Author: Arbi Tashjian

Asbarez: Armenia Honors its Fallen Heroes

Arbi Tashjian

December 19,  2020



Armenians honored their fallen heroes at Yerablur National Cemetery

  • Opposition Forces, Relatives of Fallen Soldiers and Veterans Clash with Police
  • National Salvation Movement Holds Rally and March to Requiem Mass

After living through 45 days of war and 40 days after the end of the military hostilities in Karabakh, the people of Armenia on Saturday mourned the estimated 3,000 soldiers who perished during the Artsakh War and remembered those missing in action and who are still being held captive by marching to the Yerablur National Military Cemetery to honor their memory.

The procession to Yerablur kicked off a three-day mourning period that coincides with the traditional remembrance 40 days after a death.

Thousands took part in a procession of torches to Yerablur on Friday evening, in an solemn event spearheaded by the National Salvation Movement, which has been leading demonstrations in Yerevan demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who signed the November 9 agreement, along with the leaders of Russia and Azerbaijan, which ended the war, but stipulated the forced surrender of historic Armenian territories in Artsakh, and as become evident since, certain ares in Armenia-proper.

Heavy police and national security officials formed a wall at the entrance of the Yerablur Cemetery, where relatives of soldiers, Armenian Armed Forces veterans and opposition forces had come together to form a human chain and prevent Pashinyan and his entourage from entering the pantheon, saying that he, who is responsible for such grave losses, should not be allowed to hamper the day of national mourning.

Chaos ensued at Yerablur, according to several Armenian media reports, when Pashinyan and his entourage of government officials who were being guarded by heavily armed security detail reached the military pantheon Saturday afternoon, where thousands had already gathered. Angry protesters chanted “Nikol traitor!” while some Pashinyan supporter shouted back, “Nikol, prime minister.

Riot police deployed to Yerablur on this national day of mourning, pushed back the protesters and scuffles broke out with police and between protesters and Pashinyan supporters.

Armenian media captured photos and videos of Pashinyan’s adviser Robert Ghukasyan beating up a mourner at Yerablur.

At 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, the National Salvation Movement organized an opposition rally and a march to the St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, where a requiem Mass was said in memory of fallen soldiers.

Officiating the Mass was Primate of the Artsakh Diocese Archbishop Parkev Matirosyan.

“Martyrs are the most praised and the most bright in heaven, because they went to their death on their own volition, in order to secure their eternity through their passing,” said Archbishop Martirosyan.

“Today by commemorating our fallen children, we must realize and bring to life their dreams,” added Martirosyan. “We must be able to make wise decisions… and only through unity and our national abilities can we create our future.”

Armenian monuments are at risk in Azerbaijan. L.A. artists make their own to keep memory alive

Arbi Tashjian
Los Angeles Times
Dec 16 2020
By Carolina A. Miranda, Columnist 

Dec. 16, 2020


If you stand at the corner of Artsakh Avenue and East Broadway in Glendale you’ll catch a glimpse of a surreptitiously installed public monument.

It shows a woman’s face veiled by lace — a still from Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 film, “The Color of Pomegranates” — along with the phrase “ARTSAKH ENDURES.” Emanating from the piece is a soulful mix of Armenian songs.

To see (and hear) this unusual art piece, you’ll need a cellphone since “Monument to the Autonomous Republic of Artsakh” is totally virtual — visible only via an augmented reality app and visible only at that specific geographic point. It’s a poignant work: a reminder of a bloody conflict thousands of miles away in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan (known as Artsakh by Armenians), one that has left thousands dead and centuries of Armenian cultural legacy imperiled.

The monument is a collaboration among a group of Los Angeles artists and scholars. It emerges from a design by Kamee Abrahamian, with contributions by Nelli Sargsyan and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian. Sargsyan supplied the work’s haunting soundtrack: a medley that draws from songs about mountains and wind, a nod to Artsakh’s rugged landscape. Artist Nancy Baker Cahill, who has long used augmented reality as an artistic platform, was also involved, making the monument available for viewing on her 4th Wall app.


The work, says Hakopian, “imagines a future in which Artsakh is visible and a future in which Artsakh endures — even if it’s only virtually or in the memory of the diasporic peoples that have been displaced.”

It is one of many artistic responses to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh by artists of Armenian heritage.

Last month, the metal band System of a Down, which emerged from Glendale’s Armenian community, reunited to release the protest songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” its first new music in 15 years. She Loves Collective, a group of women artists that formed in 2017, has staged guerrilla performances related to themes of loss and trauma in Armenian culture. Filmmaker Nare Mkrtchyan, whose Oscar-shortlisted documentary short “The Other Side of Home” explored themes related to the Armenian genocide, traveled to the region shortly before Nagorno-Karabakh reverted to Azeri control.

“I felt the strong need to go and film and be able to capture history, to be able to touch it one last time,” she says via email.

Among the places she traveled was the historic Tsitsernavank monastery, an early Armenian site whose earliest constructions likely date to the 5th or 6th century. “[I] was there less than an hour before the territory turned to Azerbaijan,” she writes. “It is surreal to think that my Armenian prayer might be the last one in those walls.”

The conflict in Nagorno-Karbakh is a long and complex one. Situated in the Lesser Caucasus mountain range, the region has been ruled over the centuries by Persians and Russians, followed in the 20th century by the old Soviet Union. Historically, the area has been occupied largely by Christian Armenians, along with Muslim Turkic peoples and other ethnic groups. The roots of today’s conflict lie partly in the hands of the Soviets.
In the 1920s, the region’s population was majority Armenian, but the Soviets split off Nagorno-Karabakh and placed it within Azerbaijan’s political borders (part of a tactic, by Stalin, to weaken the national identities of smaller Soviet states). After the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, inhabitants of the region attempted to rejoin Armenia, a move that resulted in a bloody, years-long conflict. A Russian-brokered cease-fire in 1994 brought peace but left Nagorno-Karabakh in a tenuous, in-between state: an autonomous zone administered by Armenians that wasn’t officially part of Armenia but was technically considered Azerbaijan under international law. During that period, thousands of Azeris fled the region.

The old conflicts came roaring back in September, when fighting began anew — but this time with the Azeris better armed courtesy of Turkish support and a strong petroleum economy. Another Russian-brokered cease-fire in early November put a halt to the shooting. It also put Nagorno-Karabakh, along with several provinces around it, back in Azeri hands. It is now Armenians who flee.

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Left behind are centuries of Armenian cultural heritage: the graceful Dadivank monastery, which dates to the 12th century; the fan-roofed Gtichavank monastery, from the 13th century, once an important pilgrimage site; and the archeological site of Tigranakert, which dates to the Hellenestic era and is, in the words of Hamlet Petrosyan, an Armenian archeologist who has led research expeditions to the area, “the best-preserved city of the Hellenistic and Armenian civilizations.”

This is critical because, as art historian Christina Maranci wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month, Azerbaijan has “well-documented policies of destroying the Armenian cultural heritage found in their territories.”

An extensive investigative report by scholars Simon Maghakyan and Sarah Pickman published by the arts website Hyperallergic last year recorded the systematic destruction of 89 medieval Armenian churches and 5,840 of the elaborate cross-stones known as khachkars in the province of Nakhichevan between 1997 and 2006. This included the razing of the vast medieval necropolis at Djulfa, near the Iranian border, which once contained thousands of 16th century Armenian headstones.

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Late last year, when Maghakyan presented his findings in Pasadena, he told The Times: “If I do not tell this story, who will?”

Azeri officials deny charges of iconoclasm. Last year, Nasimi Aghayev, consul general of Azerbaijan to the Western United States, told The Times that the destruction of Djulfa were “a figment of Armenia’s imagination.” And a statement issued by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture last month stated that all monuments, “irrespective of its origin,” will be preserved.

But copious photography and satellite imagery of Nakhichevan tell another story. Not to mention the fact that Azeri officials are in the habit of regularly describing Armenian churches as “Caucasian Albanian,” a specious classification that serves as a way of writing Armenians out of the region’s history.

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The U.S. foreign policy apparatus, in the meantime, is checked out on the subject. The State Department has not issued any statements regarding Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is too busy delivering Republican stump speeches in Georgia — the U.S. state, not the Caucasus nation.)

UNESCO issued a statement late last month reminding both nations that they are signatories to the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and cited a U.N. Security Council Resolution from 2017 on the “unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, looting and smuggling of cultural property.” As part of its efforts, the agency promised to carry out a field mission to draw up an inventory of heritage in the area.

How effective that will be remains to be seen. In 2000, UNESCO ordered an end to the destruction at Djulfa. It was futile. By 2006, the cemetery had been smashed to pieces, with ancient grave markers dumped into the Araxes River, according to a report by Pickman in Archaeology magazine.


To draw awareness to the issue, artists of Armenian descent in Los Angeles are busy making work.

Members of She Loves Collective staged two performances this fall that dealt with themes raised by the war: struggle, displacement, erasure.

“We are all sucked into this immense pain that we all feel and we are seeking ways of _expression_,” says Adrineh Baghdassarian, a multimedia artist who is a co-founder of the collective. “We are all seeking ways of connecting to our heritage. Can I fly to Armenia? Can I help someone collect funds? What is it that I can do? Well, what is that we do best? It’s this.”

For its first performance, on Oct. 11, the group staged a procession through downtown L.A. that began at the Broad museum and moved to City Hall, where participants chanted, “The Rifles Our Ancestors Didn’t Have” (the title of the work). The artists wore striking white caftans emblazoned with an image of a rifle, a design that evoked the female Armenian freedom fighters of the early 20th century.

“The concept was looking peaceful, looking strong, looking powerful,” Baghdassarian says.

The collective followed this with a similar procession along the banks of the Los Angeles River that ended with the group dropping rose petals into the water while images from Artsakh were projected onto a bridge nearby.

The action functioned as “a healing,” says Nelly Ackhen Sarkissian, an installation and performance artist who is also a co-founder of She Loves.

It also incorporated iconic sites of the Los Angeles landscape. Southern California, after all, is home to the largest population of Armenians outside the former republics of the former Soviet Union. It is also home to one of the first monuments to the Armenian genocide built outside of Armenia: the Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument in Montebello, completed in 1965.

The L.A. River performance employed as backdrop the concrete architecture of the river, as well as the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance — a way of connecting the Armenian story to to the American story.

“The focus point is always to have a strong L.A. backdrop,” Sarkissian says. “It’s not just important to say that we’re Armenians from L.A., but that we are engaging with our fellow Angelenos and Angelenas.”

The group is currently at work on another performance that it plans to stage in Malibu, possibly in January if the COVID surge eases, at the site of a house claimed by one of the recent fires.

“It’s a universal thing,” Baghdassarian says. “Whether you lose it in a war or you lose your home in a fire or you lose your ancestral land.

“Where does home begin and where does home end?” she adds. “How is a person willing to burn his own home down if he cannot go down to his home ever again?”

Hrag Vartanian is an arts journalist of Armenian descent who is editor in chief of Hyperallergic, which has doggedly chronicled some of the cultural issues at stake in the region. He is also part of an informal group of international scholars and cultural workers trying to compile information on historic sites in the region in anticipation of any destruction.

Vartanian, who has spent time in Nagorno-Karabakh, says that Armenian history is embedded in the landscape there. “Those buildings tell our history in an intimate way. … The history is written on the walls. Families are buried there.”

He notes that Armenian artists making work in response to the region’s tragedies is nothing new.

In the poignant painting “The Artist and His Mother,” created between 1926 and 1942 and held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., artist Arshile Gorky depicts himself as a young boy with his mother, who died of malnutrition after being displaced by the 1915 Armenian genocide, in which Ottoman Turkish forces systematically killed 1.5 million Armenians.

“It’s not the first time Armenians have been threatened,” Vartanian says. “They have been threatened by Mongols and different invaders.”

“This is how Armenian culture has evolved,” he adds. “We take these stories and we take these instances and we build something new.”

Cultural sites may be at risk in the Caucasus. New ones arise in L.A.


Gazprom and Armenia discuss terms of gas supplies in 2021

Arbi Tashjian
TASS, Russia
Dec 17 2020
Since January 1, 2019, the price of Russian gas for Armenia has increased from $150 to $165 per 1,000 cubic meters

MOSCOW, December 17. / TASS /. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan discussed the terms of gas supplies in 2021, the gas holding said in a statement on Thursday.

“The parties discussed the results of work on gas supplies to Armenia in 2020 and the terms of supplies in 2021,” the statement said. Gazprom is the only gas supplier to consumers in Armenia. The gas supplier to the domestic market of the country is Gazprom Armenia.

Since January 1, 2019, the price of Russian gas for Armenia has increased from $150 to $165 per 1,000 cubic meters. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the republic Zohrab Mnatsakanyan said earlier that the issue of reducing the price of Russian gas is of great importance for Armenia, negotiations with Moscow in this direction are continuing. At the end of March, Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan sent a letter to the head of Gazprom with a proposal to start new negotiations on reducing gas prices due to the worsening economic situation associated with the spread of the new coronavirus.


Pilgrimage to the Armenian St. Thaddeus Monastery in Iran inscribed on UNESCO Intangible Heritage list

Arbi Tashjian
Public Radio of Armenia

Dec 17 2020
Pilgrimage to the Armenian St. Thaddeus Monastery in Iran inscribed on UNESCO Intangible Heritage list

Pilgrimage to the Armenian St. Thaddeus Apostle Monastery in Iran has been inscribed on UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The annual three-day pilgrimage to St. Thaddeus Apostle Monastery in northwestern Iran is held each July. The pilgrimage venerates two prominent saints: St. Thaddeus, one of the first apostles preaching Christianity, and St. Santukhd, the first female Christian martyr.

The bearers of the element are the Armenian population in Iran, Iranian-Armenians residing in Armenia, and followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Pilgrims gather in Tabriz before departing for the monastery. They cover 700 kilometers from Yerevan to the monastery annually.

The commemoration ceremony includes special liturgies, processions, prayers and fasting. It culminates in a Holy Mass with Holy Communion. Special times are set aside for traditional Armenian folk performances and Armenian dishes are served.

The pilgrimage is the primary social and cultural event of the year. Because attendees reside in tents in close proximity to one another, the sense of community is enhanced. The monastery has been a pilgrimage site for over nineteen centuries.

However, during the years of Soviet power in Armenia, participating in the pilgrimage was prohibited. Bearers of the element preserved cultural memories of the pilgrimage and transmitted it to families and communities. Only after independence in the 1990s was the pilgrimage from Armenia resumed.

https://en.armradio.am/2020/12/17/pilgrimage-to-the-armenian-st-thaddeus-monastery-in-iran-inscribed-on-unesco-intangible-heritage-list/



The South Caucasus: New Realities After the Armenia-Azerbaijan War (Part Three)

Arbi Tashjian
Jamestown Foundation

Dec 18 2020

05:54 PM Age: 22 hours

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently supplanted the Minsk Group’s triple co-chairmanship (the United States, France, Russia) as mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It was Putin, not the Minsk co-chairmanship, who mediated the November 10 armistice agreement, shunting aside the Minsk Group’s troika. The armistice agreement does not even mention the Minsk Group and does not reference any “status” goal for Karabakh Armenians (see EDM, November 12, 13).

The US and French co-chairs, removed from the negotiations by Putin’s maneuver, are keen to re-enter the process by having the Minsk troika discuss the Karabakh “status” issue with Baku and Yerevan. The Kremlin, however, will probably take up this issue on its own initiative, dealing directly with Baku and Yerevan (the same procedure it used when mediating the armistice); and Moscow will await a convenient opportunity to initiate this process on its own timing.

Indeed, according to Putin (and contrary to Azerbaijan’s position—see above), this conflict is not conclusively resolved because the problem of Upper (“Nagorno”) Karabakh’s status remains open (TASS, November 17, 21).

The Kremlin had played “neutral” during the 44-day Karabakh war before intervening to stop the fighting. Exploiting Yerevan’s adventurism (see EDM, November 25), and undoubtedly anticipating its debacle, Putin intervened at the last moment on the Armenian side as a providential “savior,” namely on three counts: “saving” the Karabakh Armenians by sending Russian “peacekeeping” troops; “saving” the Armenian army’s remnants from total destruction by stopping the war at that point; and “saving” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government from collapse with fulsome praise for Pashinian’s acceptance of hard but inevitable armistice terms (TASS, November 17, 21, December 2).

Putin’s salvage operation has rendered an exhausted Armenia more dependent on Russia than ever before. Moreover, all of Armenia’s political forces—from Pashinian to his Yerevan opponents to the Stepanakert leaders—are outbidding each other in expressions of gratitude to Putin’s Russia and faith in the bilateral alliance.

Russia, however, had made clear all along that its treaty-based security guarantees to Armenia do not apply to Karabakh. It was Yerevan that guaranteed Karabakh’s security until this lost war. After this war, Russia has taken over from Armenia the role of guaranteeing Upper (“Nagorno”) Karabakh’s security—if not officially, then clearly de facto by stationing Russia” “peacekeeping” troops there. As a cumulative result, Russia’s guarantees now cover both Armenia and the parts of Upper Karabakh not regained by Azerbaijan. By the same token, Russia’s military presence helps perpetuate this territory’s separation from Azerbaijan and the unrecognized “Karabakh republic” proto-state. Its “president,” “parliament,” “government” and “defense army” continue their existence. Russia does not officially recognize them but deals with them and sustains them de facto. At the same time, amply using the tools of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance, Russia is increasingly taking control of Upper Karabakh from the debilitated Yerevan (see EDM, December 8, 10).

Nevertheless, even as it strengthens its grip on Upper Karabakh de facto, Russia officially deems it to be part of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory de jure (unlike Upper Karabakh’s hitherto-guarantor Armenia, which did not and does not recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty in this territory). The Kremlin duly requested and received Baku’s consent to Russia’s “peacekeeping” presence in this territory of Azerbaijan, a spart of the quid pro quo terms of the armistice (see Part One in EDM, December 16).

In sum, Azerbaijan now finds itself confronted with two patrons of the “Karabakh republic”: Yerevan the declared but weak patron, Moscow the unofficial but strong patron. Yerevan, for all its weakness, remains absolutely intractable in negotiations, while Moscow is all too willing to mediate some compromise on the “frozen conflict” model: professing to recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty while preventing it from exercising that sovereignty in practice, and making it subject to perpetual negotiations with Yerevan through Russia’s mediation.

Controlling Azerbaijan’s Lachin corridor between Armenia and Upper Karabakh with Russian “peacekeeping” troops, as well as controlling the Armenian transit route to and from Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave with Russian border troops, as per the armistice agreement, will provide Russia with additional opportunities to manipulate this conflict.

Moscow must be content to have allowed Yerevan to de-frost and heat up this conflict, setting the stage for Russia to intervene and re-freeze it, with built-in opportunities to warm it up again if necessary in the future.

Russia has positioned itself as arbiter between Armenia and Azerbaijan for a long time to come. The Kremlin is not interested in a conclusive resolution of this conflict. It is, instead, interested in prolonging and managing it, with the collateral benefit of justifying Russia’s military presence.

The Kremlin is also mindful of the domestic ramifications to its involvement in the Karabakh conflict. Addressing a senior staff meeting devoted to this matter, Putin noted that more than two million Armenians and more than two million Azerbaijanis currently live and work in Russia, and their sentiments must be taken into account. Russia, therefore, should pursue a “balanced approach [to the Karabakh conflict] in the interest of consolidating Russia’s internal stability” (TASS, November 20).

https://jamestown.org/program/the-south-caucasus-new-realities-after-the-armenia-azerbaijan-war-part-three/?fbclid=IwAR2oiTdhVR4hCkw5SIkQzw4qnHthRYEgWz1jwaQQXfre6oSdlfuiMunKTdg


No casualties on Armenian side as a result of clashes near Hadrut

Arbi Tashjian
Public Radio of Armenia
Dec 13 2020

There are no casualties on the Armenian side as a result of the Sunday clashes near Hadrut. The Armenian Unified Infocenter refutes the reports of Azerbaijani media and Telegram channels claiming that the Armenian side sustained losses.

As reported earlier by the Ministry of Defense, six Armenian servicemen were wounded as a result of Azerbaijan’s provocative actions.

In violation of the trilateral agreement on the cessation of hostilities, special forces of the Azerbaijani army launched an attack on the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact in the area of Hin Taghlar and Khtsaberd villages in Hadrut region of Artsakh.

After hours of fighting, the enemy managed to enter the village of Hin Tagher, and approach the village of Khtsaberd.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian military are negotiating the return of the parties to the former positions in Hadrut region.

The Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that “these actions of official Baku further underline the imperative to eliminate the consequences of the recent Azerbaijani aggression, including the de-occupation of the territories of Artsakh and the return of the Armenians of Artsakh to their places of residence.”

Armenia To Receive Humanitarian Aid From Greece Tomorrow

Arbi Tashjian
Greek City Times
Dec 11 2020
by Paul Antonopoulos

Aid will be delivered to Armenia tomorrow after a request by Armenian Organizations in Greece.

The International Development Cooperation Service of Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of its humanitarian mission, will deliver the aid to Armenia.

Specifically, the Armenian Relief Society, Armenian Blue Cross and Cross of Mercy Macedonia-Thrace, with assistance from the Embassy of Armenia in Athens, gathered humanitarian aid for victims of Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh.

Armenians pack their belongings while leaving their house in Kalbajar. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

With cooperation from the Ministry of National Defense, which provided a transport aircraft, the delivery is scheduled to be transported to Armenia tomorrow.

The humanitarian aid includes medical supplies and food for the victims and refugees of Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh.

Armenian refugees.

The aid was supplied by Greeks and Armenian-Greeks.

The actions are coordinated by the General Director of the International Development Cooperation Service, Mr. G. Larissis.

He will deliver the sent aid to representatives of the Armenian Ministry of Emergency Situations and the branch of the Armenian Relief Society in Armenia.

This action is representative of the support and solidarity Greeks have for Armenians.

Last month, Thessaloniki also did not hesitate to offer a helping hand to Armenians, with dozens of boxes of medical-pharmaceutical materials gathered and delivered to the Armenian community of Thessaloniki to be shipped to Armenia.

This was announced last month when the Armenian flag was raised in front of the city hall of Alexandroupolis in the presence of the Armenian Community of the northern Greek city, Mayor Ioannis Zampoukis, and President of the Municipal Council, Dimitris Kolios.



Nagorno-Karabakh: Syrians used as ‘cannon fodder’

Arbi Tashjian
Arab News
Dec 11 2020
Armenian soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint after a truce agreement in Nagorno-Karabakh. Syrians have detailed how they were duped into fighting in the conflict. (AFP/File

  • Life-changing $2,000 offer for ‘sentry work’ ended in vicious front-line combat, recruits say
  • Fighter tells BBC: ‘I was paralyzed by fear, death was all around us’
Updated
Arab News
00:37


LONDON: Four Syrian nationals have claimed they were sent into battle in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as mercenaries, despite only enlisting for sentry duties in Azerbaijan.

The claims, made directly to the UK’s BBC, come as Turkey and Azerbaijan deny using mercenaries in the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

In August, people in rebel-held areas of northern Syria were told that there was paid employment overseas.

One of the Syrians told the BBC: “I had a friend who told me that there is a very good job you can do, just to be at military checkpoints in Azerbaijan.”

Another said: “They told us our mission would be to serve as sentries on the border — as peacekeepers. They were offering $2,000 a month. It felt like a fortune to us.”

Both enlisted for the work through Turkish-backed rebels that make up the Syrian National Army, a group opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad.

The civil war in Syria caused an economic breakdown and a decline in wages, and few people in the region now earn more than $1 a day. As a result, the promised salary seemed like a “godsend,” one of the Syrians said.

Recent estimates say that between 1,500 and 2,000 men enlisted and traveled to Azerbaijan via Turkey on a military aircraft.

However, the men were deliberately misled. They were being recruited for war, despite many having no military experience. The deadly ruse was discovered when they were taken to the front line and ordered to fight.

One of the Syrians said: “I didn’t expect to survive. It seemed like a 1 percent chance. Death was all around us.”

Azerbaijan and its regional ally Turkey have denied using mercenaries in the conflict. However, researchers have gathered a photographic evidence, drawn from videos and images posted online by fighters, that reveals a different story.

The Syrians were deployed on the southern side of the Azeri line, where both sides suffered heavy casualties. The fighters told the BBC that they “came under heavy fire” and were traumatized by their experiences. They chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from military higher-ups.

“My first battle began the day after I arrived,” said one.

“Myself and about 30 guys were sent to the front line. We walked for about 50 m when suddenly a rocket landed near us. I threw myself to the ground. The shelling lasted for 30 minutes. Those minutes felt like years. It was then that I regretted coming to Azerbaijan,” he said.

“We didn’t know what to do or how to react,” said another fighter, who added that he and many of his fellow recruits had almost no experience of war, let alone military training.

“I saw men dying, and others who just went running. They didn’t have any sense of where they were going, because they were basically civilians,” he said.

The four men claim Syrian recruits were provided with almost no protective equipment or medical support. Many fighters bled to death from wounds that medics could have treated, they added.

“The hardest moment was when one of my mates was hit,” said a fighter who was later hospitalized after suffering shrapnel wounds. “He was 20 m away from me when the shell landed. I saw him fall. He was calling to me and screaming. But his spot was exposed to the Armenian machine guns. I couldn’t help him. In the end he just died there.”

Another Syrian fighter said he was “paralyzed by fear” when the shelling began.

“I remember I just sat on the ground and cried, and my injured friends started to cry as well,” he said. “One guy suffered a shrapnel wound on his head. He died right there. Every day I see this. When it comes to me, I sit and cry, even now. I don’t know how I survived this war.”

Estimates of the Syrian death toll in the conflict vary. Official figures report a total of 2,400 casualties on the Armenian side and nearly 3,000 on the Azeri side. But Azerbaijan does not acknowledge that Syrians were among the dead.


BBC correspondent describes staying safe, finding journalistic camaraderie during Nagorno-Karabakh’s 6-week war

Arbi Tashjian
CPJ: Committee to Protect Journalists
Dec 9 2020

By Elena Rodina, Europe and Central Asia Research Associate on December 9, 2020 1:15 PM EST

Journalists who covered the recent six-week-long conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh faced violence to get the story of the region’s latest bloody chapter to the world. At least six journalists were injured in shelling attacks in Nagorno-Karabakh and two were assaulted when a mob descended on a broadcaster in Armenia to oppose its reporting on the November 9 peace treaty, as CPJ documented. CPJ issued safety advice for journalists covering the conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh, located within Azerbaijan’s borders, has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 truce. Fighting again broke out on September 27, with hundreds and possibly thousands killed, according to reports. In the November 9 peace treaty, Armenia ceded certain territories to Azerbaijan.

BBC Russia correspondent Marina Katayeva covered the most intense weeks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. She spoke to CPJ via messaging app on November 8 from Yerevan, the Armenian capital, just after she left the conflict zone, and again on November 12, also from Yerevan, about the challenges of working in war, safety measures for reporters, and the importance of journalistic camaraderie. For security reasons, Katayeva writes under a pseudonym, which CPJ has also used in this interview. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Had you covered conflict before, and how did you decide to cover Nagorno-Karabakh? 

I have never covered conflicts before, and my decision to go to Nagorno-Karabakh was dictated by my desire to go into the field, given that for half a year before that I had worked from home [due to COVID-19]. I wanted to finally see people, not just write articles based on phone interviews. Plus, I had been in Armenia before and knew the region.

Can you describe your daily routine while covering the conflict? 

My workdays are almost never the same. Planning is almost impossible because the situation is changing daily. But there are some rituals that I start every day with: checking social networks, calling people in the conflict zone whom I want to feature in an article. If the situation hasn’t evolved overnight, I proceed with what I planned for that day – meeting with people, recording interviews. If the road back to the hotel from the location takes a long time, I write the article while still in the car, using the Notes app on my phone. 

What do you do to make sure you’re protected? 

In our team, everyone has a bulletproof vest and a helmet, and we also brought those for our driver-interpreter. The main protocol is to not take these off if we hear shots or explosions and wear them in the zones where shelling can potentially start. When planning a trip to an area where the conflict is ongoing, we try to find a hotel with a basement. In Stepanakert [the de-facto capital of Nagorno-Karabakh] a couple of times we went to bed fully clothed in case of the nighttime shelling. 

How do you find out about safety concerns in a particular area? 

You can only learn about safety by calling a specific village or a city where you are going to and by asking the locals. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work. Shelling can start at any moment; it can catch you in the beginning of your visit or toward its end. Also, you cannot rely entirely upon the local peoples’ safety evaluations, simply because they do not always consider the situation around them dangerous. To any question about safety they would answer that “Everything is good, there is no danger.” And then they would proceed to tell you how the day before a shell had landed in their yard and got stuck in the ground next to an apple tree, unexploded. 

What is the most difficult part of covering Nagorno-Karabakh?

As in all conflict zones, the main difficulty is staying safe. It is impossible to guarantee full safety or predict anything here. There is also a question of difference of opinions. It is almost impossible to hear an alternative point of view on the events; it is natural and common for all the war zones, especially when the conflict has to do with the land or the integrity of a state. 

You are covering this conflict during a global pandemic. How do you and your team protect yourselves from the virus? 

Almost no one thinks about COVID-19 in the immediate proximity to the conflict zone – people who spend nights hiding in basements have different priorities. On the other hand, in Yerevan the rules are very strict: you are obliged to wear a mask in every store or closed space. Police can stop you on the street and ask you to put on a mask. I am going with the flow, so I am not wearing a mask in the conflict zone and I put it on when I leave it.  

How has working in Nagorno-Karabakh impacted you personally? 

I was most touched by a story of a refugee who had a birthday while he was staying in one of the hotels in Goris [a town in southern Armenia close to the Nagorno-Karabakh border]. The owner of the hotel decided to prepare a surprise for him, having learned that he would be turning 65 years old. She ordered a cake with candles, and when all the refugees gathered together for dinner, she turned the light off in the dining room and brought out that cake, playing loud music. While everyone around was applauding and congratulating him, the man looked at the cake with an empty stare, and all he could say was “Thank you.” Later I spoke with him and his wife, and learned that their sons were at war, and they came from Hadrut [the site of heavy fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh] leaving all their possessions behind, having the time to only grab their documents. 

In the duration of the whole work trip to Karabakh, my dominant emotion was sadness. I felt bad for the people who lose their houses, who must spend their days, sometimes weeks hiding in basements. I was sad that the war became routine for them, and that they organized their daily lives with a potential bombing in mind. The saddest thing is not that people complain or cry — I have almost never seen it here — but that they keep quiet or tell me that they are “doing just fine.” 

When you are covering a conflict for so long, does the sense of danger eventually diminish? 

Some people say that the feeling of danger changes with time, but not for me. Perhaps this is because during this trip I have been responsible not only for myself, but our whole journalistic team. I would not risk their safety, no matter how important of a story I had to cover. 

Do journalists covering Nagorno-Karabakh help each other and share information and resources?

Journalists are friendly with each other. Almost everyone crosses each other’s paths in the hotels of Goris or in Karabakh itself, and many get acquainted in the basements in Stepanakert. In these places people forget about competition and try to help each other. Of course, we are all looking for unique characters, unusual stories, and exclusive shots. But there is no animosity among journalists here. 

Elena Rodina, a native of Kazan, Russia, worked as a Moscow-based sociopolitical correspondent for Ogoniok, one of the oldest weekly Russian magazines, and Esquire Russia. Her journalism and research have been published in Caucasus Survey, Digital Ethics, Time Out Chicago, Newcity, Media and Communication, and Zeitschrift fur Slavische Philologie, among other outlets. Rodina holds a PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Oregon, in addition to her bachelor’s degree in Romanic-Germanic Philology from Russia’s Kazan Federal (former State) University.

Catholicos of All Armenians to address the nation

Arbi Tashjian

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 12:39, 8 December, 2020

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. The Supreme Spiritual Council is holding a meeting in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Priest Vahram Melikyan said on Facebook.

He informed that at the end of the meeting His Holiness Garegin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, will address the nation.

Edited and Translated by Aneta Harutyunyan