Author: Dabaghian Diana

Refugees find safety in Armenia, but the future remains uncertain

Dabaghian Diana
Oct 20 2023
STORIES
Like many of the 100,000 refugees who have fled to Armenia, Karine and her relatives are now grappling with the psychological impacts and questions over how to rebuild their lives.
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By Anahit Hayrapetyan and Melik Benkritly in Vardenis, Armenia
Karine, 24, had just given birth to her second child – a daughter named Mane – and was looking forward to her family arriving at the maternity hospital in Martakert, a town in Karabakh, to bring her and the baby home.

Karine, 24, had just given birth to her second child – a daughter named Mane – and was looking forward to her family arriving at the maternity hospital in Martakert, a town in Karabakh, to bring her and the baby home.

At Karine’s house on the outskirts of town, her close friend and sister-in-law, Mariam, was decorating the house and laying the table for a celebration to welcome the newest member of their family. With her were her husband Hrach and their two children, and her brother-in-law, – Karine's husband – Artyom.

But the joyful homecoming never happened. Messages began to circulate telling people to take cover. At the hospital, doctors told Karine and other mothers on the ward to head down to the basement with their newborns.

“At that moment, the main fear I had was that my son was in kindergarten,” Karine said. “I was thinking: ‘Where will he be … what will happen to him?’.”

While Artyom rushed to the kindergarten to find their young son and bring him to the hospital, Mariam and her family rushed home and took shelter in their basement. “We just left everything … and ran away; we didn’t finish decorating the room. We just managed to grab our documents from home and run down to the basement,” Mariam said.

With communications down, the whole family chose to reunite at the hospital and spent two anxious nights sheltering underground. Finally, fearing for their safety, they took the difficult decision to leave their hometown and head for the border with Armenia. With the roads jammed with families trying to escape, what was usually a three-hour journey took them more than 40 hours.

It was only when they finally crossed into Armenia early on 25 September at the village of Kornidzor, exhausted and hungry, that the reality of their situation hit Karine. “I will never forget the moment when we reached Kornidzor. I always saw it in the movies where people in extremely difficult situations …  are approached by aid workers, cars, rescue services. I would have never thought that I would also be approached by aid workers saying ‘how can I help you?’.”

Karine and her family were among more than 100,000 refugees who entered Armenia from Karabakh in the space of a week at the end of September. Many arrived traumatised, exhausted and hungry, and in urgent need of psychosocial support and emergency assistance. Some 30 per cent of the refugees are children, along with many women and older people.

Teams from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, have been on the ground at the border in Armenia since day one, providing assistance in support of the Government-led response. The agency has provided technical equipment to help the authorities register new arrivals and assess the needs of refugee families.  

UNHCR is working around the clock and, together with its partner Mission Armenia NGO, is distributing foldable beds and mattresses, warm blankets and pillows, linen, hygiene items, kitchen sets and other essentials to refugee families. Many new arrivals are being hosted in remote border communities and face the added challenge of coping with harsh early winter conditions.  The agency and its UN and NGO partners have appealed for $97 million to respond to the urgent needs of refugees in Armenia.

While some refugees are living in hotels, hostels, schools and other temporary shelters, Karine and her relatives are among those now staying with family and friends in Armenia. Fifteen members of the extended family have crammed into the two-bedroom house of Hrach’s and Artyom’s parents in Vardenis in the Gegharkunik province of Armenia, a rural town set amid plains surrounded by mountains to the north and east and Lake Sevan to the west.

The brothers’ mother Romella described the desperation she felt when she lost contact with her children and their families for several days. “It was a horrible feeling. I was crying all the time, praying for news. I cannot describe the feeling of relief when I learnt my children had arrived safely.”

That sense of relief outweighs any potential misgivings about having so many relatives under one roof. “On the contrary, I feel bliss, happiness. When the children were away, we were feeling lonely and the house felt empty to us. Now that everyone is here, and we are together, the house is full. I am so happy and gratified. Believe me, I do not have any concerns, nothing bothers me now.”

"We cannot live here like this for long."

Hrach, refugee in Armenia

 

But Karine and her young family are still deeply affected by their experience, like many refugees in Armenia whose lives have been uprooted. “The most touching thing is that my son wakes up every morning at 5 a.m. saying: ‘You will not take me to the kindergarten, no? I don’t want to go to the kindergarten.’ He is still afraid and does not want to go to kindergarten, as he was left alone there when all this happened.”

For Hrach, the current situation is only a temporary stopgap, but the future remains uncertain. He and his wife Mariam own a small house near the capital Yerevan, but it is only half finished and they cannot afford to complete the renovation work on top of the cost of the mortgage.  

“We cannot live here like this for long,” he said. “This is our priority now. The most important thing for me at this stage is to have a place to live, and from that point, we can start a new life: to find a job, enrol the children in school and kindergarten. [But] we need to have a home to begin our lives again and raise our children.”

https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/refugees-find-safety-armenia-future-remains-uncertain

"Armenia’s democracy continues to receive blows from outside forces" – Pashinyan

Dabaghian Diana
Oct 17 2023
  • JAMnews
  • Yerevan

Pashinian’s speech at the European Parliament

“Some pretend not to understand why the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh left their homes en masse. Such questions seem cynical in themselves. The answer is more than simple. Azerbaijan has clearly and unambiguously demonstrated its decision to make life impossible for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh,” said the Armenian Prime Minister in the European Parliament.

According to Nikol Pashinyan, the Karabakh Armenians left their homes and their homeland in one week, and this happened “in the conditions of inaction” of the Russian peacekeeping contingent called to ensure their security.

“At a time when 100,000 Armenians fled from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, our security allies not only did not help us, but also made public calls for a change of power in Armenia, for the overthrow of the democratic government,” he said.

Pashinyan emphasized that “another ‘plot’ against the Armenian state failed as a result of the unity of the people.”

During his speech in the European Parliament, the Prime Minister touched upon the problems related to the resettlement of Karabakh Armenians in the country, the signing of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, as well as the challenges and threats facing democracy in Armenia.

Main points of the Armenian Prime Minister’s speech in the European Parliament.

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Pashinyan emphasized that “surprised faces” of some representatives of international structures in connection with the exodus of all Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are unacceptable to him.

He reminded that he himself warned about the threat of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh for several months in a row, and various organizations and countries made statements, appeals, adopted resolutions on the issue, including in the European Parliament. But even the decision of the UN International Court of Justice did not change anything.

This is Pashinyan’s opinion both about the work of the government, which provided housing for compatriots arriving from NK, and the ordinary residents of Armenia, who welcomed them into their homes.

“Our international partners confess that they have not seen a case when 100 thousand refugees entered the country in a week and this country could accept all of them without creating refugee camps and tent settlements,” European deputies applauded after this statement of the Prime Minister.

He informed that Armenia is implementing a $100 million program to support IDPs. He thanked the EU and the countries that have already provided financial aid, noting that the country needs “budgetary support” to overcome the humanitarian crisis.

JAMnews tells about those who have resettled in Armenia. What they came with, what they left behind in their homeland and what they expect

The Armenian Prime Minister announced that the region needs peace and he came to the European Parliament with this very message:

“There is a need for a situation when all countries of the region will live with open borders, will be linked by active economic, political and cultural ties, with accumulated experience and traditions of solving all issues through diplomacy and dialog.”

According to Pashinyan, he considers it his political commitment to support the establishment of peace in the region.

Since 2020, Pashinyan said, Armenia has received more than one blow to its democracy, and each time it happened according to a recurring scenario:

“Namely, the following happened: external aggression, then inaction of Armenia’s security allies, then attempts to use war or humanitarian situation or external security threat to overthrow the democracy and sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia – using hybrid technologies provoking internal instability directed by external forces.”

According to him, the most serious of such strikes was Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia’s sovereign territory in September 2022. “The last and most tragic” he called the military actions that Azerbaijan initiated in Nagorno-Karabakh in September this year.

He believes that “from the inevitable in many ways ordeals that have fallen to Armenia’s share in recent years, the country would have been simply paralyzed, would have lost its independence and sovereignty if it had not been democratic.”

At the same time, the Prime Minister is sure that democracy is going through hard times not only in Armenia:

“The events taking place in Armenia and elsewhere in the world raise the following question: whether democracy is capable of ensuring security, peace, unity, well-being and happiness. I didn’t come here to ask that question, I came here to answer it. My answer is unequivocally yes.

Conflictologist Arif Yunusov does not exclude that in case of the beginning of military actions on the part of Azerbaijan on the territory of Armenia, Western partners may resort to sanctions against Baku

According to Pashinyan, this can be quite realistic if official Baku officially confirms the previously developed principles of the settlement of relations during the upcoming meeting in Brussels. This refers to the agreements that were reached during earlier meetings. In particular, Pashinyan spoke about the meeting held in Prague on October 6, 2022, and the Brussels talks organized this year.

The sides, according to Pashinyan, reached the following agreements and worked out the following principles for the settlement of relations:

  • mutual recognition of the countries’ sovereignty, inviolability of borders and territorial integrity,
  • demarcation of borders on the basis of the latest maps of the USSR General Staff, which should also become the basis for mutual withdrawal of troops,
  • unblocking of regional communications on the basis of full respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass, as well as equality and reciprocity.

He assured that Armenia “has the will to move toward peace.” But Pashinyan expects that the international community, the EU and the countries of the region will provide support to make this chance a reality.

He emphasized that there was a serious opportunity for a breakthrough in the peace process at the Granada meeting, but Aliyev refused to participate in it.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Council President Charles Michel held a quadrilateral meeting in Granada within the framework of the third summit of the European Political Community. The President of Azerbaijan refused to participate in this meeting, citing France’s biased position.

Pashinyan said that the President of Azerbaijan, unlike him, did not declare that he would recognize Armenia’s territorial integrity within certain borders, i.e. on the territory of 29.8 thousand square kilometers. Only recently he made a statement without indicating specific figures. In his opinion, Aliyev avoids specifying in order to put forward Armenia’s territorial claims:

“At the same time, Ilham Aliyev declares that there is no border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but according to the Alma-Ata Declaration, the administrative borders of the former Soviet republics have become the state borders of these countries.”

The Armenian Prime Minister also called ambiguous the statements made by Baku regarding the maps on which the border should be demarcated.

At the end of this topic, he announced that Azerbaijan puts forward one more demand that has no grounds, namely the provision of an extraterritorial corridor through the territory of Armenia.

Main provisions of the statement adopted at the end of the Pashinyan-Macron-Scholz-Michel quadrilateral meeting, as well as a commentary by an Armenian political scientist

Touching upon the topic of the so-called “Zangezur corridor”, the Prime Minister said he had not made such a promise:

“There are analytical studies that Baku manipulates the corridor terminology in order to provoke a new war in the region, occupy new territories of Armenia and continue the blockade of Armenia.”

Meanwhile, he re-emphasized that there is an agreement to unblock regional communications in compliance with the legislations of the countries through which they pass:

“We are ready to make such decisions a day earlier, we are ready to restore the Meghri railroad.”

The Armenian side, as Pashinyan said, calls this program “Armenian Crossroads”, but it can become regional and be called “Crossroads of Peace”. He assured that Yerevan is ready to unblock the highways as well, to ensure the safety of people and goods passing through them.

Main provisions of the statement adopted at the end of the Pashinyan-Macron-Scholz-Michel quadrilateral meeting, as well as a commentary by an Armenian political scientist

At the end of his speech, Nikol Pashinyan said that Armenia is ready to establish even closer relations with the EU “as far as the EU considers it possible”. According to him, the European Union is Armenia’s key partner and economic ties are getting stronger. The Prime Minister listed the directions of cooperation with European partners: economic and investment programs, reforms in the spheres of education, state administration and judicial system.

In addition to economic and investment programs, he also mentioned reforms in education and public administration, judicial, police and rescue systems.

“But for the first time, the EU was also involved in Armenia’s security agenda,” he emphasized, referring to the EU civilian observer mission monitoring the border with Azerbaijan.

https://jam-news.net/pashinians-speech-at-the-european-parliament/

Armenian FM meets with U.S. Senior Adviser for Caucasus Negotiations

Dabaghian Diana

 14:32,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 11, ARMENPRESS. On October 11, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan met with Louis Bono, U.S. Senior Adviser for Caucasus Negotiations, U.S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the Armenian foreign ministry said.

“Touching upon the process aimed at establishing lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus and of normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, Ararat Mirzoyan emphasized the need to restrain encroachments against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia and in case of the absence of such intentions on the part of Azerbaijan, the need of constructive engagement of Azerbaijan in the peace process. Views were also exchanged on addressing current humanitarian challenges and rights of more than 100,000 forcibly displaced Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Minister Mirzoyan emphasized that Nagorno-Karabakh was factually subjected to ethnic cleansing, despite numerous targeted appeals of international partners, including the USA. Ararat Mirzoyan emphasized that the international failure to prevent the mass displacement of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh from their homeland in the 21st century once again testifies the imperative of clear steps of international actors in such situations,” the foreign ministry said in a readout.

As an Azerbaijani, I have to speak out about my country’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians

Dabaghian Diana
The Guardian, UK
Oct 9 2023

Ruslan Javadov


We are raised to hate and fear each other, but I want my voice of hope to reach the displaced children of Nagorno-Karabakh

The world has just seen an end to centuries of Armenian existence in Nagorno-Karabakh. All ethnic Armenians have left the disputed region, travelling in a caravan of cars over the border to Armenia. The Armenian children now displaced will hate the Azerbaijanis, just as I once hated the Armenians for what they did to me. I was a victim of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s, when it was Armenia that was victorious, and it ethnically cleansed all Azerbaijanis from its lands. I am speaking out, hoping to be a small pebble, lodged in this endless cycle of violence.

Before the first war, inside Azerbaijan’s borders there existed the “Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast”, a majority-Armenian island, so to speak, of mountainous land, with the culturally significant, majority-Azerbaijani citadel Shusha right in the middle. Concentric circles of alternating ethnicities radiated outward from Shusha; Azerbaijanis surrounded by Armenians surrounded by Azerbaijanis and Azerbaijani Kurds and so on – a great inconvenience for emerging nationalist narratives. Being Armenian and Azerbaijani became oppositional and mutually exclusive. Neighbour went against neighbour, and eventually state against state, with their armies wreaking havoc on the other.

Nagorno-Karabakh votes to secede from Soviet Azerbaijan – archive, 1988
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During that war my first childhood memories were formed. I remember walking down a dirt road in my father’s village at dusk when the sky suddenly turned bright as day – bullets flying above my head. I remember attending the burial of my 18-year-old uncle, and being scared of the graveyard, where the eyes of the dead stared at me from pictures on their gravestones. He had been drafted into the war and had died there. I came to understand from the adults’ conversations that he had stepped on a landmine and had his legs blown off. He had then shot himself in the temple before his friends could get to him to stop him.

My mother’s family, Azerbaijani Kurds, hailed from the mountainous district of Lachin. I was told we had a big, beautiful house there, with many windows. My mother fondly remembered how my great-grandmother would take her on horseback up the rugged cliffs. It felt like flying, she would say. Armenian forces ended our ancestral existence there, ethnically cleansing everyone who was not Armenian. I never saw our house, never got to fly on horseback, and never saw Lachin, except in the news with its new Armenian name, “Berdzor”.

Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh arrive in Kornidzor, Armenia on 29 September. Photograph: Irakli Gedenidze/Reuters

In school, I learned that the Armenians were villains responsible for all our tragedies; this was not hard to believe given what my family had been through. The Russian empire, we were taught, had transported them into our country as a loyal Christian population from Iran after the conclusion of the Russo-Persian wars in 1828. We learned that the Armenians were conniving tricksters never to be trusted. On TV, I heard Armenians described as “the abominable enemy” and “vandals”. The horrifying pogroms Azerbaijanis committed against the Armenians in our major cities were denied, minimised or explained away as being organised by the Armenians to make themselves look like victims, garner international sympathy and justify starting a war of occupation. The ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Azerbaijani and Soviet troops during the infamous events of 1991 was never even mentioned. Nor did we ever hear about the wilful and systematic destruction of Armenian heritage in Azerbaijan.

I have since come to learn that the Armenians were fed the same types of messages about the Azerbaijanis. We were labelled “Turks”, with obvious traumatic associations with the Armenian genocide, which made us guilty for a crime in another land by another people. The cultural, religious and linguistic differences between the Caucasian Azerbaijanis and Anatolian Turks, who had in fact fought wars with each other, did not concern the Armenian nationalists. We were nothing but barbarian invaders from central Asia with no history and no culture.

After our horrible fate in the 1990s, hatred seized Azerbaijan, and destroyed us. The current president, Ilham Aliyev, took power in 2003 and curtailed free speech, with the notable exception of hate speech against the Armenians. An Azerbaijani is always welcome to hate the Armenians a little more and to blame them for all our problems. The first family has been accused of benefiting from state contracts and business deals; Aliyev has even benefited from the plight of those in Karabakh, using our suffering to legitimise his endless repressions.

‘It’s a ghost town’: UN arrives in Nagorno-Karabakh to find ethnic Armenians have fled
Read more

Aliyev would have you believe that the Armenians are leaving Nagorno-Karabakh of their own free will – a lie. The Armenians know well what sorry destiny awaits them if they stay. This process is, of course, ethnic cleansing.

I left Azerbaijan 15 years ago, displaced this time not by the Armenians but by the cruelty of those who were supposed to love me and protect me. I fled domestic violence after my father tried to kill me for being gay, and there was no person or institution in Azerbaijan that could protect me. I am as displaced as a person could be, and, through my words here, I may never be able to visit Azerbaijan again for fear of persecution. But I am compelled by my conscience.

I want Armenian children being forcefully displaced from their homes to hear the words that would have once meant everything to me: I am sorry we failed you. One day, when you understand what happened to you, hatred will start to drip into your heart, and you will want to seek vengeance. In that moment, take my outstretched hand and let me guide you back to our shared humanity. For the only true “us” and “them” lies between the perpetrators of violence, and those who reject it.

  • Ruslan Javadov is a pseudonym

 

Turkish Press: Azerbaijan arrests several top Karabakh separatist leaders

Dabaghian Diana
TRT World, Turkey
Oct 4 2023

The arrests come as Baku moved swiftly to establish total control over the region following the lightning anti-terror operation to subdue the Armenian-backed illegal armed groups.

Authorities in Azerbaijan have arrested several former separatist leaders of Karabakh after reclaiming control of the Armenian-occupied region in a lightning military operation last month, a top Azerbaijani news agency said.

Arayik Harutyunyan, who led the region before stepping down at the beginning of September, was arrested and was being brought to the Azerbaijani capital, the APA news agency said on Tuesday.

Arkadi Gukasian, who served as the separatist 'president' from 1997 until 2007, and Bako Sahakyan, who held the job from 2007 until 2020, also were arrested along with the 'speaker' of the separatist legislature, Davit Ishkhanyan, APA said.

The wave of arrests comes as Azerbaijani authorities move swiftly to establish their control over the region after a military operation that put an end to the illegal Armenian occupation in the region.

While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians, most of them have rushed to flee the region.

In a 24-hour anti-terrorist operation that began Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s occupying Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate.

The separatist government then agreed to disband itself by the end of the year, but Azerbaijani authorities are already in charge of the region.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

'Reintegration' plan

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Karabakh came under illegal Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, turning about 1 million of its Azerbaijani residents into refugees.

After a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the South Caucasus Mountains, along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had occupied earlier.

Azerbaijan’s presidential office said the country has presented a plan for the “reintegration” of ethnic Armenians in the region, noting that “the equality of rights and freedoms, including security, is guaranteed to everyone regardless of their ethnic, religious or linguistic affiliation.”

It said the plan envisages improving infrastructure to bring it in line with the rest of the country and offers tax exemptions, subsidies, low-interest loans and other incentives. The statement added that Azerbaijani authorities have held three rounds of talks with representatives of the region’s ethnic Armenian population and will continue those discussions.

Nagorno-Karabakh enclave emptied after entire ethnic Armenian population flees

Dabaghian Diana
ABC News
Oct 2 2023

More than 100,000 Armenians have fled in what’s being called “ethnic cleansing.”

ByPatrick Reevell

LONDON — Virtually the entire ethnic Armenian population of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has fled, with the last buses carrying refugees having left on Monday, according to Russia’s peacekeeping force deployed there.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians left the enclave in the last week, according to local officials, abandoning their homes after Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, recaptured the region with a military offensive just over a week ago.

The exodus has emptied the enclave in what Armenia has condemned as “ethnic cleansing.”

A television news crew from Al Jazeera showed the region’s capital, known to Armenians as Stepanakert, completely deserted. The city, which had a population estimated at more than 50,000, appeared now to be a ghost town. The Al Jazeera crew showed the city’s central square abandoned and strewn with empty chairs, used by people waiting for evacuation.

Before Azerbaijan’s offensive, the enclave’s population was estimated at 120,000. But a spokesperson for the Karabakh Armenians’ unrecognized state’s emergency services ministry on Sunday said only a tiny handful of people now remained in the enclave.

Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, announced plans for Nagorno-Karabakh’s reintegration into his country, signaling he intended to quickly restore strong control over it.

The region will now be overseen by special representative offices to Azerbaijan’s president and security will be handled by Azerbaijan’s interior ministry, Aliyev said. Azerbaijan’s currency, the manat, would be reintroduced.

Aliyev said the equality of rights and freedoms, including security, would be guaranteed for all residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, and it would be permitted to use Armenian there. He also pledged that religious freedoms would be guaranteed, and cultural and religious monuments protected.

The pledges appeared to ignore the fact that the enclave’s Armenian population had already fled. The Armenians fleeing have said they don’t believe Azerbaijan’s guarantees of their rights and fear they would face persecution.

A United Nations mission also arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh Sunday to assess humanitarian needs, but it faced heavy criticism from local ethnic Armenian authorities who said they were far too late, given the civilian population was no longer there.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been at the center of a bloody conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for decades. Internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, it had been home to an ethnic Armenian population for centuries. As the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians tried to break away from Azerbaijan, declaring independence.

A bloody war, in which Armenia aided the separatists, saw hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians also driven out of the region and ended with ethnic Armenians controlling most of Nagorno-Karabakh with their own unrecognized state.

But Azerbaijan reopened the conflict in 2020, starting a full-scale war that decisively defeated Armenia and ended with a truce deal brokered by Russia, which deployed peacekeepers to enforce it.

Two weeks ago, after blockading the enclave for nine months, Azerbaijan launched a new offensive, swiftly defeating the ethnic Armenian authorities in two days. The enclave’s population started fleeing shortly afterward to Armenia.

There has been little international response to the crisis. Western countries, including the U.S. and France, have expressed concern and called for Azerbaijan to protect the rights of the Armenians. The Biden administration announced $11.5 million in humanitarian aid and dispatched the high-profile head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, to the region last week.

Richard Giragosian, the director of the Regional Studies Center based in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, said the international response was “too little too late” and had set a “dangerous precedent.”

“[This was] a seeming vindication of the use of force over diplomacy,” Giragosian told ABC News by phone. “A military victory of authoritarian power over a struggling democracy.”

But he said it had also shown the West has little influence over Azerbaijan. “What we see is Azerbaijan simply does not care about Western threats, pronouncements, and at the same time, the West has little leverage over Azerbaijan,” Giragosian said.

Armenia’s defense ministry on Monday also accused Azerbaijani forces of opening fire on a car carrying food to an Armenian border post near the village of Kut.

Azerbaijani forces are likely to move into Nagorno-Karabakh’s now-empty capital, which it calls Khankhendi, in the next few days.

Russia’s peacekeeping contingent said a joint Russian-Azerbaijani patrol came under sniper fire inside Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday, but that there were no casualties.

A meeting of representatives from Azerbaijan and the Karabakh Armenian leadership will take place for the first time in the capital in the “near future,” the news agency of the enclave’s unrecognized Armenian state reported Monday.

Politician Says Iran Losing Key Gateway As Azerbaijan Takes Karabakh

Dabaghian Diana
Oct 2 2023

The former head of Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee says Azerbaijan’s attack on Karabakh is the beginning of a regional crisis.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh told Didban Iran [Iran Monitor] website in Tehran that the country is facing a serious challenge as one of its gateways to Europe is threatened because of the military development in the Caucasus. 

Falahatpisheh also pointed out that Iranian officials and military commanders who used to deliver passionate speeches about Iran’s interests and authority in the region are silent in the face of threats to Tehran’s interest. 

During the past months, several Iranian military commanders and politicians warned Azerbaijan not to attack Armenia and avoid closing Iran’s gateway to Europe at its borders with Armenia. As Azerbaijan expelled 120,000 Armenians from the enclave, it now threatens to enter and occupy the narrow strip of land connecting Iran via Armenia to Russia and Europe.

Iran has also long warned Azerbaijan about its close military relations with Israel, which is the Baku’s main arms supplier.

Mashregh News, a media outlet with close links to Iranian security and intelligence organizations on September 9, called an attack on Karabakh Iran’s “red line” and maintained that such an action will entail consequences for Azerbaijan. The threat later proved to be hollow. 

Iran’s silence in the face of the development is apparently linked to a visit to Iran by Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu immediately before the attack. Meanwhile, Tehran’s inaction was quite embarrassing for the regime and its military commanders considering months of bragging on IRGC media outlets and social media channels about Iran’s swift reaction in case Azerbaijan attacked Karabakh. 

Some Iranian social media users ridiculed the Iranian military and posted a photo of a smiling Iranian military attache’ walking alongside victorious Azeri officers in Karabakh following the attack. One user wrote: “I wrongly thought that the Iranian regime’s officials were trying to be strategically patient in the face of Azerbaijan’s alliance with Israel.”

Falahatpisheh told Didban Iran that “All this is an outcome of Iran’s outdated foreign policy. At times we saw Iranian officials delivering irresponsible speeches at the borders with Azerbaijan. If what is happening now is Iran’s real policy, those speakers should be accountable for agitating the society at the expense of Iran’s national interests.” 

The former lawmaker said that the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh is not the end of the conflict. On the contrary, it marks the beginning of a new crisis in the region. Tens of thousands of Armenians have been displaced and their private and public rights poses a new challenge for the region’s leaders. This is likely to turn into a chronic challenge not only for Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also for other players such as Turkey and Israel. Particularly because Iran will perceive Israel’s presence at its borders as a true challenge. 

He said: “Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s stance during the conflict were more realistic that the other leaders involved. At least he acknowledged that Iranians are not going to like the closure of one of their key gateways to Europe and the outside world. 

Meanwhile, Erdogan’s call for a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia to discuss the aftermaths and implications of the attack on Karabakh, without mentioning Iran. 

Falahatpisheh pointed out that Iran’s policy about the region dated back to three decades ago and Tehran was oblivious to the developments and dynamics that have been taking shape during the past thirty years in the region. 

He argued that as a result of the current conflict, Azerbaijan will have to allocate a major part of its annual budget to military spending. He added that by inviting countries from beyond the region into this conflict, Azerbaijan has made a mistake. It could have solved its problems with Armenia in a different way. 

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202310018322

Azerbaijan moves to reaffirm control of Nagorno-Karabakh as the Armenian exodus slows to a trickle

Dabaghian Diana
Oct 2 2023

  • By The Associated Press

The last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh left the region Monday, completing a grueling weeklong exodus of over 100,000 people — more than 80% of its residents — after Azerbaijan reclaimed the area in a lightning military operation.

The bus that entered Armenia carried 15 passengers with serious illnesses and mobility problems, said Gegham Stepanyan, a human rights ombudsman for the former breakaway region that Azerbaijan calls Karabakh. He called for information about any other residents who want to leave but have had trouble doing so.

In a 24-hour campaign that began Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate. The separatist government then agreed to disband itself by the end of the year, but Azerbaijani authorities are already in charge of the region.

Azerbaijan Interior Ministry spokesman Elshad Hajiyev told The Associated Press on Monday the country’s police have established control of the entire region.

“Work is conducted to enforce law and order in the entire Karabakh region,” he said, adding that Azerbaijani police have moved to “protect the rights and ensure security of the Armenian population in accordance with Azerbaijan’s law.”

While Baku has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians, most of them hastily fled the region, fearing reprisals or losing the freedom to use their language and practice their religion and customs.

The Armenian government said Monday that 100,514 of the region’s estimated 120,000 residents have crossed into Armenia.

Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said some people had died during the exhausting and slow journey over the single mountain road into Armenia that took as long as 40 hours. The exodus followed a nine-month Azerbaijani blockade of the region that left many suffering from malnutrition and lack of medicine.

Armenia alleged the closure denied basic food and fuel supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan rejected the accusation, saying the Armenian government was using it for weapons shipments and argued the region could receive supplies through the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam — a solution long resisted by Nagorno-Karabakh authorities.

Sergey Astsetryan, 40, one of the last Nagorno-Karabakh residents to leave in his own vehicle Sunday, said some elderly people decided to stay, adding that others might return if they see it’s safe for ethnic Armenians under Azerbaijani rule.

“My father told me that he will return when he has the opportunity,” Astsetryan told reporters at a checkpoint on the Armenian border.

Azerbaijani authorities have arrested several former members of the separatist government and encouraged ethnic Azerbaijani residents who fled the area amid a war three decades ago to start moving back.

The streets of the regional capital, which is called Khankendi by Azerbaijan and Stepanakert by the Armenians, appeared empty and littered with trash, with doors of deserted businesses flung open.

The sign with the city’s Azerbaijani name was placed at one entrance and Azerbaijani police checkpoints were set up on the outskirts, with officers checking the trunks of cars.

Just outside the city, a herd of cows grazed in an abandoned orchard, and a small dog, which appeared to have been left behind by its owners, silently watched passing vehicles.

Russian peacekeeping troops could be seen on a balcony of one building in the city, and others were at their base outside it, where their vehicles were parked.

On Sunday, Azerbaijan prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for former Nagorno-Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan, who led the region before stepping down at the beginning of September. Azerbaijani police arrested one of Harutyunyan’s former prime ministers, Ruben Vardanyan, on Wednesday as he tried to cross into Armenia.

“We put an end to the conflict,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech Monday. “We protected our dignity, we restored justice and international law.”

He added that “our agenda is peace in the Caucasus, peace in the region, cooperation, shared benefits, and today, we demonstrate that.”

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, turning about 1 million of its Azerbaijani residents into refugees. After a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains, along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had captured earlier.

Armenian authorities have accused the Russian peacekeepers, who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after the 2020 war, of standing idle and failing to stop the Azerbaijani onslaught. The accusations were rejected by Moscow, which argued that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene.

The mutual accusations have further strained the relations between Armenia and its longtime ally Russia, which has accused the Armenian government of a pro-Western tilt.

Allegations of shooting on both sides resumed Monday for the first time since a Sept. 20 cease-fire.

Russian Defense Ministry alleged Monday that its patrol in the region’s capital, conducted jointly with Azerbaijani forces, was fired at by a sniper, although it added that it wasn’t clear who was behind the attack.

Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’ defense ministries, in turn, traded accusations of cross-border shooting. The Armenian military accused Azerbaijan of shooting at one of its vehicles, killing one soldier and wounding two more in an area near the Armenia-Azerbaijani border in the Gegharkunik region of Armenia. The ministry said a car carrying food for soldiers came under fire, along with an ambulance. Azerbaijani forces said the Armenian military opened fire at their positions in the Kalbajar region, which lies between the north of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan alleged Thursday that the exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh amounted to “a direct act of ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected Pashinyan’s accusations, arguing their departure was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Speaking to the AP in Lachin, the Azerbaijani town that had been controlled by separatists for nearly three decades until Baku’s forces reclaimed it in 2020, Solmaz Abbasova, 67, said returning home was a dream that sustained her family since the earlier exodus.

“It was a boundless happiness to come back home after 31 years and see the things which were so dear — the land, the river, the forest and the lake,” Abbasova said, adding that her husband and son were with her but their daughter died before she could return.

She said the Armenians are leaving the region safely by their own choice, unlike her family and other Azerbaijani refugees, adding that many were killed as they tried to leave.

“I feel sorry for simple Armenians leaving Karabakh now, but there is a big difference: They and their children aren’t being hunted and killed as they killed our refugees,” she said. “They have a choice whether to stay or leave calmly.”

Azerbaijan’s presidential office said the country has presented a plan for the “reintegration” of ethnic Armenians in the region, noting that “the equality of rights and freedoms, including security, is guaranteed to everyone regardless of their ethnic, religious or linguistic affiliation.”

It said the plan envisages improving infrastructure to bring it line with the rest of the country and offers tax exemptions, subsidies, low-interest loans and other incentives. The statement added Azerbaijani authorities have held three rounds of talks with representatives of the region’s ethnic Armenian population and will continue the discussions.

Associated Press writers Aida Sultanova in Shusha, Azerbaijan, and Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed.

https://www.beloitdailynews.com/news/national-news/armenian-exodus-from-nagorno-karabakh-ebbs-as-azerbaijan-moves-to-reaffirm-control/article_b1facbba-3fec-5548-bde9-17d99c268934.html

Armenian relief groups seeking public help as thousands of refugees flee Artsakh

Dabaghian Diana
ABC 7 Eyewitness News
Sept 29 2023
ByABC7.com staff

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — The humanitarian crisis at the Armenian border with Azerbaijan is growing by the hour. Ten of thousands of refugees are fleeing the Armenian enclave of Artsakh.

Representatives of the Armenian National Committee of America are closely monitoring the situation.

Nearly 100,000 people have flooded into a small town just inside the Armenian border, and the country itself is struggling to help the families streaming in. ANCA says more help is desperately needed.

“It’s a very small village, and now they just have an influx of almost 85,000 people,” said Arek Santikian with ANCA. “It’s a huge humanitarian crisis.”

“You’re talking about people who left bunched with other family members into a small car and they really just have the clothes on their back, maybe a bag of some essentials. And a lot of kids.”

ANCA says help from the United States only provides about $95 a person, for families who have lost everything.

Anyone who wants to help can donate here through the Armenian Relief Society.

Why renewed fighting in Artsakh region may herald new war with Armenia