16:20,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly inaugurated Canada’s embassy in Yerevan on Wednesday.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan attended the ceremonial opening of the embassy.
Photos by Hayk Manukyan
Author: Nahapetian Samvel
Azerbaijan, Turkey launch joint military exercise as Fidan meets Armenia FM
Oct 23 2023
The joint military exercise coincided with a five-country summit in Tehran between Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran and Russia.
No alternative to peace in the South Caucasus, says Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
17:28,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German parliament, the Bundestag, Michael Roth has expressed his solidarity with Armenia, stressing that there is no alternative to peace in the South Caucasus.
"On October 24, together with my delegation, I will visit the southern regions of Armenia to express solidarity with Armenia as a democratic country and send a message to the autocratic regime of Azerbaijan that there is no alternative to peace in this region. We will not tolerate any military solution in the region," Roth emphasized.
According to the German lawmaker, the use of military force used against ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh is definitely a gross violation of international law.
German lawmaker, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag Michael Roth has arrived in Armenia.
Meetings with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Sargis Khandanyan are scheduled.
Hamas attack aimed to disrupt Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization -Biden
13:47,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel aimed to disrupt a potential normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia sought by Riyadh, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday, Reuters reports.
Biden suggested Saudi Arabia wanted to recognize Israel in the comments he made at a campaign fundraiser.
"One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis," Biden said.
"Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel."
The potential normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states was a top priority for Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his June trip to Riyadh, although he acknowledged no progress should be expected imminently.
Two rare oral histories converge in Dr. Gil Harootunian’s newest publication
Book Review | At Four O’clock in the Afternoon and Bones and Bodies, We Had to Walk Over Them
Written by Guleeg Haroian and Eva Hightaian
Translated by Rose D. Guertin, Ph.D.
Edited by Gil Harootunian, Ph.D.
Two oral histories are combined in one collection. At Four O’clock in the Afternoon is the only existing firsthand oral account of an adult female who survived both the 1895 Hamidian massacres and the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Bones and Bodies, We Had To Walk Over Them is the firsthand oral account of her nine-year-old daughter who survived the Genocide.
Both accounts were translated by Rose D. Guertin, Ph.D. and written and edited by Gil Harootunian, Ph.D. This stunning collection is told in four voices.
Dr. Harootunian’s voice provides the introduction to both oral histories with thoroughly researched facts and a relevant overview that shine a light on key points that may have been dimmed during the emotional narration or translation in language. She states there are many reasons why self-narrated histories were not written by women, including but not limited to the lack of literacy skills and the community taboo that precludes females discussing their sexual trauma.
Guleeg (Toomasian) Haroian narrates At Four O’clock In the Afternoon, starting her story at the age of 10, when she witnessed the killing of her father, the theft of their wealth and the burning of their house down to ashes by the Turks. By 1913, she was married to Hagop Haroian, blessed with two daughters and pregnant with a third, when he left for America with the dream of saving money to bring his family a life of freedom. With dreams shattered, she survived the 1915 Genocide through a forced marriage to a Muslim and later reunited with her daughter.
Excerpt: “And soon the crier yelled for us to go. I jumped. I knew that place so well! I ran. They had begun separating the pretty ones, the brides, for rape, marriage and property. They were raping and beating them, then driving them out…I escaped. I had a stick in my hand. I was in my thirties; my eyes and face I had rubbed all black mud on, so the Turks wouldn’t recognize me, and they wouldn’t see how young I was…From roof to roof, I jumped.”
Guleeg Haroian with her husband Hagop and daughters Eva and Mary (infant) in the U.S.
Eva (Haroian) Hightaian, Guleeg’s only surviving daughter from “the old country,” narrates Bones and Bodies, We Had to Walk Over Them. Eva’s oral history is significant, as she reveals the decision-making process of a nine-year-old child experiencing the collections, the Death March and forced transfer into a Muslim household. Eva also talks about her years with an Arab adoptive mother and her reluctance to re-join her mother and the Armenian community.
Excerpt: “After the Turkish government took all the ammunition and everything they saw, they decided you still have more…The soldiers took the women they found to the konagh. They tortured them. No woman would talk about it, but you can imagine what they did to the women. …The Turkish soldiers collected all the old men. They took them to a gorge, shot them, and those old men fell right there…After that, the massacre time came…And now the Turks claim they never did such a thing. But I saw it with my own eyes, in my young days, my childhood, they did all those things…”
The afterword is written by Dr. Rebecca Jinks, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, and a respected authority of women’s experiences during the Armenian and Yezidi genocides and humanitarian responses and representations in the aftermath. Her article “‘Marks Hard to Erase”: The Troubled Reclamation of ‘Absorbed’ Armenian Women, 1919-1927” was published in 2018 in the American Historical Review. Dr. Jinks provides a comparative analysis to a phenomenon called “genocidal absorption” that occurs when children are removed from the ethnic, religious and national communities that they are born into, as part of the process of group destruction. Dr. Jinks states that Guleeg and Eva’s experiences give us real insight into different experiences of genocidal absorption during the Armenian Genocide.
The book is just over 200 pages and flows smoothly for a quick read. However, the words on those pages will stay with you long after as you reflect on the unspeakable horror and remarkable resilience. Please note trigger warnings of violence, sexual trauma and genocide.
This level of firsthand accounts is a rarity, and their value cannot be understated.
It was not lost on me that this rare collection of Armenian history was written by a family matriarchy of four generations of women. The two oral histories consist of excerpts from recordings made beginning in 1976 with all four generations present. Had this not been a collaborative effort among trusted family members, these stories would join others that will never be told. This level of firsthand accounts is a rarity, and their value cannot be understated.
This treasure could not have been written by anyone other than Dr. Harootunian. We highly recommend this book for its rare and unique firsthand points of view, especially for readers and researchers interested in the lesser told stories from women that are written in English.
We also commend and thank Guleeg and Eva for their selfless bravery, for opening deep wounds and for reliving their nightmares, and Rose and Gil for pushing through their generational trauma to share this invaluable treasure with the world.
Israel, Nagorno-Karabakh, and other crises: why the EU is surrounded by conflicts
Spain – Oct 14 2023
ANDREA RIZZI
The world watches in suspense as the aftermath of the conflagration unleashed by Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel unfolds. This is the umpteenth outbreak of violence in the vicinity of the European Union. Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Israel and Gaza, Libya, the Sahel: a crescent of terrible conflicts borders the EU on its eastern and southern flanks. The triggers are of course different in each case. But in all of them an era of instability has played a role, with changes in the attitudes of large and medium powers seeming to encourage violent escalations. The entire arc of crisis, with the exception of Ukraine, shows the very limited ability of the EU to have an influence on this environment.
This period of volatility is one in which Russia has sought to forcibly reconfigure the world order, China has gained strength, the United States has reoriented itself to address the rise of Beijing, Iran has reaffirmed its antagonism to the West, and the Global South has mobilized against Western dominance in new ways. This geopolitical panorama influences the arc of instability.
Let’s start with the violence unleashed by Hamas’ attack on Israel. This is a criminal decision by its leaders, in which there are no ifs or buts. This does not mean that we should not analyse the context in which it has arisen, and which will have undoubtedly influenced its planning. This shows, on the one hand, Iran — a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah — fully aligned with the attitude of open defiance to the West, of an unleashed Russia, and an increasingly assertive China. Tehran’s position must also be read in light of the collapse of the perspective opened by the nuclear treaty sealed with the Obama Administration and torn up by the Trump Administration. On the other hand, Israel has not suffered any significant pressure to modify its abusive occupation policy.
Without doubt, the prospect of growing normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries has also played a role, which Washington has promoted to improve Israel’s security but also as a tool to shore up its waning influence in the region. This is the context of vulnerability and a change of attitude in which Hamas’ decision was taken. At none of these levels has the EU (in favor of pursuing the path of a nuclear pact with Iran) had, nor does it have, an important role.
Of course, the war in Ukraine has taken center stage in this era of political uncertainty. It is the episode that embodies the frontal challenge to the global primacy of the West from Russia, which believed itself to be strong again after the dissolution of its empire and the turbulence of the nineties. The Russian offensive in Ukraine is one of the keys to reading what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh a few weeks ago. With Moscow completely occupied on that first front, Azerbaijan (backed by Turkey) has taken the initiative to forcefully resolve the conflict with Armenia, traditionally protected by the Kremlin. The political weakness and shift in the general balance of power undoubtedly incited action, opening a window of opportunity. The EU was almost irrelevant here.
Russia and Turkey are also key actors in Syria and Libya, albeit on opposite sides. Moscow has supported Bashar al-Assad in the first conflict and Marshal Khalifa Hafter in the second. Ankara is on the other side. In neither case has a war been unleashed like it was years ago, but there is still violence and bombings in Syria and a lot of unpredictability in Libya. In the first case, the Kremlin took advantage of the geopolitical absence of the US and the EU to intervene and determine the future of the conflict. In the second, there was indeed a Western intervention, but the disinterest of Washington — busy with other issues — and the limits of the EU have paved the way for the chaos into which Moscow and Ankara have inserted themselves.
The crises in the Sahel, like the others, has largely arisen from local problems. In this case, they stem from a lack of prosperity and democratic maturity. But, here too, the era of global instability has undoubtedly been a context that has encouraged turbulence. Russia, once again, has offered the prospect of support to rebellious and authoritarian sectors of those societies that have continued to harbor anti-colonial suspicions. They perceive Moscow, a power that seeks an imperial and colonial projection in its own environment, as the heir of the USSR, which supported various processes of decolonization in the last century. Here too, the EU — with France as the protagonist — has suffered a harsh reality check regarding its ability to influence and interact in the region.
Not even a superpower can control how certain crises develop. Nobody expects the EU to do it. But the outbreak of conflicts in Europe and its surroundings in this time of uncertainty, of changes in forces and attitudes, should make us think. The Union has had a reaction worthy of the circumstances in the case of Ukraine, achieved with good will and ingenuity, but it remains ill-prepared in structural terms to act in this new, white-hot context. The path to achieving this is not easy and does not guarantee being able to avoid or protect itself from certain crises. There are many questions, but the answer is almost always more common foreign and security policy.
AW Letter to the Editor: Is Artsakh a test of Armenian fortitude?
April 15, 1915: Hidden from the conscience of mankind, 1.5 million Christian Armenian men, women and children perished under the hand of the Ottoman Turks—a crime against humanity now known as one of the first genocides of the 20th century.
September 19, 2023: 108 years later, in full view of the eyes, ears and conscience of mankind, 120,000 Christian Armenian men, women and children, living in the Armenian enclave of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), are forced to flee for their lives, a consequence of “ethnic cleansing” and terrorism, inflicted on them by the Azerbaijan regime, a perfect example of genocide in the 21st century.
Preceding the horror of September 19, 2023, the Azerbaijani regime executed an over nine-month blockade of the Berdzor (Lachin) Corridor, the only route connecting Artsakh to the outside world. This blockade resulted in dire consequences for the indigenous Armenians living there. They were deprived of food, necessary living supplies, medical and emergency care. Store shelves were barren. There was mass unemployment. Schools were closed. Families were separated. Armenians were being decimated by “ethnic cleansing,” and the deafening silence of the world was stunning.
Armenians around the globe are grieving, lamenting the loss of life and suffering of our fellow Armenians in Artsakh. Knowing that thousands of helpless, innocent human beings were forced to leave their homes with only the clothes on their backs and a bag holding their belongings is gut wrenching. We, with the support and resources of our secular and religious organizations, are working tirelessly to provide life-saving assistance, including food, water, shelter and sanitation to the thousands of victims of this humanitarian catastrophe. We are so grateful to all the non-Armenian people, countries and organizations around the world who are helping and supporting us in this time of crisis and upheaval.
Politics is a dirty business. It is the convergence of power, money and people. Unfortunately, Armenia is inadequately prepared for the realities of defending itself and Artsakh in the political environment in which it currently exists. It has become the leaderless casualty of an unjust war, caught in the crosshairs of a changing political alignment and balance of power.
The words of Raffi, the legendary Armenian writer and patriot, ring true today, as they did in 1915. He instilled in the Armenian psyche the ideas of education, self-reliance, love of nation and love of freedom. “Armenians,” he preached, “Take up arms and defend yourself. Don’t expect others to defend you!”
It is imperative that we, the descendants of the Genocide of 1915, heed Raffi’s words, embrace the battle cry “Never Again,” and take the necessary steps to prepare ourselves for an uncertain and challenging future. It is said that great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice. Let the tragedy that has befallen our sisters and brothers in Artsakh be Armenia’s impetus for initiating a compelling, bold and aggressive blueprint for change and justice—one that will energize and stimulate its economy; strengthen and mobilize its military; and expand and bolster its political policies and alliances in preparation for the hurdles that lie ahead. What we Armenians say and do in the days, months and years ahead will be a test of our mettle, wisdom, judgment, resilience and unity.
It is imperative that Armenia avenge the pain, suffering and death of its compatriots who were forced to flee Artsakh. The best revenge for the victim is to seek and secure the justice they deserve. Armenia must hold President Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani regime accountable for their criminal actions by demanding the International Criminal Court prosecute Azerbaijan for war crimes and genocide. It is the moral duty and obligation of all Armenians to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make our enemies pay the price for the atrocities they have inflicted upon our people. Artsakh’s pain is our pain. Armenia’s future is our future. Our fight has just begun. Time will tell if we have the brains, guts and fortitude to stay the course and strike back.
Hazel Barsamian
Scottsdale, Arizona
Armenians of Argentina protest genocide in Artsakh
A large crowd gathered in Buenos Aires in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—The Armenian community of Argentina marched to the Embassy of Azerbaijan on October 7 to denounce the genocide suffered by the Armenian population of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
“120,000 Armenians exiled by the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan.”
Under the banner “120,000 Armenians exiled by the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan,” the crowd marched towards the diplomatic representation of the government of Azerbaijan, chanting slogans such as “new genocide underway,” “Azerbaijan murderer state,” “Azerbaijan guilty of ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Artsakh” and “genocide denied, genocide repeated.” One of the posters summed up the collective feeling of the Armenian community after so many demonstrations against injustice: “Are you tired of hearing it? We are tired of living it.”
On September 19, Azerbaijan launched an attack against Artsakh after almost 10 months of a complete blockade of its Armenian population, a crime that was considered a genocide by the former International Criminal Court Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo. After suffering widespread famine and a lack of medicines and essential products, Artsakh’s authorities were forced on September 20 to stop the defense of the population, hand over their weapons and announce the dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh. In the following days, more than 100,000 citizens and natives of Artsakh were forced into exile to Armenia, causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
Alejandro Kalpakian, president of Armenian Institutions of the Republic of Argentina (IARA), read a statement on behalf of the community in which he denounced “the abuses committed by Azerbaijan against the Armenian civilian population of Artsakh” and the “policy of ethnic cleansing, taking into account that the Armenians have been expelled from their ancient Armenian territory of Artsakh.”
The representatives of all the Armenian institutions of the country work together within IARA, which was created after the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide in 2015. Most community protests and large events are coordinated by this organization.
“It is clear that Azerbaijan is not ready to respect any international law. The political prisoners have not yet been released, and Artsakh government officials have now been arrested. Do they think that Armenians will accept this? Do they think that we are going to abandon the fight that we have kept alive for decades?” Kalpakian said.
Following the large-scale attacks on September 19, Azerbaijan began arresting the authorities and military personnel of the Republic of Artsakh, including former State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, advisor to the president David Babayan, National Assembly Speaker Davit Ishkhanyan, former Presidents Arayik Harutyunyan, Bako Sahakyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan, former Artsakh Deputy Defense Minister LTG Davit Manukyan and former Artsakh Defense Minister LTG Levon Mnatsakanyan. They will all face trial in Baku for “terrorism,” “creation of armed groups” and “illegal border crossing,” among other charges. They will join the dozens of Armenian prisoners of war who have been detained since the 2020 Artsakh War and whose official number is currently unknown.
“Our presence here today, just like it’s happening around the world, is a strong example that we will continue to fight Turkey’s genocide against the Armenian people, the ongoing persecution and extermination that Azerbaijan is now committing, and the denial of these abhorrent acts and defend the right of the Armenian people to live in peace in their territory,” Kalpakian concluded.
Miguel Harutiunian, president of the Representative Association of Armenian Migrants of Argentina (ARAMA), was born in Goris in southern Armenia, which is where his family currently resides. Goris, which is located near Armenia’s border, became a transit point for displaced Armenians fleeing Artsakh. “The situation is dramatic, and the city has become a refugee camp. All the squares and the main streets have tents to meet the needs of the refugees. Many families receive them in their homes with open arms,” Harutiunian told the Weekly. Support is first provided to vulnerable cases including children, pregnant or sick women and the elderly, he added.
Hagop Tabakian, president of the Armenian National Committee of South America (ANC-SA) and member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), said that the Armenians of Buenos Aires support the “claim and struggle of the people of Artsakh.” “We also see the threat in the south of Armenia and follow every move made by Azerbaijan and Turkey,” Tabakian told the Weekly, expressing concern that the Armenian government is not doing enough to protect the security and interests of Armenians.
“The respect for human rights in the countries of South America has always been a priority, especially in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia. We are working to get the support and visibility of this extreme situation,” he continued.
Vanesa Simsir, member of Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) of South America and teacher at Khrimian School, said that teachers prepared special classes about the conflict and the current events “so that the students can ask questions and clear up their doubts.” “It’s also important to combat the misinformation that exists on social networks,” she added. Simsir said that some of her friends from Argentina and Uruguay are volunteering in Goris, Armenia to help people displaced from Artsakh.
Analia Topakbassian, member of the Armenian Relief Society (ARS) and granddaughter of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, saw parallels between 1915 and what has happened in 2023. “They were both obviously very well planned. They took the leaders and the people who govern. The population left on foot before, and now they are leaving by car, but the caravans of people leaving their lands look the same,” Topakbassian said. While in 1915, human rights abuses by the Turks were not amplified on social media, today videos of Azerbaijanis beheading and taunting Armenians circulate online. “They don’t even have the shame or humility to hide it,” she said.
“Are you tired of hearing it? We are tired of living it.”
The Armenian community in Argentina was established mostly by survivors of the Armenian Genocide who arrived in the country at the beginning of the 20th century. According to the Armenian Diaspora Survey conducted in 2019, “The estimated size of the community is between 50,000 and 100,000, made of third, fourth and even fifth generations of Armenians.”
“Will this second genocide against the Armenian people go unpunished again? Does the international community only act if it serves economic interests? The question is rhetorical, of course,” said Professor Rosita Youssefian, former Armenian language teacher and coordinator at the Marie Manoogian Institute of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU).
Argentina’s government has expressed its solidarity with the Armenians of Artsakh and pledged to send humanitarian aid. On October 6, President of Argentina Alberto Fernandez received a delegation of Armenian community leaders at Casa Rosada. The president announced that Argentina will send a plane to Armenia on October 22 with humanitarian aid and a mission of volunteers to distribute it among the forcibly displaced population of Artsakh.
Armenian community leaders also thanked Fernandez for his statements during the G20 summit on September 9 and at the United Nations, where he denounced the blockade and the Azerbaijani attacks. The last official act of the Artsakh government before the crisis was to send a letter of gratitude to President Fernandez on September 19.
Armenians are fully established in Argentinian society and have a dynamic community life.
There are 11 churches, seven Armenian schools, three scout groups, various dance companies, sports clubs, restaurants and human rights defense organizations in Argentina. There are also branches of the ARF, Homenetmen, ARS and AGBU, two newspapers (Diario Armenia of the Dashnaktsutyun and Sardarabad of Ramgavar) and an office of the Armenian National Committee of South America.
We Just Saw What the World Is About to Become
New York Times
Oct 9 2023
OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
Oct. 9, 2023
Mr. Derluguian is a sociologist at New York University Abu Dhabi and the author of “Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus.”
The history of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh was ended in the old manner of conflict resolution: siege, conquest, expulsion. After a 10-month blockade, Azerbaijan launched an attack on Sept. 19, claiming the enclave in a day and causing nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population to flee. Give war a chance, as the saying goes.
For Armenians, a classic relic ethnic minority whose Christianity and peculiar alphabet date to the epic struggles between the Romans and the Parthians, it was another genocide. For the Azerbaijanis, Turkic in language and historically Shia Muslim, a great triumph. Yet despite appearances, the conflict is not a Samuel Huntington-style clash of civilizations. Instead, in its emboldening of traditional regional powers like Turkey, scrambling for geopolitical spoils after the retreat of superpowers, it’s a harbinger of the coming world disorder.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus, is perennially contested. Ceded by Persia to Russia in the 19th century, it fell into dispute with the emergence of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan both claiming it. In 1921, Stalin attached the enclave to Azerbaijan, home to oil resources and a thriving intellectual culture. Yet the thin crust of Azeri modernist intelligentsia was eliminated in Stalin’s purges of the 1930s and replaced by corrupt functionaries overseen by the formidable K.G.B. general Heydar Aliyev. (His son, Ilham Aliyev, is the dynastic president of Azerbaijan.)
In 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev’s dreams of achieving a more rational, humane Soviet Union emboldened Armenian intellectuals to start a tremendous popular movement for uniting the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh with mainland Armenia. This seemed deceptively easy: transfer a province from one Soviet republic to another. But the Armenian demands ran into protests in Azerbaijan that almost immediately turned violent. Gorbachev looked impotent in the face of disasters he had provoked. From there to the end of the superpower, it took just three years.
In the chaotic aftermath of Soviet collapse, the Armenians undertook to defend Nagorno-Karabakh by force. Instead of poetic intellectuals, the wartime generation of Armenian leaders became militia commanders. They proved earthier and, soon, brazenly corrupt. Defending the country became their sole means of legitimacy, ruling out the concessions that peace would require. By 1994 the Armenians, mobilizing around the traumatic memories of genocide, succeeded in expelling scores of Azeris from the enclave. Last month, Azerbaijan got more than even.
In that project, it had a powerful backer: Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a master of vertiginous visions, has already tried Islamic liberalism, joining Europe, leading the Arab revolts, challenging Israel and negotiating peace in Ukraine. He now has another dream: opening a geopolitical corridor from Europe through Central Asia, all the way to China. This is the “Zangezur corridor,” a 25-mile-long strip of land to be carved through Armenia as part of a peace deal imposed at gunpoint.
Iran is not happy with Azerbaijan’s victory. As openly as the Iranians ever do, they’ve threatened to use force against any changes to the borders of Armenia. Iran, a millenniums-old civilization central to a whole continent, cannot tolerate being walled off behind a chain of Turkish dependencies. India, similarly, is on Armenia’s side and has been sending a regular supply of weapons. One spur for such support, no doubt, is Pakistan’s joining the Azeri-Turkish alliance. In the jargon of American lawyers, this opens a whole new can of worms.
Then there’s Russia, whose absence from the denouement in Nagorno-Karabakh was striking. Even after the 1990s, Moscow still remained by far the biggest supplier of weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Their economies and societies, above all the elites and their corruption networks, were until very recently molded together. What we are seeing now, as both nations slip out of Russia’s orbit, might be the second round of Soviet collapse.
Once again, Armenia started the shift. In spring 2018 a tremendously hopeful uprising, reminiscent of 1989 in Central Europe, forced the post-communist elites to surrender power. Vladimir Putin was visibly displeased to meet Nikol Pashinyan, the anticorruption journalist and street rebel elected Armenia’s premier by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Pashinyan admittedly had neither political team nor experience; he is learning statesmanship on the job, often at great expense to his nation. Yet he managed to significantly reduce corruption, helping to unlock the legendary entrepreneurship of Armenians. Amid all the grim news, the Armenian economy, led by the I.T. sector, is registering impressive growth.
All that, to Moscow, is punishable. When in September 2020 Azerbaijan launched a massive offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh lasting 44 terrible days, Russia effectively allowed Azerbaijan and Turkey to nearly destroy its Armenian ally, under the pretext that Karabakh was outside the mutual defense treaty. At the cusp of Azeri victory, however, Mr. Putin personally brokered a cease-fire and ordered a crack force of his peacekeepers into the enclave.
That brought nearly all the perimeter of the former Soviet Union into Russia’s sphere of influence. Rebellious Belarus, its dictator dependent on Russian support, was in hand; so too the war-torn Caucasus. The large and oil-rich Kazakhstan itself requested Russian peacekeepers during a bewildering bout of street violence in January 2022. Strangely, the elite Russian troops soon departed from Kazakhstan. A month later, the whole world realized that they had been dispatched to Ukraine, the last sizable piece of Mr. Putin’s post-Soviet gambit. And there his plan broke down.
History has a habit of serving the same lessons with changed variables. In 1988, it was the dreamer Gorbachev stumbling over Nagorno-Karabakh that unwittingly shattered the world order. Today, Mr. Putin could become the second, much darker incarnation of the Kremlin aggrandizer going awry on all fronts. The consequences — from emboldening international aggression to reanimating the West under the banner of NATO — will be profound. As events in Nagorno-Karabakh show, the fragile post-Cold War order is giving way to something else entirely.
The Caucasus might seem strange and distant. Yet it might prove the wedge that turns the fortunes of world order. Trieste, Smyrna, Sarajevo, Danzig and Crimea were all such places. Let us not have to relearn history at the cost of yet another ethnic cleansing.
Georgi Derluguian is a professor of social research and public policy at New York University Abu Dhabi and the author of “Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus.”