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh as leverage to remain a regional hegemon, Moscow has now been decisively outflanked by Turkey. Likely, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rationale for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi shortly before Azerbaijan’s attack was to inform the Russian side about the pending operation and to demand that its peacekeepers stand aside, which they did. 

The currently dominant transportation route through the region is the east-west Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.

It is symptomatic that Moscow did not react when, in the early hours of the assault, the deputy commander of the Russian peacekeeping force, Captain First Rank (Colonel) Ivan Kovgan, was killed. Although he was a senior officer, having served as deputy commander of the submarine force of Russia’s Northern Fleet, his death did not cause much public reaction from Moscow. And it is also telling that Armenia recently opted to hold military drills with U.S. forces.

The third – and in a longer-term perspective, most important – dimension of the geopolitical transformation concerns the regional transport infrastructure. The geographical location of the South Caucasus, wedged between the Caspian and the Black Seas, means that it is critical to controlling the main transport arteries between east and west (China and Europe) and north and south (Russia and the Indian Ocean nations). 

In the Soviet era, the South Caucasus was a major conduit for the flow of goods from southern Russia along the Caspian seaboard in Azerbaijan, and onward to Iran and India. The war over Nagorno-Karabakh blocked that route, as its vital link through southern Azerbaijan ended up in a war zone. The railroad link that skirted its southern border fell into disuse and disrepair.

The currently dominant transportation route through the region is the east-west Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. Also known as the Middle Corridor, it forms part of the well-funded Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Iran is attempting to break its international isolation by promoting two alternative routes to revive the link from north to south. One is the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 kilometer-long “multimode” network of shipping lines, rails and roads that links India with Russia via Iran and Azerbaijan. At present, it is mainly used for running guns from Iran to Russia. 

Tehran has also sought to revive an old proposal for a corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea that would connect Mumbai in India with Bandar Abbas in Iran and proceed onward to Europe via the South Caucasus, bridging Georgia and Bulgaria across the Black Sea.

Banking on its traditional friendship with Iran, Armenia hopes this latter corridor will bypass Azerbaijan. Its optimism is enhanced by India, which has emerged as a prominent provider of weapons shipped via Iran. Under a $245 million deal signed in October 2022, New Delhi agreed to supply Yerevan with multiple-launch rocket systems, anti-tank rockets and drones, and equipment for demining, communication and night-vision surveillance. 

Following decades of mutual animosity, the Armenian side has every reason to fear that life for those who become subjects of Azerbaijan will not be easy.

In March 2023, Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan said the country’s armed forces had received significant deliveries of weapons and ammunition. At the same time, an Armenian delegation visiting New Delhi sought Indian investments for the Persian Gulf-Black Sea Corridor to be drawn via Armenian territory. The proposal was timed to coincide with a visit by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan. Eager to circumvent the Suez Canal and avoid disruptions caused by the confrontation between Russia and the West, India may find the idea tempting.

The main problem for both variants of a north-south corridor is that they mainly serve for arms smuggling. In contrast, the BRI and the Middle Corridor bypassing Russia and Iran are firmly based on commercial interest. And while Russia and Iran are economic basket cases, the powers behind the Middle Corridor have ample resources.

In the final analysis, much will depend on whether some form of peace can be engineered. The core concern is the fate of the ethnic Armenian population that remains inside Nagorno-Karabakh. The two sides have agreed in principle to recognize each other’s territorial integrity, which means that the story of Artsakh is over. But the outlook for sustained peace is uncertain. 

Following decades of mutual animosity, the Armenian side has every reason to fear that life for those who become subjects of Azerbaijan will not be easy. Although the Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor (a mountain road linking Armenia and Artsakh) hardly qualifies as a crime against humanity, it seriously indicates what may be in store for the Armenian minority. The possibility of discrimination and ethnic cleansing policies cannot be ruled out. The outcome of the “anti-terror operation” casts a shadow.

Yerevan is running short on friends who might support its cause. It had a good run with Russia as a patron. Its successful assault on Azerbaijan in the early 1990s would not have been possible without Russian support. The same was true about maintaining the illegal occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories. But these days, Armenia has abandoned all hope of help from Russia in securing an equitable peace. 

The Armenian position is so weak that Yerevan may have to accept promises it does not feel it can trust.

Looking to the West for help may appear a logical alternative. Under other circumstances, given their emphasis on human rights and minority protection, Western governments would be sympathetic. But Armenia has alienated many potential Western supporters by cultivating friendship with Iran and playing an intermediary role in Russian sanctions-busting schemes. In 2022, it helped Russia obtain significant shipments of U.S.- and EU-made chips, processors, and the desired consumer goods, such as autos.  

If India continues to veer toward the West, Armenia’s only remaining friend will be Iran. Although the two only share a short border stretch, Iran has been a vital supplier of energy and other necessities over the years. However, if needed, it will be easy for Azerbaijan to seal this passage, leaving landlocked Armenia isolated between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia. 

Thousands of ethnic-Armenian children who fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region after an assault by Azerbaijani forces on September 19 have begun attending classes at schools in Armenia, according to government and media reports.

On Wednesday, the Armenian prime minister’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, said more than 29,000 children were among 100,625 forcibly displaced people who had arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, and said their education was a priority for the government.

On Friday, Baghdasaryan told media that 7,904 children – roughly 38 percent of school-aged children who had arrived – had been enrolled in schools so far. The government was also looking to hire more teachers and advertised 1,035 vacant positions across the country.

This footage published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Friday shows students at a school in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, where they said around 20 evacuee children were enrolled. The video includes interviews with children from Nagorno-Karabakh, including a girl who becomes tearful while recounting how her family was forced to leave their home, and an interview with a teacher from Nagorno-Karabakh who said she was hired immediately after arriving in Armenia, according to translations provided by RFE/RL. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/refugee-children-nagorno-karabakh-begin-185308785.html

By RAYMOND IBRAHIM Published on