Author: Andres-Papazian

KAREN BEKARYAN: ARMENIA NOW HAS MUCH TO SAY

Panorama.am
25/10/2012

During the meeting with the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers,
the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs will try to place on the agenda the
issue of preparation of a meeting between the presidents, head of
European Integration NGO Karen Bekaryan told reporters in Yerevan.

We will remind that Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will
meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov and the OSCE
Minsk Group Co-Chairs in Paris on October 27.

“After the extradition and pardon of Ramil Safarov, we have a different
situation. Armenia did not abandon the talks, but we now have much
to say,” said the expert.

According to him, Armenia should toughen its position, but not so
much as Azerbaijan expects.

“I think before making the Safarov deal, Azerbaijan discussed the
possible consequences thinking that Armenia would quit the talks,
(which is just what Azerbaijan wants), the Minsk Group format would
change, the negotiations would be transferred to another platform
and Azerbaijan could accuse Armenia of foiling the negotiations,”
Bekaryan concluded.

From: A. Papazian

STRENGTHENING TIES WITH SWITZERLAND IS AMONG THE KEY ISSUES OF FOREIGN POLICY OF ARTSAKH: BAKO SAHAKYAN

ARMENPRESS
OCTOBER 25, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 25, ARMENPRESS. On October 25 the President of
Artsakh Republic Bako Sahakyan received a group of deputies and
businessmen from Switzerland. As the Central Information Department
of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President informed “Armenpress”
issues related to the development of Artsakh-Switzerland relations and
the implementation of various projects in the republic were discussed
during the meeting.

President Bako Sahakyan underlined that strengthening ties with
Switzerland is among the key issues of our foreign policy, adding
that substantial progress in this field was already palpable.

Within this context the Head of State also referred to the role of
the Diaspora considering it among the key factors contributing to
the development of cooperation with various countries.

The Speaker of the National Assembly Ashot Ghulyan, philanthropist
Levon Hairapetyan and other officials partook at the meeting.

From: A. Papazian

GLOBALPOST REFERRED TO AZERBAIJANI DRONE SHOT DOWN BY ARMENIAN SIDE

ARMENPRESS
OCTOBER 23, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS: American GlobalPost drew its attention
to NKR conflict and Azerbaijani drones. As reports Armenpress, the
author of the article Nicholas Clayton mainly wrote “In a region where
a fragile peace holds over three frozen conflicts, the nations of the
South Caucasus are buzzing with drones they use to probe one another’s
defenses and spy on disputed territories. Last September, Armenia
shot down an Israeli-made Azerbaijani drone over Nagorno-Karabakh and
the government claims that drones have been spotted ahead of recent
incursions by Azerbaijani troops into Armenian-held territory”.

Clayton also referred to the comments of Richard Giragosian,
director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, on the attacks
from Azerbaijani side “Attacks this summer showed that Azerbaijan is
eager to “play with its new toys” and its forces showed “impressive
tactical and operational improvement”~T. The author also cited the
warning of The International Crisis Group that as the tat-for-tat
incidents become more deadly, “there is a growing risk that the
increasing frontline tensions could lead to an accidental war.”

“The drones are the latest addition to the battlefield. In March,
Azerbaijan signed a $1.6 billion arms deal with Israel, which consisted
largely of advanced drones and an air defense system.

Through this and other deals, Azerbaijan is currently amassing a
squadron of over 100 drones from all three of Israel’s top defense
manufacturers. Armenia, meanwhile, employs only a small number of
domestically produced models. Intelligence gathering is just one use
for drones, which are also used to spot targets for artillery, and,
if armed, strike targets themselves” Nicholas Clayton noted.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces routinely snipe and engage one another
along the front, each typically blaming the other for violating the
ceasefire. At least 60 people have been killed in ceasefire violations
in the last two years, and the Brussels-based International Crisis
Group claimed in a report published in February 2011 that the sporadic
violence has claimed hundreds of lives.

Theauthor also cited Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus
Institute in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, saying that the arms
buildup on both sides makes the situation more dangerous but also
said that the clashes are calculated actions, with higher death tolls
becoming a negotiating tactic.

He also highlighted that the deadliest recent uptick in violence
along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact around
Karabakh came in early June as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
was on a visit to the region.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN AMBASSADOR MET WITH NEWLY APPOINTED LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF CAIRO

ARMENPRESS
OCTOBER 23, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Ambassador to Egypt Armen
Melkonyan had a meeting with Osama Ahmed Kamal, the newly appointed
Lieutenant Governor of Cairo on October 23. As Armenpress was informed
from the press, informational and public relations department of
Armenian MFA, the development of Yerevan Cairo relations, mainly the
signing of legal documents between the two countries, developments of
mutual visits and other issues have been discussed during the meeting.

Interlocutors considered the development of tourism and cultural
cooperation to be promising. They highly evaluated the investment of
Egyptian Armenians in the Cairo’s cultural and social life.

From: A. Papazian

ZVARTNOTS RESUMED GROUND HANDLING FOR ARMAVIA FLIGHTS

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 15:49:53 – 23/10/2012

The International Airport of Yerevan has resumed ground handling of
flights of Armavia suspended today morning due to debts.

Zvartnots resumed handling as soon as Armavia transferred 150,000
USD to the airport’s account.

From: A. Papazian

MEXICAN PARLIAMENT UNEQUIVOCALLY SUPPORTS THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES

armradio.am
12:10 24.10.2012

Edward Nalbandian, MexicoOn October 24, Foreign Minister Edward
Nalbandian, who is in Mexico on an official visit, met with Francisco
Arroyo Vieyra, the Deputy Chairman of the Lower Chamber of Mexico~Rs
Senate.

Welcoming the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Vieyra
mentioned that Mexico~Rs Parliament would like to bring its
contribution to the development and strengthening of the
Armenian-Mexican relations.

Edward Nalbandian stressed that the resolutions adopted during the
previous year~Rs sitting of the Chamber of the Mexican Parliament
which distort the facts about Nagorno-Karabakh not only harmed
bilateral relations, but also flagrantly contradict to the position
of the international community repeatedly voiced by the heads of the
OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries. In the words of the Armenian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, such activities are harming the steps
undertaken by the international community towards the settlement of
the issue and are threatening regional stability.

The high-ranking official of the Mexican Parliament said he~Rs aware
of the negative consequences of the above-mentioned statements and
provided explanations, underlining that the Chamber of the Mexican
Parliament unequivocally supports the right to self-determination
of peoples and any attempts to refer some positions to the Mexican
Parliament do not correspond to reality.

Edward Nalbandian expressed satisfaction with the unequivocal support
provided by the Mexican Parliament to the right to self-determination
of peoples, as well as with the assurances presented by the Mexican
Secretariat of Foreign Affairs that Mexico officially supports
the proposals made by the Minsk Group on the settlement of the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue, and the efforts undertaken in that direction.

Minister Nalbandian expressed hope that the newly elected Mexican
Parliament would undertake effective steps to develop relations with
Armenia. Edward Nalbandian informed about the creation of a friendship
group with the Chamber of the Mexican Parliament in the Armenian
Parliament, and conveyed greetings of the Speaker of the Armenian
National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan to the heads of the Senate and
Chamber of Parliament.

Francisco Arroyo Vieyra said that the Chamber of Parliament would
undertake the steps towards the creation of a friendship group with the
Armenian National Assembly which would definitely become an important
format of interaction.

In Mexico City Foreign Minister had a meeting with the representatives
of the Armenian community in Mexico, as well. Edward Nalbandian
presented them the main vectors of Armenian~Rs foreign policy, reforms
implemented in the country, and the results of the meetings held in
Mexico as well as answered their numerous questions.

The visit of the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs to Mexico was
largely covered by the local media. The Mexican media presented many
publications referring to the situation created after the unveiling
of a so-called Khojaly monument in Mexico City, describing it as an
insult to the dignity of the Mexican people.

The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Armenian Minister
that under the pressure of the Mexican public opinion, Mexico City~Rs
municipality made a decision to establish a special commission to
determine the fate of the Azeri monuments.

Wrapping up the visit to Mexico, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian
left for Guatemala.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN MILITARY SERVICEMAN DIES IN JEEP ACCIDENT

news.am
October 24, 2012 | 11:30

YEREVAN. – An unfortunate incident occurred in Armenia’s Berd city
on Tuesday.

Armenian News-NEWS.am received information that a UAZ-model jeep had
rolled over in the city’s Koraghbyur district. As a result, the driver
died on the spot, whereas the passenger sustained serious injuries
and was transferred to hospital.

Our source also informed that the driver was 44-year-old Sergo
Melikyan, who was a military serviceman. The Police confirmed this
incident to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

From: A. Papazian

BACK IN THE USSR? GEORGIA ELECTS AN OLIGARCH.

The Weekly Standard, Vol. 18 No. 6
October 22, 2012 Monday

by: Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard
Tbilisi

Citizens of Georgia did something bizarre a couple of weeks ago.

Having fought a war against Russia in 2008 over the disputed
territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they turned around and
chose Bidzina Ivanishvili to serve as their prime minister.

Ivanishvili had been one of the richest Russian oligarchs before
returning to his native Georgia a few years ago. He will have to
rule alongside his despised rival, President Mikheil Saakashvili the
democracy reformer who had promised to bring Georgia into both NATO
and the EU and who convinced George W. Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy to
think of Georgia as a beacon of freedom between the Black and Caspian
seas. Georgians do not yet agree with Vladimir Putin, who once urged
that Saakashvili be strung up by the balls. But they have issued a
lashing repudiation of Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM)
and voted their country back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Until Saakashvili, Georgia was a rough, tough place. Its best-known
native sons include not only Stalin but also his secret police boss
Lavrenti Beria. When Georgia’s longest-serving post-Soviet leader,
Eduard Shevardnadze, tried to claim power in a rigged election in
2003, Saakashvili led hundreds of thousands into the streets, then
into parliament, in what would be called the Rose Revolution. He
sought to refound Georgia on different bases: democracy instead
of autocracy and the West instead of Russia. He established what
one Western ambassador last week called about as forward-leaning a
democracy as there is in the post-Soviet space.

Saakashvili cleaned house. He preached tolerance for Armenians,
Azerbaijanis, and gays. He built a new concert hall and a glitzy,
glassy footbridge over the Kura River, and brought electricity
to remote villages. He sent 800 troops to back NATO forces in
Afghanistan more than Belgium, and more than any non-NATO country
except Australia. He passed a plan to move the parliament from Tbilisi
to the western city of Kutaisi. He purged the old Soviet apparat,
firing tens of thousands of police, including the notorious traffic
squads who used to shake down people on the streets of the capital,
Tbilisi.

Deadwood would be one way of describing these guys. Bidzina
Ivanishvili’s base would be another.

Ivanishvili thinks Georgia was freer under Shevardnadze than it
is under Saakashvili. On the night before the elections, as part
of a delegation sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United
States, I met him at his Japanese-designed compound atop a steep hill
overlooking Tbilisi. One of my colleagues asked whether he thought
Putin’s Russia was freer than Saakashvili’s Georgia. When it comes
to democracy Georgia has no better situation, Ivanishvili said. But
when it comes to human freedom, the main value of democracy, things
are much worse in Georgia.

According to this year’s Forbes 400, Ivanishvili is worth $6.4 billion
a bit less than Eric Schmidt of Google and a bit more than Silvio
Berlusconi. He started getting rich importing primitive high-tech
items from the West into Russia, and acquired the protection of the
Yeltsin-era hardliner (and later Yeltsin rival) Alexander Lebed. He
wound up with his own bank, Rossiyskiy Kredit, which other oligarchs
used. Ivanishvili is a bit like the Dan Snyder of Georgia. Much
as the Washington Redskins’ owner has tried to use his billions to
restore the team he remembers from his childhood, Ivanishvili is using
his to rebuild the Georgia he grew up in. True, he spends money on
his mammoth stainless-steel-and-glass home and on a collection of
animals (penguins, zebras, flamingos) that he keeps in the west of
the country. But he also shells out on weddings in his hometown of
Chorvila, gilt for the new roof of the Tbilisi cathedral, big stipends
for many of Tbilisi’s artists and intellectuals, and much besides.

Ivanishvili says that trust from the people was the main capital he
brought to the election. But he has deployed the more traditional
kind of capital just in case. At a rally in Kutaisi in early summer,
his aides reportedly distributed Dream Cards, inviting supporters to
give their name and number and, while they’re at it, to list something
they’d kind of like but couldn’t afford, as long as it didn’t go over a
thousand lari (about $600). Ivanishvili’s willingness to spend caught
Saakashvili by surprise. Saakashvili had long used the Washington
consultants Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, but Ivanishvili shelled out
millions on Washington advisers (Patton Boggs) and pollsters (Penn
Schoen Berland) and European advisers (including former U.S. ambassador
to Germany John Kornblum, of Berlin-based Noerr) and pollsters. His
campaign warned darkly of voter fraud and issued its own polls showing
Ivanishvili winning by a three-to-one margin. Ivanishvili seemed to
be setting the stage for a popular uprising should he lose.

And as recently as mid-September, an Ivanishvili loss seemed almost
inevitable. Saakashvili’s party was up by 25 percent. But two
weeks before the election, hidden-camera videos began to emerge of
prisoners being tortured at the bottom of a stairwell in a Georgian
jail. Taken by a guard who had fled to Belgium, they aired on the
television channel Ivanishvili owned. These tapes, the authenticity
of most of which the Saakashvili camp did not dispute, exposed as
false the government’s claim to be moving Georgia into modernity. And
that is how Ivanishvili’s triumphant supporters came to be waving the
old-fashioned (1990s) Georgian flags in Freedom Square on October 1,
while Ivanishvili’s albino son, Bera, whose rap songs have become
popular among party supporters since his father’s run, hopped around
on a makeshift stage.

The Saakashvili government had never looked quite so good at home as
it did abroad. In 2005, after the minister of justice and minister of
health flopped in TV debates, government officials stopped explaining
their decisions to the public. In 2006, a young banker named Sandro
Girgvliani, who had insulted some employees of the interior ministry
in a bar, was found dead on the outskirts of Tbilisi the following
morning. After months of protests, observers discovered the government
had obstructed the investigation. The government was way too eager to
raze housing units and beloved landmarks to pay for increasingly vain
development schemes. As Olga Allenova of the Russian paper Kommersant
rightly summed it up: The authorities got carried away with reforms
and forgot about the people.

An assertion heard at all levels of Georgian society was that
Saakashvili’s government treated minorities and foreigners better than
it treated natives. The French superstore Carrefour got better terms
when opening a new outlet than did Georgian grocers it added prestige,
after all. The Saakashvili government, derided in some quarters as a
creature of the Bush administration, wound up governing like the Obama
administration, a coalition of new-class elites and special interests.

It mopped up the vote last week in ethnic minority areas, which
supporters attributed to the popularity of its progressivism and
detractors to fraud. Ivanishvili, meanwhile, took huge majorities
among the country’s Georgian Orthodox and solid majorities in Tbilisi.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that because Saakashvili was
less democratic than he looked, Ivanishvili is more democratic. On
the day after the election, before he had even been named prime
minister, Ivanishvili called on Saakashvili to resign his post as
president, a demand he later retracted. An op-ed in the New York Times
recently chalked up Ivanishvili’s saber-rattling to his bad political
instincts. But Ivanishvili made billions of dollars in Russia in the
1990s, a time when it required almost perfect political instincts to
keep from getting whacked. We should assume Ivanishvili’s instincts
are excellent until they’re proven -otherwise. That is possibly why
he has said he will not disturb Saakashvili’s goal of seeing Georgia
in the EU and NATO, although his unwillingness to rule out a strategic
partnership with Russia makes this an impossibility.

No matter how loudly he proclaimed his vision, Saakashvili had a
weak hand from the get-go. There was always something utopian about
assuming Georgia could be wrenched out of the Russian orbit. Rather
like Armenia, it is a lonely Christian country surrounded by Muslim
ones in what is one of the most perennially violent parts of the
world. Its great trump is that it has been closely allied with a
massive Christian country to the north, which has traditionally been
the biggest and most intimidating force in the region. Even in the
wake of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008, there is pretty much zero
anti-Russian feeling in Georgia. Most Georgians want more normal
relations with Russia, which is the natural market for their wine,
walnuts, canned goods, textiles, stone, and migrant labor. Ivanishvili
says he hopes to open trade relations in time to sell part of this
year’s harvest.

And what did Saakashvili have to offer in return? First, an opening
to NATO, an organization that demonstrated unambiguously in 2008 that
it would not come to Georgia’s aid if Russia chose to challenge it.

Western indifference to Georgia’s defense needs has deepened further
in the Obama years. And, second, an opening to the EU, which since
2008 has looked more and more like a machine for dragging all member
countries into debt and bankruptcy. A proud people might decline
to sell its future to a billionaire if it has options. Clearly,
Georgians were not satisfied that they did.

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

From: A. Papazian

IRAQ VET SEEKS ATONEMENT FOR EARLY WAR TRAGEDY

National Public Radio NPR
Oct 23 2012

On April 8, 2003, in the early days of the Iraq War, the Kachadoorian
family found themselves in the middle of a firefight at a major
intersection in Baghdad.

They had approached the intersection in three cars, and didn’t respond
to Marines’ warnings to stop and turnaround, so the Marines opened
fire, killing three men and shooting a young woman in the shoulder,
not realizing the people in the car were civilians.

Lu Lobello was one of those Marines. He didn’t know if his bullets
were responsible for the Kachadoorians’ deaths and injuries, and he
maintains that the Marines did exactly what they were trained to do
in that situation.

But years later, still haunted by the experience and dealing with
post-traumatic stress disorder, Lobello started researching the
incident, looking for everything he could find about that day. That’s
when he stumbled across Dexter Filkins’ 2003 account of the tragedy
in The New York Times. Lobello says the article helped answer his
questions about why the family drove towards the gunfight.

“My reasoning was they were driving toward us, of course they’re an
enemy. Why would anyone drive towards the sound of a battle?” Lobello
tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “And when I read from their point of
view, [which] Dexter talked about in his article, it just shook me
because it all seemed so plausible.”

Filkins tells Gross that, in the early years of the Iraq War, Iraqis
driving into American checkpoints led to many casualties. In this
instance, the Kachadoorians were just trying to get home, which was
just around the corner from the firefight.

According to Filkins, the family was confused and too frightened
to turn around, because the house they had been staying at had just
been bombed, so they decided to try and make it through, with tragic
consequences.

“And then if you flip that around, you’re like a 20-year-old American
soldier; you’re scared to death; you don’t know what is coming at you,”
Filkins says.

Lobello used Filkins’ article to track down Nora and Margaret
Kachadoorian, two surviving family members who were there that day,
and send them a video apology.

“It wasn’t all just about my guilt from this one day,” Lobello says.

“It was about feeling as though there was somebody out there who was
greatly affected by our actions as a unit, and that we had a duty to
them, to reach out to them, to find out how they were doing and if
I could do that I knew I’d feel better.”

Lobello also reached out to Filkins, and together they went to
Glendale, Calif., to meet the Kachadoorians – with the help of Filkins’
New York Times article, the family had come to the U.S. as refugees.

Filkins says at first, the meeting was unbearably tense and filled
with long pauses. “Lu kind of lost it right away and they didn’t,
and at one point Margaret said to Lu, ‘You’re crying, but I don’t
have any tears left.'”

The tension broke only after Lu and Nora’s husband, Asaad Salim,
went outside for a cigarette.

“I think it was akin to two guys sharing a drink – it was just
something that was universal, international,” Lobello says. “I think
that having a couple minutes alone with him and the family seeing
that me and him were able to talk and be comfortable with each other,
it kind of set the tone for the rest.”

For Lobello, there wasn’t a clear moment when Margaret and Nora said
they forgave him and he suddenly felt better. “The whole process
of going up there, the whole journey to find the Kachadoorians and
the whole experience was all part of it. Just letting me into their
home and feeding me and meeting with me – the whole thing was [as]
if they were saying we forgive you and we understand.”

Since then, Lobello has maintained a relationship with the
Kachadoorians through Facebook, phone calls and even a visit to help
the family with a legal matter.

As for Filkins, he says American forces did learn something from that
2003 tragedy. At the beginning of the war, he says, “Iraqis got caught
in the wrong place at the wrong time, often in cars driving towards
checkpoints and getting killed.” Eventually, Americans made changes in
their procedures at checkpoints and started yelling or having signs
in Arabic, and shooting at engine blocks rather than drivers to stop
cars. “It’s just good to know that there was a learning curve dealing
with this stuff, because it probably spared a lot of lives. Obviously,
you just wish that we’d known all of this ahead of time.”

Filkins writes about Lobello’s meeting with the Kachadoorians in the
Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker.

——————————————————————————–

Interview Highlights

On finding the Kachadoorians’ story

Filkins: “It was a week after Saddam [Hussein] fell, his government
fell, and Baghdad was just total chaos. There was looting everywhere.

There were people being killed in the streets. There were buildings
on fire – it was just total anarchy.

“So I was just driving around trying to figure things out and I saw
this crazy scene in front of a hospital, and this was happening at
all the hospitals: There was a giant crowd of people trying to get
inside so they could just tear everything apart and basically carry
away anything of value… And I watched a doctor come out, you know,
a guy in a white lab coat with an automatic rifle and shoot it over
the heads of the crowd to kind of scare them back. And what a scene. So
I just pulled over and I went inside the hospital to see what I could
see, not knowing what I would find.

“And it was a scene inside the hospital, which was very much like
the outside – total pandemonium. Most of the hospital had been looted.

There was no electricity. The water was gone. There were people
walking around carrying, holding their bleeding limbs. It was
extraordinary. And a doctor walked up to me, an Iraqi doctor. I had
been there for a while looking around and he just pulled me aside
and said, ‘There’s something I want to show you.’ And I said, ‘OK.’

“And I followed him into this ward in the back of the hospital, and
there was this woman who turned out to be Nora Kachadoorian, a young
woman probably 21-years-old at the time. Her mother and her aunt were
standing over her in a hospital bed and her shoulder had been really,
really badly wounded.

“So I just kind of sat down and talked to them about what had happened
and she, Nora, and her mom, Margaret, they kind of reconstructed this
event, what had happened and how it came that she had been shot in
the shoulder and Nora’s two brothers and her father had been killed
just a couple days before and so it was quite a story.

“So this was one really sad traumatic event in this gigantic scene
that was happening, this gigantic historical event, so I focused on
that for a while and I somehow managed to find the Marines camped out
in the field a couple miles away. And I can’t remember how I managed
to get lucky like that, but I found them and they were all very upset
and they told me what happened from their perspective.

“And so I was able to piece together what had happened at this terrible
moment at this intersection… And that was April 2003 and I wrote
that story and it stayed with me because the Kachadoorians, they were
very sweet people and what had happened to them was terribly sad and
years went by. I spent almost four years in Baghdad and I used to
ask about them and I used to look around for them every now and then.

I saw a lot of death, but I never found them again and never heard
from them again until a couple of months ago and got a Facebook
message from Lu.”

On the video apology Lobello sent the Kachadoorians

Lobello: “By sending a video I felt that I could encapsulate more of
the emotions I was feeling. I tried to write out something to send to
them. I probably made 25 drafts and deleted them all. It just seemed
so odd to put on paper. I just didn’t know what to say really, and
every time I would read what I just wrote, I thought that it sounded
like something I would hate to read if I was them. So eventually I
tried to video myself in hopes that it would better show them what
I was feeling…

“I introduced myself. I told them of the night that we met and I told
them I was sorry and that I had to speak to them if I could. I told
them that they lived so close to me that I had to reach out. It was
just too odd to me not to say hello and not to find out how they were
doing to see if I could help them really. I wanted to know if there
was something I could do to make their life easier.”

On the Kachadoorians forgiving Lobello

Filkins: “When Lu was outside with Asaad [Salim] smoking a cigarette
and I was inside with the two Kachadoorian women, Nora, who’s now
about 30 – she’d been sitting quietly, for the most part, the whole
time – didn’t really say anything, just a couple of words here and
there. And finally when Lu was outside, she spoke and she said,
‘We want to help them.’ And it was very nice.

“One of the oddities of the story, and there are so many, and I’m not
sure what it means, but they’re Christian, for one thing, which makes
them a minority in Iraq, some 2 percent of the population … And
they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses and they’re very religious – certainly
as anyone would be after something like this.

“So every time I asked them about forgiving Lu, or what had happened,
or how did they feel about it, or why are they not bitter, because
they’re not, they would just default immediately to the Bible or they
would start talking about religion, of God and forgiveness. And it
was amazing. You could just see the power of religion at a really
micro level. They believed deeply in their religion and she said,
and they said, over and over again, ‘We have to forgive them. This
is what God commands us: He’s forgiven us; we must [as well]. And
there was no doubt in their mind about it. And the conviction with
which they did it was very moving.”

On the importance of telling these kinds of stories

Lobello: “A lot of the times, these stories don’t get told. What gets
told is the other side and the heroism. And what you miss out on is
that this is a part of any war. No matter the training, no matter
the terrain, you will always have innocent civilians killed. And if
more stories are told about these innocent civilians, maybe we will
start to think twice the next time we decide to go somewhere and have
these battles or maybe at least we’ll come up with some programs to
take better care of these people that are caught in the crossfire.”

From: A. Papazian

SAINT LAZARUS, THE PERSECUTED

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
Oct 23 2012
Italy

Paolo Martino

‘Everybody talks about Syria, but nobody does anything. Instead of
stopping the whips, people count while we are being flogged. How is
that possible?’ Ibrahim is twenty years-old, lives in Damascus and
longs for a different Syria. The last episode of “From the Caucasus
to Beirut”, a journey on the discovery of the Middle-Eastern Armenian
diaspora

>From my journal. December 11 Ibrahim keeps the window down, sowing his
young ideas in the still noon air. His words are sharp like stone. In
those words, the awakening of a generation is fulfilled. The Arab
Spring is first and foremost a process of verbal re-appropriation,
the conquering of a new, fulfilled expressive dimension. Even if the
regime survives itself, even if Assad and his courtiers remain on
the throne, unknown heroes like Ibrahim will still have picked the
most beautiful flower of their Spring: the strength to speak.

Al Tall, a twenty-minute drive from centre-city Damascus. The store
shutters rolled up are filled with merchandise, children run to their
Mothers on their way out of school. As in Damascus, life flows by
always the same; as in the capital, everything seems to be in its
place. The same stubborn normalcy repeated and awaiting the looming
change. All of a sudden, Ibrahim stops in front of the post office:
‘We wrote those last Friday during the demonstration’. The eyes are
lifted up to the third floor, where slogans of protest against the
regime cover the plaster. ‘It’s not easy to erase them up there’. As a
cascade of verses, the writings come down to the ground floor. Passers
by discretely read them pretending to do something else.

‘Welcome, our home is your home’. Mahmud and Khalil, Ibrahim’s Father
and Brother, are sitting with their legs crossed around the mezze,
a dish of pasta with chickpeas, yoghurt and olive oil. Reporters have
never visited them, banned by the regime till popular demonstrations
took to the streets. ‘Our silence days are over’. Old Mahmud pours
mint and limonella tea. ‘Why hide if the regime punishes everyone
indiscriminately?’

Ibrahim is twenty, but his gaze makes him look twice as older. In the
Umayyad Mosque, throbbing heart of old Damascus, he stood apart along
with a group of fellow university students, on March 18th, waiting for
the great Friday prayer to end. While the faithful were slowly coming
out of the prayer room, the boys started singing choruses of protest,
echoing the rebellion started four months earlier in Tunisia. ‘The
Umayyad Mosque represents this Country’s immense history, humbled
for the past forty years by Assad’s dictatorship. That’s why we met
there’. The secret service knew everything. ‘They were waiting for us
at the gate, no uniforms, armed with canes. I don’t know how long they
detained us, the light is always the same, when you’re underground’.

The whole family was arrested about a month later. Ibrahim nods as his
Father goes over the endless night when the special forces broke in
their house. ‘They blindfolded us with our own shirts, handcuffed us
and threw us in the middle of the street’. On the van, tens of other
prisoners. ‘They insulted our wives and sisters. If anybody responded,
they would end up in the torturers’ hands once we got to the prison’.

That night, Al Tall saw over 1.500 people get arrested. The three
were released after four endless days. ‘Many others have disappeared,
just vanished’. Mahmud takes leave. ‘Everybody talks about Syria,
but nobody does anything. Instead of stopping the whips, people count
while we are being flogged. How is that possible?’

The road to the Saydnaya Monastery winds up through the soft slopes
of Qalamum. The vegetation keeps getting sparser and sparser, leaving
room for a timeless view, a photograph of a century when the stately
foundations of the church were laid down on the rock by the monks.

With worried eyes, Ibrahim looks down below at the sky over Damascus.

‘It all depends on the sky. Only a UN no fly zone could stop the
massacres carried out by the helicopters during the demonstrations’. A
dense yellowish cloud is starting to gather over the capital. ‘The
revolution is going to win anyway, but for me time is of the essence.

In a few months, I’m going to be called up for the draft. If the
regime doesn’t fall before that, I’ll have to run away’. Thousands
of young Syrians are in his same situation. ‘I will never point a
gun at my people’.

Christian and Muslim families stroll among the kiosks and chapels of
the Monastery of Our Lady, where Ibrahim speaks without the fear of
being heard. ‘A Sunnite like me knows that his career is bound to be
mediocre’. The thread of reasoning weaves desires and expectations
for a society based on equality, equal rights, meritocracy. ‘I can
see that minorities fear change’. The outlines of a crucifix look
like a seal over the sunset. ‘But Christians, Jews, Alawites, Kurds,
Armenians, Druze and Sunnites lived in peace in this region long before
the Assad dictatorship set in. This – he concludes – is also their
revolution. When it’s over, differences will mean nothing any more’.

>From my journal. December 12 My last night in Damascus is vibrating
with thoughts. ‘When you come back to visit us – Ibrahim promises
before falling asleep – Syria will be a different Country’. In the
darkness of the room, the revolution seems to fill every space,
until it takes your breath away. Without the support of minorities,
the protest is sliding over to become a civil war. It is going to be
Lebanon again, Iraq again. Courage and tyranny will learn to quickly
swap clothes, and once again history will offer its children but one
alternative: continue to survive.

There is no more room to take notes, I did not have the courage to
carry my journal with me and the tourist guide only has 3-4 blank
pages. I am leaving Damascus tomorrow. I will be home for Christmas
after one year travelling. Good night, Ibrahim.

Epilogue The steamboat approaches the isle of San Lazzaro degli Armeni,
riding the waves of the Lagoon while, on the opposite side, the outline
of Venice is becoming more and more blurred. The small isle hosts
the most manifest traces of the Armenian presence in Italy. On the
quay, the custodian welcomes a small group of visitors in the early
afternoon. “Welcome”. Kevork is an Armenian from Lebanon and has the
simple features of the many Armenians met between the Caucasus and
Beirut. ‘I have been in Italy for 30 years, now. I rarely go back to
Lebanon and only for a few days’. A sad smile crosses his face.

‘Beirut will never be the same, after the civil war. It’s impossible
to re-educate the people who have lead us for 25 years unrestrained’.

The low sun reflects on the still waters of the Lagoon while, in the
silence surrounding the isle, even thoughts seem to make noise.

Sitting on the pier, alone, I take out the last cigarette from the
packet I bought at the airport in Yerevan. The torch that Tamar holds
in her hand is still burning, renewing the desperate call for a man
that will never come. The legendary woman portrayed on the packet gives
the name to the Isle of Aktamar, on Van’s lake, Armenian sanctuary of
silence. Just like San Lazzaro. Tamar has been looking for her man for
too long. Her lover drowned in the abyss too long ago while swimming to
her. The packet floats on the dense surface of the Lagoon, until Tamar
finally sinks to her destiny. And the legend is ready to be told again.

From: A. Papazian