President of Russia Vladimir Putin congratulated Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian acting PM Nikol Pashinyan with New Year and Christmas holidays.
In the congratulatory message Putin stressed that Armenian and Russian relations are based on ancient-long traditions and cultural and spiritual closeness.
Pashinyan sure of greater victories in 2019
14:37,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has participated in a formal reception on New Year and Christmas holidays for representatives of the state administration system. President Armen Sarkissian, Catholicos Garegin II and outgoing Speaker of Parliament Ara Babloyan were also in attendance.
“The main question that arises in the 2018-2019 boundary is the following: can we do the things we talk about? This question certainly has one answer, it is positive, but simultaneously with this answer there are conditions. Yes, we can, if we are able to believe in our powers, and in order to believe in our powers it is necessary for us to be able to believe in our mission. Our government is a government of a mission that must realize its mission, because it is developed on the faith and trust of our people for the past and future.
This mission is developed on the perception that a people who have passed through centuries-old disasters cannot lose because if it were a losing people this defeat would had arrived long ago. Therefore, the Armenian people is a winner and in 2018 the Armenian people proved this.
We must realize that all issues and tasks that we are developing are assigned to us by the people. All of these issues are solvable and we must solve them on the basis that all of us must understand and record – the solution of these issues is here and there [in the mind and heart]. If we are able to adhere to this formula, we will definitely solve all issues before us.
And the past eight months have proven that we have sufficient will, sufficient coherency, sufficient strength, sufficient people’s support for solving these issues.
I would like to thank all those present for their work during this period, and I want to congratulate for the joint work. Although I can’t say that we have done everything that we would have liked to have finished already, I can’t not mention that during this period we have done the most important thing – we have proved that we are capable of solving the issues set before us, regardless of how likely the solution of these issues seems to anyone.
I congratulate us all on the years of 2018 and 2019. I am sure that just like 2018, 2019 will also be a year of victories, but they [victories] must be greater, more encompassing and more strategic victories. Happy New Year to your families, happy New year to the staff of all ministries, I wish you good luck in your work and in your personal life. Thank you,” Pashinyan said.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
Walking around the Armenian capital of Yerevan in early June, the last thing a visitor could picture on those streets was a revolution. Spotless, clean, and cheerful, with families out for ice cream and strolls in the balmy late-spring night, the city appeared to be perfectly content.
And yet, only weeks before, the nation had been in turmoil. The streets were filled with protestors demanding the resignation of president Serzh Sargsyan and an end to the corrupt, autocratic government that had controlled the former Soviet republic since 2008.
The year 2018 was one in which authoritarianism made striking gains in countries like Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. But in May, Armenia managed to free itself from autocracy—without shedding a drop of blood. By December, the country had held was was arguably its first fair election in two decades.
Armenia’s so-called “velvet revolution” was a model of democratic engagement, prompting The Economist to name it the country of the year. The story of how Armenians brought about their victory offers lessons for citizens around the world seeking to get rid of corrupt leaders—and reminds us all that it’s possible to bring about political change.
Sargsyan had held the office of president since 2008, as well as the office of prime minister from 2007 to 2008, thanks to a series of crony deals and contested elections. May’s protests were first ignited when, in April 2018, Sargsyan privatized the official presidential residence with the intention of holding onto it regardless of the end of his mandate later that same month. Lawmakers then elected him prime minister, despite the fact that he had pledged in 2015 that he wouldn’t seek the role—further enflaming public fury and sending tens of thousands of protestors onto the streets of Yerevan and other Armenian cities.
But this was not the first time Sargsyan had encountered popular opposition. In fact, the prime-minister-turned-president-turned-prime-minister had been dealing with intermittent protests for years. The results of every election had been contested since 2008. In 2011, a protest led by street vendors against a ban on selling goods on Yerevan’s streets broadened to become a mass political demonstration against both national and local governments. The protests carried on, intermittently, for the entire year. But although they led to some concessions, such as a change in anti-assembly laws, they didn’t turn into tangible victories.
From 2012 on, the protests gained focus—and became a yearly occurrence, as Salpi Ghazarian, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Armenian Studies and co-founder of Civilitas Foundation, Armenia’s first large NGO, told Quartz.
In 2012, there was the Mashtots Park Movement, or Occupy Mashtots, a protest with the goal of stopping the government from turning Yerevan’s Mashtots Park into real-estate property. The movement, led by a group called The City Belongs to Us, managed to stop the project, bolstering spirits with a concrete victory. In 2013, the focus of the protests was a big hike in Yerevan’s transportation fares. In 2014, protestors turned out to oppose pension reform. In 2015, the movement, called Electric Yerevan, centered on the rising cost of electricity.
These victories were both emboldening and limiting, according to both Ghazarian and Ani Paitjan, one of the many young, polyglot reporters who work for Civilitas’s digital media organization, CivilNet. On one hand, citizens got to feel the thrill of accomplishing tangible results. On the other, these small victories signaled, every time, the end of the fight. And when the protests moved away from concrete issues and into the broadly political realm in 2016, with people demanding the government’s resignation, the turmoil wasn’t capable of obtaining similar, relatively quick results.
And so, even as an opposition leader—current prime minister Nikol Pashinyan—emerged in late 2017, many people were dubious about whether it was really possible to move beyond smaller political changes and get rid of the Sargsyan government. ”Everybody was skeptical,” one start-up founder housed by the incubator Impact Hub, who asked not to be identified in order to protect their family’s privacy, told Quartz. The attempts to bring about long-lasting political change had been so numerous that “it just didn’t seem like there were ways to get these politicians out.”
But as it turned out, all those previous protests—despite their limitations and shortcomings—wound up informing the strategy that successfully toppled Sargsyan. Interviews with Ghazarian, as well as with CivilNet journalists and Impact Hub co-founder and CEO Sara Anjargolian, identified five steps that proved crucial to ousting the authoritarian regime.
On top of all this, the revolution was very friendly to the media. CivilNet, as well as other organizations such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, broadcast live from the protests. Pashinyan had a background as a journalist, and the media felt he was trustworthy.
Getting digital media on board was crucial because of an interesting feature of Armenia: Its impressive internet penetration. According to the country’s official statistics, 72.5% Armenians in the country have access to the web. The Freedom of the Net report, which places internet penetration at 62%, considers the country free when it comes to internet access. Mobile penetration, too, is very high, at 119%. All this makes it easy for the news to circulate even in rural areas. And because Armenia has a large diaspora population, online media was particularly key in spreading awareness of the protests.
In CivilNet’s newsroom, Ghazarian explains that Armenia is a country where grandmas casually use Skype, even in rural areas, to speak with their grandchildren and relatives in other countries. Because digital sites have a large diaspora audience following their English updates, they could count on a direct information channel out of Yerevan and into more rural areas of the country, as well as an indirect one: From CivilNet to the diaspora, and then back to people in Armenia through loved ones abroad.
Some outlets were strategic in spreading the demands of the protesters and sharing the size of the uprising. CivilNet, for example, greatly expanded its staff and services to provide nonstop coverage of the protest. But others tried to remain outside the velvet revolution, acting as watchdogs.
That was the case with EVN Report, led by former CivilNet staffer Maria Titizian. During the protests, Titizian told Quartz, her organization, too, provided constant updates through its social media. But unlike others, EVN Report remained cautious in its optimism about the movement’s potential, and remains so.
“Revolution is a pretty loaded word,” said Titizian. “We had an uprising, an anti-regime movement; it is not a revolution until the change is permanent.”
YEREVAN. – The Acting Minister of Defense of Armenia, Davit Tonoyan, on Saturday attended the events devoted to the 77th anniversary of the 102nd Russian Military Base in Gyumri.
Congratulating the soldiers of this military base on this anniversary, the acting defense minister noted that this military base’s deployment in Armenia stems from the long-term strategic and political interests of the two countries, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia informed Armenian-News-NEWS.am.
Also, Tonoyan underscored this military base’s role in maintaining regional stability, and expressed a conviction that the close cooperation will be strong and fruitful, from now on, as well.
On the same day, Davit Tonoyan visited a military unit of the Armenian Armed Forces, too, and got familiarized with its daily military service. And at the end of his tour of this military unit, he gave several instructions and recommendations to its command staff.
“First News”The interlocutor is Professor Ruben Inchikyan of Webster University of Geneva. Ruben Inchikyan, professor of economics and management, worked at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for about 30 years.
– Mr. Inchikyan, Former Prime Minister of Armenia Hrant Bagratyan believes that the economic situation will worsen in the coming months of 2019, the Central Bank should not stabilize the dram exchange rate. What does your analysis show?
– I agree with Hrant Bagratyan. He means that lowering the dram exchange rate will lead to the strengthening of Armenia’s export competition. There are always two sides. when states want to keep their dram exchange rate stable. This has an important component, firstly, so that foreign investors believe in the economic and political risks of that country, that if they establish a production in a country like Armenia, they will receive approximately the same amount of dollars for the costs of the produced drams. If the dram falls, then foreign investors may suffer losses. At the same time, the producers in Armenia, who have mainly dram expenses and can export and receive dram equivalent to the dollar, but here there is also the question of Russia, how the Russian ruble will move against the dollar. But if we analyze the trade in dollars, it can boost Armenia’s export potential to some extent. And in this sense, I agree with Bagratyan.
– How do you evaluate Armenia’s economic strategy? In general, how to promote production capital in Armenia? Nikol Pashinyan noted that a process of economic transformation is taking place in Armenia. The goal of the government is to make Armenia a technological industrial country. Is it possible?
– I fully share this position of Pashinyan. He talks about the diversification of the Armenian economy and wants to create new jobs with new, higher productivity and added value sectors of the economy. Of course, they should mainly produce not for the domestic market, but for the foreign market. Armenia should take advantage of its intermediate status and assume the role of a connecting country with post-Soviet and Western countries if they want to invest in Armenia and enter the EAEU market. And Armenia can create its production base, mainly by solving the issue of capital accumulation thanks to foreign investments, then produce and sell those goods and services to the EAEU, why not also to the countries of the Middle East. Armenia should play the role of such an important link that can connect several chains. In the same way, Armenia can play an important role in China’s and in the future India’s foreign investment, so that they too choose Armenia, a place that will be able to consolidate all the logistics of the development of the Silk Road through information technology, and thus help China’s Silk Road implementation process. Therefore, it is important to find opportunities to export what can be sold by creating information technologies, the Internet, information bases. In other words, to enter huge projects as a country providing an important service. And I think Pashinyan’s strategy is very correct. Along with that, of course, a program should be presented. And I think that will be the main problem of the new government. And congratulating the new government from the bottom of my heart, I suggest that they start thinking about the strategy of economic development and export potential, I would say, on the strategy of exponential growth from the very first days. And for that, the most difficult issue, the issue of capital accumulation, must be resolved.
– During the past seven months, the Prime Minister repeatedly called to come and invest in Armenia, because now the field in Armenia is favorable for investments. Do you think the field of investments will expand next year?
– The fact that Pashinyan offered to come and make investments, and also announced that our revolution did not cause economic shocks, was the right approach. Pashinyan did the right thing by holding quick elections. And it showed that Armenia is a democracy, although they say that Pashinyan and his team will make decisions alone, but I do not agree. Today there are three parties in the National Assembly. It is also wrong to say that the other two cannot be in the opposition, because they are separate parties and may not agree with the position of the My Step alliance. And if those two forces do not agree, and “My Step”, having a majority in the parliament, passes its decisions, in any case, the signals of the opposition will sober it up and they will think for a long time before making a new decision. There is an opposition in Armenia that can be constructive and help the ruling power. Having received the people’s trust, “My Step” and Pashinyan’s government as well, if they take steps to improve the political and economic situation and implement programs in the right way, it will be an important incentive for investors to come and invest in Armenia. During seven months, Pashinyan did not have such a political base as he has after the elections. And now no political force can stop him if he organizes well and can use all the specialists in the right way. I would put an old but literate specialist next to a newly revolutionary, but not yet fully trained young specialist. I see on Facebook that there are professionals who work in a serious organization, but instead of giving professional advice, they go beyond that framework and make various criticisms, which is quite unpleasant. Our educated elite should become more patriotic and not selfish and should be able to unite around the idea of the country’s development and not to show themselves.
Armenia faces an important problem: the problem of capital accumulation. It is necessary to find important directions for accumulation of production capital, development and growth of new productions. First, Pashinyan’s government should create a truly development state, where institutions will work well, guide foreign investors and create mechanisms based on information technology, say, a single window system, a system for establishing a fast business, a system for supporting foreign investors. These institutions will provide answers to all the questions that concern them and create an environment of legal protection where they will be able to protect their rights while working with local partners. Our Armenian entrepreneurs will also understand that the courts in the new Armenia will be completely independent and will make a fair decision if there is a dispute between partners. This will be a signal for foreign investors that they can come and open productions. And Armenians working in many international companies can also attract the attention of their companies that they can come to invest in Armenia, which in turn will be an incentive for increasing the volume of direct investments. As for portfolio investments, they have the property that they can both enter and leave the country quickly. Capital is flowing out of many developing countries these days. And representatives of such speculative capital, playing on the difference between interest and income, make money. And if the interest rate in Armenia is high and the Central Bank protects the dram, it means that a foreign portfolio investor can enter Armenian securities, earn interest and hope that the exchange rate of the dram and the dollar will remain the same, and then exit. And the so-called hot money comes in as easily as it comes out and may not be very positive for the development of the country. And so the government should give a clear signal that it is waiting for long-term investments, to develop the production base, so that the country can profit more with its products and finally reach the point where Armenia’s exports are greater than its imports. This should be one of the priority tasks of the government, so that Armenia does not depend on the financial assistance of friends living abroad in the future.
And finally, it is necessary to apply the experience of the active industrial policy of Southeast Asian countries in supporting exporting companies. The state here accelerated the process of capital accumulation by allowing companies that channeled their earnings into new investments and exports to receive major benefits, exempting a portion of that income from taxes, allowing exporting companies to import machinery and other equipment without paying import duties, and giving these companies the opportunity to obtain loans at lower interest rates if the products were exported.
The Acting Minister of Defense of Armenia, Davit Tonoyan, has issued a congratulatory message on the coming New Year, to the servicemen and servicewomen of the Armenian Armed Forces.
“The year 2018 became phenomenal in the public and political life of our country,” the message reads, in particular. “A new system of governance, a new military and political leadership of the country, but our task is the same: To ensure the peace of Armenia and Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh], with a high[-level] readiness.
“Any reality taking place in the country, in reality, is secondary, third to the tasks of ensuring security, [and] at whose center is our modern army.”
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Sam Sweeney
Security, Middle East
Don’t Withdraw from Syria Just Yet
President Donald Trump: I appreciate your desire to bring our troops home from Syria. The Islamic State is indeed nearly defeated in Syria, for now, and you are right to not want an open-ended presence in the country. However, a U.S. withdrawal now would put the very allies with whom we defeated ISIS in Syria at grave risk. As you well know, Turkey is threatening to invade the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who did the hard work of defeating ISIS, giving thousands of lives to do so. The world should be grateful to the SDF for this effort rather than punishing them for it. Additionally, if we leave now there is a significant chance that war could break out in the area. There would be no better opportunity for ISIS to regroup than extended chaos in northern Syria.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to travel to northeast Syria to look at efforts to preserve archaeological and historical sites in the area. I was not planning on writing about politics, but I feel compelled to speak out now. The political project in northeast Syria, called the Autonomous Administration or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, is not perfect—nothing is. However, it is by far the fairest, most tolerant political project to hold power in Syria in recent memory. The diversity of the area—linguistic, ethnic and religious—is being preserved and promoted. Three languages—Arabic, Kurdish and Syriac— greet visitors as they arrive. This is unprecedented in Syria, where Arabic has traditionally been imposed on all Syrians regardless of their native language. Power is shared between Arabs and Kurds, Christians and Muslims, men and women.
If Turkey invades the area east of the Euphrates River now, we can expect a humanitarian disaster. When Turkey backed Syrian rebels to take over the area of Afrin in northeastern Syria it unleashed a shocking campaign of ethnic and religious cleansing. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks in explicitly ethnic terms when discussing Syria—he sees only Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen, not human beings. He intends to drive a wedge between ethnic communities, if his rhetoric regarding “terrorist Kurds” is any indication.
President Erdogan’s assertion that the Syrian Democratic Forces are terrorists is absurd. Calling them so deprives the word of all meaning. They have defeated the terrorists with no help from him. He was not concerned about terrorism when his government allowed jihadists from all around the world to travel freely through Turkey to join the fight in Syria and fuel groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Any campaign of Turkey’s to remove the Syrian Democratic Forces from northern Syria will rely on jihadist groups that are only marginally more moderate than ISIS itself. Turkey-backed rebels looted and pillaged the majority-Kurdish area of Afrin while Turkish troops watched. This is in stark contrast to what the Syrian Democratic Forces did when they took over majority-Arab cities like Manbij and Raqqa—they worked hard to establish order. I was just in Raqqa; the situation is still tense, with ISIS cells lurking about at night, but the security officials are working for the people. In Afrin they are engaged in ethnic and religious cleansing.
Northern Syria is an incredibly diverse area: Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Syriac and Armenian Christians all live side-by-side, in tolerance if not always in perfect harmony. A Turkish-backed invasion of the area will threaten this diversity existentially. Armenians in the area mostly came fleeing the Armenian Genocide during World War I. They fled from Turkey and were protected by local Arabs in places like Raqqa. They rebuilt their lives from scratch. They became an integral part of society. If Afrin is any indication, they will not survive a Turkish incursion into the area. Another Christian community, the Syriacs, still speak the language of Christ. These communities barely survived ISIS. The groups Turkey used to invade Afrin in Syria’s Kurdish-majority northwest destroyed Yazidi religious sites and called on “atheist” Kurds to repent or lose their heads. Can we reasonably believe a Turkish incursion into northeast Syria will involve groups looking to preserve the patchwork of religions and ethnicities in the area? Almost certainly not.
A political deal that respects Turkey’s border and guarantees security for our allies in the SDF is possible, and this would allow us to leave Syria. But we could not have defeated ISIS without the SDF, and abandoning them now would be an affront to that effort, which is still unfinished. There is still work to be done to ensure that ISIS cannot regroup. President Trump, we don’t need to be in Syria forever. But we can’t leave just yet.
Samuel Sweeney is a former Congressional staffer and is now a writer and translator based in the Middle East. He has a Master’s Degree in Islamic-Christian Relations from l’Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut.
Image by Samuel Sweeney taken in Raqqa on December 11, 2018. A bombed van in front of Qasr al-Banat, a historic site in Raqqa dating to Harun al-Rashid’s caliphate which also used Raqqa as its capital, from 796 to 809 AD.
https://news.yahoo.com/don-t-withdraw-syria-just-143700031.html
MOSCOW. – Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Armenia’s third President Serzh Sargsyan, on the New Year and Christmas holidays.
Vladimir Putin sent greetings to several former foreign heads of state, including the ex-presidents of Armenia, the Kremlin press service informed.
As reported earlier, Putin had also congratulated Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan—who is remanded in custody in Armenia—on the coming New Year.
Divide et Impera is a mod for Total War Rome 2 that has been with us for some time, it has won numerous awards from Creative Assembly including it’s best overhaul mod and most innovative mod in consecutive years. The mod gives us a greater experience of the realism of warfare during the Roman times and it gives greater importance on historical accuracy in regards to the factions and units. It also looks to improve the battle difficulty, diplomacy and campaign gameplay of the AI something that many Total War fans have yearned for, and it certainly brings about a higher level of intelligence for the AI giving you the challenge you’ve always wanted.
The developers have released their latest version just before Christmas and the latest version has a host of changes which can you can read in their release post here. The biggest changes involve new textures and skins for the Armenian units alongside historically accurate figures for the faction to give that authenticity for those wanting to try and emulate the Armenian Empire built more than 250 years before the death of Caesar.
ScipioTheGreat continues the AI overhaul in the mod. The AI will now have a minimum success chance has increased to 40%, it will have better financial management of its provinces and better intuition of strategic areas in the map of where it needs to be defensive or aggressive to take advantage of any weaknesses it finds. Diplomacy between AI factions has also improved with alliances genuinely meaning alliances, whereby other factions provide greater support to each other in times of need.
With over 100,000 people subscribed to the mod on Steam alone, are you ready to join the action and march your armies to victory? If so go on over to their download and installation thread here or their Steam workshop page here.