Author: Parkev Tvankchian

The Foreign Minister of Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan, visited Damascus on 23 February and held a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, as well as with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad.

Upon receiving him, Assad expressed gratitude for the Armenian rescue teams and relief packages that were sent to areas affected by the devastating 6 February earthquake.

The Syrian president also praised the longstanding, historical relationship between the two nations and stressed the importance of continuing to build ties, as “alliances among states with shared principles are important for overcoming challenges.”

Mirzoyan expressed his condolences to Assad and the Syrian people, particularly on behalf of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He added that Armenia will always stand by Syria, and will never forget its “stance beside the Armenians … [and their] assistance when the devastating earthquake occurred there in 1988.”

The Armenian foreign minister also referred to Syria as a “homeland for thousands of Armenians who are still living here.”

During his visit to the Syrian capital, Mirzoyan also met with Syria’s Foreign Minister, Faisal Mekdad, discussing bilateral cooperation based on “solid historical relations between the two countries,” according to SANA.

They also discussed “regional security issues.” Mirzoyan briefed Mekdad on the current humanitarian concern in the Nagarno-Karabakh region, an area contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan – consisting of a majority of ethnic Armenians – over which the two countries have been at war since the 1980s.

Since the start of the US-backed war against Syria in 2011, Armenia has maintained positive ties with Damascus and was among the few who did not sever diplomatic ties with it.

Since the 6 February disaster, a number of regional states, including Algeria, Iraq, and the UAE, were quick to dispatch aid to Syria despite the high risk of US sanctions.

Even longtime backers of the war, such as Saudi Arabia, sent aid to Syria, signifying Damascus’ gradual return to the regional fold after over a decade of brutal conflict.

A few days after the quake, Tunisia announced its intention to restore diplomatic relations with Syria. Later in February, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said that enmity towards Damascus was no longer feasible, adding that there was a “growing consensus” among Arab states for Syria’s reintegration.

This is something that the US finds unacceptable, as it has continued to condemn any normalization with Syria throughout the aftermath of the earthquake.

On January 23, the European Union announced it would be sending a civilian mission to Armenia for a two-year term to document tensions on the border with Azerbaijan (Consilium.Europa.eu, January 23; see EDM, February 8). The EU’s recent decision follows earlier attempts by Brussels to establish itself in Armenia and represents a significant upgrade from previous initiatives. Moscow responded angrily, tacitly accusing Yerevan of not pursuing other options, most notably a mission from the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) (Mid.ru, January 26).

These tensions highlight the increasingly difficult relationship between Armenia and Russia since the end of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, when Azerbaijan won a decisive victory over Armenia in the disputed Karabakh region. Since then, at least in the eyes of Yerevan, Russia’s attitude toward Armenia’s geopolitical predicament has been ambivalent. However, Moscow has opted to maneuver in accordance with its own national interests, one of which has been keeping cordial ties with Azerbaijan, a country that the Kremlin has seen as a more effective regional actor (TASS, November 26, 2021; Report.az, November 17, 2022). Baku has also leveraged its strategically important geographic and economic positions to boost its influence vis-à-vis Moscow. Indeed, Azerbaijan is a critical regional gas producer; a key transit node in the east-west directions connecting Europe, Central Asia and China; as well as a link in the north-south transportation corridor between Russia and Iran.

Given Russia’s pragmatism, Yerevan no longer feels confident in its relationship with Moscow. Crossing a psychologically significant red line, in January 2023, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed that Russian “peacekeeping” forces on Armenian territory not only failed to ensure the security of the country but also represented a threat to Armenia itself (Armenian Weekly, January 11; see EDM, February 8). Following that, Yerevan even called off drills that the CTSO had scheduled to be held on Armenian territory. These decisions were in turn built on Pashinyan’s earlier refusal to sign onto a joint CSTO statement that failed to mention Azerbaijan’s infringement on Armenian territory during the clashes in September 2022 (Panorama.am, November 24).

Thus, though widely considered to be unavoidable before 2020, Armenia’s geopolitical dependence on Russia has now been increasingly contested in Yerevan. The alliance between the two countries was first struck in the 1990s. At the time, the South Caucasus was a different place. Armenia had emerged victorious after the First Karabakh War and Russia, though weak, still held enough prestige to maintain its power.

Following 2020, however, Armenia’s geopolitical situation deteriorated, and Moscow seemed unable or unwilling to help. As a result, Yerevan has been attempting to diversify its international relations through improved relations with Turkey and more involvement with the EU. Most importantly perhaps, Armenia is building a closer partnership with Iran, an increasingly significant player in a region where Turkish influence is growing and endangering Tehran’s core interests. Iran is also feeling deep discomfort with Azerbaijani and Turkish actions along Baku’s shared border with Tehran, a development which favors Armenia in its efforts to forge stronger ties with the Islamic Republic (see EDM, December 13, 2022).

Another factor contributing to the weakening relationship between Armenia and Russia is Moscow’s waning image due to its protracted war and heavy military miscalculations in Ukraine, lack of resources and declining prestige. These developments have wide-ranging effects, including in the Russian-led regional blocs, such as the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, which have frequently been plagued by internal weaknesses. And that fragility is now becoming all the more apparent as Russia’s global standing continues to decline.

Although Armenia is a member of Russia’s military alliances, Moscow has repeatedly refused to heed Yerevan’s pleas for security assistance. As the Yerevan-supported separatist state in Karabakh is not considered to be Armenian territory, Russia has contended that the CSTO security commitment does not apply there. In September 2022, as Azerbaijan bombarded cities within Armenia proper, far removed from Karabakh, the Kremlin merely sent a fact-finding delegation to the South Caucasus (Azatutyun.am, September 14, 2022). From this, the message was loud and clear: Russia was incapable and unwilling to help Armenia.

Russia’s troubles create a certain geopolitical vacuum in the South Caucasus. For Armenia, it is both a dangerous development and a budding opportunity. As Yerevan seeks to diversify its foreign policy, it is moving, along with other options, toward forging closer ties with the West. For its part, the West has much to gain if it uses this geopolitical opportunity to build influence in the region, and the EU’s January 2023 decision to send a special mission to the region is a good sign in that regard. Another positive sign is Brussels’ active diplomacy within the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process, as Russia has been absent at most of the summits between Yerevan and Baku (see EDM, October 17, 2022). While its waning influence in the region provokes worry in the Kremlin, the Russian authorities can do little more than make angry statements from the sidelines. With this in mind, the region may now be moving into a new era, with the end of the so-called “post-Soviet period” and Russia’s notion of regional hegemony.

Looking ahead, Armenia and Russia are unlikely to return to the previous form of their alliance, in which Yerevan often unhesitatingly followed the Kremlin’s line. Instead, in the future, Russia will have to dedicate more time and resources in persuading Yerevan to follow its lead in foreign policy, whether on Karabakh or any other matter. While less forceful than Azerbaijan, Armenia is testing Russia’s resolve and ability to protect its once enviable position in the South Caucasus amid the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. However, while Armenia may want to diminish engagement with Russia, it does not want to completely disengage—as a total Russian withdrawal from the South Caucasus would not augur well for Yerevan. Thus, Armenia will be forced to strike a delicate balance between Moscow and its other partners over the coming months.

By the Jamestown Foundation

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Why-Armenia-Is-Turning-Its-Back-On-Russia.html

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber

TBILISI (Reuters) -At least 49 Armenian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Azeris were killed on Tuesday in the deadliest fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia since a 2020 war, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to appeal for calm.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, neighbouring former Soviet states, blamed each other for the renewed fighting which began overnight at several points along their border, raising fears of another major armed conflict in the former Soviet Union while Russia’s military is tied up in Ukraine.

Russia has peacekeeping troops in the Azeri-Armenian conflict zone as guarantor of an agreement that ended a six-week war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh two years ago.

Yerevan said Azerbaijan had shelled towns near the border including Jermuk, Goris and Kapan, forcing it to respond. Baku said Armenian sabotage units had sought to mine Azeri positions and began the shooting.

It also accused Armenian troops of firing heavy weapons in violation of a ceasefire reached earlier on Tuesday.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield accounts from either side.

“It is difficult to overestimate the role of the Russian Federation, the role of Putin personally,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“The president is naturally is making every effort to help de-escalate tensions at the border.”

UKRAINE AND CAUCASUS

Russia’s war in Ukraine has undermined its status as a regional security guarantor, leaving room for Azerbaijan to make more claims, said Laurence Broers, associate fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme of Chatham House think tank.

Azerbaijan, which is politically and culturally linked to Turkey, made significant territorial gains in 2020, reclaiming land lost to ethnic Armenians in an earlier war over Nagorno-Karabakh 30 years before.

“Since February, we also have been seeing the collapse of Russia’s reputation as a security patron and a provider of security in the region,” Broers said. “That has created a window of opportunity for Azerbaijan, recalling that the outcome of the second war in 2020 left unfinished business.”

An Iranian-Armenian pastor has today begun serving a 10-year prison sentence for holding church services in his home.

Joseph Shahbazian, who is 58 years old, was yesterday given 24 hours to hand himself in to the authorities at Tehran’s Evin Prison, and did so today at around midday, Iranian time.

Meanwhile, a Christian convert sentenced to six years in prison for her involvement in Joseph’s “house-church” was given a stay of execution, because she is still recovering from a broken leg.

Mina Khajavi, who is 59 years old, also received a summons to prison yesterday, but was today told by the prison authorities that she could return home until she has recovered.

Mina’s leg was broken in three places as a result of a recent car accident, and she was only released from her cast two days ago. The authorities at Evin told her that a government-certified doctor must now review her medical records and confirm her condition, upon which she may be given up to six weeks’ recovery time before being required to serve her sentence.

Two other Christian converts, mother and daughter Masoumeh Ghasemi and Somayeh (Sonya) Sadegh, were also summoned yesterday to pay within 24 hours fines of 24 million ($950) and 40 million ($1,275) tomans, respectively.

Masoumeh and Sonya had also been handed prison sentences of one year and four years, respectively, but were permitted by the judge to pay fines instead.

The same was true for two other converts in the case, Farhad Khazaee and Salar Eshraghi Moghadam, who again were sentenced to one year and four years, respectively, but permitted to pay fines instead.

The seventh Christian in the case, 48-year-old convert Malihe Nazari, also faces a six-year prison sentence, though it is not yet known whether or not she has been summoned.

The seven Christians in the case were among at least 35 Christians arrested or interrogated by intelligence agents belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a coordinated operation over two days and across three cities in the summer of 2020.

They were eventually sentenced in June this year, and their appeals were rejected just two weeks ago.

Another Iranian-Armenian pastor, 60-year-old Anooshavan Avedian, is also awaiting a summons in a separate case to serve a 10-year sentence on similar charges.

Meanwhile, an elderly man with Parkinson’s disease, Homayoun Zhaveh, and his wife, Sara Ahmadi, recently began serving their own prison sentences, of two and eight years, respectively, also as a result of charges relating to their involvement in a house-church.

In Iran, while Christians are one of three officially recognised religious minorities, converts are not recognised as Christians and are not permitted to attend the churches of the “recognised” Christians of Armenian and Assyrian descent – Christians like Joseph and Anooshavan, who themselves are not permitted to proselytise.

At the same time, Iran is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which enshrines freedom of religion, including the freedom to change one’s religion and to share it with others.

However, in reality, there is no such freedom, as seen clearly in the above-mentioned cases, which all relate to Christians worshipping together in their homes because Persian-speaking Christians have no place to worship, as highlighted in the Place2Worship campaign.

Last week, eight UN experts called on the Iranian authorities to stop “persecuting and harassing” members of religious minorities, including Christian converts.

On the same day, the British Ambassador to Iran, Simon Shercliff, tweeted a message in the Persian language promoting religious freedom, including freedom to share one’s faith with others and to change one’s belief.

“Everyone should be free to choose any religion/belief, practise it freely, share their religion … and also freely change their religion/belief,” he wrote.

Also that same day, 22 August, which is the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, the Secretary-General of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, Emilio Carmona, wrote to the Iranian embassy in Spain about the cases of Joseph, Anooshavan, Mina and Malihe.

“These people were simply exercising their freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as their freedom of _expression_, as defined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by their country,” he wrote.

“This case leads me to ask you: if Christians cannot meet in their homes, where should they meet to worship? I know there are many Christians in Iran, so they should be able to meet somewhere. Can Christian believers be safe when they go to a church to worship together?”

Earlier this month, Article18 joined partner organisations CSW, Open Doors, Middle East Concern and the World Evangelical Alliance in sending a joint report to the UN’s Human Rights Committee on the situation of Christians in Iran, in which we asked the committee to demand that Iran answers that very question:

“Please clarify how Persian speakers in Iran, whatever their ethnicity, may freely gather to worship, as envisaged by Article 18 of the [International] Covenant [on Civil and Political Rights],” we wrote.

We continue to await an answer.

https://articleeighteen.com/news/11617/

Reprinted at 

ARDASHAR, Armenia, Aug 23 2022 (IPS) – There are those cows watching the fight in the mud of rusty Soviet cars; there are those tethered dogs that bark next to bathtubs full of rainwater, or those cats that frolic in freedom. This is Armenia, a state of three million deep in the heart of the Caucasus region.

At 30 kilometers west of Yerevan (Armenia’s capital), Ardashar could well be a regular Armenian village were it not for the fact that most of its 700 inhabitants belong to the Yezidi community. Jundi Jundoyan, a local spiritual leader, awaits IPS at the entrance of his house. At 68, he boasts that many Armenians have asked him about his ancestral cult. Jundoyan is always willing to explain things, he just asks for patience.

God, who is also the sun, he explains, has 3,000 names and seven archangels. He created the world from a pearl, but then he disregarded it. He also brought Adam and Eve to life and forced Malak Tawus, the sacred peacock (the chief archangel) to serve them. But Tawus refused: why should one bow to the whims of a couple of simple mortals? In the end, that dispute between him and God was settled and the fallen archangel was finally redeemed.

The Yezidis, however, are not originally from the southern Caucasus but from somewhere in northern Mesopotamia. In fact, Jundoyan explains it all in Kurmanyi (a variant of Kurdish spoken in Turkey and Syria).

It was at the beginning of the 20th century when many fled to the Caucasus – along with Armenians and Syriacs – escaping genocide in Anatolia. Jundoyan remembers it just before walking into a room where dozens of blankets are stacked, which, he claims, preserve “treasures brought from Lalish (his most sacred temple, in northern Iraq) and many other relics.”

The largest Yezidi temple in the world stands a few kilometers from here. Built in 2019 thanks to private contributions it also hosts a set of statues of Armenian Yezidi great men, including that of an Iraqi Kurdish woman. It is Nadia Murad, one of those young women enslaved by the Islamic State in 2014 during the genocide perpetrated against the Yezidis of Sinjar (northern Iraq). Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize four years later.

“What did France, America, etc. do when the Islamic State massacred thousands of our people in Iraq and enslaved all those women?” Jundoyan blurts out, shortly before asking for a toast to the “martyrs”: both those from Anatolia from over a hundred years ago as well as the more recent ones from Iraq.

And then there are those who left. The Armenian Yezidis were close to 100,000 individuals in the times of the USSR, but the last census (in 2011) placed them at just 35,000. Those who remain try to survive through farming or herding.

“Everyone is leaving for Russia,” laments the host.

“Hate speech”

The Yezidi Center for Human Rights is an NGO founded in 2018 focused on protecting the rights of this community.

One of its most active members is Sashik Sultanyan, a 27-year-old lawyer who faces six years in prison for “incitement to hatred”. An interview he gave in June 2020 on a Yezidi radio channel in Iraq earned him a complaint from Veto Armenia, a far-right organization.

Someone took care to translate (from Kurdish into Armenian) a conversation in which Sultanyan spoke of “discrimination” towards his people. He denounced that Yezidi lands are being expropriated under legal pretexts and that their linguistic and cultural rights are not respected. The Armenian prosecutor’s office speaks of a process “in accordance with national and international law.”

For its part, Amnesty International has denounced an attack against freedom of _expression_ and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is asking Armenia to withdraw criminal charges they label as “intimidating.”

From his office in Yerevan, Sultanyan tells IPS that discrimination is “as real as those clichés about his community that television and the media repeat relentlessly”: they are always portrayed as illiterate, dirty and disorganized peasants or herdsmen.

Regarding the issue of the lands, Sultanyan clarifies that “the thieves are the oligarchs, and not the Armenians, as the translation of the interview said.” And then there is also the issue of language. Although classes in Kurmanyi are offered at Yezidi children’s schools, the subject is not part of the official curriculum.

Besides, the text books are in Cyrillic when the most logical thing, Sultanyan insists, would be to use the Latin alphabet, which is the one used by the Kurds of Turkey and Syria.

In fact, the first Kurdish-language newspaper, Riya Taze (“New Road”), was founded in Armenia in 1930, but any link between this minority and a neighboring people, the Kurds, with a population much larger than that of the country, is something that Yerevan does not see with good eyes today.

“When we talk about human rights we insist that we must be alert on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many do not understand it that way. They reject being a minority because they are afraid that a special status could damage their brotherhood with the Armenians. But brotherhood cannot exist without equality,” Sultanyan resolves.

Transmigration

The Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020 has given some visibility to the community. In that 44-day conflict that ended with an overwhelming victory for Azerbaijan, there were more than twenty young Yezidis who lost their life in the ranks of the Armenian Army.

One of them was Samad Saloyan. His parents, Yuri and Nina, still live in the Zartonk, one of those villages around the Yezidi temple. The family has turned the living room into some kind of mausoleum erected to the memory of the lost son: there are photos of him as a child, or dressed as a soldier; there´s also a Yezidi flag (white and red with a sun in the center) as well as set of army medals and others from his sporting victories.

“There is nothing worse than talking about your own child in the past tense,” Yuri tells IPS. Nina has a hard time getting started until a sea of tears breaks the dam and her words overflow.

Her son was recruited at the age of 18. He was about to graduate when the war broke out, but he was finally mobilized. He survived 42 days of hell, until a bomb dropped from a drone killed him and three others.

“It was just two days before the war ended,” Nina repeats, caught up in a monologue that runs in a loop, but that always leads to a dead end: Samad is no longer in this world.

The Yezidis believe in transmigration, a chain of reincarnations that serves to purify the spirit until it becomes one with God.

But this is no comfort for the Saloyans. Only when the tears give the first truce is it possible to change the subject. Do they go to the temple? Do they keep Yezidi festivities? “Yes, more or less”. And how has the harvest been this year?

Yuri points to the lack of rain, there there is no water and that the land does not provide. Making ends meet has become a real challenge. Besides, who can assure them that another war with Azerbaijan will not break out? Armed incidents are getting increasingly recurrent along the border.

Nina raises her head and searches Yuri with her eyes. They have relatives in Russia. Most likely, she says, they will also leave.