Author: Karapet Navasardian

Yerevan hopes that the arrangements on the reopening of borders between Armenia and Turkey will be implemented soon. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated about this during the debates on the draft 2024 state budget at the joint meeting of parliamentary standing committees in the National Assembly of Armenia Monday.

"I hope that in the near future we will see the implementation of the arrangements that were made as a result of the meetings of the special envoys of Armenia and Turkey," said Pashinyan.

According to the Armenian PM, the Armenia-Turkey border shall be reopened at this phase for citizens of third countries and holders of diplomatic passports.

Also, Pashinyan noted that in addition to political arrangements, considerable infrastructural work was also done in this regard.

President Joe Biden announced last week that the United States would provide “$100 million of new US funding for humanitarian assistance in both Gaza and the West Bank.” As my colleague Danielle Pletka notes, the administration will channel money for Gaza from the U.S. Agency for International Development's emergency funds that will not be subject to congressional scrutiny. USAID, meanwhile, will not answer questions about how it will spend that money in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

What is certain is that Hamas retains authoritarian control over the Gaza Strip, and it is not possible to distribute aid without going through at least some Hamas structures. Speaking to CNN, principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer twisted himself into knots explaining how the administration had come to an “understanding” with Hamas about how the money would be spent without actually saying what that understanding was. That Finer’s comments came so quickly after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported Hamas stole medicine and fuel before deleting its tweets only adds to the White House's naivete.

In effect, it is the North Korea aid debacle all over again. At the time, President Bill Clinton agreed to provide both food and heavy fuel oil to North Korea as part of an incentive package for a diplomatic deal. North Korea cheated, sending both oil and food to its army as ordinary citizens froze and starved. When the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed the North Korean cheating and diversion, the State Department blamed America for demanding too inflexible a regimen of control.

Making the same mistake twice in the face of terrorists and rogues is bad enough, but it gets worse. While Biden bails out Hamas, a terrorist group holding American hostages and with American blood on its hands, it repeatedly refused to provide any substantive aid to Nagorno-Karabakh, which is home to one of the world’s oldest indigenous Christian populations.

In December 2022, then-Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried testified that since the second Nagorno-Karabakh War began in September 2020, the United States had provided “$21 million in humanitarian assistance, directly and indirectly.” Most of that assistance was indirect, channeled through the International Committee of the Red Cross. In theory, this was meant to provide humanitarian support for Nagorno-Karabakh’s besieged Christians, but Azerbaijan refused to allow ICRC aid in. That did not stop Azerbaijan from collecting its portion, as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridors Act that prohibits countries receiving American assistance from interfering with its distribution in other countries, regions, or territories. In practice, this meant that Nagorno-Karabakh received only a portion of the $2.5 million the U.S. provided in demining assistance for the South Caucasus.

The juxtaposition is damning. Hamas ran one of the world’s worst dictatorships. It transformed Gaza into a terrorist statelet. Artsakh, the self-governing entity formed by indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, was democratic and invested what money it had into development projects, roads, and schools. Hamas represses all religious _expression_ that does not conform to its radical Sunni ideology, while Artsakh embraced religious freedom.

In effect, Biden shows a double standard: He rewards terrorists and turns his back on its victims. As a result, one of the world’s oldest indigenous communities was destroyed. Rather than get meaningful assistance, all they got was a letter promising his “strong support” amid Armenian “mourning” and a brief photo-op by Samantha Power, the USAID administrator who now will channel tens of millions of dollars to Hamas.

Christians, proponents of democracy, and victims of terrorism should be outraged.

Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/israel-war-biden-funds-hamas-but-turns-his-back-on-nagorno-karabakh-christians

Signs of torture and mutilation on the remains of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) who were killed during Azerbaijan’s attack in September were reported by the Human Rights Defender of Armenia Anahit Manasyan on Thursday. Manasyan noted that her preliminary report on the ill-treatment and torture in question was used by lawyers representing Armenia in a hearing at the International Court of Justice last week.

The report outlined findings of torture and mutilations on numerous bodies transported from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, including civilians, women and children. This evidence highlights the brutal acts alleged to have been committed during the conflict.

In November 2020, a Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ending the six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh. However, post-war tensions remained, with sporadic border clashes throughout 2021. On 12 December 2022, the Azerbaijani government allegedly orchestrated a blockade of the Republic of Artsakh by deploying citizens claiming to be eco-activists to obstruct the Lachin corridor, a vital humanitarian link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and the outside world, using environmental protests as a pretext. This blockade significantly impeded access to essential supplies for the residents of the region, notably in Stepanakert, the former de facto capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. The situation further escalated in September 2023 when Azerbaijan launched a swift offensive, leading to the dissolution of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. This offensive triggered a mass exodus of local ethnic Armenians, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the region.

Manasyan, along with the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatović, visited the Kotayk province on Wednesday and met with displaced Nagorno-Karabakh residents temporarily housed there. They spoke with around 105 forcibly displaced individuals, including 40 children.

“Private interviews were held with forcibly displaced persons. They presented the deprivations they suffered and the problems caused by the forced displacement to the Defender and the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe”, a statement from the office of Armenia’s Human Rights Defender revealed.

Following the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azeri media showcased Azerbaijan’s president İlham Aliyev trampling on the Artsakh flag in Stepanakert on 16 October.

https://medyanews.net/torture-signs-on-bodies-of-nagorno-karabakh-armenians-human-rights-defender-of-armenia/

The riot squad appears to have taken up residence on Republic Square. Dressed in khaki blue, they occupy the steps of government buildings 24 hours a day, their metal shields resting upright like cello cases, batons at the ready. Things may have calmed down a little in the Armenian capital but tensions are running high. The protests could easily restart.

As helmeted riot police lined up like a praetorian guard, some were seen to lower their heads when berated by a middle-aged woman. She suggested quite forcibly that they should be ashamed of themselves, questioning why they defend buildings when the government inside those buildings had turned its back on their own people.

She was referring to the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who belong to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, known historically as Artsakh. This little-reported but long-running dispute came to a stunning conclusion when a two-day military offensive by Azeri forces last month overran local defences.

[ Nagorno-Karabakh: more than 53,000 flee to Armenia as exodus continues from region ]

The speed of such abject capitulation meant that these remote, rural highlands have been virtually emptied out, its panic-filled civilians loading up cars to the rooftops and chugging across the mountains into Armenia.

President Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan has resolved to return some 5,000 Azeris displaced from the region during war. He also assures that any ethnic Armenians who stay will be treated fairly as Azeri citizens. The urgency of the exodus, however, belies any trust in that promise and the vast majority of evacuees do not expect to return.

Only UN observers and the International Red Cross have been allowed in to witness the aftermath. Silent footage, images devoid of human life, are surreal. Family possessions lie strewn everywhere in a mad rush to get away. The UN estimates that only a couple of hundred people remain and a humanitarian effort is under way to reach those unable or unwilling to leave; the old, the infirm and the stubborn.

Of course the conflict has deep roots. Although overwhelmingly Armenian in tradition, religion and culture, the region was parcelled into Azerbaijan in 1923. The Soviet Union brought both states under one roof but the dispute reignited when Artsakh voted to secede from Azerbaijan before the USSR collapsed.

[ Azerbaijan claims it does not want mass Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh ]

Six years of fighting ended in 1994 with Armenian victory but a shorter war in 2020 went decisively in Baku’s favour. Russia, a traditional overseer in the Caucuses, stationed 2,000 peacekeeping troops there but Aliev tightened Baku’s grip on the breakaway republic last December by cutting off supplies of food, fuel and medicine.

Despite severe hardship, the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh refused to yield. Baku, fuelled by wealth from its vast oil and gas reserves – and possibly encouraged by Russia’s diversion into Ukraine – duly carried out a lightning strike. That a 35-year conflict should end in less than a week has left Yerevan reeling.

Strangely, there are very few traces of this mass influx on the Armenian side. A makeshift refugee tent billows emptily outside the border village of Kornidzor. Adults and children gather in the reception area of Hotel Goris, a mountain retreat, their heavily laden cars parked outside like tired mules. Otherwise, this entire community has dispersed like the wind, as though vanished into thin air. Ask where they’ve gone and people will shrug. Those without the shelter of relatives or friends will soon resurface, like a tracksuited man doubling up as parking attendant on a busy Yerevan street. Humbly extending an open palm he explained his need for spare coins in one word: “Artsakh”.

For a gradually dwindling number of protesters, this calamity has reawoken other deeply felt fears. It is 105 years since the Ottoman Empire carried out genocide here, wiping out an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. The synchronicity has not been lost locally that the very week ethnic Armenians were again forced to flee their homeland, Aliev welcomed his staunch ally, Turkish president Tayip Erdogan. Such is the Ottoman imprint on the Armenian psyche that older protesters refer to the military takeover not as advancing Azeri soldiers but as invading Turks.

[ Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh victory highlights limits of Russia’s power ]

They feel angry that Moscow has let them down again. The protesters are also ready to turn up the heat on their own prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who they say has abandoned the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

They angrily question why thousands of lives were sacrificed on both sides because it now looks like Nagorno-Karabakh has simply been given away. They wonder what their wealthy and emboldened neighbours will want next, especially if Baku is supported by Ankara. And if they must come to terms with the idea that Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh is no longer Armenian, what, they ask, is to become of Armenia itself?

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2023/10/17/speedy-takeover-of-nagorno-karabakh-and-generational-memory-of-genocide-pose-existential-threat-to-armenia/