THE GEOPOLITICS OF SHEEP IN AN ARMENIAN REGION – MOSCOW TIMES
12:45 ~U 28.03.13
Moscow Times paper has published a remarkable article relating to the
Armenia’s government intention to lease thousands of hectares to Iran
that will be used as grazing pastures for Iranian livestock.
The author of the article James Brooks voices opinion that this
project may bring as many as 10,000 Iranian shepherds to Armenia.
“Iran’s Ambassador to Armenia, Mohammad Reisi, offers to rent thousands
of hectares of mountain pastures to provide grazing land for Iranian
sheep. With the grazing leases, he has estimated that Armenia could
increase its livestock fivefold. Within a decade, he says, Armenia
could be exporting 2 to 3 million sheep a year to Iran. Sounds good to
me. After all, not too many people are lining up to invest in Armenia,
a small, landlocked nation, with poor relations with two of its four
neighbors. What’s more, to the east, Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan
are closed. To the west, Armenia’s land borders with Turkey are still
closed,” Brooks writes.
The author says the sheep would largely graze in Armenia’s southernmost
region, Syunik. Long and as narrow as 30 kilometers wide in some
places, Syunik is Armenia’s lifeline to Iran. But it is strategically
vulnerable, sandwiched between two territories of Azerbaijan.
“Although Syunik is Armenia’s second-largest region, it is also one of
its least populated. With 15 percent of Armenia’s land area, Syunik
has less than 5 percent of Armenia’s people. The population dropped
in the late 1980s after ethnic fighting forced an Azeri minority to
flee to Azerbaijan and northern Iran,” Brooks writes.
“Without a large local population to draw on, the Iranian sheep
project would mean importing Iranian shepherds and possibly their
families. Depending on the age of slaughter – for lamb or mutton –
an annual export of 2.5 million sheep could mean an Iranian flock of 5
million sheep in southern Armenia. Given the region’s steep terrain,
it would be hard for one shepherd to watch more than 500 sheep. So,
back-of-the-envelope calculations point to as many as 10,000 Iranian
shepherds. Where would the shepherds come from?” the author says.
The article informs that the memorandum of understanding was signed
between Syunik and the neighboring Iranian region, a place with a
name that sounds ominous to many Armenians – Eastern Atrapatakan,
or Eastern Azerbaijan. With a population 20 times that of Syunik,
Eastern Atrapatakan is a keystone for the northern Iran’s Azeri
minority, about 17 million people.
“The Iranian sheep deal could come with as many 10,000 ethnic Azeri
shepherds, their families, and their watchdogs. But there is another
wrinkle: Over the past 20 years, the withdrawal of Armenian shepherds
from the mountain pastures has allowed the nation’s wolf population to
surge. Armenian authorities now pay a $275 bounty for each wolf shot.
So it stands to reason that Iranian shepherds would carry rifles to
protect their flocks from wolves and other predators. In a nutshell,
Armenians say, the Iranian sheep deal would mean several thousand
ethnic Azeri men, most of whom are armed with rifles, infiltrating
into a strategic area,” Brooks writes.
“I remember how the Azerbaijanis were quietly taking control of
Syunik during the Soviet years. We have liberated it. And now, we
want to give it to them again? Can’t we really understand that it
is the same Azeris – citizens of Iran – who would be coming back to
Syunik with their families, and so the blood we shed for those lands
would turn out to be for nothing?” Brooks ends the article quoting
Armenian environmentalist Silva Adamyan as saying.
http://www.tert.am/en/news/2013/03/28/iran-armenia/
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-geopolitics-of-sheep-in-an-armenian-region/477592.html#ixzz2OlPV0xTh