Author: Shushan Frangulian

Anoush, a 23-year-old recent English graduate from Martuni province in the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, is one of tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians who have fled to Armenia this week, after officials announced that Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist on New Year’s Day 2024.

Almost all ethnic Armenians have now left the disputed region, which broke away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union, amid events that Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has called a “direct act of ethnic cleansing”.

“We were happy living there, even during nine months of blockade [of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijani forces], when there was no light, gas supply or internet, no flour to bake bread, because we were in our homeland,” says Anoush, who was one of dozens of people to contact the Guardian via a callout about Nagorno-Karabakh. “Our city [survived the blockade], as people were able to keep domestic animals such as chicken and geese.”

When Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military offensive on 19 September, Anoush’s 28-year-old brother, Harout – who had returned to Karabakh from working in construction in Moscow to grow potatoes for his starving family – went to the border to join the frontline resistance.

“My grandmother baked bread for our soldiers from leftover cornflour. But unfortunately, we were not as strong as our enemy, and we were not as many,” Anoush says.

Last Monday, she and seven family members were driven over the Armenian border by a Karabakh civilian in an army vehicle. “We didn’t have to pay for it. After nine months of blockade, money has no value in Karabakh.

“It was so difficult to leave. My sister and brother were in school. I packed a handful of soil from my homeland, a photo album and some warm clothes.”

Four days later, the group arrived in the village of Tsovak in eastern Armenia, where Anoush’s boyfriend, who has Karabakh roots but lives in Armenia, has rented a three-bedroom house.

“It’s 13 of us here, sleeping on the floor. Six more will come soon – my mum, my three brothers, my sister and my grandmother. Harout will join us soon, too.

“We don’t know yet [whether we will stay in Tsovak]. We don’t know where it will be peaceful to live. I think there are no peaceful places on our planet left.”

Muriel Talin Clark, 51, a UK resident with Armenian roots, had travelled to her ancestral homeland last month to volunteer for the educational charity Oxford Armenia Foundation and was supposed to return to London two weeks ago.

But when thousands of refugees started crossing into the country, she decided to stay and volunteer with the Armenian Red Cross at a registration centre for refugees in the tiny town of Vayk in central Armenia.

“There are enormous numbers of people arriving, and so many different needs. The registration office is overloaded. People have packed up their life and tried to fit it on the luggage racks of their vehicles, with entire families crammed inside, taking turns to sleep in the car.

“Many arrived on buses and only have a small plastic bag with personal belongings. We provide them with a bit of food, nappies and wet wipes. People are relieved to get out of Karabakh and escape harm, but particularly older people are often very distraught and feel completely lost. A lot of people are crying, because they know there is no way back. This is a forced migration.”

A doctor and a few nurses, Clark says, are trying their best to provide care for many of the refugees, with elderly people in particular often arriving in critical condition, because of restricted access to food and medication during the lengthy blockade.

“Many people have been starving, eating only potatoes for instance, they ran out of everything, even salt,” she says. “We have had a few children arriving with fever. At night, the temperature drops a lot, but people don’t have suitable gear.”

Volunteers at the centre are photocopying refugees’ passports or birth certificates, where available, before trying to find them a place to stay across Armenia.

“These people have nowhere to go. They are coming to Armenia because they believe it is their only hope of survival. They cannot live with Azerbaijani people, in a country where they are not wanted. We try to offer them abandoned houses in villages, but it’ll be difficult to fit everyone in.”

Some of the children arriving, Clark explains, have not been schooled for quite some time, while others want to start higher education in Yerevan, the capital.

“Many are very keen to go to Yerevan to find work, to build a new life, but finding places is quite difficult. Many Russians have recently migrated there, because of the sanctions, to be able to continue carrying out business.

“Rents have gone up a lot, there’s a capacity problem. If you don’t have connections, it’s very hard to find a place.”

Though some, she says, have family who can put them up, most arrivals do not know anyone in Armenia. Many of the refugees pouring into the centre are subsistence farmers from rural areas in Nagorno-Karabakh, looking to find a new piece of land, but Clark says farming conditions may be different to what they are used to.

A lot of Armenians are willing to help, Clark says, although many are “in shock”.

“People are very sad because we have lost that land now to Azerbaijan, with all its cultural heritage, churches from the middle ages, fortresses, all considered extremely precious. It’s a tragedy.

“We’ve got so much to do. People are coming and coming.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/03/this-is-a-forced-migration-the-ethnic-armenians-fleeing-nagorno-karabakh

Barzani wished Manoukian success in his future endeavors. 

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on early Saturday met with the outgoing Armenian consul general to Erbil, wishing the diplomat success in his future endeavors, according to a statement.

Prime Minister Barzani extended his gratitude to the Armenian Consul General Arshak Manoukian for his efforts in enhancing Erbil-Yerevan ties during his tenure, a statement from the premier’s office read.

The diplomat expressed his country’s appreciation for the cooperation and support the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) provided to his diplomatic mission, according to the press release.

Barzani wished Manoukian success in his future endeavors.

Armenia officially inaugurated its consulate general in Erbil on Feb. 24, 2021.

According to Armenia's Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, around 7,000 to 8,000 Armenians live in Iraq. At least 3,000 of these Armenians live in the Kurdistan Region, with the majority, between 850 to 900, living in Duhok province.

In May 2019, the KRG opened the first Armenian Orthodox church in Erbil's Christian-majority Ankawa district.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/32789-PM-Barzani-meets-outgoing-Armenian-envoy-in-Kurdistan-Region

The EU and UN must take positive steps and stop the region from descending into yet more violence.

On Sunday, the UN arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh – 30 years too late.

The exodus of almost the entire population, as well as the culmination of a decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse the breakaway region, is almost complete.

For months, a brutal blockade of the ethnic-Armenian enclave by Azerbaijani military forces left the region on the brink of famine. After years of using “lawfare” as a weapon, and failed peace talks, Azerbaijan launched a final surprise attack.

Following a day of heavy shelling, sweeping advances, and desperate scenes, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities agreed to a ceasefire.

By the morning of 28 September, they announced that the Republic of Artsakh, as Armenians refer to it, will be officially dissolved on 1 January 2024.

A False Friend in Moscow

While it remains unclear what the results will be from peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels, what is clear is that the Armenian people placed their trust in the wrong person.

Vladimir Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine has distracted Russia from stopping the Azerbaijani blockade as obligated under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). And this wasn’t the first time: Russian forces failed to come to Armenia’s aid during the war in 2020, as well as during fierce clashes last year when Azerbaijan invaded and occupied parts of eastern Armenia.

Before this latest attack, Armenia openly questioned Russia’s status as an effective security guarantor.

In developments that angered Russia, Armenia sent aid to Ukraine and held its first military exercises with the United States. Armenia even recalled its CSTO representative and on 3 October, parliament ratified the Rome Statute – the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.

Traditional Conflict Resolution Has Failed

But Armenia has been hedging its bets, knowing the West has also been a poor interlocutor.

For months U.S. and EU officials tried and failed to pressure Azerbaijan into lifting the blockade of the Lachin corridor. This failure is why Armenia also made overtures to Iran, a deeply troubling development for Western powers who must stop this latest bout of fighting from collapsing into a much more destructive proxy war.

Because even if the ceasefire holds and Nagorno-Karabakh is reintegrated into Azerbaijan without further violence, Armenia will be desperately searching for new allies to respond to public pressure and maintain control over what land it has left.

There are already fears that Azerbaijan won’t stop after it has taken full control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Rhetoric around creating a “Zangezur corridor” between Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhchivan across the southern Armenian district of Syunik has escalated since the latest offensive.

On 2 October, Armenia urged the EU to enact sanctions against Azerbaijan, warning the worst of the violence is yet to come.

Given Azerbaijan’s close military ties to Israel, and the possibility of Israel using Azerbaijani territory to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran has a vested interest in limiting Azerbaijani influence. In late September, Iran warned that any change to borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan would be a “red line.”

How far Iran is willing to go is unclear. But traditional mechanisms to solve territorial disputes are increasingly yielding to violence. For example, international arbitration – hailed as an alternative to military intervention – aggravated tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia for years by putting Nagorno-Karabakh at the center of an environmental and energy conflict.

And elsewhere this blunt tool has radicalized critical partnerships between Turkey and Iraq and in the South China Sea. These cases underscore the need for careful multi-level diplomacy in addressing Armenia’s challenges.

International Help Urgently Needed

In fact, the future of the Caucasus rests on whether Western institutions can offer a robust alternative to already tested mediation efforts.

This means that the EU must ensure this latest Azerbaijani offensive is its last. A permanent peace agreement between both sides, guaranteeing the safety, rights, and freedoms of ethnic Armenians inside an Azerbaijani- controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, must be implemented.

This must also include deploying an international body of human rights observers to ensure the war crimes of 2020 (and in recent days) are not repeated – a plea Armenia echoed in the UN Security Council.

Crucially, the UN and EU must leverage Azerbaijan’s supporters in Turkey and Israel to permanently commit to peace. If this strategy fails, then Western leaders must be prepared to impose sanctions on Azerbaijani oil and gas exports to hamper Baku from purchasing more weapons and political influence from its allies.

At the same time, security and economic support must be increased – offering Armenia an alliance which builds a more resilient and prosperous economy instead of one hooked on remittances from Russia.

This could mean supplying Armenia with modern weaponry alongside expanded military exercises that level the playing field with Azerbaijan. Greater investment in Armenia’s economy, and opening the EU labor market to Armenian workers, would also provide Armenians alternatives to their current exploitative economic relationship with Russia.

If European powers fail to negotiate a permanent peace deal in the Caucasus and cannot offer an alternative to Russia’s waning influence, then the region will be lost to more violence.

…

George Meneshian is a Greek-Armenian international relations and security expert specializing in the Middle East and the Caucasus. He currently works as a researcher at the Washington Institute for Defense and Security and heads the Middle East research group of the Institute of International Relations (IDIS) in Athens.

https://tol.org/client/article/armenia-urgently-needs-helping-hands.html

AZERBAIJAN IS A dictatorship built around a family dynasty. The current president of 20 years standing, Ilham Aliyev, is the son of his predecessor, Heydar Aliyev. The vice-president of the country is Mehriban Aliyeva, wife of Ilham.

By contrast, Armenia has developed an imperfect democracy with intense political competition. The current premier, Nikol Pashinyan came to power in 2018 on a wave of popular protests. His popular democratic credentials mean he is viewed with suspicion by many post-Soviet autocrats, not least in the Kremlin.

For many years Armenians and Azerbaijanis have found themselves at war over the destiny of Nagorno-Karabakh – a mountainous territory approximately the size of Co Tipperary and home to 120,000 Christian Armenians.

Yesterday, Azerbaijan launched an all-out assault to bring an end to a separate Armenian-populated Karabakh and impose a final military solution.

A ceasefire was announced this morning ahead of talks planned for tomorrow – but Armenia says at least 32 people have been killed and more than 200 wounded since the shelling by Azerbaijan began. 

Stalin’s fatal decision

How did we get to this point?

Even though the vast majority of people (94%) in Nagorno-Karabakh were Armenian when the USSR was established, in 1923 the then Commissar of Nationalities, Joseph Stalin, reversed an earlier leadership decision and placed the region within Soviet Azerbaijan. Long after the dictator’s death, Stalin’s handiwork wreaked havoc, as his cartography cost the lives of thousands.

During the communist era, the Kremlin refused to entertain periodic representations from Karabakh Armenians who complained of discrimination and lack of autonomy.

The Soviet empire kept a lid on the conflict, but Gorbachev’s reforms led to increased calls from Karabakh Armenians to unite with their ethnic kin, efforts that were brutally suppressed by the Azerbaijani leadership.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan declared independence from the Soviet Union and then promptly fought each other over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

As the USSR imploded, fifteen new republics quickly gained international recognition. Azerbaijan – Nagorno-Karabakh included – was one of them.

The war ended in 1994 with a decisive victory for Armenia, which expelled hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from neighbouring areas to create a buffer zone to insulate Karabakh Armenians from attack.

Embittered and vengeful, Azerbaijan nursed its grievances for a generation. The conflict appeared frozen to many observers but it merely simmered.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan spent billions of euro building up huge military resources and preparing for war.

2020 war

In September 2020, as the rest of the world managed the COVID-19 pandemic, Azerbaijan finally ignited large scale military operations.

Armenia’s Soviet-era arms and strategy proved no match for the rapid, flexible, high-tech war that Azerbaijan waged with Turkish support.

We will never know for sure how many died during that 44-day war but estimates run as high as 10,000 people with multiples of that number displaced.

So great is the enmity between the two nations that fleeing Armenians dug up the remains of their relatives, for fear their graves would be desecrated, and brought them to be reburied elsewhere.

Azerbaijani forces quickly gained the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and a complete rout seemed inevitable.

However, as they edged closer to the Armenian stronghold of Stepanakert, a city of some 50,000 people, Russia finally intervened and brokered a hastily agreed ceasefire.

Without committing – let alone losing – any of its own troops during the war, Russia came away with a settlement that greatly enhanced its military presence in the Caucasus. Its role as a regional hegemon had been affirmed.

But what had emerged was a ceasefire, not a peace settlement. Azerbaijan and Turkey resented Russia’s role. Rather than promising an end to the conflict and a new beginning it seemed merely to be a pause.

The 2020 war was hugely popular in Azerbaijan but it had ended inconclusively.

Why now?

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has tilted the balance further in Azerbaijan’s favour. Not only is the Kremlin preoccupied with its calamitous war, but the EU – eager to replace Russian energy with alternative suppliers – has increasingly warmed to the Azerbaijani regime.

For the last nine months the people of Karabakh have been blockaded as Azerbaijan prevented the free movement of people to Armenia, contrary to the agreement struck in 2020.

The international community stood by as reports filtered out of Armenians suffering from all sorts of deprivations. The lack of an effective response – not least from Russian troops in the region – no doubt convinced Ilham Aliyev that the rewards that would come from renewed war outweighed any risks.

And so, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale attack against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The term used to justify the invasion – “anti-terrorist measures” – has all the deceitfulness of Putin’s “special military operation”. The phrase is meant to de-emphasise the enormity of what is been done and to conceal the real objectives.

Armenian leaders in Karabakh have said these attacks were aimed at wiping out the local population. The word “genocide” resonates strongly amongst Armenians given the mass killings and ethnic cleansing that took place in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

They are under no illusion that Azerbaijan wants the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh but not the Armenians who live there.

Videos have been circulating of Armenians fleeing the area in the last few hours. 

The Russian and Turkish response

Wary of being dragged into an unwinnable war, and conscious of the domestic and foreign adversaries who want him replaced, Prime Minister Pashinyan did not try to militarily reverse the Azerbaijani attack. The Armenians have dedicated foes and relatively indifferent allies.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan yesterday offered Azerbaijan his full support, saying “we act under the motto ‘one nation, two states’”.

Frustrated with Russia’s failure to secure the safety of Karabakh Armenians, Pashanyan recently spurned military drills with the Kremlin-sponsored Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) alliance in favour of joint military drills with NATO.

Earlier this month Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife in Kyiv. Consequently, many in Russia’s political elite now relish Pashinyan’s predicament.

The former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who currently sits on Russia’s Security Council, wrote that Pashinyan had “decided to flirt with NATO, and his wife demonstratively went to our enemies with cookies. Guess what fate awaits him…”.

The Editor-in-chief of Russia Today facetiously asked Pashinyan where his help from NATO was now? She added:

“An Armenian who comes to power with anti-Russian slogans is a traitor by definition. A traitor to Armenian interests, not Russian ones. Russia will manage without Armenia. Armenia without Russia – no.”

What now?

It was announced this morning that ethnic-Armenian forces in Karabakh had agreed to terms for a ceasefire – committing to “full dismantlement” of their forces. 

In short it is a complete and unconditional surrender. It signals after three decades in existance the end of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

The two sides said talks would be held tomorrow in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh. 

However, many Armenians would rather die than live under Azerbaijani rule and many survivors are likely to flee Karabakh for nearby Armenia.

This isn’t simply a matter of leaving a house. Rather, it involves abandoning a homeland where Armenians have predominated for centuries and is considered an integral part of their national culture and identity.

Most people focus on the geopolitics of the region, not least when large-scale conflict erupts.

But while we talk of the role of Russia, Turkey, the EU, and other powers, we should not forget that right now there are 120,000 souls in Karabakh who are living in a state of uncertainty – many in paralysing fear of what will become of them.

Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University. For more than two decades he has worked and researched in the post-Soviet region and has been published widely on the subject.